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  • Posts Tagged ‘Christies’

    A CLOTHES RACK FOR HALF A MILLION DOLLARS, EUROS OR POUNDS

    Tuesday, September 12th, 2023
    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.

    LAST REMBRANDT PORTRAITS IN PRIVATE HANDS AT CHRISTIE’S

    Sunday, June 4th, 2023

    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

    SUPERB IRISH LOTS AT WEINSTOCK SALE AT CHRISTIE’S

    Saturday, November 5th, 2022
    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

    UNPRECEDENTED $1 BILLION ART SALE AT CHRISTIE’S NEXT WEEK

    Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022
    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

    ANN AND GORDON GETTY COLLECTION MAKES MORE THAN $150 MILLION

    Wednesday, October 26th, 2022
    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).

    $3,420,000

    ANN AND GORDON GETTY COLLECTION AT CHRISTIE’S

    Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022
    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.”

    WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE AT CHRISTIE’S

    Friday, April 22nd, 2022
    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).

    ST. DOMINIC AND THE STIGMATISATION OF ST. FRANCIS

    Friday, April 15th, 2022
    Fra Angelico (c1395-1455) – Saint Dominic and the Stigmatization of Saint Francis UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $4,740,000

    Saint Dominic and the Stigmatisation of Saint Francis, recently featured in an exhibition at the Prado in Madrid, comes up at Christie’s sale of Masterworks from the Alana Collection in New York in June.  The exceptionally rare small panel by Fra Angelico (c1395-1455) is estimated at $4 million – $6 million. It was originally part of a diptych.  The second panel is the Madonna and Child with four angels and is in the Detroit Art Institute.  The Alana Collection, owned by Chilean economist  billionaire Alvaro Saieh and his wife Ana Guzman, is the most significant collection of Italian Old Master Paintings, Sculpture and Antiquities to be offered in New York in living memory.   Other highlights include works by Orazio Gentileschi and El Greco.

    LAVERY AT CHRISTIE’S MODERN BRITISH AND IRISH SALE

    Tuesday, March 8th, 2022
    Sir John Lavery – The Croquet Party (1890-93). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £2,922,000, A WORLD AUCTION RECORD FOR LAVERY

    THE Croquet Party by Sir John Lavery comes up at Christie’s Modern British and Irish Art evening sale on March 22. The work powerfully showcases Lavery’s abiding interest in modern life, transforming a traditional group portrait into a dynamic composition that revels in the elegant fashions and pastimes of his subjects.  It is estimated at £1,200,000-1,800,000. The auction is now online for browsing.

    SHANGHAI TO LONDON SALE REFLECTS CONFIDENCE IN THE ART MARKET

    Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022
    Pablo Picasso’s  La fenêtre ouverte (1929)  made £16,319,500

    The Shanghai to London sale series at Christie’s established a pioneering cultural dialogue between two of the art market’s major hubs and made a total of £249,070,155. Sell-through rates of 90% by lot and 93% by value demonstrated the confidence of the market, building on the successes we witnessed in 2021. Across the three sales, registered bidders from 34 countries and 5 continents reflect the strength of global demand, with 21% of buyers from Americas, 31% APAC and 49% EMEA. Millennial collectors accounted for 28% of registrants.

    Shanghai to London led with museum quality paintings by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Franz Marc, and Pablo Picasso: Franz Marc’s The Foxes (Die Füchse) sold for £42,654,500, setting a new world auction record for the artist and the highest price ever achieved in Europe for a restituted work of art. Francis Bacon’s Triptych 1986-7 made £38,459,206 and Lucian Freud’s  Girl with Closed Eyes (1986-87) made £15,174,500.