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Lichtenstein's Reflections on Painter and Model Leads Sotheby's November Evening Sale

Roy Lichtenstein's 1990 Reflections on "Painter and Model," from the Hedreen collection, carries a $20 million to $30 million estimate at Sotheby's Now and Contemporary Evening Auction on November 16.

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On November 16, 2026, at 7 PM EST, Sotheby's New York opens The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction with Roy Lichtenstein's Reflections on "Painter and Model" (1990) as one of its two highest estimated lots, at $20 million to $30 million. The acrylic, oil and graphite painting measures 78 by 96 inches. It comes from the Seattle collection of Richard and the late Elizabeth Hedreen, who acquired it before September 1993 through Leo Castelli Gallery and Gagosian Gallery.

The painting belongs to Lichtenstein's Reflections series, begun in the late 1980s. Bands of Ben Day dots, diagonals and flat color sit over an earlier image, as if the canvas were glass you cannot quite see through. Of the related Reflections prints, Lichtenstein said he had been trying to photograph another artist's work through glass: "It portrays a painting under glass. It is framed and the glass is preventing you from seeing the painting. Of course, the reflections are just an excuse to make an abstract work, with the cartoon image being supposedly partly hidden by the reflections." The same logic drives the large canvas headed to the block.

Around it, Sotheby's will offer some 50 works from the Hedreen collection across the November New York sales, including contemporary masterworks by Sam Francis, Cecily Brown and others, with a dedicated Old Masters auction planned for February 2027. The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction lists 53 lots with a low estimate total of $226.2 million. For a Pop artist who spent decades quoting mass print, Reflections on "Painter and Model" turns the quote back on painting itself.

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