A coveted painting with Houston ties is set to fetch between $35 million and $45 million dollars when it's sold to the highest bidder at Christie's, a leading global art business and auction, on November 15. Christie's Evening Sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art will be highlighted by works from the private collection of Susan and François de Menil including Untitled (Rust, Blacks on Plum), a 1962 painting by post-war master, Mark Rothko.





The city of Houston is interwoven throughout the painting's storied past. Dominique de Menil, an heiress to the Schlumberger Limited oil-equipment fortune, and her husband John de Menil first visited Mark Rothko in his studio in 1960, where the painter showed them his Seagram Murals that were intended to hang in the lobby of the Seagram Building in New York. However, Rothko kept the paintings upon finding out they would hang in the in the building's Four Seasons restaurant instead.

Impressed by his works, the de Menils, who founded Houston's Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel, once again paid a visit to Rothko in 1964. RELATED: The Menil is back and better than ever This time, they offered him a commission to paint a series of his own devising that would hang in a chapel being built in Houston. As the couple consulted with the artist during his creative process, Untitled (Rust, Blacks on Plum) caught the eye of Dominique. While waiting for the completion of the construction of the chapel, now known as the Rothko Chapel, Dominique (then chairman of the Art History Department of the University of St. Thomas in Montrose) arranged an exhibition titled "Six Painters," at the university. She requested five works by Rothko, including Untitled (Rust, Blacks on Plum). RELATED: Houston's Rothko Chapel vandalized with paint, handbills: 'It's okay to be white' The paintings were exhibited with works by the five other mid-century masters: Piet Mondrian, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock. When the show concluded at the end of the year, the painting returned to Rothko, who possessed it until his death. Dominique and John de Menil's son, François de Menil, who had a natural affinity for the mysterious qualities of Rothko's darker canvases, purchased the piece from the Rothko estate in 1978.

The Christie's sale on November 15th will present the second instance that Untitled (Rust, Blacks on Plum) has ever changed hands. It will be auctioned with a group of four works by Joseph Cornell, made between the 1930's and 1948. What makes the Rothko piece so valuable that it's expected to be auctioned for more than $35 million? Its not unusual for a Rothko painting to sale for millions of dollars. In 2016, Christie's auctioned Mark Rothko's No. 17, 1957 for $32,645,000. Untitled (Rust, Blacks on Plum), a 5-by-5-foot square oil on canvas, is an eye-catching standout among the artist's works. It was painted at a time when Rothko began to contemplate dark plums, blacks, and purples, which became the predominant palette in the panels at the Rothko Chapel. Its texture, surface and deep hues that pop that against an electric purple background draw you in. Alex Rotter, Christie's chairman of postwar and contemporary art, told Bloomberg News in October, "There are good Rothkos and there are great Rothkos. This Rothko floats."