T. rex skeleton Gus leads July auctions with $20m-$30m estimate

A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton named Gus, estimated at $20m-$30m, will be the top lot in Sotheby's Natural History sale on 14 July in New York. Uncovered in Harding County, South Dakota between 2021 and 2023, the 67-million-year-old specimen stands over 12ft tall and 38ft long with remarkably complete bones showing healed fractures and bite marks. This estimate is the highest ever assigned to a dinosaur, following record sales of Stan ($31.8m at Christie's in 2020) and Apex ($44.6m at Sotheby's in 2024). Meanwhile, Sotheby's London will offer Edwin Landseer's Scene in Braemar (1857), estimated at £3m-£4m on 1 July. The nearly nine-foot-tall Highland landscape, described by art historian Richard Ormond as a "sequel" to The Monarch of the Glen, was commissioned by railroad contractor Edward Ladd Betts and later owned by Henry William Ferdinand Bolckow and Edward Guinness. Beatrix Potter singled it out in 1887. At the Hamptons Fine Art Fair (9-12 July), Modern Fine Art presents a ten-foot bronze cast of Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty for $1m, the last of 12 artist's proofs authorized by the Musée des Arts et Métiers. The cast commemorates the 250th anniversary of the US. Christie's First Open sale on 17 July features Milton Avery's Rushing Stream (c.1930, est. $40,000-$60,000) from the Rabb Goldberg Collection, built by the Stop & Shop family, including works by Degas, Renoir, Nevelson, and Hockney.