Judith Lewis and Thomas Frye Conversation piece of the Hon. Herbert Hickman Windsor, dressed in Hussars’ uniform with his sister Charlotte Jane, later Countess of Bute, with their dog and other pet animals in a landscape. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
This painting, one of only three known signed works by the Irish female artist Judith Lewis, comes up at Sotheby’s Old Master and 19th century paintings day sale in London on July 6. Lot 139 is estimated at £24,000-32,000. Judith Lewis was sister of Stephen Slaughter, a Dublin-based portrait painter, and later wife of another Dublin artist, John Lewis, who was the first scene-painter to be permanently employed at the Smock Alley Theatre.
This work depicts the Hon. Herbert Hickman-Windsor in a hussar’s uniform, his trousers decorated with Irish Harps, alongside his sister Charlotte Jane, who would later become the Countess of Bute, and from whose husband’s family this picture has descended. Both sitters were the children of Herbert Windsor, 2nd Viscount Windsor, a British landowner and Tory politician. They are depicted in an arcadian landscape, surrounded by a dog, a chipmunk and a variety of exotic birds. In the late 17th and 18th centuries, exotic animals were considered the ultimate extravagance and display of wealth as they were imported from far away countries. When this painting was with Philip Mould the attribution of the landscape to Judith Lewis and the figures to Thomas Frye was endorsed by Dr Michael Wynne.
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.
Barcelona Red Mirror by Sean Scully made £482,600 at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary day auction in London today. Executed on two vertical canvases it epitomises Scully’s hallmark configuration of stripes. Spanning bold alternating blocks of crimson and deep mahogany on the left panel and coal black and lilac on the left the present work creates a ruptured duality, a certain asymmetrical union. Signed and dated 04 on the reverse it brings to mind the artist’s early double canvases, at the same time paying homage to Barcelona, where Scully has had a studio since 1994.
Lady with a Fan – the last portrait Austrian artist Gustav Klimt painted
There was a new auction record for a painting sold in Europe at Sotheby’s in London tonight when Klimt’s last portrait – Lady with a Fan – soared past its estimate of £65 million to sell for £85.3 million. After a four way bidding war it went to a collector in Hong Kong. This is the second highest price for a portrait ever at auction.
The painting, described as “a masterpiece by an artist at the height of his powers”, has strong Asian influences and is part of the Japonisme trend, which refers to the influence of Japanese art and design among Western European artists.
It also features several Chinese motifs including the phoenix, a symbol of immortality and rebirth, and lotus blossoms that signify love.
Helena Newman, the chair of Sotheby’s Europe and worldwide head of impressionist and modern art, said: “Dame mit Fächer is the last portrait Gustav Klimt created before his untimely death, when still in his artistic prime and producing some of his most accomplished and experimental works.
“Many of those works, certainly the portraits for which he is best known, were commissions. This, though, is something completely different – a technical tour de force, full of boundary-pushing experimentation, as well as a heartfelt ode to absolute beauty.”
Previous highest prices achieved in Europe were:
£65m / $104.3m – Alberto Giacometti, Walking Man (Sotheby’s London, February 2010) – record for any work of art sold at auction in Europe £40.9m / $80.4m – Claude Monet, Le basin aux nymphéas – (Christie’s London, June 2008) – record for any painting sold at auction in Europe £59.4m / $79.8m – René Magritte, L’empire des lumières (Sotheby’s London, March 2022) £49.5m / $76.7m – Rubens, The Massacre of the Innocents (Sotheby’s London, July 2002)
(See post on antiqesandartireland.com for June 24, 2023)
Sir William Beechey, R.A. Portrait of Mrs Dorothy Jordan (1761–1816) as Rosalind in Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £22,860
Sir William Beechey’s famous and much illustrated portrait of the great Irish actress, Dorothy Jordan, mistress of King William IV comes up at Sotheby’s in London next week. She was the mother of ten illegitimate children by him, all of whom took the surname FitzClarence. Its significance was recognised by her bibiographer Claire Tomalin who used the painting on the front cover of her definitive publication on Mrs Jordan in 1994. Born the daughter of Irish and Welsh emigres in London Dorothy Phillips (her unmarried name) started off her professional life on the stage in Dublin. In 1790 she attracted the eye of the young Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence and later William IV, who gave her an annuity of £1,200 and enough provisions for her accompanying family. She was subsequently given the use of Bushy House, a residence of the Duke in Bushy Park, where she became mother of his ten offspring. Rising debts and the search for a society marriage prompted William to call-off the affair, and Jordan was to receive £4,400 in a settlement drawn up shortly after their parting in 1811. Their eldest son George Augustus Frederick FitzClarence, 1st Earl of Munster (1794–1842) would have been King rather than Queen Victoria but for his illegitimacy. The painting is lot 142 at Sotheby’s Old Master and 19th century day auction in London on July 6 with an estimate of £20,000-£30,000.
Sir William Orpen R.A., R.H.A. – The Yacht Race (Sighting the Boat). UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
The Yacht Race (Sighting the Boat) by Sir William Orpen comes up at Sotheby’s Modern British Art sale in London on June 28. Orpen’s summer ritual from 1909 onwards had been to rent Arthur Bellingham’s house known as ‘The Cliffs’ overlooking the majestic sweep of Dublin Bay for the month of August. There he would be joined by his wife, Grace, and his daughters, Mary and Kit, along with other members of his family. Since the Howth holiday followed his summer term residency at the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin friends and students sometimes joined the party. These convivial gatherings became subjects for drawings and paintings for, as his brother Richard recalled, while these ‘long, lovely, never-to-be-forgotten summer days’ were carefree. The pencil and watercolour on paper is estimated at £90,000-£130,000. A Shining Place – a Venetian painting by William John Leech – comes up at the same sale with an estimate of £50,000-£70,000.
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.
Lucian Freud – Night Interior, 1968-70. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £9,586,700
Lucian Freud’s portrait of Penelope Cuthbertson leads the evening sale of Modern and Contemporary art at Sotheby’s in London on June 27. Night Interior is estimated at £8-12 million. The auction offers four pieces by three visionaries of British Art: Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Frank Dobson from a distinguished private collection. All four were created within just a few miles of one another in London. Freud’s meditative portrait will be offered alongside two remarkable paintings from Frank Auerbach’s most revered series’: Mornington Crescent and a portrait of his most famed sitter Juliet Yardley Mills, J.Y.M. Seated II. There is as well a rare to market white marble sculpture of a female form by Frank Dobson. Only ten carvings by the artist have appeared at auction in the last thirty years.
Charles II Irish silver porringer, Samuel Marsden, Dublin, 1680. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £4,445
This very rare Irish silver porringer by Samuel Marsden comes up as lot 77 at Sotheby’s sale of furniture, silver, clocks and ceramics which runs online until tomorrow (May 23) afternoon. Only one other example of Marsden’s work is known: a 1679 communion cup and paten at St. Michan’s church in Dublin. He was a warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company of Dublin from 1677-1680 and master in 1681. The estimate for the piece is £4,000-£6,000.
Among other lots of Irish interest are a set of four Irish George III silver meat dishes with Sheffield plate covers with the arms of Moore, Earls of Drogheda for Charles Moore (29 June 1730 – 22 December 1822), 6th Earl of Drogheda, who in July 1791 was created Marquess of Drogheda. The estimate here is £12,000-£18,000. There is a silver salver by Joseph Johns of Limerick and a soup ladle by George Moore of Limerick, Irish silver goblets, coasters, basting spoons and sauce boats. UPDATE: The Earl of Drogheda silver sold for £13,970
Haze Days by Yoshitomo Nara at Sotheby’s. THIS WAS UNSOLD
The explosion of creativity in the art world in the first two decades of the 20th century has not been matched in the 21st. and it is interesting to speculate about why. A century ago the world was newly enriched by Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Abstraction, Suprematism and the rest. In the global village of today, development of the shock of the new in art does not seem to have occurred at the hectic pace of technology and other groundbreaking disciplines. Are artists stupefied by the pace of change in the world all around them? In a world where wonder is taken for granted is visual surprise and delight degraded?
Geniuses like David Hockney have demonstrated the infinite possibilities of digital art but it is not as yet a significant art market sector. It looks as if NFT’s have gone the way of cryptocurrency for now. The most innovative market focus is on overlooked women artists, non western art, ethnic, tribal and minority groups but art needs innovation, not political correctness. The impressive selection of Impressionist, Modern, Post-Modern and Contemporary art will come under the hammer at the big New York spring sales in May are mostly of the 20th century. Highly significant art from major collections like Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, legendary Condé Nast co owner S.I. Newhouse and Warner Bros. Records executive Mo Ostin, among whose signings were The Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Joni Mitchell, R.E.M. and Madonna, will boost these sales.
L’Empire des Lumieres by Rene Magritte from the Mo Ostin collection at Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS MADE$42,273,000
All the big names, from Picasso, Matisse and Magritte to Georgia O’Keeffe, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama and Jean Michel Basquiat are here along with less well known but seriously doing well relative newcomers like Wayne Thiebaud and Yoshitomo Nara. But the art of today, which both auction houses have been busily promoting, is represented by just 51 lots, 27 at the 21st Century evening sale at Christie’s on May 15 and 24 at the Now evening sale at Sotheby’s on May 18.
Pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama at Christie’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $4,890,000
The Christie’s auction will be headed up by a Basquiat (born in 1960, died in 1986). There is a pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama (born in 1929), a box of ten photographs by Diane Arbus (1923-1971), a take on a Velazquez painting by Jeff Koons (born 1955), Prophet by El Anatsui (born 1944) and Untitled (We will no longer be your favourite disappearing act) by Barbara Kruger (born 1945). Art in this sale by Cecily Brown, Rashid Johnson, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and other younger artists like Vojtek Kovarik and Louis Fratino (both born in 1993) will definitely reward serious study but seems rooted in the 20th century. A powerful 1998 work by Yoshito Nara titled Haze Days will highlight the Now auction at Sotheby’s. This monumental rendering of a bandaged child – furious, foreboding and wonderfully appealing – embodies the contradictions of our culture and ourselves. The eyes have it and it is no surprise that these angst laden paintings sell for many millions of dollars. There is arresting art by Simone Leigh, Jonas Wood, Matthew Wong, Julien Nguyen, Mark Grotjahn, Kerry James Marshall, Mark Bradford, Rudolf Stingel and other names that might not yet be so well known. With this sale Sotheby’s has set out to offer heightened visibility and a relevant art historical context for a new generation of younger artists but it is the artists themselves who need to forge new paths.
Burning gas station by Ed Ruscha at Christie’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $22,260,000
