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  • Posts Tagged ‘Christie’s’

    HIGH HORIZON IN RODERIC O’CONOR PAINTING AT CHRISTIE’S

    Wednesday, March 13th, 2024
    RODERIC O’CONOR (1860-1940) – Marée Montante

    Marée Montante by Roderic O’Conor comes up at Christie’s Modern British and Irish art evening sale in London on March 20. The composition employs an unconventional perspective with an unusually high horizon line and a lack of traditional recession, reminiscent of the aesthetic language of Japanese wood-block prints so fascinating to fellow artistic pioneers around Pont-Aven at the time. This departure from the typical expansive landscape format plunges the viewer into a vertiginous exploration of vertical depth, evoking an awe-inspiring portrayal of the sea as a living, breathing entity. The work was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1906 and it is estimated at £100,000-£150,000.

    MARKET LEADING PERFORMANCE AT CHRISTIE’S LONDON SALES

    Friday, March 8th, 2024
    René Magritte’s L’ami intime (The Intimate Friend) sold for £33,660,000

    Delivering a market-leading performance, up 17% from last year, Christie’s 20th / 21st Century: London evening sale and The Art of the Surreal evening sale realised a combined total of £196,685,600 / $250,380,769 / €229,335,410, selling 87% by lot and 95% by value. The auctions were led by René Magritte’s L’ami intime (The Intimate Friend), from The Gilbert and Lena Kaplan Collection which sold for £33,660,000. The sale series attracted registered bidders from 31 countries, confirming the wide appeal to global collectors of the presentation of 20th century masterpieces showcased alongside cutting-edge contemporary artists. Active buying was witnessed from millennials (10%).

    The20th / 21st Century: London evening sale made £137,699,300 and showed strong demand for selected masterpiece lots, many unseen on the market for decades. Francis Bacon’s Landscape near Malabata, Tangier made £19,630,000. David Hockney’s California made £18,710,000 and  Lucian Freud’s intimate portrait, Kai, originally unveiled at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1993, achieved £4,638,000. Michael Andrews’ School III: Butterfly Fish and Damsel Fish realised a world auction record for the artist (£3,125,500).  

    The Art of the Surreal evening sale achieved £58,986,300 selling 88% by lot and 99% by value, up 52% year on year.   

    BACON’S LANDSCAPE NEAR MALABATA, TANGIER AT CHRISTIE’S

    Friday, February 16th, 2024
    Francis Bacon –  Landscape near Malabata, Tangier (1963). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £19.6 MILLION

    Francis Bacon’s Landscape near Malabata, Tangier (1963), a painting that stands as a powerful and passionate memorial to his great love Peter Lacy, will be a highlight at Christie’s 20th/21st Century evening sale in London on March 7. Created in London the year after Lacy’s tragic death in Tangier, the painting depicts the landscape where he was laid to rest. Here, the artist pays tribute to their relationship in a unique image of grief, desire, and longing. Having remained in the same collection for more than 20years, this marks the first time the painting has been offered at auction since 1985 when it set a then world auction record for Francis Bacon. The estimate now is £15 – £20 million. Often exhibited internationally  it was included in the landmark 1971-72 lifetime retrospective at the Grand Palais, Paris, and was most recently exhibited in the Royal Academy’s ‘Francis Bacon: Man and Beast’, in 2022. Francis Bacon met Peter Lacy at the Colony Room in Soho in 1952. Lacy, a former fighter pilot, was a deeply troubled man whose mercurial personality wrote its way into Bacon’s life and art. The two shared deep, complex feelings towards one another.

    PAULINE BOTY’S CELEBRATION OF MARILYN MONROE AT CHRISTIE’S

    Friday, February 9th, 2024
    Pauline Boty – Epitaph to Something’s Gotta Give (1962)

    Pauline Boty’s celebratory tribute to Marilyn Monroe, Epitaph to Something’s Gotta Give (1962) is among the highlights of Christie’s Modern British and Irish Art evening sale in London on March 20. One of Pop Art’s founding members, Pauline Boty died prematurely at the age of 28 in 1966. Epitaph to Something’s Gotta Give is one of only around 25 Pop paintings that Boty created and was included in a rare lifetime exhibition at Arthur Jeffress Gallery in London in 1962. The painting was gifted to a close friend of Boty’s in 1964 and has remained in the same collection since.  It is estimated at £500,000-£800,000.

    Boty painted two further depictions of Monroe as tributes to the actress following her death, both of which are held in museum collections: Colour Her Gone, 1962 (Wolverhampton Art Gallery) and The Only Blond in the World, 1963 (Tate, London). Boty studied at the Royal College of Art, the seedbed of the Pop Art movement, where she met, befriended and went on to exhibit with Sir Peter Blake, Derek Boshier, David Hockney, Peter Phillips and Patrick Caulfield. In 1961, she exhibited along with Blake and two others at the A.I.A. Gallery in a group show seen as the very first Pop Art exhibition.

    MONET’S SUMMER MORNINGS ON THE SEINE TO HIGHLIGHT CHRISTIE’S SALE

    Thursday, February 8th, 2024
    Claude Monet. – Matinée sur la Seine, temps net (1897). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £14,397,500

    Claude Monet’s Matinée sur la Seine, temps net (1897) will be a highlight Christie’s 20th/21st Century evening sale in London on March 7. At auction for the first time in 45 years the work which captures a tranquil moment on The Seine with morning light casting a glow is estimated at £12-£18 million. The series to which the painting belongs, titled ‘Matinées sur la Seine’, conveys the landscape during the summer mornings of 1896 and 1897 as the light transforms the atmosphere. Tracing the sun as it passes over the scene, from the first rays of light at dawn, to the full brilliance of the sun at mid-morning, this extraordinary sequence of works was conceived as a connected, interrelated sequence of canvases. These would become some of the last scenes the artist would create of the Seine, a frequent subject in his oeuvre and one of the defining images of the Impressionist movement.  

    EXCEPTIONAL WINES FROM THE CELLAR OF LA GAVROCHE

    Wednesday, February 7th, 2024
    LA GAVROCHE CELLAR

    La Gavroche, an online auction with the exceptional wine collection from the two-Michelin starred French restaurant, together with works of art and selected objects, will run at Christie’s from April 10-24. More than 100 lots from the renowned London establishment will include wine, pictures, drawings, prints, decorative objects, porcelain and silver. The restaurant closed in January, 57 years after being founded in 1967 by the Roux Brothers,Albert and Michel. The restaurant proudly boasts a prestigious roster of internationally renowned chefs who were trained within its kitchens, including Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White, Marcus Wareing and Pierre Koffmann.

    MAGRITTE MASTERWORK TO LEAD CHRISTIE’S SURREAL SALE

    Monday, February 5th, 2024
    René Magritte –  L’ami intime (The Intimate Friend) (1958) (£30,000,000-50,000,000). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £33,660,000.

    René Magritte’s L’ami intime (The Intimate Friend) will highlight Christie’s Art of the Surreal evening sale in London on March 7. Presented to coincide with the centenary of the Surrealist Manifesto, penned by André Breton in October 1924, the painting comes to auction for the first time since 1980. Depicting the enigmatic bowler-hatted man, Magritte’s ‘everyman’, L’ami intime (The Intimate Friend) is property from the Gilbert and Lena Kaplan Collection and was last exhibited in Brussels at the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in 1998. The estimate is £30-£50 million.

    Gilbert Kaplan was a pioneering entrepreneur who founded Institutional Investor in 1967 at the age of 25. He was also a renowned cultural connoisseur. Having established and built a commercially successful company, he celebrated its 15th anniversary, together with his own 40th birthday, by conducting Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony, the Resurrection Symphony, at the Lincoln Center in New York. The debut was well received and following the sale of Institutional Investor, he went on to conduct the symphony around the world, lecturing and teaching at Juilliard. Reflecting his lifelong passion, he had a radio show on WQXR called ‘Mad About Music’. Two of the men close to Gilbert Kaplan’s heart were Gustav Mahler and René Magritte. Kaplan served on the Board of Carnegie Hall for more than 30 years and set up a fellowship programme at Harvard’s Music Department, which continues to support students today.

    The figure of a man in a bowler-hat made his first appearance in Magritte’s work in the 1926 painting Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire (The Musings of a Solitary Wanderer). The figure came to function within Magritte’s oeuvre as a symbol of the bourgeois, of the anonymous, faceless masses, the everyday working man and that of the lone wanderer. In L’ami intime (The Intimate Friend) the distinctly ordinary, yet also mysteriously anonymous bowler-hatted man is seen, almost like a silhouette, from behind. Gazing out the window onto a serene, mountainous landscape and a cloud-filled sky, he appears oblivious to the strange sight of a baguette and wine glass floating in mid-air behind him.  

    ARTWORK SIGNED BY ALL FOUR BEATLES MAKES $1.7 MILLION

    Friday, February 2nd, 2024
    THE BEATLES, 1966 – Images of a Woman. Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd.

    This painting – made and signed by all four Beatles – sold for $1,744,000 at Christie’s Exceptional Sale in New York. This is one of the highest sums ever paid for a piece of Beatles memorabilia. The sale of the best in decorative and applied arts, works of historic importance and iconic objects of pop culture brought in $6.7 million with bidding from around the globe. A 1965 Gretsch Chet Atkins country gentleman hollow body electric guitar once owned by Elvis Presley sold for $302,400.

    MAJOR DERAIN WORK TO HIGHLIGHT CHRISTIE’S SALE IN PARIS

    Thursday, February 1st, 2024
    André Derain, Matisse et Terrus, 1905 – © Christie’s Images Limited 2024

    An unknown masterpiece by Andre Derain and a pivotal work in the history of the Fauves movement comes up at Christie’s in Paris on April 9. Directly from the collection of Catalan painter Etienne Terrus, who hosted André Derain and Henri Matisse in Collioure during the summer of 1905, Matisse and Terrus marks the friendship between these three founding figures of Fauvism. The painting holds particular significance in Derain’s oeuvre from Collioure, for more than its portrayal of tripartite friendship. At the 1905 Salon d’Automne in Paris, its bold style and vivid fauvist palette were described as “an orgy of pure tones” giving official birth to one of the major modern art movements. Captivated by light and colors, Derain gradually eschews lines, and separates color from its descriptive, representational purpose, allowing it to exist on the canvas as an independent and focal element. These thick, sweeping strokes of pure pigment, filled with sensual vitality epitomize the breakthrough towards modernity. Estimated at €2 – €3 million it will highlight the ART IMPRESSIONISTE & MODERNE – ŒUVRES CHOISIES sale.

    MARK KNOPFLER GUITAR COLLECTION MAKES £8.8 MILLION

    Thursday, February 1st, 2024
    Mark Knopfler’s 1959 Vintage Gibson Les Paul Standard CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2024

    The Mark Knopfler guitar collection brought in £8,840,160 at Christie’s in London last night. Bidders registered from 61 countries, new auction records were set and the top lot was his vintage 1959 Les Paul Standard which realised £693,000 setting a new world auction record for the model.  The collection of the celebrated singer-songwriter, guitar hero and frontman of the iconic British band, Dire Straits aroused phenomenal competition and the 122 lot auction lasted over six hours and was 100% sold. A total of  25% of the total hammer price will be divided equally and donated to charities that Mark Knopfler has supported for many years: The British Red CrossTusk and Brave Hearts of the North East. 100% of the funds raised from the final lot are being donated to Teenage Cancer Trust. In addition, Christie’s is contributing a further £50,000 to each of the four charities.