Diane Arbus Photos From Lily Tomlin Collection Head to Bonhams Auction

A 1963 Diane Arbus portrait of a teenage couple on Hudson Street, estimated between $60,000 and $90,000, anchors the photography highlights of "Lily Tomlin & Jane Wagner: Wit, Women & The Art of Collecting," a 33-lot live auction at Bonhams New York set for April 8. The sale marks the first major public dispersal from the five-decade personal art collection of actress and comedian Lily Tomlin and writer-director Jane Wagner.

The Arbus photograph, titled "Courtship, Teenage Couple, Hudson St.," depicts a young boy and girl posed together with a familiarity that reads well beyond their years, a quality characteristic of Arbus's psychologically charged portraiture. Arbus's work is noted as a particular favorite of Tomlin and Wagner, and the collection includes multiple prints by the photographer. For anyone tracking how prints move through the secondary market, provenance tied to a documented personal narrative can shift both estimates and realized prices considerably; works assembled by figures who engaged directly with the art world carry a biographical dimension that few institutional sales can replicate.

The auction extends well beyond photography. Robert Rauschenberg tops the overall estimate range with his 2001 work "Page 8, Paragraph 3 (Short Stories)," carrying estimates of $150,000 to $200,000. Two additional Rauschenberg pieces, "Clover" (1980) and "Surge" (1980), are estimated at $80,000 to $120,000 and $60,000 to $80,000, respectively. Andy Warhol is represented with two prints from the "Ingrid Bergman" series: "With Hat," estimated at $60,000 to $80,000, and "Herself," at $30,000 to $50,000. Both Warhol and Rauschenberg were personal acquaintances of Tomlin and Wagner, lending the collection an unusually direct connection to the artists themselves.

Annie Leibovitz also appears with two photographs of Tomlin, both gifted directly to the couple: "Lily Tomlin as 'Trudy' (in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe)" (1986) and "Lily Tomlin on a Motorcycle (for Vanity Fair)" (1986), each estimated at $3,000 to $5,000.

Running alongside the April 8 live event, Bonhams will host an online-only sale of more than 50 additional works dedicated exclusively to photography, open from March 31 through April 9. Irving Penn is among the photographers represented in that component, alongside other figures central to the collection's emphasis on pioneering women artists.

Realized prices from the Arbus lots will be watched closely by curators and private collectors alike. When a print with this level of provenance comes to market, the result functions as a data point that can influence museum acquisition strategies and reset private collector expectations for comparable Arbus material going forward.