![\"Pierre-Auguste](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790100011_727_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nAngelenos recognize Armand Hammer as the founder and namesake of Westwood\u2019s Hammer Museum. New Yorkers associate him with Hammer Galleries, specializing in impressionism and modern art. (Pop culture aficionados may know his great-grandson is Armie Hammer.) No matter what you know about the 20th century oil tycoon, you likely associate him with art.<\/p>\n
Now, a dozen pieces from Hammer\u2019s private collection are set to be auctioned by Sotheby\u2019s, with highlights \u2014 including Mary Cassatt\u2019s \u201cSummertime,\u201d Edgar Degas\u2019 \u201cTrois danseuses (Jupes jaunes)\u201d and Pierre-Auguste Renoir\u2019s \u201cAntibes\u201d \u2014 on preview at Sotheby\u2019s Los Angeles from Wednesday through Friday. (The sale will begin in New York in November.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, \u201cAntibes,\u201d 1888<\/p>\n
(Sotheby\u2019s \/ Armand Hammer collection)<\/p>\n
Hammer moved to Los Angeles in 1956 at the age of 58 with plans to retire, but instead invested $50,000 into two wildcat oil wells<\/a> owned by Occidental Petroleum (at the time nearly bankrupt<\/a>), and the rest is monied history. His last public appearance was at a party celebrating the opening of the Hammer Museum in 1990.<\/p>\n \u201cArmand Hammer\u2019s imprint on Los Angeles is difficult to overstate,\u201d the head of Sotheby\u2019s L.A. office, Jacqueline Wachter, said in a news release. \u201cHe believed that collecting art came with an obligation to share it, a conviction that shaped not only his own museum but decades of gifts to institutions across this city and beyond. Long before Los Angeles was recognized as a global capital for art, Hammer was already insisting that world-class painting belonged here.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the selection of 12 works, estimated to be worth $25 million to $37 million, Cassatt\u2019s \u201cSummertime,\u201d painted between 1894-95, stands out. It does so literally: full of light, sumptuous, in clear conversation with Cassatt\u2019s French impressionist contemporaries (she was the only American and one of few women to exhibit with the impressionists in Paris). But it also may do so in dollar signs: Sotheby\u2019s says it\u2019s poised to set an auction record for Cassatt; they expect it to break $10 million.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s also, obviously, the moment we\u2019re in, and that\u2019s a moment in which women artists are continuing to be recognized more and more, and specifically recognized as undervalued in comparison to their male counterparts,\u201d said Julian Dawes, Sotheby\u2019s head of impressionist and modern art. \u201cThat hasn\u2019t actually made its way, I don\u2019t think, to the impressionist realm, where there are unbelievable female artists, Cassatt being probably the most famous, but also Berthe Morisot<\/a>, Eva Gonzal\u00e8s<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1971, when Armand Hammer bought \u201cSummertime,\u201d the sale set a world record for both Cassatt and any female artist at the time ($150,000<\/a>, or about $1.256 million in today\u2019s dollars). This phenomenon has recently repeated itself among female artists: Leonora Carrington\u2019s \u201cThe Pleasures of Dagobert\u201d<\/a> broke her own sales record in 2024 ($28.5 million), and Frida Kahlo\u2019s \u201cEl sue\u00f1o (La cama)\u201d<\/a> did the same in 2025 ($54.7 million, the most expensive artwork by a woman ever auctioned). Which might be why Cassatt is poised to break her own record now.<\/p>\n \u201cCollectors genuinely see it as an opportunity. It\u2019s like, \u2018This may be the last chance to get a world-class Mary Cassatt for only $10 million,\u2019\u201d Dawes said. \u201cIt\u2019s also a refreshing narrative. It\u2019s, like, oh, you walk into somebody\u2019s house, \u2018Wow, that\u2019s a nice Monet.\u2019 \u2018Actually, it\u2019s not a Monet.\u2019 And that\u2019s kind of cooler than saying, \u2018Yes, it\u2019s another Monet.\u2019 And I think people love new stories. Not that it\u2019s a new story, but it\u2019s an under-told story.\u201d<\/p>\n Edgar Degas, \u201cTrois danseuses (Jupes jaunes),\u201d circa 1899<\/p>\n (Sotheby\u2019s \/ Armand Hammer Collection)<\/p>\n The other standout is \u201cTrois danseuses (Jupes jaunes),\u201d painted around 1899 by Degas, who was independently wealthy and from an aristocratic family, which allowed him the freedom to experiment. That freedom \u201ccomes across here in his sensorial, atmospheric approach, where he\u2019s completely dissolved any attempt at delineation, and it\u2019s just this sea of colors, to the point where he\u2019s literally finger painting it,\u201d said Dawes. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s unbelievable how much of this is done with the pads of his fingers. And all of his fingerprints and thumbprints are crystal clear in the paint.\u201d<\/p>\n Proceeds from the sales will go to the Armand Hammer Foundation. The organization is in the early stages of shifting its focus from stewardship of the collection to providing grants for arts education and institutions. <\/p>\n \u201cI feel there is no better way to honor my great-grandfather\u2019s legacy than to support programs that instill a love of the arts, especially for students, and build appreciation of the roles they play in our lives and communities,\u201d foundation chairman Viktor Hammer wrote in an email. \u201cThis is especially important at this time when there are cutbacks in arts funding.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Angelenos recognize Armand Hammer as the founder and namesake of Westwood\u2019s Hammer Museum. New Yorkers associate him with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[35839,145271,2308,185680,185681,185684,30056,22058,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,185682,5589,155057,165829,315,185683],"class_list":["post-472131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-armand-hammer","tag-armie-hammer","tag-art","tag-cassatt","tag-degas","tag-dollar-sign","tag-hammer-museum","tag-institution","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-private-art-collection","tag-sale","tag-sotheby","tag-summertime","tag-time","tag-unbelievable-female-artist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Edgar](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790100012_169_.jpeg\")
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