The Portrait of Ada That Set Alex Katz's Auction Record

Alex Katz's Blue Umbrella I (1972) sold for $4.15m (£3.38m) at Phillips in London on October 2, 2019. The oil on canvas work had been traded 5 times in the past.

Alex Katz painted his first portrait of Ada Del Moro Katz a year before they got married in 1958. That early painting is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection. He has gone on to paint his wife and muse more than 250 times.

He created Blue Umbrella I in 1972 and then painted a sister canvas in larger dimensions, titled Blue Umbrella II, which broke Katz's auction record in 2015. He has published two sets of lithographs in 1979-1980, in colour and in grayscale, featuring the same close-up of Ada in the rain.

Ada Del Moro Katz recalled how it all began. "This guy that I was interested in was looking at my eyes, my ears, my shoulders," she told the writer Calvin Tomkins. "The whole thing was just very sensual. But then it became just this thing that he did. I was sitting and he was painting, and that was it."

The sale beat the artist’s previous auction record by $2.91m, a 225% rise. His previous record was set by Ada And Louise (1987), which sold for $1.24m at Christie's on March 7, 2019.

A Brief History of Alex Katz at Auction