5 Paintings Set Auction Records; $60.5 Million Paid for a Cezanne

In a sale that set auction records for five artists, a still life of fruit on a table by Paul Cezanne dated 1893-94 sold Monday night for $60.5 million to an anonymous bidder--more than twice the previous record of $28 million for a work by the French Impressionist.

A landscape by Georges Seurat, a study for the famous park scene “Island of the Grande Jatte,” was purchased by Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn for a record $35.2 million at the Sotheby’s auction house sale. Wynn will exhibit the work at his gallery in the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas.

Both works came from the estate of New York socialite-philanthropist Betsy Cushing Roosevelt Whitney, who acquired one of the world’s great art collections during her 40-year marriage to financier John Hay “Jock” Whitney. A publisher of the New York Herald Tribune and onetime ambassador to Great Britain, Whitney died in 1982. Betsy Whitney died last year at 89.

The total of 50 artworks sold Monday brought in $128 million, the second highest take for a single auction of one owner’s works. The record is held by the Picasso-laden auction of the estate of Victor and Sally Ganz at Christie’s New York in the fall of 1977.

Sotheby’s officials said most of Monday’s buyers were American, many relatively new to the market. Other records were for a landscape by Berthe Morisot--purchased by Wynn for $3.85 million--as well as Roger de la Fresnaye ($211,500) and Camille Bombois ($134,500).