Sotheby's brings a Monet to its first Abu Dhabi fine art sale on 10 December

Sotheby's will hold its first international fine art auction in Abu Dhabi this December. The sale, called Breaking Ground, takes place on 10 December and closes the second edition of the auction house's Collectors' Week at the Saadiyat Grove Experience Centre on Saadiyat Island, where all six of the week's auctions will be held. Public exhibitions of the lots open on 4 December.

The best-known name in the sale is Claude Monet. His still life Prunes et Abricots, painted between 1882 and 1885 for the drawing room of the Paris dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, is estimated at $2 million to $2.6 million. Andy Warhol's Ads portfolio from 1985 is also included. There is a local story too: Christo's 2007 drawing The Mastaba of Abu Dhabi (Project for UAE), for the giant work of oil barrels he and Jeanne-Claude proposed for the Liwa desert, is estimated at $180,000 to $250,000. A bronze by Fernando Botero, Donna con Ombrello (2008), carries an estimate of $350,000 to $550,000, and an untitled 2022 painting by Jadé Fadojutimi $500,000 to $700,000.

Emirati artists are at the centre of the sale. It includes paintings by Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim and Hassan Sharif, two of the pioneers of contemporary art in the UAE, and Najat Makki's A Woman's State of Being from 1988, estimated at $30,000 to $50,000. Nujoom Al-Ghanem and Nasser Al-Yousif appear at auction for the first time. The sale gives weight to women artists from the region, among them Etel Adnan, Huguette Caland, Inji Efflatoun and Fahrelnissa Zeid, alongside Paul Guiragossian and S H Raza. Yasmeen Gailani, the Sotheby's specialist leading the sale, said the house wanted "to pay tribute to the emirate's position as a global destination for art, culture and collecting."

The luxury auctions come a day earlier, on 9 December. They include about 50 Cartier watches from a single-owner collection called Shapes of Cartier, among them a rare Twin Strap from around 1970, several Ferraris such as a 2009 Scuderia Spider 16M and a 2004 360 Challenge Stradale, a fancy brown-orange diamond of more than 40 carats, handbags and high-performance bicycles.

The first Collectors' Week, in December 2025, sold only luxury pieces; Monet and Warhol works were shown then but were not for sale. This year the auction lands in a crowded season for art in the capital: Christie's holds its first fine art auction in Abu Dhabi on 1 November, Frieze Abu Dhabi runs from 19 to 22 November and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is due to open on 11 December.

Full lot details are due in November. Sotheby's has not yet published visiting hours for the exhibitions or said whether they need booking, so check its website before you go. The exhibitions are the free way to see the Monet up close before it is sold; bidding is for registered clients of the auction house.