In November 2023, Sotheby’s New York staged one of the most remarkable single-owner sales in recent memory.

The collection of Emily Fisher Landau realised approximately $425 million across two sales, making it the most valuable auction dedicated to a female collector in history at the time.

I attended the evening sale in New York.

What struck me was not simply the result, but the atmosphere in the room.

The sale felt less like a market event and more like the public recognition of a lifetime of conviction.

Today, the art market often focuses on transactions. Headlines revolve around prices, records and guarantees. Yet the Emily Fisher Landau sale offered a reminder that before there is a market, there must first be a collector willing to commit to a vision.

That is what made the collection so compelling.

Emily Fisher Landau did not assemble works according to fashion. She collected artists she believed in and continued collecting through multiple market cycles. Looking back at the collection, one sees not a series of purchases but a coherent intellectual journey.

The strongest collections often share this characteristic.

They are not built through diversification.

They are built through conviction.

For collectors, that distinction is important.

The market frequently rewards certainty in hindsight. Collectors, however, must act without that luxury. They make decisions in the present, often before consensus has formed. What appears obvious decades later can feel highly uncertain at the time.

The Fisher Landau collection demonstrated the rewards of long-term thinking.

Its success was not simply financial. It reflected decades of engagement with artists, galleries, institutions and ideas. The collection possessed a clear point of view, and the market ultimately recognised that.

There is also a broader cultural significance to the sale.

Historically, discussions of major art collections have often centred on male collectors. The Fisher Landau auction served as a reminder that some of the most important private collections of the last half-century were assembled by women whose influence extended far beyond the walls of their homes.

The scale of the result inevitably generated headlines. Yet reducing the sale to a number misses the more interesting story.

The real achievement was not the $425 million.

The real achievement was creating a collection capable of producing that result.

At the centre of that story sat Picasso’s Femme à la montre.

The painting sold for $139.4 million, becoming the most valuable work sold at auction that year and one of the highest prices ever achieved for a Picasso. Yet what fascinated me most was not the result itself.

It was the wristwatch.

Picasso’s images of Marie-Thérèse Walter are among the most recognisable paintings of the twentieth century. Yet here, on her wrist, appears an object that feels unusually specific.

A watch.

Time enters the painting.

That small detail changes the way one reads the image.

A watch measures something invisible. It marks duration, waiting, memory and mortality. In a portrait so closely associated with desire and intimacy, it becomes difficult not to wonder whether Picasso was consciously introducing a meditation on time itself.

Was it a symbol of the time he spent with Marie-Thérèse?

A private gift transformed into paint?

Or perhaps a subtle reminder that even the most intense relationships exist within the limits of time?

Whatever the answer, the watch feels unusually modern.

Picasso painted Femme à la montre in 1932, often described as his annus mirabilis. The works from that year are among the most celebrated of his career. They are filled with confidence, sensuality and invention. Yet the watch introduces something quieter into the conversation.

The passage of time.

Looking back now, there is an irony that is difficult to ignore.

The painting itself became a measure of time.

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It remained in the collection of Emily Fisher Landau for more than five decades before returning to the market. During those years, generations of collectors, curators and scholars came and went. Markets rose and fell. Entire artistic reputations were reassessed.

The painting remained.

This is perhaps what distinguished the Emily Fisher Landau sale from so many contemporary auctions.

It was not merely a collection of valuable objects.

It was a collection shaped by patience.

Landau did not assemble her collection according to short-term fashion. She collected with conviction. Looking at the works that passed through the sale, one sees not a strategy designed for resale but a coherent engagement with the art of her time.

That quality is becoming increasingly rare.

Collectors often speak about acquiring great works.

Far fewer speak about holding them.

Yet duration is one of the most underrated elements of collecting. Time allows a collection to develop meaning. It creates context. It transforms ownership into stewardship.

This may ultimately be why the sale resonated so strongly.

The headlines focused on $425 million.

The more interesting story was the collector behind it.

Emily Fisher Landau was not simply selling art.

The market was recognising a lifetime of judgement.

And at the centre of that recognition sat Picasso’s Femme à la montre — a painting about a woman, a watch and perhaps, in its own way, the passage of time itself.

Everything in the auction room was measured: estimates, increments, guarantees, hammer prices and records.

At the centre of it all was a painting that appeared to ask a simpler question.

What is time worth?