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  • Posts Tagged ‘Christie’s’

    COLLECTION OF AN OLD STYLE CONNOISSEUR AT CHRISTIE’S

    Wednesday, December 20th, 2023
    A pair of early 19th century Neoclassical porphyry vases

    The erudite collection of  Philip Hewat-Jaboor (1953-2022), chairman of the Masterpiece Fair in London, at Christie’s next February 8 will offer objects of antiquity, antique furniture and important collectibles. An old style connoisseur he had a particular passion for porphyry and the auction will offer a notable collection headed by early 19th century neoclassical vases. He collected work from legendary British patrons and collectors William Beckford (1760-1844) and Thomas Hope (1769-1831) like a pair of c1815 Roman giltwood armchairs probably purchased by Beckford from Cardinal  Fesch in Paris in 1816 (£30,000-£50,000)(€34,960-€58,270).  Joseph Fesch was Napoleon’s half uncle and one of the most famous art collectors of his period.   Hewat-Jaboor’s collection of antiquities includes a 2nd century AD Roman marble bust of Bacchus (£70,000-£100,000) (€81,570-€116,530).  The 200 works in the collection are expected to realise more than £1.5 million (€1.75 million) and estimates range from £700 to £120,000 (€815-€139,840).

     A pair of Roman giltwood armchairs at Christie’s, probably purchased from Cardinal Fesch.

    DESIGN SALES BRING IN $15 MILLION AT CHRISTIE’S, NEW YORK

    Monday, December 11th, 2023
    JEAN DUPAS (1882-1964) 
    Set of Three Panels from the ‘Birth of Aphrodite’ Mural from the Grand Salon of The S.S. Normandie, circa 1934 

    The iconic ‘Birth of Aphrodite’ panels created by Jean Dupas for the Grand Salon of the famed liner S.S. Normandie made $378,000 at Christie’s two day series of Design sales in New York. The results were exceptional. The first sale featured a group of works by leading artists and designers from 1900 through to the present and achieved $11,408,670. The second was a showcase of works by glassmaker Louis Comfort Tiffany and the Tiffany Studio and it brought in $3,676,050.  The highest prices were achieved by Les Lalannes, the iconic 20th century artist couple. François-Xavier Lalanne bronzes ‘Singe Alternatif IV’ made $945,000 and a black Bélier made $882,000. The third highest price was made by a ‘Singerie’ armchair by Claude Lalanne.  The top lot of the Tiffany sale was a window – ‘Landscape with Magnolias and Irises’ – which made $705,600, three and a half times its low estimate. 

    TIFFANY STUDIOS
    ‘LANDSCAPE WITH MAGNOLIAS AND IRISES’ WINDOW, CIRCA 1910

    FROM €15,000 to €12.7 MILLION IN JUST TWO YEARS

    Friday, December 8th, 2023
    Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn – The Adoration of the Kings

    Rembrandt’s rediscovered Adoration of the Kings sold for £10.9 million (€12.7 million) at Sotheby’s in London on December 6. Just two years ago – when it was attributed to the Circle of Rembrandt – it was valued at just €10,000-€15,000 at Christie’s in Amsterdam. The complex monochromatic painting had been almost entirely unseen by scholars since the 1950’s when it came to light.

    It was included in museum exhibitions and referenced as a Rembrandt work by leading Rembrandt scholars in the 1950s, but in 1960 German art historian Kurt Bauch, who only knew the painting from a black and white photograph, described it as a product of the Rembrandt School and omitted it from from the catalogue raisonné he was compiling. Thereafter, the painting was “entirely overlooked and completely ignored in the Rembrandt literature,” according to Sothebys. Following an 18 month research programme by Sotheby’s it was recognised as a work of great significance from Rembrandt’s early career.

    The Adoration of the Kings was acquired by collector J.C.H. Heldring in Amsterdam in 1955. His widow sold it to a German family in 1985, where it remained until it was sold by Christie’s in Amsterdam two years ago. The painting, which measures 9.6 x 7.3 inches, was purchased by an anonymous buyer for €860,000 at the Christie’s sale — more than 50 times the estimated value. It was later identified as the work of the Dutch master. 

    The vast majority of Rembrandt’s works hang in museums around the world, and almost all of those that have come to auction over the past three decades have been portraits or studies of single character heads.

    ELEGRANT PORTRAIT RECALLS BEAUTIFUL ACTRESS WITH IRISH ROOTS

    Wednesday, November 15th, 2023
    PHILIP ALEXIUS DE LÁSZLÓ (BRITISH, 1869-1937) – Mrs Philip Astley, née Madeleine Carroll. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £63,000

    In 1938 Madeleine Carroll was the highest paid actress in the world. This elegrant full length portrait from 1935 depicts the first Alfred Hitchcock blonde in the same year that she starred in The 39 Steps.  It will be a highlight at Christie’s British & European Art sale on December 14 during Classic Week in London.  Early parts included I Was a Spy, and School for Scandal before she was cast by Hitchcock in The 39 Steps and Secret Agent (1936). Subsequently Madeleine Carroll was offered a major contract in Hollywood and starred with Gary Cooper in The General Died at Dawn, and with Ronald Colman in The Prisoner of Zenda. Carroll has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her outstanding contribution to the cinema industry. She largely abandoned her acting career after the death of her sister Marguerite in the London blitz to devote herself to helping wounded servicemen and children displaced or maimed by the war. She was awarded both the Legion d’Honneur and the American Medal of Freedom for her work with the Red Cross. Born in Staffordshire to John Carroll, an Irish Professor of Languages from County Limerick and his French wife Helene her last film was The Fan in 1949.

    Her Broadway debut was in 1948 and at the tail end of radio’s golden age Carroll starred in the NBC soap opera The Affairs of Dr. Gentry (1957–59) and was one four stars who rotated in taking the lead in each week’s episode of The NBC Radio Theater (1959). The portrait is estimated at £50,000-70,000.

    A STELLAR NIGHT AT CHRISTIE’S IN NEW YORK

    Friday, November 10th, 2023
    Claude Monet –  Le bassin aux nymphéas sold for $74,010,000. 

    Monet’s Le bassin aux nymphéas was the top lot at Christie’s stellar 20th century evening sale in New York last night. His lily pond painting made $74 million in an auction that brought in $640,846,000 and established artists records for Richard Diebenkorn, Barbara Hepworth, Arshile Gorky, Joan Mitchell, Joan Snyder and Fernando Botero. This is the highest total in a single night for a various-owner evening sale since November 2017. Selling 97% by lot, 98% by value, and 105% hammer against low estimate it brings the running total of the week so far at Christie’s to $748,297,800. The second highest price of the night was for Francis Bacon’s Figure in Movement which made $52,160,000. 

    Richard Diebenkorn’s Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad was the highest record of the night, selling for $46,410,000. Joan Mitchell’s Untitled made $29,160,000. Arshile Gorky’s Charred Beloved I made $23,410,000, Barbara Hepworth’s The Family of Man: Ancestor II sold for $11,565,000, Fernando Botero’s The Musicians achieved $5,132,000, and Joan Snyder’s The Stripper sold for $478,800.

    Three Cezanne paintings were sold to benefit the Langmatt Museum in Baden, Switzerland. The group was led by Fruits et pot de gingembre which realised $38,935,000. This was followed by Quatre pommes et un couteau selling for$10,415,000 and La mer à l’Estaque made $3,196,000.

    Richard Diebenkorn – Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad made a record $46,410,000.

    A GOOD NIGHT FOR FEMALE ARTISTS AND ARTISTS OF COLOUR

    Wednesday, November 8th, 2023
    Issy Wood – Fanta Car Interior made $277,200

    Female artists represented one fourth of Christie’s 21st Century evening sale in New York last evening and performed exceptionally well. The 41 lot sale brought in $107.4 million and more than 10% of buyers were millennials. Issy Wood’s Fanta Car Interior made $277,200 against a low estimate of $80,000 and Stefanie Heinze’s Third Date sold for $239,400 against a low estimate of $60,000. Artists of colour saw strong results: Eat dem Taters by Robert Colescott sold for $3,922,000, Night 1 by Matthew Wong achieved $4,164,000, and Intersection of Color: Loge by Reggie Burrows Hodges matched the record for the artist, selling for $730,800.

    The top lot of the evening was Cy Twombly’s Untitled (Bacchus 1st Version II) which made $19,960,000. The second highest price came for Basquiat’s Untitled which achieved $11,910,000. There was five new records: Jenna Gribbon’s Regarding Me Regarding You and Me, brought $478,800; Jia Aili’s Combustion made $4,769,000; Jadé Fadojutimi’s A Thistle Throb achieved $1,683,500; Ilana Savdie’s A High-pitched Complicity sold for $201,600, and Lalanne’s Mouton de laine sold for $1,502,000—the highest total for a single Lalanne Mouton.

    BIG NEW YORK SALES GET UNDERWAY THIS WEEK

    Sunday, November 5th, 2023
    Sixteen Jackies by Andy Warhol at Christie’s. UPDATE: THIS MADE $25.9 MILLION

    The 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F Kennedy this month is recalled through Andy Warhol’s Death and Disaster series in New York next week. Sixteen Jackies will lead Christie’s 20th century evening sale next Thursday (November 9). The 1964 painting, a grid of a repeated press image of First Lady Jackie Kennedy during her husband’s funeral procession is estimated at $25 – $35 million and is one of many highlights in the sales. Led by the Emily Fisher Landau collection of key masterwork examples sales at Sotheby’s showcase over a century of artistic production. There are seminal works by Picasso, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol.  This collection comes under the hammer at Sotheby’s next Wednesday and Thursday (November 8 and 9), followed by the Modern evening auction on November 13 and Now and Contemporary art sales on November 15.  At Christie’s the 21st Century evening sale is next Tuesday the 20th century sale is on Thursday, the Post War and Contemporary day sale is on November 10 and the Impressionist and Modern day sale takes place on November 11.

    Untitled XV 1983 by Willem de Kooning at Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS MADE $8.6 MILLION

    SEMINAL LALANNE SCULPTURE MAKES €18.3 MILLION IN PARIS

    Friday, October 20th, 2023
    Francois Xavier-Lalanne (1927-2008) – Rhinocrétaire I sold for €18,335,000

    Francois Xavier-Lalanne’s unique 1964 piece Rhinocrétaire I made €18,335,000 at a dedicated stand alone single lot auction at Christie’s in Paris today. This is a new world record for Lalanne. His first major sculpture had been estimated at €4-€6 million. Rhinocrétaire I first appeared at Jeanine Restany’s trailblazing Galerie J in the artist’s debut joint exhibition with his wife Claude Lalanne. A functional, metamorphic work, Rhinocrétaire I is at once a bar, an illuminated writing desk, and a seminal early sculpture that foreshadows the poetic exuberance and preternatural inventions that defined the artist’s work for the next forty-four years. Exhibited only one other time, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2010, Rhinocrétaire I has remained in the private collection of the same French family since the 1964 Galerie J. exhibition. 

    ROTHSCHILD DECORATIVE ARTS MAKE $62,656,516

    Wednesday, October 18th, 2023
    A PAIR OF LATE LOUIS XV GILTWOOD AND WHITE-PAINTED FAUTEUILS – Price Realized: $6,221,000
    Louis Delanois, Joseph-Nicolas Guichard, Jean-Baptiste Cagny, supplied to Madame Du Barry for Château De Louveciennes, Circa 1770-1771

    The landmark Rothschild auction series at Christie’s in New York totalled $62,656,516. There was strong demand for decorative arts of all categories and price levels, and underscoring the enduring power of the Rothschild provenance on both sides of the Atlantic. The four sales averaged 280 percent sold hammer above low estimate, and 98 percent sold by lot. Millennial buyers accounted for an average of 15 percent of bidders and buyers across the week, and bidders and buyers from 40 nations participated. Christie’s broke the record for European 18th century seat furniture and then broke that record in the very same sale. Records were also set for Hispano-Moresque and Bernard Palissy earthenware as well as for 17th century flatware.

    The series began with a sale of masterpieces. The leading lot was Gerrit Dou’s A young woman holding a hare with a boy at the window which made $7 million. A pair of late Louis XV gilt walnut fauteuils a la reine by the 18th-century French furniture maker Louis Delanoisset the record for 18th century European chairs making $4,406,00, and then shortly after that this record was broken again by a Delanois pair of late Louis XV giltwood and white-painted fauteuils, supplied to Madame Du Barry for her Château De Louveciennes, Circa 1770-1771, which made $6,221,000, the second-highest price ever for European chairs of any era.

    A TWOMBLY HIGHLIGHT AT CHRISTIE’S 21ST CENTURY EVENING SALE

    Wednesday, October 18th, 2023
    CY TWOMBLY (1928-2011)Untitled (Bacchus 1st Version II) courtesy  CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LIMITED 2023

    This 2004 work by Cy Twombly comes up as a highlight at Christie’s 21st century evening sale in New York on November 7. The work comes from the artist’s celebrated Bacchus series which stands as a culmination of Twombly’s fifty years of painterly practice. The iconic looping theme had been integral to his body of work since the meandering scrawl of his 1960s Blackboard paintings. The character of Bacchus (or Dionysus in Greek), god of revelry and wine, is a notable presence, employed repeatedly throughout Twombly’s career. The character is first referenced in his 1975 collage Dionysus, then again in a 1977 series on the theme of Bacchanalia, and once more in a 1981 triptych Bacchus.

    The 2003 – 2008 Bacchus series is broken into three distinct sets. Untitled (Bacchus 1st Version II) comes from the first and is one of six portrait-format paintings Twombly completed in 2004, not exhibited until 2008 at the Red October Chocolate Factory in Moscow. This set includes the only works with text. Four, including the present example, are inscribed with ‘Psilax’ translating to “the Giver of Wings” a surname attributed to Dionysus. This work is estimated at $18. – $25 million.