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    • Posts Tagged ‘Christie’s’

    EXTRAORDINARY COLLECTION OF CELEBRITY STUFF AT AUCTION

    Sunday, August 13th, 2023
     Handwritten manuscript working  lyrics to We are the Champions. UPDATE: THESE SOLD FOR £317,500

    Freddie Mercury’s baby grand, the matched wedding rings of Bogie and  Bacall, a first edition of The Great Gatsby from the collection of Charlie Watts and Sir Roger Moore’s Lamborghini skis are among an extraordinary collection of celebrity stuff soon to come up at blockbuster sales in London and Hollywood. Collectibles like these are big business.  With fans everywhere and global auction access online the business is growing exponentially.

    A c1905 Art Nouveau glass vase lamp from the collection of Freddie Mercury. UPDATE: THIS MADE £22,860

    Right now every inch of Sotheby’s 16,000  gallery space at New Bond St. in London is given over to a free exhibition of the world of Freddie Mercury in advance of three auctions on September 6, 7 and 8.  Online Mercury sales already underway will run to September 11, 12 and 13.  On offer are costumes, hand written lyrics, drawings, furniture, decorative and fine art that were part of his life at his London home, Garden Lodge in Kensington.The centre piece of the exhibition is his treasured Yamaha G2 Baby Grand.  More than a decade of hits, from Bohemian Rhapsody to Barcelona, were composed on this treasured piano.  Always kept in pristine condition it is estimated at £2 million – £3 million.  There are handwritten working lyrics for Bohemian Rhapsody, Don’t Stop Me Now and Somebody to Love, costumes relating to promotional videos including a two piece stage outfit comprising catsuit and bolero of ivory satin with winged wrists and lower legs inspired by the God Mercury.

     Henri Matisse – Masque Blanc sur Fond Noir from the collection of Freddie Mercury. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £30,480

    Freddie Mercury was a discriminating collector who loved going to auctions.  In 1980 he acquired Garden Lodge, a Georgian style brick villa, and set about creating a home that was both grand and intimate, richly furnished and entirely of his own making. The auction will include art by Matisse, James Tissot, Picasso and Utagawa Hiroshige, Victorian paintings and works on paper, the finest examples of the glass makers art, exceptional fabrics and fine works collected on trips to Japan.  All are on view at Sotheby’s in an exhibition that will close on September 5, the day that would have been Freddie Mercury’s 77th birthday.

    The matching 14 carat gold wedding rings exchanged by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in May 1945 at Julien’s. UPDATE: THESE SOLD FOR $190,500

    Iconic objects from some of Hollywood’s greatest legends will come up at a sale by Turner Classic Movies and Julien’s Auctions on September 6, 7 and 8.  There is everything from dresses worn by Princess Diana and Audrey Hepburn to a slave costume worn by Princess Leia in Star Wars, Captain Kirk’s Star Fleet command jacket and the 1945 wedding rings of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. James Bond, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Back to the Future and Batman will all feature in a sale celebrating 100 years of Warner Brothers.

    A library of First Edition classics and landmarks from the world of jazz will come up at Christie’s sale of the collection of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts (1941-2021).  The sale is led by a first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby inscribed by the author to the original Gatsby of the story. There are iconic works of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle alongside the best of English and American literature of the 20th century. Charlie Watts: Gentleman, Collector, Rolling Stone will take place in London on September 28.  An online sale will run from September 15-29.  Meantime Bonhams will offer 180 lots from the personal collection of Bond actor and UNICEF ambassador Sir Roger Moore (1927-2017) in London on October 4.  This marks the 50th anniversary year of his first appearance as 007.  There is Bond memorabilia like dinner suits and jackets, collectibles like a Hollywood Walk of Fame plaque and personal items like silk ties and cravats along with a pair of his Lamborghini skis.

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    UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE MAKES RECORD £12.6 MILLION

    Friday, July 7th, 2023
    MICHAEL SWEERTS (BRUSSELS 1618-1664 GOA) – The Artist’s Studio with a Seamstress

    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.

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    CLASSICAL TREASURES ON SALE IN LONDON

    Sunday, July 2nd, 2023
     Canova’s bust of Helen of Troy at Christie’s. UPDATE: THIS MADE £3,549,000

    FROM Helen of Troy and Aphrodite to Mozart and a suite of Louis XIV silver mounted furniture the London summer sales season will deliver some remarkable masterworks and classical pieces to the global market in the coming week. On the market for the first time ever is a Bust of Helen by Antonio Canova (1757-1822).  Given by Canova to Robert, Viscount Castlereagh (later the 2nd Marquess of Londonderry) in recognition of his efforts to return works of art to Italy at the end of the Napoleonic Wars it will be a highlight at Christie’s Old Masters sale on July 6.  Appreciation of Castlereagh, by Canova or anyone else, is out of the ordinary.  The Marquess, who committed suicide in 1822, is not remembered kindly in Ireland as a result of the suppression of the 1798 Rebellion and the promotion of the Act of Union, or in England, where he supported repressive measures that linked him in public opinion to the Peterloo Massacre.  Inspired by that massacre Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy begins:  “I met murder on the way, he had a mask like Castlereagh…  

     A 2nd century AD Roman head of the Capitoline Aphrodite on Italian polychrome 17th century stone draped shoulders at Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £889,000

    A bust of Aphrodite, Goddess of Love at Sotheby’s sale of Master Sculpture from Four Millennia on July 4 is unusual in that the head, neck and chest are all original.  It was made in the Roman Empire about the 2nd century AD.  The bust rests on Italian polychrome stone draped shoulders which date to the 17th century.  Lifesize Roman representations of Aphrodite carved out of dark stone are extremely rare. The only other known example is at the Vatican.

    A letter in German signed by Mozart’s at Christie’s. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

    A dramatic 1782 letter by a 26 year old Mozart to his close friend Baroness von Waldstatten declares that he will need to get married within two days to save his future wife the scandal of being dragged out of his house by the police. Constanze was known to be cohabiting under the same roof in Vienna as Mozart.  This prompted her mother Cacila Weber to send in the police to reclaim her daughter and save her reputation.  The only solution Mozart could come up with was to marry her the same day or the next and marry they did, on August 4, 1782.  It comes up at Christie’s Exceptional Sale on Thursday. A c1670 suite of Louis XIV furniture comprising a table and a pair of torcheres at Sotheby’s Treasures sale next Wednesday is thought likely to be the only surviving examples of the silver furnishings produced in the second half of the 17th century by  the silversmiths of the Louvre and Gobelins workshops. The ensemble displayed in the King’s Grand Appartement at Versaille comprised 20 tons of solid silver.  In 1689-90 Louis XIV decreed all silver should be sent to the Royal Mint to fund France’s fight in the Nine Years War. Nearly all but the most modest items or those that had already left France were melted down.

    Alabaster portrait of Charles V at Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

    A carved alabaster portrait of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), the most famous and celebrated Hapsburg ruler of Europe, demonstrates idiosyncrasies like the huge Hapsburg underbite.  Lifetime portraits of Charles V in private hands are rare, most exist in museums.  The sales next week will offer a trove of numerous museum quality works from paintings and drawings by Old Masters to furniture, decorative objects, books, manuscripts and letters.

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    SIGNAC LEADS CHRISTIE’S AUCTION WHICH BRINGS IN £63.8 million

    Wednesday, June 28th, 2023
    Paul Signac – Calanque des Canoubiers (Pointe de Bamer), Saint-Tropez sold for £8,015,000

    Paul Signac’s Calanque des Canoubiers (Pointe de Bamer), Saint-Tropez realised the top price of £8,015,000 at Christie’s 20th/21st century London evening sale on June 28. The sale totalled £63.8 million. Global interest in Jean Michel Basquiat continued when his  iconic tribute to the legacy of Picasso Untitled (Pablo Picasso) was sold for £6,462,500 to a client in the room.  Collectors from around the world gathered in London for a sale where 61 lots sold in two hours. There was spirited bidding for new contemporary names and female artists.

    Diane Dal-Pra’s surrealist portrait, It Belongs to You, sold to an online bidder for £113,400 against an estimate of £30,000-50,000, achieving a new world auction record for the artist. Sahara Longe’s Self-Portrait sold for £113,400, marking the artist’s evening sale debut (estimate: £40,000-60,000). Caroline Walker’s Recreation Pavilion sold for £441,000 (estimate: £150,000-250,000). Louis Fratino’s Listening to a conch was the first work by the artist to be included in a Christie’s London evening sale, made £201,600. Victor Man’s Weltinnenraum (World Within) saw 25 bidders competing against one another before it sold for £1,734,000, a world auction record for the artist.

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    THE ART WORLD DESCENDS ON LONDON RIGHT NOW

    Saturday, June 24th, 2023
    Lady with a fan by Gustav Klimt at Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £85.3 MILLION TO BECOME THE MOST VALUABLE PAINTING EVER SOLD IN EUROPE.

    A late painting by Klimt set to become the most valuable artwork ever sold in Europe, wonderful antique furniture, portraits and exceptional collectibles will make rich pickings for the rich and plenty of eye candy for the rest of us in London in the coming weeks. This is the time of year when the art world descends on the British capital for a variety of major sales, fairs and significant one off events like the re-opening after five years of the world renowned National Portrait Gallery.   Despite some  indications that the global art market might be in slightly hesitant mode right now the London summer season of 2023 is unlikely to disappoint. Lady with a Fan by Klimt at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary evening sale on June 27 has an estimate of around €80 million.  The last portrait he painted was still on an easel in the studio at the time of his untimely death in the flu pandemic of 1918. Featuring  an unnamed woman it is described by Sotheby’s as an ever deeper, ever more joyful immersion in pattern, colour and form, filled with the creative exuberance. The auction will offer a strong grouping of portraits with work by artists like Alberto Giacomett and Edvard Munch.

    These c1765 carved mirrors in the Chippendale style are being shown by Ronald Phillips at the Treasure House Fair

    In celebration of the re-opening of London’s National Portrait Gallery last Thursday the dynamism of portraiture across the centuries, redefined by each generation, will again be highlighted at Christie’s sale on June 28.  One of the more contemporary offerings here is Diplomacy I by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.  Part of the Tate Retrospective which closed last February it depicts a group of suited delegates recalling Marion Kaplan’s photographs of African heads of state at a summit in Uganda in 1967. The artist has created bold new characters for black representation in art. In this imagined portrait Yiadom-Boakye has inserted a single woman, clad in pink.  The sale offers portraits by Frank Auerbach, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Edgar Degas, Lucian Freud and Howard Hodgkin.

      Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Diplomacy I (2009) at Christie’s. UPDATE: THIS MADE £1,371,000

    The Treasure House Fair, in full swing until next Monday at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, was generated by leading UK dealers after the cancellation of Masterpiece, which cited a lack of overseas exhibitor interest. Treasure House has attracted dealers from France, Switzerland and the US like Geoffrey Diner and Michele Beiny.  There is fine antique furniture from leading UK dealers like Ronald Phillips at this curated global event with distinguished names across a wide range of disciplines.Meantime the city is gearing up for London Art Week which runs from June 30 to July 7 with 53 specialists and expert dealers with museum quality examples of decorative arts, paintings, sculpture and works on paper from antiquity to contemporary. Various galleries will show work by Irish artists like Sir John Lavery, Gerald Leslie Brockhurst (who lived here for a time)  Augustus John and Gwen John as well showcasing artists from Giambologna to Renoir, Picasso and Dora Maar.  The Fine Arts Society will exhibit an enamel by Phoebe Anna Traquair, the Irish born artist who achieved international recognition for her role in the Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland.  She produced large scale murals, embroidery, enamel jewellery and book illuminations.  On show in London is The Life of the Virgin (1906), three plaques in enamel with foil on copper.

    The Life of the Virgin (1906) by Dublin born Phoebe Anna Traquair is on display at the Fine Arts Society in London.

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    A BEAUTIFUL TURNER SUNRISE WATERCOLOUR AT CHRISTIE’S

    Wednesday, June 7th, 2023
    Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A. (1775-1851) – Sunrise over the Sea, perhaps at Margate courtesy CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2023. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £1,032,200.

    Capturing the enigmatic fleeting beauty of changing sunlight celebrated across cultures and across time, Sunrise over the Sea, perhaps at Margate by J M W Turner is a highlight at Christie’s  Old Master and British Drawings and Watercolours sale on July 4 during Classic Week in London. Harriet Drummond, International Head of British Drawings and Watercolours, commented: “This remarkably well-preserved and ravishingly beautiful drawing is an exceptional example of the boldly expressive watercolours Turner made in his final years. Previously dated to the later 1820s, it is has now been associated by Ian Warrell for the first time with sheets of one of the ‘roll’ sketchbooks that were broken up and dispersed after Turner’s death. Turner deployed these light-weight books on many of his later travels in the early 1840s, notably in Germany, Venice and the celebrated final tours of Switzerland. In this instance, the dismantled book can be placed in the sequence of sketchbooks used during the summer of 1845 overlapping in its focus on cloudy skies over the sea with the contents of the ‘Channel’ sketchbook at the Yale Center for British Art, and several of those in the Turner Bequest at Tate Britain.”

    The watercolour is estimated at £600,000-800,000.

    Turner has posthumously often been celebrated for his depictions of sunset light, but in recent years many of the works John Ruskin and others had identified as that time of day have been retitled as sunrises. Turner confessed to a young admirer at the time: ‘when you are all fast asleep, I am watching effects of sunrise far more beautiful [than the sunsets people associated with him]; and then, you see, the light does not fail, and you can paint them’ (M. Lloyd, ‘A Memoir of J.M.W. Turner, R.A.’, (1880), Turner Studies, summer 1984, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 22). It was this kind of dedicated approach to the observation of changing light that anticipates Claude Monet’s method of painting successive canvases, working on each within a limited time frame during the course of a day; both Turner and Monet were especially drawn to the special character of dawn and twilight.

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    A NEW TREND CONTINUES AT CHRISTIE’S NEW YORK SALE

    Thursday, May 18th, 2023
    Christopher Wool – Untitled sold for $10,070,000.

    Records were broken for women artists and for artists of colour, continuing a trend of the past several seasons at Christie’s sale of the Gerald Fineberg Collection in New York last night. The evening achieved $153,053,300, bringing the total for the Spring Marquee Week to $878,066,496, with a final sale remaining. Christopher Wool’s Untitled made $10,070,000 and was the top lot of the evening. There were notable results for Gerhard Richter’s Badende which made $9,610,000; Pablo Picasso’s Buste d’homme lauré which mde $8,460,000 and a Joan Mitchell abstraction Untitled which made $6,584,000. 

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    A $67 MILLION BASQUIAT AND NEW ARTISTS RECORDS AT CHRISTIE’S

    Tuesday, May 16th, 2023
    Jean-Michel Basquiat – El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile) made $67,110,000 

    Jean-Michel Basquiat’s El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile) was the top lot at Christie’s 21st Century evening sale in New York last night. It made $67,110,000 in an auction of 26 lots which brought in $98,802,500, selling 96% by lot and 123% hammer against low estimate. More than one third of lots set artist records; five were set for female artists – Robin F. Williams, Simone Leigh, Danielle McKinney, Rebecca Ackroyd, and Diane Arbus – as well as records for Vojt?ch Kova?ík, El Anatsui, Peter Saul, and William Eggleston (for a single work).

    Combined with the successful sale of the S.I. Newhouse Collection and the 20th Century Evening Sale on May 11 and the series of Day Sales May 12 – 13, this auction brought Christie’s running total for its 20th and 21st Century Spring Marquee Week auctions to $725,013,196.

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    NEW RECORD FOR HENRI ROUSSEAU AT CHRISTIE’S

    Friday, May 12th, 2023
    Henri Rousseau –  Les Flamants made $43,535,000, a new record © Christie’s Images Limited 2023.

    Masterpieces from the S.I. Newhouse collection and the 20th century evening sale brought in $506,571,600 at Christie’s in New York last night. The evening began with 16 works from the collection of S.I. Newhouse, which achieved a total of $177,792,000, selling 100% by lot, and 105.6% by low estimate. With this sale, the Collection of S.I. Newhouse is now established as the sixth highest collection total of all time, combined with a total of $237,975,000 made during sales in 2018 and 2019. Highlights included Francis Bacon’s 1969 Self-Portrait, which made $34,622,500, and Willem de Kooning’s Orestes, which brought $30,885,000. 

    The 20th Century Evening Sale offered works from a strong group of estates and private collections. The top lot was Henri Rousseau’s, Les Flamants, which made $43,535,000. Les Flamants – a rare example with impeccable provenance – soared past the artists’ previous record of $4,400,000 set in 1993, bringing $43,535,000. Other highlights included, Pablo Picasso’s Nature morte à la fenêtre, which sold for $41,810,000; Ed Ruscha’s Burning Gas Station, which made $22,260,000; Georgia O’Keeffe’s Black Iris VI, which sold for $21,110,000, and David Hockney’s The Gate, which realised $19,385,000.

    Francis Bacon’s 1969 Self-Portrait made $34,622,500 © Christie’s Images Limited 2023.

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    PICASSO PORTRAIT OF MARIE-THERESE A CHRISTIE’S HIGHLIGHT

    Tuesday, May 2nd, 2023

    This large scale 1932 portrait of Marie-Therese Walter will highlight Christie’s 20th century evening sale in New York on May 11.  Nature morte a la fenetre was painted during a pivotal year for Picasso, who reached an extraordinary peak of creativity in 1932.  Marie-Therese came to dominate every aspect of his output in the early 1930’s. This is one of the first works of an exceptional series devoted to her. One of them, Femme assise pres d’une fenetre (Marie-Therese), sold for $103 million in 2021. The painting here was shown at the Picasso retrospective in Paris in the summer of 1932 after which it was exhibited at his inaugural museum show in Zurich. It remained in his personal collection for the rest of his life, hidden from public view until the 1980’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $41,810,000

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