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    • Archive for July, 2023

    THE ART MARKET IS FOR EVERYONE

    Saturday, July 8th, 2023
    Untitled IV by Willem de Kooning from the Macklowe Collection sold for $18.9 million (€17.4 million) in New York in 2021.

    The red/blue tonal palette of two artworks illustrated here is similar.  In art market terms the gulf between them amounts to millions and millions of euros and is to all intents unbridgeable. Willem de Kooning, the a Dutch born American based Abstract Expressionist, belongs in the canon of the greats, Gerard le Roux is a practically unknown French artist and sculptor born in 1942 and resident for many years in St. Tropez.
    When it comes to the art market comparisons are indeed odious.  Untitled IV by de Kooning sold at Sotheby’s in New York for a whopping $18.9 million in November 2021.  It was part of the Macklowe Collection, which sold for just under $1 billion, then the most valuable collection ever sold at auction. The sale of the collection of  Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen for $1.66 billion last November has eclipsed this result since.  Despite stellar sales like these the art market operates at many different levels.  You do not need to be an RTE “celebrity” in order to be able to dip into it.

    Three Women by Gerard le Roux has an estimate of €200-300 at Whyte’s. UPDATE: THIS MADE 250 AT HAMMER

    The market is for everyone as demonstrated by the second red/blue work Three Women by Gerard le Roux. It comes up at Whyte’s online summer evening art sale on July 10.  Colourful, appealing and charming enough to grace any wall it is estimated at a mere €200-€300.  An American influence is obvious in two works by him at this sale, lots 316 and 317.  There is a similar estimate on Couple on a Beach.  The artist spent a number of years in New York. The Mutualart website reports that work by le Roux has been offered at auction multiple times with prices ranging from $127 (€116) to $360 (€329), a record established for a beach scene at  Pourville near Dieppe at Pierre Berge and Associates in Paris in 2021.

    Summer art sales are brimful of interest and need not break the bank.  There is a selection of 337 works to choose from at Whyte’s.  The online sale offers an exciting array of accessible art from Ireland and around the world.  Among the artists represented are Paul Henry, Jack Yeats, Norah McGuinness, Graham Knuttel, Robert Ballagh, Markey Robinson and Pauline Bewick.  Le Grand Pavon (Peacock), a wool carpet by Salvador Dali was produced in 1979 by Ege Axminster, Denmark and comes with an estimate of €800-€1,200. A 1947 lithograph by American painter and  illustrator Norman Rockwell is estimated at €100-€150, the estimate for Ecce Homo, 16 offset colour lithographs by George Grosz dated 1923 is €2,000-€3,000 and a woodblock print portrait of a man by Otto Dix is estimated at €500-€700.

    Beached Boat by William Carron at Whyte’s (€500-€700). UPDATE: THIS MADE 480 AT HAMMER

    A view of Kilshannig, Castlegregory, Co. Kerry by Kenneth Webb is estimated at €3,000-€5,000, Mayo, a watercolour by Norah McGuinness, is estimated at €2,500-€3,500, an oil of Tory Harbour by Patsy Dan Rodgers is estimated at €600-€800, as is a watercolour of thatched cottages in the west of Ireland by Frank McKelvey.

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    UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE MAKES RECORD £12.6 MILLION

    Friday, July 7th, 2023
    MICHAEL SWEERTS (BRUSSELS 1618-1664 GOA) – The Artist’s Studio with a Seamstress

    This completely unpublished and unknown canvas by Michael Sweerts made a record £12,615,000 over a top estimate of £2-£3 million at Christie’s Old Master’s sale in London. The unpublished and previously unknown canvas has been recognised as a signal masterpiece of Michael Sweerts’s art and a highly important addition to the oeuvre of ‘one of the most creative, enigmatic and hauntingly memorable artists of the seventeenth century’ (P. C. Sutton, Michael Sweerts: 1618-1664, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, 2002, p. 11). Painted in Rome, where Sweerts is documented living in the Via Margutta between 1646 and 1652, this is perhaps his greatest picture on the theme of the artist’s studio, borne out of his own deep interest in education and artistic instruction. Two of his best-known works, also from his Roman period, are on the same subject: the Artist’s Studio in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, datable to circa 1650 and In the Studio, in the Detroit Institute of Arts, dated 1652. The present picture may pre-date both works and was likely painted soon after Sweerts’ arrival in Rome.

    The landmark re-discovery of the last known pair of portraits by Rembrandt in private hands, Portrait of Jan Willemsz. van der Pluym and Jaapgen Carels, sold for £11,235,000. A discovery of a pioneering early work by Fra Angelico The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Baptist and the Magdalen at the Foot of the Cross made a new auction record for the artist of  £5,001,000. Christie’s Classic Week Evening sales realised a combined total of £68,156,850 achieving sell-through rates of 80% by lot and 92% by value. A total of 36% of new registrants to these sales were millennials; the breakdown of buyers by region was:43% EMEA / 35% APAC / 22% Americas.

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    HOWARDINA PINDELL AT IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

    Thursday, July 6th, 2023
    Howardina Pindell – Autobiography: India (Shiva, Ganges), 1985, Mixed media on canvas.  ASOM Collection.

    The first solo exhibition in Ireland by Howardina Pindell, the American artist, activist, and educator working through the media of painting, drawing, print and video, has opened at IMMA (The Irish Museum of Modern Art). Titled A Renewed Language it is the largest presentation of her work in Europe to date. New paintings from Pindell’s studio and works on paper are shown with two videos that frame her long career – Free, White and 21 (1980) and Rope/Fire/Water (2020). These works tackle the pervasiveness of racial inequality, drawing on Pindell’s own experiences and also on her collation of historical data relating to segregation, discrimination and race-based violence in America.  

    From the 1980s Pindell’s practice began to deal explicitly with issues of racism and discrimination, her work took on a more overtly political tenor, which anticipated the Black Lives Matter movement by thirty years. Pindell deals with issues including colonisation and enslavement, violence against indigenous populations, police brutality, the AIDS crisis and climate change.

    Born in Philadelphia in 1943, Pindell began her career in the 1960s. Having studied painting at Boston and Yale Universities she became an Exhibition Assistant at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1967, rising to Associate Curator and Acting Director, and serving on the Byers Committee to investigate racial exclusion in museum acquisitions and exhibitions. She first exhibited her art in 1971, and was a founding member of A.I.R (Artists in Residence), the first women’s cooperative gallery in New York City. In 1979 she began teaching at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where she is now a distinguished Professor of Art. She rose to prominence throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, and had her first major solo exhibition at the Studio Museum, Harlem in 1986.

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    MARINE CHRONOMETER FROM NIMROD AT BONHAMS

    Wednesday, July 5th, 2023
    UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £14,080

    A rare two-day marine chronometer from Ernest Shackleton’s British Antarctic Expedition, from July 1907 to September 1909 comes up at Bonhams in London on July 13. The chronometer, now mounted in a mahogany mantel case, was first purchased by the Admiralty in 1899 and was one of several chronometers used on the ship, the Nimrod, as part of Ernest Shackleton’s 1907 Antarctic expedition to reach the South Pole. The team, led by Shackleton, came to within 97 miles of the magnetic pole, before being forced to turn back due to bad weather. A description of the expedition, written by Shackleton, notes that Jameson Boyd Adams, a Royal Naval Reserve Commander and the first to volunteer for the expedition, “every morning, directly after breakfast, wound up the chronometers and chronometer watches.”

    James Stratton, Bonhams Director of Clocks commented, “This very special chronometer has had a rich and impressive service. Not only was it part of Shackleton’s extraordinary Antarctic expedition, it also travelled the world with the Royal Navy and was on HMS M19 in the First World War.” The estimate is £3,000 – 5,000.

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    SUMMER ONLINE ART SALE NOW ON VIEW AT WHYTE’S

    Tuesday, July 4th, 2023
    NORAH MCGUINNESS HRHA (1901-1980) – MAYO. UPDATE: THIS MADE 2,600 AT HAMMER

    MAYO, a watercolour by Norah McGuinness, comes up at Whyte’s summer online art auction which ends from 6 pm on July 10. The sale is now on view at Whyte’s on Molesworth St. in Dublin and the catalogue is online. It offers accessible art from Ireland and around the world. Mayo is, at €2,500-3,500, one of the more expensively estimated lots.

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    RIJKSMUSEUM TO DISPLAY RESTITUTED SALT CELLARS

    Tuesday, July 4th, 2023

    Four outstanding silver salt cellars made by the renowned Amsterdam silversmith Johannes Lutma (1584-1669) Amsterdam’s foremost silversmith in the 17th century – have been acquired by the Rijksmuseum. These partially gilded objects are among the most important examples of 17th-century Dutch silversmithing. Prior to the Second World War, all four were the property of Hamburg resident Emma Budge, who was Jewish. Following her death in 1937, the cellars were sold at auction. The proceeds of this sale went to the Nazis rather than to Budge’s heirs. The Dutch Restitutions Committee recently decided that the salt cellars be returned to the descendants. 

    Following the death of Emma Budge in 1937, her property was sold off at Paul Graupe’s ‘aryanised’ auction house in Berlin. The proceeds of the sale were confiscated by the German Nazi party. It is believed that the four salt cellars were bought by a German dealer named Greatzer, about whom little else is known. They eventually entered collection of W.J.R. Dreesmann. In 1960, central government and the City of Amsterdam acquired the four salt cellars at an auction of the Dreesman collection; two went on display in the Rijksmuseum and two in the Amsterdam Museum. 

    An investigation carried out by the Amsterdam Museum concluded in 2013 that the two salt cellars in its collection were of suspicious origin. This prompted the Rijksmuseum to initiate an investigation into the two salt cellars in its own collection. A year later, these objects were identified as suspicious on the websites of both the Rijksmuseum and the Museums Association. In 2014, restitutions committees in various countries designated the 1937 auction of Emma Budge’s estate as involuntary. This led to the return to Budge’s descendants of silver, porcelain, tapestries and busts by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the German food conglomerate Dr. Oetker. The Dutch Restitutions Committee arrived at the same conclusion in 2018, leading to the return of the bronze sculpture of Moses attributed to Alessandro Vittoria from the collection of Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle.  In May of this year the Dutch state and the City of Amsterdam returned the objects to the claimants. That same day, the heirs sold all four salt cellars to the Rijksmuseum.

    The acquisition was made with financial support from the Friends Lottery, the Mondriaan Fund, the Rembrandt Association, and private benefactors. The Rijksmuseum will place the four salt cellars on view from September 6 next in a display that also tells the story of Emma Budge.

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    RARE SIGNED PAINTING BY IRISH ARTIST JUDITH LEWIS AT SOTHEBY’S

    Monday, July 3rd, 2023
    Judith Lewis and Thomas Frye
    Conversation piece of the Hon. Herbert Hickman Windsor, dressed in Hussars’ uniform with his sister Charlotte Jane, later Countess of Bute, with their dog and other pet animals in a landscape. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

    This painting, one of only three known signed works by the Irish female artist Judith Lewis, comes up at Sotheby’s Old Master and 19th century paintings day sale in London on July 6. Lot 139 is estimated at £24,000-32,000. Judith Lewis was sister of Stephen Slaughter, a Dublin-based portrait painter, and later wife of another Dublin artist, John Lewis, who was the first scene-painter to be permanently employed at the Smock Alley Theatre.

    This work depicts the Hon. Herbert Hickman-Windsor in a hussar’s uniform, his trousers decorated with Irish Harps, alongside his sister Charlotte Jane, who would later become the Countess of Bute, and from whose husband’s family this picture has descended. Both sitters were the children of Herbert Windsor, 2nd Viscount Windsor, a British landowner and Tory politician. They are depicted in an arcadian landscape, surrounded by a dog, a chipmunk and a variety of exotic birds. In the late 17th and 18th centuries, exotic animals were considered the ultimate extravagance and display of wealth as they were imported from far away countries. When this painting was with Philip Mould the attribution of the landscape to Judith Lewis and the figures to Thomas Frye was endorsed by Dr Michael Wynne.

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    CLASSICAL TREASURES ON SALE IN LONDON

    Sunday, July 2nd, 2023
     Canova’s bust of Helen of Troy at Christie’s. UPDATE: THIS MADE £3,549,000

    FROM Helen of Troy and Aphrodite to Mozart and a suite of Louis XIV silver mounted furniture the London summer sales season will deliver some remarkable masterworks and classical pieces to the global market in the coming week. On the market for the first time ever is a Bust of Helen by Antonio Canova (1757-1822).  Given by Canova to Robert, Viscount Castlereagh (later the 2nd Marquess of Londonderry) in recognition of his efforts to return works of art to Italy at the end of the Napoleonic Wars it will be a highlight at Christie’s Old Masters sale on July 6.  Appreciation of Castlereagh, by Canova or anyone else, is out of the ordinary.  The Marquess, who committed suicide in 1822, is not remembered kindly in Ireland as a result of the suppression of the 1798 Rebellion and the promotion of the Act of Union, or in England, where he supported repressive measures that linked him in public opinion to the Peterloo Massacre.  Inspired by that massacre Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy begins:  “I met murder on the way, he had a mask like Castlereagh…  

     A 2nd century AD Roman head of the Capitoline Aphrodite on Italian polychrome 17th century stone draped shoulders at Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £889,000

    A bust of Aphrodite, Goddess of Love at Sotheby’s sale of Master Sculpture from Four Millennia on July 4 is unusual in that the head, neck and chest are all original.  It was made in the Roman Empire about the 2nd century AD.  The bust rests on Italian polychrome stone draped shoulders which date to the 17th century.  Lifesize Roman representations of Aphrodite carved out of dark stone are extremely rare. The only other known example is at the Vatican.

    A letter in German signed by Mozart’s at Christie’s. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

    A dramatic 1782 letter by a 26 year old Mozart to his close friend Baroness von Waldstatten declares that he will need to get married within two days to save his future wife the scandal of being dragged out of his house by the police. Constanze was known to be cohabiting under the same roof in Vienna as Mozart.  This prompted her mother Cacila Weber to send in the police to reclaim her daughter and save her reputation.  The only solution Mozart could come up with was to marry her the same day or the next and marry they did, on August 4, 1782.  It comes up at Christie’s Exceptional Sale on Thursday. A c1670 suite of Louis XIV furniture comprising a table and a pair of torcheres at Sotheby’s Treasures sale next Wednesday is thought likely to be the only surviving examples of the silver furnishings produced in the second half of the 17th century by  the silversmiths of the Louvre and Gobelins workshops. The ensemble displayed in the King’s Grand Appartement at Versaille comprised 20 tons of solid silver.  In 1689-90 Louis XIV decreed all silver should be sent to the Royal Mint to fund France’s fight in the Nine Years War. Nearly all but the most modest items or those that had already left France were melted down.

    Alabaster portrait of Charles V at Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

    A carved alabaster portrait of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), the most famous and celebrated Hapsburg ruler of Europe, demonstrates idiosyncrasies like the huge Hapsburg underbite.  Lifetime portraits of Charles V in private hands are rare, most exist in museums.  The sales next week will offer a trove of numerous museum quality works from paintings and drawings by Old Masters to furniture, decorative objects, books, manuscripts and letters.

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    IT TOOK A CENTURY: WOMEN ARTISTS AND THE RHA AT NATIONAL GALLERY

    Saturday, July 1st, 2023
    Alice Maher (b.1956) – Self-portrait, 2022
    Charcoal and chalk on paper © Alice Maher. Image, National Gallery of Ireland

    It Took a Century: Women Artists and the RHA opens today at the National Gallery of Ireland. It took a century for the Royal Hibernian Academy to elect the first woman artist, and another century before the first woman President was elected. The exhibition showcases women’s membership of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts from the election in 1923 of the first woman member, Sarah Purser, to the first woman President, Dr Abigail O’Brien, in 2018.

    As part of the RHA bicentenary celebrations the exhibition combines an historic survey of the past 100 years together with a presentation of work by current woman members of the Academy, which has now achieved equitable representation in its membership. The constituent works are drawn almost exclusively from the collections of the National Gallery of Ireland and the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts. The show runs until October 2022.

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    THIS BIRD OF PARADISE HAS WINGS

    Saturday, July 1st, 2023
    Bird of Paradise by Graham Knuttel  UPDATE: THIS MADE 5,200 AT HAMMER

    A colourful and  distinctive Bird of Paradise by the artist Graham Knuttel, who died aged 69 in May, comes up as lot 12 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s off the wall online art auction which runs until the evening of July 3. Playfully displayed as a bird, not a flower, and complete with an instantly recognisable Knuttel eye it is estimated at €2,000-€3,000.  The art of Graham Knuttel tends to be more popular with punters than the art establishment.  His distinctive designs, including a Bird of Paradise mug, feature on a range of household items by Tipperary Crystal. The sale includes a selection of affordable artworks from a wide range of artists. Among them are Arthur Maderson, Cecil Maguire, Steve Burgess and John Morris. It is on view in Skibbereen on Monday and the catalogue is online.

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