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This pair of Arras style garden armchairs come up as lot number 10 at Victor Mee’s two day summer garden sale on July 18 and 19. The stylish hand forged wrought iron chairs are estimated at €1,000-2,000. Arras furniture – based on the designs made in the town of Arras in France in the 17th and 18th centuries – is sought after. There is another similar pair in the sale which offers 686 lots. The catalogue is online.
Those in search of a mid 20th century look might be interested in this teak Everest sideboard by Andrew Thompson. It comes up as lot 143 at de Veres timed online art and design auction which runs until July 18. The sideboard has three central drawers flanked by cupboard doors and estimated at 500-700. The auction offers design furniture and affordable art.
Landline Weave is the title of an exhibition by Sean Scully now on view at Thaddeus Ropac in Paris. There is new work from his Landline and Wall of Light series and work from his new Weave and Net series. In this new series Scully draws on his early work with interlocking lines and contrasting colours to from a textural tartan with inset densely arranged rectangular shapes. The exhibition at Paris Pantin can be viewed online at Thaddeus Ropac. Included is a short video of the artist introducing the exhibition in which he explains that it took him decades to get the informality of seepage on the back of the works on to the front.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
