Peinture (Femmes, lune, etoiles), a museum quality Miro, will headline Christie’s Avant Garde sale in Paris on October 20. Painted in 1949 it has been displayed in the La Colombe d’Or at St. Paul de Vence since its acquisition from the nearby Galerie Maeght in 1950. Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Braque and Calder were among the artists invited to leave work in lieu of payment at this inn where the food is as legendary as the art. Peinture (Femmes, lune, etoiles) has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, the Fondation Maeght, The Fundacio Miro, the Grand Palais in Paris and the Fondation Pierre Gianadda. Founded in 1920 La Colombe d’Or is now run by the third generation of the Roux family. Paul Roux’s passion for painting was the starting point for what is one of the most prestigious 20th century art collections in the world. The sale of this work will help the family expand the collection further.
Paula Rego, Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ (1995, estimate: £2,200,000-3,200,000)
Paula Rego’s 1995 work Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ (1940) will come to auction for the first time at Christie’s 20th / 21st Century evening sale in London on October 13. With an estimate of £2.2-3.2 million it is expected to set a new auction record for the artist. Executed upon two monumental panels this is the finest and most complex in this extraordinary series. Formerly part of the Saatchi Collection, Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ was created for the Hayward Gallery’s exhibition ‘Spellbound: Art and Film’ in 1996 and has been prominently exhibited over the past three decades including at Tate Liverpool (1997); The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (2007-08); Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris (2018-19) and Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover (2022-23).
THE top estimate was £600 but Freddie Mercury’s silver moustache comb sold for a whopping £152,400 at the final day of the Queen frontman’s series of online sales at Sotheby’s in London yesterday. The little comb by Tiffany and Co. ignited the public interest at the month long exhibition at Sotheby’s before the series of Freddie Mercury sales.
Pablo Picasso, Femme à la montre, 1932, oil on canvas, 51 1?4 x 38 inches. Estimate in excess of $120 million
An Era Defined is the title of the sales of the Emily Fisher Landau Collection at Sotheby’s in New York on November 8 and 9 next. The collection is synonymous with connoisseurship and quality, and also speaks to Mrs. Fisher Landau’s voracious and instinctive approach to collecting. From Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and Fernand Léger, through to Ed Ruscha and Jasper Johns, alongside Mark Tansey and Glenn Ligon, the collection traces the greatest achievements of 20th-century art, in each case through key masterpiece examples. Following a series of international exhibition some 120 exceptional works from the collection, estimated to bring well over $400 million, will be offered for sale at Sotheby’s.
MARK TANSEY – Triumph Over Mastery II
Mrs. Fisher Landau’s collecting journey began in the late 1960s with the purchase of a striking Alexander Calder mobile and with a chance encounter with a poster advertising a forthcoming Josef Albers show at Pace Gallery, from which three major acquisitions followed. Mrs. Fisher Landau began to put together a major ensemble of works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Jean Arp, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Paul Klee and Louise Nevelson among others. All were complemented, in later years, by the work of artists she came to know and patronize directly, many of whom she collected in depth. Few collectors have been as committed to building relationships with artists as she: from post-war titans such as Ed Ruscha and Jasper Johns to artists at the vanguard in the 21st century, such as Glenn Ligon and Mark Tansey.
Beginning in the mid-1980s, and over the course of the next four decades, Mrs. Fisher Landau was deeply involved with the Whitney Museum in so many ways: a member of the acquisition committees, she also endowed the Museum’s famous Whitney Biennial exhibitions and in 2010 made a landmark donation of nearly 400 works, which was subsequently exhibited under the title “Legacy: The Emily Fisher Landau Collection”. The fourth floor of the Breuer building remains named in her honour.
HUANGHUALI CLOTHES RACK – 17TH CENTURY. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $919,800
Fancy a clothes rack for around half a million? Christie’s has just the one – a 17th-century magnificent and extremely rare huanghuali version – at its important Chinese ceramics and works of art sale in New York on September 21-22. The estimate on this stupendous piece from an American private collection is $400,000-$600,000. The sale features outstanding works from a number of important private collections of ceramics, cloisonné, lacquer, jade, scholar’s objects, textiles, and important classical Chinese furniture.
In New York Christie’s will mark Asian Art Week with nine auctions, six live; three online. Live sales begin September 19 with Japanese and Korean Art. There will be sales of South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art, The LJZ Collection of Chinese Jades; Mineo Hata: An Instinctive Eye spanning the geography of Asia; Marchant: Eight Treasures for the Wanli Emperor and Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art. The online sales are The Moke Mokotoff Collection, Arts of India and Arts of Asia.
This diamond ring is at Adams next Tuesday with an estimate of €10,000-€15,000. UPDATE: THIS MADE 15,000 AT HAMMER
The James Adam catalogue contains an eye watering selection of jewellery and watches from an Art Deco diamond bracelet designed by Austrian Imperial jewellers Kochert in 1929, later re-designed as a tiara by Bulgari in Rome in the 1950’s, to necklaces, bracelets, rings, dress rings, pendants, brooches and watches by makers from Rolex to Breitling. The fine jewellery and watches sale takes place on September 12 and is now on view in Dublin. The catalogue is online.
UPDATE: The top lot of the sale was an Art Deco diamond bracelet designed by Erwin Lang. It made €95,000 at hammer.
Freddie Mercury’s Yamaha grand piano sold for £1,742,000 at Sotheby’s last evening. Though slightly below estimate it was a record for a composers piano. He used it to compose some of Queen’s greatest hits. An original 15-page manuscript for their epic hit Bohemian Rhapsody, with the working title “Mongolian Rhapsody” and which reveals in its notes the different directions Mercury saw the track going in, was sold for £1.3 million. The first night of the Freddie Mercury: A World of His Own auction series saw bidders from 61 countries drive 93% of lots over their estimate, with Bohemian Rhapsody lyrics and Freddie’s Yamaha piano leading the sale. Sales on the opening night brought in £12.2 million in a white glove auction where every one of nearly 60 lots sold. A month long exhibition at Sotheby’s in advance of the sales drew nearly 140,000 visitors.
The second day of the sale on September 7 brought in £9.4 million.
Keith Haring (1958-1990) – Untitled (Feb 2, 1987)($220,000-320,000) courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd. 2023. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $227,200
In New York Christie’s will hold an online auction of five unique digital drawings by Keith Haring created on an Amiga computer in the mid-1980’s in an online sale from September 12-20. Keith Haring: Pixel Pioneer focuses on an artist who blended historically disparate cultures; he was highly celebrated for his achievements in public artwork while simultaneously a massively successful figure in the gallery world. A natural extension of his legacy for his art is to continue to bridge today’s artistic cultures – fusing the physical art world with the world of Web3.
Keith Haring was an early admirer and adopter of the digital age, even depicting the first Apple Macintosh computer in his work. In keeping with his signature style of bold lines and pop color, Haring’s Amiga drawings show the artist’s early interest and involvement in the medium, which has since become pervasive in commercial design and 21st-century digital art. To accurately preserve the natively digital material created on a now-vintage computer system, the Keith Haring Foundation has minted these five Amiga artworks — previously only viewable via floppy disks — on the Ethereum blockchain. For the first time, these unique digital drawings can now be collected, exhibited, and even printed.
JACK BUTLER YEATS (1871-1957) – A Girl Clings to a Young Man on the Beach. UPDATE: THIS MADE 4,000 AT HAMMER
THIS pencil on paper by Jack Butler Yeats titled A Girl Clings to a Young Man on the Beach is from a 1904 illustration for The Collegians. It is based on the 1829 novel by G. Griffin on a notorious murder of a woman in Co. Limerick in 1819. She had been secretly married to a local landlord. Dion Boucicault based The Colleeen Bawn on Griffin’s version of the tale. The signed work comes up at Morgan O’Driscoll’s current online sale of Irish art with an estimate of €3,000-€5,000. The auction runs until the evening of September 11 and the catalogue is online. Meantime there will be viewing in Skibbereen on September 7, 8 and 11.
Two fine sleepers emerged from the James Adam At Home sale in Dublin yesterday. This pair of 19th century marquetry side tables, estimated at €1,500-€2,500, made a hammer price of €10,000. Attributed to Edwards and Roberts a trade label showed the tables had been with David Zork, Chicago and were once in the collection of Rear Admiral F R Harris, New York.
An English School watercolour tondo portrait of a young woman also made €10,000 at hammer. The c1900 work was estimated at just €300-€500.
ENGLISH SCHOOL c1900 – Portrait Study of a Young Woman
