April in Paris offers a touch more than even usual right now. La Pomme de New York, a monumental piece by Claude Lalanne is on view at the Bristol Paris until next Tuesday before being auctioned by Christie’s on April 15. Standing nearly 2.5 metres tall it is the most monumental sculpture ever created by the artist. The apple has had a central place in her practice since the 1960’s offering Lalanne a fertile ground for experimentation, balancing figuration, surrealism and a playful sense of scale. La Pomme de New York numbered 7/8 and dated 2008 is estimated at €5 million – €7 million. It will be a highlight at the 20/21 Century art evening sale. Located at rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré Le Bristol Paris is an iconic palace hotel and showcase for art which celebrated its centenary in 2025.
ED RUSCHA (B. 1937) – Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half sold for $68.2 million
Led by record-breaking Magritte and Ruscha masterpieces, Christie’s 20th/21st Century art week in New York achieved $486 million on night one. Magritte’s L’empire des lumières became the most valuable work of Surrealist art ever sold at auction. Seven records were set across Mica: The Collection of Mica Ertegun Part I and the 20th Century evening sale. Together they totalled $485,922,600, selling 83 per cent by lot, 92 per cent by value, and 120% hammer and premium against low estimate. The top lot – René Magritte’s L’empire des lumières – made $121,160,000, a world-record price for a Surrealist work at auction. Seven records were set, including artist records for Magritte, Ed Ruscha, Christian Schad, Susan Rothenberg and Amedee Ozenfant. Magritte and Roy Lichtenstein also set records for works on paper. There were bidders from around the world and 1.25 million viewers watched the sales across Christie’s global platform.
David Hockney’s Still Life on a Glass Table (1971) made $19,040,000. The painting was made after the end of his romance with Peter Schlesinger and is a tribute to the beauty, pain and fragility of love. Its nine objects — many associated with Schlesinger — are rendered with crystalline intimacy producing a dynamic work which was in major retrospectives including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1988) and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2017).
DAVID HOCKNEY – Still Life on a glass table (1971) sold for $19,040,000
No one captured the excitement and innovation of the Paris of the Belle Epoque quite like the great chronicler of Montmartre nightlife Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. A key work by the artist – Jane Avril au Divan Japonais – will highlight the culmination of a series of auctions to coincide with Art Basel, Paris at Christie’s on October 18. The Avant Garde including Thinking Italian sale will include a preparatory study for the most famous and best selling lithograph in the world featuring the cancan dancer Jane Avril commissioned by Edouard Fournier for his cabaret of the same name. In the same private collection for 90 years and not seen in public since the artist’s retrospective in 1931 it is estimated at €2.5 million – €3.5 million.
Even as the global focus that has been on Paris in latter weeks is likely to shift elsewhere after the Olympics draw to a close the art world focus on the French capital is pretty permanent.
Another highlight of Christie’s sale is a rediscovery of a Surrealist work by Francis Picabia, a perfect example of his transparency series entitled Myrte (€1 million – €1.5 million). The innovative series is famous for the theatrical superimposition of images which Picabia had already experimented with in his films. Picabia seeks to stimulate the imagination with a surreal interweaving of images inspired by a real life revelation in a cafe in Marseilles and Myrte immerses the viewer into a sensual, hallucinatory dream.
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.
A landmark rediscovery of the last known pair of portraits by Rembrandt to remain in private hands will highlight Christie’s Old Masters sale in London on July 6. The subjects are relatives of Rembrandt, wealthy Leiden plumber Jan Willemsz van der Pluym (c1565-1644) and his wife Jaapgen Carels (1565-1640). Signed and dated 1635 they were acquired at Christie’s by an ancestor of the present owners almost two centuries ago and have remained completely unknown to scholars ever since. They return to auction after an extensive investigation and scientific analysis at the Rijksmuseum. The portraits remained in the family of the sitters until 1760, when they were sold at auction in Amsterdam. They passed to the collection of Count Vincent Potocki (c.1740-1825) in Warsaw, before briefly entering the collection of Baron d’Ivry in Paris in 1820 and then James Murray, 1st Baron Glenlyon (1782-1837), who put them up for sale at Christie’s in June of 1824. The estimate is £5 million – £8 million (€5.75 million – €9.2 million). UPDATE: THESE SOLD FOR FOR £11,235,000
A pair of George III marquetry and giltwood console tables attributed to Ince and Mayhew at Christie’s. UPDATE: THESE SOLD FOR £163,800
A pair of George III marquetry and giltwood side tables probably supplied to the Earls of Kerry in 1770 and attributed to Ince and Mayhew will be a highlight at Christie’s sale of the collection of Lord and Lady Weinstock in London on November 22. Estimated at £100,000-£150,000 (€116,230-€174,340) the tables are among a selection of works with strong Irish provenance in the sale. Arnold Weinstock was a leading businessman who transformed GEC into one of the most successful companies of the post war era. A keen racehorse owner he maintained strong Irish connections through Ballymacoll Stud in Co. Meath, which he owned, and where his 1979 Derby winning horse Troy was bred.
Among lots with Irish links are a set of four George IV gilt bronze wine coolers almost certainly commissioned by John Browne, 1st Marquess of Sligo, is estimated at £20,000-£30,000 (€23,000-€34,000); a pair of silver tazze by Joseph Walker, Dublin 1792 (€3,500-€5,700) and a pair of Irish giltwood mirrors (€23,000-€34,000).
A set of four George IV wine coolers from Westport House at Christie’s. UPDATE: THIS SET MADE £40,320
PAUL GAUGUIN (1848-1903) – Maternité II (estimate in excess of $90 million). UPDATE: THIS MADE A RECORD $105,730,000
Highlights from the collection of Microsoft founder Paul G Allen will be part of an unprecedented $1 billion sale at two auctions at Christie’s in New York next week. The auctions on November 9 and 10 will include examples, often among the finest in private hands, by Jan Brueghel the Younger, J.M.W. Turner, Edouard Manet, Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Gustav Klimt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and many others in more than 150 masterworks. All of the estate’s proceeds from this historic sale will be dedicated to philanthropy, pursuant to Mr. Allen’s wishes.
Max Carter, Vice Chairman, 20th and 21st Century Art, Americas, remarked: “The Paul G. Allen Collection, like Cézanne’s breathtaking view of Mont Sainte-Victoire, is the summit of the mountain. From Brueghel’s Five Senses and the Venetian imaginings of Turner and Manet, to late 19th-century masterpieces by Van Gogh, Gauguin and Monet, Klimt’s Birch Forest and Freud’s Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau), arguably the greatest set piece of the last fifty years, the Collection is bounded only by vision and quality. And then there is Seurat’s Les Poseuses. Formerly in the collections of Alphonse Kann, John Quinn and Henry McIlhenny and featured in the 1913 Armory Show, when it appeared at auction for the one and only time in 1970, the art historian John Russell suggested that it was one of the three or four most beautiful works of art to be sold since the war. It remains so today.”
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for August 26, 2022)
GEORGES SEURAT (1859-1891) – Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version) (Estimate in excess of $100 million). UPDATE: THIS MADE A RECORD $149,240,000
JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU (1684-1721) – Three head studies of a girl wearing a hat made: $3,420,000
With global participation the sale of the Ann and Gordon Getty Collection at Christie’s made more than $150 million. This firmly established the collection, sold across ten auctions which concluded in New York yesterday among the top three fine and decorative art sales at Christie’s. It ranks alongside the collections of Yves St. Laurent and Pierre Berger and that of Peggy and David Rockefeller. Records were set for Mary Cassatt’s Young Lady in a Loge Gazing to Right ($7,489,000); Jacques-Émile Blanche’s Vaslav Nijinsky in ‘Danse Siamoise’ ($2,700,000); Jules Bastien-Lepage’s Portrait de Sarah Bernhardt ($2,280,000) and Jean-Antoine Watteau, Three Head Studies Of A Girl Wearing A Hat (work on paper) ($3,420,000).
GIOVANNI ANTONIO CANAL, IL CANALETTO Entrance to the Grand Canal looking East, with Santa Maria della Salute at right UPDATE: In the hours leading up to the auction, Christie’s announced the private sale of Venice, the Grand Canal looking East with Santa Maria della Salute by Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto, to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, enabled through a generous donation by Diane B. Wilsey.
The legendary Ann & Gordon Getty Collection will be sold at Christie’s through a series of landmark auctions beginning next October. The collection stands alone in its quality, rarity and beauty. Nearly 1,500 works of English and European furniture, Asian works of art, European ceramics, Chinese export porcelain, silver, European and Asian textiles, and Impressionist and Old Master paintings from the couple’s San Francisco residence will be offered. The sales in October are expected to achieve as much as $180 million. Proceeds will benefit the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation for the Arts and designated beneficiaries include California based organisations like the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, University of San Francisco, Berkeley Geochronology Center, and the Leakey Foundation.
HENRI MATISSE Chrysanthèmes dans un vase de Chine UPDATE: THIS MADE $5.1 MILLION
Gordon Getty commented: “Though she left us far too soon, I know Ann would be proud that her exquisite eye and unmatched dedication to craftsmanship and scholarship are being shared with the world, and that the philanthropic planning around our art collection is being realised. These sales are a continuation of the longstanding philanthropic goals of the Getty family first established by my father, J. Paul Getty.”
EMANUEL LEUTZE (1816-1868) – Washington Crossing the Delaware signed ‘E. Leutze’ UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $45 MILLION
Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, which hung for decades at the White House, will be a highlight at Christie’s 20th Century evening sale in New York on May 12. Painted in 1851 it is one of two extant versions by Leutze. The other is in the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Leutze’s powerful imagining of a key moment in American history has been a cultural phenomenon from the minute it was seen and has been reproduced more than almost any painting in American history. This picture, which defined its era and has had a profound and lasting impact on art history and popular culture. It was commissioned by the original purchaser of the Metropolitan’s painting, the art dealers Goupil, Vibert & Co. They wanted a smaller version that could be more easily reproduced by the engraver, Paul Girardet, as a print. This painting was also exhibited in its day at major venues in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Thanks to the engraving, within short order the image was everywhere. “Every town and village along that vast stretch of double river-frontage had a best dwelling,” wrote Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi, 1883. “Over middle of mantel, engraving—Washington Crossing the Delaware; on the wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-lightning crewels by one of the young ladies …”. It is estimated at $15-20 million.
Among the other highlights are Claude Monet’s Parlement, Soleil Couchant, Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, and Mark Rothko’s Untitled (Shades of Red).
