Andy Warhol’s Portraits of Reigning Queens to Lead Phillips’ Editions Sale
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A set of 1985 Andy Warhol portraits of four female monarchs reigning at the time, alongside works by David Hockney, Picasso Pablo, Banksy, and Cecily Brown and other British contemporary artists, will highlight Phillips’ editions sale in London later this month.
Warhol created a total of 16 royal-edition screenprints of the four Queens, including Queen Elizabeth II of the U.K., Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, and Queen Ntfombi Tfwala of Swaziland. The so-called royal editions have different colour schemes, but all feature glimmering diamond dust, which accentuate the outline of the portraits.
This set of four images is being offered by a private, anonymous Dutch collector, who acquired them from Holland Art Gallery in Eindhoven in 2003, according to Phillips.
The set has an estimated total between US$260,000 and US$395,000. The highest-priced in the set is the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, who died last September at the age of 96 after a seven-decade reign. It has a presale estimate of between £200,000 and £300,000 (US$240,000 and US$360,000)
A similar portrait from Warhols’ Reigning Queens series sold for C$1.14 million (US$855,000) last November at Canadian auction house Heffel, setting a record price for an editioned print by the American Pop artist.
Warhol’s portraits of Queen Elizabeth were based on photographs. A drawing of Queen Elizabeth said to be by Warhol was pulled 24 hours before its scheduled auction last week because of authentication doubts.
Phillips editions (prints and multiples) sale, in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Editions Department in London, will feature 310 lots across two sessions from Jan. 18-19. Online bidding is open now and highlights will be on view to the public starting next Wednesday in Phillips’ galleries on Berkeley Square.
Another highlight of the sale is Hockney’s 1998 Dog Wall, a large-scale etching of his dachshunds, Stanley and Little Boodgie. It is expected to sell for between £200,000 and £300,000.
A selection of 15 works by Picasso, including important etchings and linocuts, will be led by Minotaure aveugle guidé par Marie-Thérèse au pigeon dans une nuit étoilée (Blind Minotaur Guided Through a Starry Night by Marie-Thérèse with a Dove). This 1934 work, depicting Marie-Thérèse Walter, his lover and muse at the time, holding a dove, has a presale estimate between £60,000 and £80,000.
In all, the January auctions will “feature some of the titans of 20th and 21st century printmaking and explore the broad spectrum of techniques that make collecting editions so enjoyable,” Rebecca Tooby-Desmond, a specialist and auctioneer at Phillips London, said in a news release.
In 2022, the auction house realised US$40 million in editions auctions globally, the highest total in its history, Tooby-Desmond said.
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The federal budget has rattled property investors. But the biggest mistake isn’t the tax changes, it’s the conclusion many are drawing from them.
2 min
The recent budget has forced a reckoning for property investors.
Negative gearing now restricted to new residential builds, the CGT discount gone and on paper, the numbers look different.
And many investors are responding by pivoting toward yield, prioritising cash flow over capital growth in a way that property strategists say misses the point entirely.
“The debate has shifted to yield versus growth as if they are opposing forces,” says Abdullah Nouh, founder of Melbourne-based buyers’ agency Mecca Property Group. “But that framing is itself the mistake.”
Nouh, who works with high-net-worth families and investors on long-term acquisition strategy, argues that capital growth remains the primary driver of genuine wealth creation and that the post-budget environment has made quality assets more important, not less.
The numbers make his case plainly. An additional $500 per week in rental income is welcome. A prestige asset appreciating by $1 million over a market cycle is transformative.
These are not equivalent outcomes, and portfolios built around yield at the expense of location and land value tend to generate income while wealth stands largely still.
The more nuanced shift Nouh is seeing among sophisticated investors is a move toward assets where both outcomes can be engineered simultaneously – established homes on substantial land in quality locations, where the existing dwelling can be repositioned, rental returns improved, and the underlying land value compounds independent of what sits on it.
For investors with existing equity, commercial property is also entering the conversation in a more serious way.
Prestige industrial assets, medical centres and long-leased essential retail offer income profiles that residential property in most capital city markets cannot currently match: longer lease terms, tenants covering outgoings, and greater predictability than the residential tenancy cycle.
“The investors who build lasting wealth are rarely the ones who chased yield or growth exclusively,” says Nouh.
“They are the ones who built a strategy they could sustain – one that generated enough income to hold quality assets through multiple cycles while those assets compounded in value.”
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