Lucian Freud, Scillonian Beachscape (1945-46) (£3,500,000-5,500,000). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £4,602,000
Lucian Freud’s fascination with the natural world is underlined by two rare paintings at the 20th/21st century evening sale at Christie’s on February 28. Scillonian Beachscape (1945-46) is one of a handful of works inspired by a formative visit to the Isles of Scilly, accompanied by his close friend, the artist John Craxton. During the trip, Freud created a number of drawings and completed this canvas when he returned to London. Garden from the Window (2002) offers a rare glimpse beyond the studio walls and belongs to a series depicting Freud’s garden at 138 Kensington Church St. in London. Christie’s expect that both works, formerly in the renowned collection of Simon Sainsbury, will resonate with collectors especially given the fact that the National Gallery, London centenary retrospective entitled Lucian Freud; New Perspectives transfers this month at the Thyssen Bornemisza in Madrid.
PAUL CEZANNE (1839-1906) – La montagne Sainte-Victoire Painted in 1888-1899 sold for $137,790,000
The most valuable private-collection sale of all time broke the world-record for a sale just halfway through the bidding at Christie’s in New York last night. The first part of the collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen – just 60 lots – made $1,506,386,000. One highlight after another saw five paintings – the most ever in one sale – bringing more than $100 million each, with each one setting a world record.
Three of the lots were among the top lots sold of all time. Georges Seurat’s groundbreaking statement on pointillism, Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version) led the evening at $149,240,000. Paul Cezanne’s monumental landscape, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire brought $137,790,000. Vincent van Gogh’s Verger avec cyprès, which captures the artist’s early encounter with the South of France, achieved $117,180,000. Paul Gauguin’s Maternité II from 1899, one of his most important years, made $105,730,000. Gustav Klimt’s evocative depiction of a Birch Forest, made $104,585,000. The number and size of the record prices set was unprecedented. 60 masterpieces were sold and 20 artists records were set.
The auction broke the world-record for a sale just halfway through the bidding when the auctioneer, Jussi Pylkkänen, knocked down Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture, Femme de Venise III, for $25,007,500. The auction was 100% sold, and 122% sold against low estimate. All of the estate’s proceeds from this historic sale will be dedicated to philanthropy, pursuant to Mr. Allen’s wishes. The second part of the sale takes place later today.
(See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for November 2 and August 26, 2022)
RECORDS
Seurat, Les Poseuses Ensemble(Petite version) – $149,240,000
Cézanne, La montagne Sainte-Victoire – $137,790,000
Van Gogh, Verger avec cypres – $117,180,000
Gauguin, Maternite II – $105,730,000
Klimt, Birch Forest – $104,585,000
Freud, Large Interior, W11 (After Watteau) – $86,265,000
Johns, Small False Start – $55,350,000
Signac, Concarneau, calm de matin – $39,320,000
Ernst, Le roi jouant avec la reine – $24,435,000
Wyeth, Day Dream – $23,290,000
Rivera, TheRivals – $14,130,000
Francis, Composition in Blue and Black – $13,557,500
Steichen, The Flatiron – $11,840,000
Cross, Rio San Trovaso, Venise – $9,550,000
Brueghel, The Five Senses – $8,634,000
Hepworth, Elegy III – $8,634,000
Benton, Nashaquitsa – $5,580,000
Sidaner, La Serenade Venise – $2,100,000
Singer Sargent, The Façade of La Salute, Venice – $3,660,000 – for work on paper
Klee, Bunte Landschaft – $4,860,000 – for work on paper
LUCIAN FREUD (1922-2011) – Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau) made a record $86,265,000
Francis Bacon – Study for Portrait of Lucian Freud, 1964 (Estimate in excess of £35 million) Courtesy Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £43,336,000
Francis Bacon’s magnetic portrait of Lucian Freud will highlight British Art: The Jubilee Auction at Sotheby’s in London on June 29. Paintined in 1964 the full-length portrait illuminates the powerful dialogue of friendship and epochal rivalry which would engulf two titans of art history and spur them to create some of their greatest works. The pair had first met 20 years earlier and would go on to share an intense friendship for over 40 years until jealousy and petty rows would ultimately splinter relations forever in the mid-1980’s.
Though their visual styles differed considerably, both artists were deeply committed to the human figure, painting each other on numerous occasions over the years. Indeed, for Bacon, Freud would become a recurrent – and one of the most significant – subjects of his work in the 1960’s. Bacon believed that: “the living quality is what you have to get. In painting a portrait, the problem is to find a technique by which you can give over all the pulsations of a person…The sitter is someone of flesh and blood and what has to be caught is their emanation.”
The black and white photographs taken by their mutual friend John Deakin would become Bacon’s primary source material as he painted Freud obsessively. Of great personal significance, Bacon would keep these photographs with him for the rest of his life, and they were rediscovered torn, crumpled and splattered with paint in his studio following his death.
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.
BRIDGET RILEY (B. 1931) – Reverse courtesy CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2022. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
The 20th/21st century Shanghai to London evening sale and the Art of the Surreal evening sale at Christie’s on March 1 are now live online for browsing. The 20/21 Shanghai to London series of sales will also be live and livestreamed to salerooms in Hong Kong and New York. This unique platform showcases the finest examples of art that span the dynamic art movements. Offered from the Neumann Family Collection, Bridget Riley’s Reverse (1963) (£3,000,000-5,000,000) alternates triangles of black and white across a hypnotic expanse. The painting was acquired in 1965 and has been unseen in public since then. Lucian Freud’s intimate and tender portrait, Girl with Closed Eyes (1986-87) (£10,000,000-15,000,000) will also make its auction debut.
Lucian Freud (1922-2011) – Girl with Closed Eyes. courtesy CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2022. UPDATE: THIS MADE £15,174,500
Patrick Swift (1927-1983) Portrait of Lucian Freud in Patrick Swift’s Hatch Street Studio. UPDATE: THIS WAS SOLD FOR 19,000
Meet the young Lucian Freud as seen by the Irish artist Patrick Swift. Between 1948 and 1956, when he was a frequent visitor to Ireland, Freud developed a friendship with Patrick Swift, whose studio on Hatch Street he regularly shared. During this time, the two artists observed one another’s work closely; both were interested in portraiture and, to a lesser extent, still lifes. Swift was still in the early stages of his career while Freud had been critically lauded and celebrated in London with a string of acclaimed solo exhibitions. His work had been added to public collections in England and the US before he was selected to represent Britain (with Francis Bacon and Ben Nicholson) at the Venice Biennale in 1954.
Swift’s first solo exhibition at the Victor Waddington Galleries in Dublin in 1952 was met with critical acclaim. He was, by now, part of a more-or-less bohemian set of artists and writers that included Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh, Nano Reid, and John Ryan; he was also connected to the art dealer Deirdre McDonagh. Freud was introduced to this cultural network through the artist Anne Dunn on his first visit to the city in the late 1940s. On his regular visits to Dublin thereafter, Freud participated in this artistic milieu.
This portrait of Freud at Swift’s studio in Hatch St., Dublin comes up at the James Adam sale of Imporant Irish Art in Dublin on December 8 with an estimate of €20,000-€30,000.
Boat, Connemara by Lucian Freud comes up at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art evening sale in London on October 14 with an estimate of £750,000-£950,000. It is one of two works the artist produced while in Ireland for three weeks in August 1948. It appeared on the market for the first time in more than 50 years at Christie’s in 2012 with an estimate of £200,000-300,000 and sold for £657,250. It is being sold by the owner who acquired it then. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for January 30, 2012)
Lucian Freud’s 2002 portrait of David Hockney will make its auction debut at Sotheby’s in London on June 29. Painted at the height of Freud’s career, this portrait of David Hockney provides a fascinating window into the narrative of a long episodic friendship that had started forty years earlier. During the spring and summer of 2002 the two titans of British art came together in a private exchange between artist and sitter. After more than a hundred hours of sittings, the result was one of the most masterful peer-to-peer portraits ever committed onto canvas. It will be a highlight at Sotheby’s British Art Evening Sale: Modern/Contemporary when it will be offered with an estimate of £8,000,000-12,000,000.
Lucian Freud – David Hockney, oil on canvas, 2002. (£8-12 million) Copyright Sothebys. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £14,905,200
Few artists spent as much time in the studio as Lucian Freud (1922-2011), regarded as one of the greatest realist painters of the 20th century. He changed the way we see portraiture and the nude. In its latest incarnation the Freud Project at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) has set out on an investigation into the relationship between the artist and their studio and the role of the studio as a space for production. In all its forms the studio exerts a fascination as the physical and conceptual frame as an artist’s work progresses. The exhibition of 29 paintings and 16 works on paper is made possible by the IMMA Collection: Freud Project, a five year loan of 52 works by Lucian Freud to IMMA. The programme of research will build on existing ways of thinking about the studio and focus on the contemporary situation in Ireland. This is the fifth exhibition to be presented as part of the project and it will run until August 30.
If you have not yet managed to see it there is still time to catch a marvellous show at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. Life Above Everything brings together the work of Lucian Freud (1922-2011) and Jack B. Yeats (1871-1957). Freud had a lifelong interest in the work of Yeats and admired its force and energy. He did not cite Yeats as an influence but seems to have found common purpose with its originality and independence. A pen and ink drawing by Yeats, The Dancing Stevedores, hung beside Freud’s bed forI over 20 years. Unique to the show is a group of seven paintings by Yeats which Freud selected for a close friend, advising him which works to acquire. Freud’s first visit to Ireland in 1948 has been described, at least in part, as a pilgrimage to the site of Yeats’ work. They exhibited together only one in their lifetimes, at the inaugural show at the ICA in London in 1948. Freud’s work has been exhibited with that of other artists, but this is the first time that it is presented with a single other artist. The show runs until January 19.
