No. 5, 1948 Auction History

1948: Painted by Jackson Pollock [4].

Early 1949: Sold by Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, to Alfonso A. Ossorio after Pollock’s Jan–Feb 1949 exhibition; in April 1949 Pollock reworked the painting following transit damage to Ossorio’s home [2].

Later: Owned by publisher S. I. Newhouse Jr., who sold it to David Geffen [3].

Nov 2006: Geffen sold the work in a brokered private sale for about $140 million; the transaction was handled by Sotheby’s Tobias Meyer (not at auction), and the buyer was not identified. David Martínez was publicly denied as the buyer by his counsel shortly thereafter [4][1][8][3].

The reported November 2006 private sale of No. 5, 1948 for about $140 million was widely described at the time as a record price for any painting, underscoring intense demand for postwar American masterpieces and Pollock’s most coveted late‑1940s drip works [4]. Importantly, the deal was brokered by Sotheby’s rather than achieved in the auction room, and the price and buyer were not officially confirmed, highlighting how top‑tier valuations in this category often crystallize in private channels with limited disclosure [1][4].

Since then, public auction benchmarks for Pollock have reset at lower levels than the very top private deals. The current auction record is $61.2m for Number 17, 1951 (Sotheby’s, The Macklowe Collection, Nov 15, 2021) [5]. Other major public results include Number 19, 1948 at $58.36m (Christie’s, 2013) and Number 31, 1949 at $54.205m (Christie’s, 2022) [6][9]. In the private sphere, a closely related drip of 1948—Number 17A—reportedly sold for around $200m in 2015 (reported in early 2016), reinforcing the premium that the very finest 1947–49 works can command outside the auction room [7].

Taken together, these data points suggest a two‑track market for canonical Pollocks: public auctions establish high but comparatively conservative comparables, while private transactions for the most historically resonant drips can exceed those levels substantially. No. 5, 1948 sits at the center of that narrative; it has no public auction history and remains in a private collection, but its 2006 price became a touchstone for the category even as its exact terms remain reported rather than on‑the‑record [1][4]. For collectors and institutions, provenance that includes early patron Alfonso A. Ossorio and later figures like S. I. Newhouse Jr. and David Geffen further amplifies the work’s significance and market standing [2][3].