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    • Archive for July, 2017

    TURNER’S EHRENBREITSTEIN SELLS FOR £18.5 MILLION

    Thursday, July 6th, 2017

    J.M.W. Turner – Ehrenbreitstein

    J.M.W Turner’s – Ehrenbreitstein made £18,533,750 at Sotheby’s sale of Old Master Paintings in London last night.  This is the highest price paid for an Old Master at Sotheby’s London since the sale of the artist’s Rome, From Mount Aventine for a record £30,322,500 in 2014.   Last night’s evening sale  realised a total of £52,514,750, a substantial increase on both London sales last year (July 2016: £16.5 million / December 2016: £14.8 million).

    One of the largest sales of its kind, comprising nearly 70 lots, the auction was 85.3% sold by lot, the highest-ever sell-through-rate for any Old Masters sale held at Sotheby’s in London, and the second consecutive sale of its kind  to achieve a sell-through rate of over 80%. Ten works on paper by the artist (among them an early watercolour of Ehrenbreitstein) were sold for a combined £1.3m, which together with Ehrenbreitstein brings the total for works by Turner sold  to £19.8 million.

    (See post on antiquesandartireland.com for April 4, 2017)

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    AN AUCTION RECORD FOR A DRAWING BY CANALETTO

    Wednesday, July 5th, 2017

    The Coronation of the Doge on the Scala dei Giganti

    There was an auction record for a drawing by Canaletto at Sotheby’s in London today. The Coronation of the Doge on the Scala dei Giganti sold for £2.6 million.

    Greg Rubinstein, Worldwide Head of Old Master Drawings at Sotheby’s, said: “The record price realised today for Canaletto’s superb drawing is a fitting testimony to its importance and its quality. Nothing like it has been seen at auction. A more total expression of the essence of Canaletto’s genius as a draughtsman than this extraordinary drawing, which transports us to the very heart of 18th-century Venice, in all its glory, wit and mystery, is hard to imagine.”

    Canaletto continues to draw crowds in London, both at Sotheby’s pre-sale exhibition and at The Queen’s Gallery, where Canaletto & the Art of Venice remains on view until 12 November.

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    SCULPTURE AT SOTHEBY’S THIS JULY

    Monday, July 3rd, 2017

    Jean Baptiste Clésinger (1814-1883), Cléopâtre mourante (The Dying Cleopatra), 1861, white marble (£100,000-150,000)

    A wide range of sculptures from the Middle Ages to the early 19th century will come up at Sotheby’s in London in July. The Old Masters evening sale on July 5 will include  a sculpture – a portrait terracotta bust by Pietro Tacca, Giambologna’s pupil, of Grand Duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici (1610-1670) estimated at £1-2 million.

    Auguste Clésinger’s Cléopâtre which comes up at a sale on July 12 is an important rediscovery.  Clésigner executed the marble in Rome and exhibited the model at the Paris Salon of 1861. In order to give this unambiguous nude enough of a veneer of respectability for it to be passed by the Salon jury, the sculptor’s friends urged him to include a snake, twisted around the ankle, in a possible reference to a classical subject, such as Cleopatra. The sculpture was so life-like that the sculptor was accused, with some justification, of using plaster casts of the live model in its creation. With this work Clésinger became famous as a sculptor of the female form. At auction for the first time since 1892 it is estimated at £100,000-200,000.

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    THE BLESSING OF THE FLEET BY JAMES MAHONY

    Saturday, July 1st, 2017

    The Blessing of the Fleet by James Mahony

    The Blessing of the Fleet by the Cork artist James Mahony is a highlight of the sale at Cork Auction Rooms on July 2.  Born in Cork in either 1811 or 1817 the artist is best known for his harrowing illustrations of the famine for The Illustrated London News, where he worked as an artist and reporter.  When a painting by James Mahony of The Consecration of St. Mary’s, Pope’s Quay around 1842 came up at Whyte’s in Dublin in 2015 the Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut paid 19,000 at hammer for a work that had been estimated at 8,000-10,000.

    The Dominican congregation in Cork were the disappointed underbidders.  A replica of the work was subsequently presented by the Dublin auctioneers to the Cork Dominican Church and priory. Among the other lots coming up at Cork Auction Rooms tomorrow are a stained glass window design by Evie Hone based on the apparition at Fatima for St. Mary’s Church, Kingscourt, Co. Cavan, a gramophone with chinoiserie cabinet, a selection of gold coins and a greyhound painting  by the popular contemporary artist Mark O’Neill.

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    A MALLET SALVAGED FROM LIBERTY HALL DURING THE RISING

    Saturday, July 1st, 2017

    This mallet salvaged from Liberty Hall is part of a collection of Easter Rising memorabilia at Sotheby’s English Literature sale in London on July 11.

    The auction will feature a map of Dublin issued to crown forces before going into action in 1916, a rare second printing of The Proclamation, the second manifesto of the provisional government, a propaganda newsletter, news cuttings, postcards and ephemera. The lot is estimated at £15,000-20,000.

    A half sheet of the original proclamation is estimated at £6,000-8,000.  The sale includes the first Irish printed edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost and a c1753 review of The Revenue Laws of Ireland.

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