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Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) The Salutation of Beatrice courtesty Christie's Images Ltd., 2012. (Click to enlarge).

The romance between Jane Morris, wife of artist and designer William Morris, and the pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a source of gossip in Victorian times. The couple took great care to protect their privacy.  Each destroyed the correspondence with the other. Now a previously unknown portrait of Jane Morris by Rossetti from a private collection in Scotland associates Jane with Dante’s muse Beatrice Portinari.   It will be offered at Christie’s Victorian & British Impressionist Art sale in London on May 31 and is estimated at £1-1.5 million.

William Morris was Rossetti’s business partner.  Rossetti met and was attracted to Jane in 1857 when he was already engaged to Lizzie Siddall. Jane married Morris. Siddall suffered an overdose of laudanum in 1862, probably taking her own life. The relationship between Rossetti and Jane Morris was eventually re-kindled.  Rossetti’s 1869 painting ‘The Salutation of Beatrice’ was unrecorded and unknown to scholars. This was the year when it is generally assumed their affair began. It lasted until about 1875. The painting is described by Peter Brown, Christie’s director of Victorian Pictures, as the most important work by Rossetti to appear at auction in 25 years.

The sale will also feature a rare depiction of Florence Nightingale studied from life by Jerry Barrett (1824-1906). The Mission of Mercy: Florence Nightingale receiving the Wounded at Scutari shows Florence Nightingale in the Barrack Hospital at Scutari, the scene of her heroic endeavours to improve the medical treatment of the British Army in the Crimea.  It is estimated at £30,000-50,000.  There is a larger version at The National Portrait Gallery in London.  At the same sale A Winner at Epsom by Sir Alfred James Munnings is estimated at £500,000-800,000.

Jerry Barrett (1814-1906) The Mission of Mercy: Florence Nightingale receiving the wounded in Scutari in 1856. (Click to enlarge).

Sir Alfred James Munnings, P.R.A., R.W.S. (1878-1959) A Winner at Epsom. (Click to enlarge).

Tamara de Lempicka Nu adossé I ($3/5 million). Click on image to enlarge. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $5,458,500

Every collector’s dream of owning an undiscovered masterpiece came true for one West Coast art lover. Knowing nothing of the artist but appreciating the quality of the work a US collector bought a painting and kept it at home for a decade. It was in fact a lost work by Tamara de Lempicka, described in the catalogue raisonné of the artist, published in 1999, as location unknown.  The Modern masterpiece Nu adossé I will be offered by Sotheby’s on May 2 in New York and is estimated at $3-5 million.

The work, a classic example of the artist’s aesthetic, was included in her groundbreaking solo exhibition at Milan’s Bottegia di Poesia gallery in 1925, the year it was painted. It was known only from a photograph of that show. Afterwards it effectively disappeared. Sotheby’s was contacted by the owner late last year. He described finding the work many years before and, while not realizing its importance at the time, he had appreciated its aesthetic appeal. A decade later the owner learned that he possibly owned an original Lempicka. An art consultant advised him to contact Sotheby’s. Following first-hand inspection and subsequent research, the work was confirmed to be the lost Lempicka.

Tamara de Lempicka was a pioneering artist who occupied an important position in ‘Roaring Twenties’ Paris. Her aesthetic embodied the spirit of the Art Deco era and its sense of style and modernity. Nu adossé I is coming to market at a time of unprecedented interest in the artist. Over the course of the past year, several new benchmarks have been set for Lempicka’s work at Sotheby’s – in June 2011, a new auction record was set for the artist when her La dormeuse sold for $6.6 million. Five months later, that record was broken again at Sotheby’s when Le rêve achieved $8.5 million.

UPDATE: IT MADE $5,458,500

(See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for February 21 and April 5 2012)

Yves Klein's FC1, described as one of the most important Post War European works of art. (Click on image to enlarge) UPDATE: IT SOLD FOR $36,482,500.

THE most important work by Yves Klein ever offered at auction, his Fire-Color Painting FC 1, comes up for sale in New York on May 8. Estimated at $30-40 million Christie’s say it is poised to break the world record for the artist at auction.  Contemporary art specialist Loic Gouzer said:  “Yves Klein’s FC 1 is to Europe what Pollock’s NUMBER ONE is to America. It is the ultimate heroic work fusing all of the elements that Klein learnt to master over his short and intense career. FC1 perfectly embodies Klein’s obsession with the irreconcilable concept of presence and absence, life and death”.

FC 1 depicts two female figures amid the fiery blue, gold and red flame-licked surface. The bodies hover on the borderline of abstraction, between the realms of the material and the immaterial. Two models acted as brushes. Doused with water they pressed themselves to a large sheet of treated cardboard. Klein then directed an intense flame towards the board.  The moisture soaked cardboard resisted. Then the models coated themselves in a subtle pink paint and pressed against the board.  They then applied a thicker coat of his IKB pigment to leave a last impression on the surface while he enhanced their silhouettes spraying pink and blue pigment with an airbrush.  By placing the sensual apparitions of the female body among the flame bursts and smoke shadows, Klein combined life and death in a way that speaks to the fragility of life but also to its permanence. On the one hand, there is a clear sense of the destructive power of the flame. On the other, the presence of the female forms hints at the eternal power of life that transcends all things.

Klein set daily life into the context of the spiritual realm he called the void; a void marked by the primal, eruptive, apocalyptic and eternal forces of life-giving and life-consuming energy. He stated: “The void has always been my main preoccupation, and I firmly believe that fires burn in the heart of the void as in the heart of man.”  He died aged 34 in 1962 shortly after the work was completed.

UPDATE: IT SOLD FOR $36,482,500.

Francis Bacon: Figure Writing, Reflected in Mirror is estimated at $30-40 million. (Click on image to enlarge). UPDATE: IT SOLD FOR $44,882,500.

A powerful work by Francis Bacon could make up to $40 million at Sotheby’s contemporary art evening sale in New York on May 9. Figure Writing Reflected in Mirror represents some of Bacon’s most important themes and was included in the legendary 1977 exhibition at Galerie Claude Bernard in Paris.  The present owners purchased it at that exhibition. It has not been seen in public since.

The writing figure represents both Bacon’s partner George Dyer and the artist himself.  The mirror shows a second figure, rather than a reflection.  The seated man, brought to life with Bacon’s urgent brushwork, is confronted by a sheet of paper. Discarded paper on the ground betrays a creative struggle. Bacon was obsessed with the written word and drew inspiration from classical writers from Aeschylus to T.S. Eliot. This is his only canvas to feature someone writing.