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A total of 13 works on paper by Sir William Orpen from the collection of Mrs. Evelyn St. George will be offered at Christie’s, South Kensington on March 22.  The works range in estimate from £1,000 to £6,000s and will be offered as part of the 20th Century British Art sale. Mrs. St. George, Orpen’s mistress and confidante, was the daughter of a wealthy New York banker. He painted her portrait in 1912.

Orpen was appointed an official war artist and many of his paintings hang in the Imperial War Museum Collection in London. Christmas Day at Howth (Lot 32), was made by Orpen either on the Christmas just before the outbreak of the war, or on the day of the famous Christmas Day Truce in 1914. He writes I’m just looking away across the sea and thinking of you all. In Happy Easter Vivien from Woppy (Lot 39) he writes to their four year old daughter wishing her a Happy Easter and draws a portrait of Vivien hatching out of an Egg. Vivien later inherited the works on paper and donated over 200 of them to the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. The 13 works on paper to be auctioned at Christie’s are the last of Vivien’s collection of her father’s letters.  The drawing on the left depicts Orpen and Augustus John in a pub in their student days. John is depicted with his distinctive dandyish dress sense and beard with his arm around Orpen.

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669) – A Bust of a Man in a Gorget and Cap. UPDATE: IT MADE £8,441,250

Rembrandt’s masterpiece A Bust of a Man in a Gorget and Cap will be offered at Christie’s in London in July.  The work, from the The Pieter & Olga Dreesmann Collection of Dutch Old Master Paintings, is estimated at £8-12 million.  It is coming to auction for the first time in almost 40 years.  No less than 15 works from the Dreesmann Collection are estimated to realise more than £19  million.  It is the most important single owner collection of 17th Century Dutch Masters of the ‘Golden Age to come to market in latter years.  There are outstanding works by  Willem Van de Velde , Coorte and Van der Ast.

A Bust of a Man in a Gorget and Cap, dated to 1626/27, measures just over 15 x 11 inches. But it captivates the viewer with an intensity that far exceeds its neat dimensions. The work presents a masterful treatment of light to create drama, achieved in part by Rembrandt’s use of chiaroscuro, pointing to the influence of Caravaggio, to whom he is clearly indebted in terms of style in this work.  It was shown at the Rembrandt/Caravaggio exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, in 2006. The Dreesmann family name is synonymous with connoisseurship, passion and philanthropy. Pieter and Olga Dreesmann are active art collectors with interests that span from Antiquity to the 21st Century.  The painting comes up at Christie’s Old Master & British Paintings auction on July 3.

UPDATE:  Christie’s summer auctions of Old Master & British Paintings, Drawings & Watercolours in London on 3 and 4 July realised a combined total of £93,663,150.