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Posts Tagged ‘sotheby’s’

WORLD AUCTION RECORDS FOR MASTERPIECES AT SOTHEBY’S

Thursday, July 7th, 2016

There was world auction records for Jean Etienne Leotard, Jan Brueghel the Elder and a work on paper by Sir Peter Lely at two days of sales of masterpieces from the past at Sotheby’s in London this week. The auctions attracted collectors from over 50 countries and a participation at sales of Old Master paintings, sculpture, works of art and drawings that was up by 40%. The four sales brought a combined total of £31,831,191. A Dutch Girl at Breakfast by Jean Etienne Leotard made £4,405,000: Still Life of flowers in a stoneware vase by Jan Brueghel the Elder made £3,845,000 and a self portrait by Sir Peter Lely sold for £869,000. The Orpheus Cup sold for £1.06 million.

Jean Etienne Liotard – A Dutch Girl at Breakfast

Jan Brueghel the Elder – A still life with flowers in a stoneware vase

Sir Peter Lely’s self portrait.

SOUTH GERMAN, AUGSBURG, AROUND 1600
THE ROTHSCHILD ORPHEUS CUP

Tags: Jan Brueghel the Elder, Jean Etienne Liotard, SIR PETER LELY, sotheby's
Posted in ART, AUCTIONS, COLLECTIBLES | No Comments »

AN IRISH PROCLAMATION AT SOTHEBY’S THIS JULY

Tuesday, July 5th, 2016

The Proclamation at Sotheby’s

A copy of the Irish Proclamation comes up at Sotheby’s sale of English Literature, History, Childrens’ Books and Illustrations in London on July 12. When purchased in 1996 it was mounted on early stiff card. It was professionally repaired at the Williamstown Art Conservation Centre in Massachusetts and afterwards preserved in a clamshell box. The restoration saw the copy removed from its previous mount, washed, archival backed, newly remounted on thin Japanese paper and encapsulated. It is estimated at £100,000-150,000.

This is one of a small number of copies printed at Liberty Hall on Easter Sunday 1916, marking the beginning of the Easter Rising. Three men, printer Christopher Brady and two compositors, Michael Molloy and Liam O’Brien handled the printing. The Rising led eventually to the foundation of the Irish Free State and later Irish Republic. Less than 50 copies of the original are thought to have survived.

UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

Tags: Irish Proclamation, sotheby's
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ART MARKET SHOWS DURABILITY AT SOTHEBY’S POST BREXIT

Wednesday, June 29th, 2016

Jenny Saville – Shift

Financial markets may be fluctuating in the wake of the Brexit vote, but the art market showed its durability at Sotheby’s June 28 Contemporary Art Evening sale. Two artist records led the auction – Jenny Saville’s monumental Shift brought £6.8 million and Keith Haring’s The Last Rainforest realised £4.2 million. Bidding was strong and competitive from the sale’s opening lots, notably Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Nets (£677,000) and a buoyant Alexander Calder mobile (£1.7 million). A trio of works by Jean Dubuffet and two canvases by the sought-after painter Adrian Ghenie also contributed to the £52.2 million total.

Last exhibited at the epoch-defining exhibition “Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection”, Shift merits its revered place in art history as the standout work of Saville’s prodigious career. Offered at auction for the first time the painting tripled the artist’s previous auction record of £2.1m set in 2014.

Tags: Jenny Saville, sotheby's
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RECOVERED IRISH PAINTINGS COME TO SALE AT SOTHEBY’S

Sunday, June 26th, 2016

irish soth Paintings by Yeats, Lavery and Henry are to be offered at Sotheby’s Irish art sale in London on September 13. The three works were stolen from a house in Co. Wicklow in 2015 and are now being offered for sale by insurance company Chubb. The combined estimate for the works is £47,000-70,000.

The painting are Jack Butler Yeats’ The Fern in the Area, Paul Henry’s Landscape with Cottage, and Sir John Lavery’s Portrait de femme au chapeau.

Charlie Minter, Sotheby’s Irish Art Specialist, said: “The remarkable recovery of these paintings has ensured that their fate looks immeasurably brighter and we look forward to finding new homes for them. The Lavery and Henry passed through our doors fifteen years ago and we’re thrilled to be able to offer them at auction again.”

Tags: Jack B. Yeats, paul henry, Sir John Lavery, sotheby's
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OLD MASTERS DEPICT ROME IN THE 1750’S

Friday, June 24th, 2016

Giovanni Paolo Panini
Rome, a view of the Forum looking towards the Capitol, 1751 UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

Masterworks by Panini and Vernet which shed light on Rome’s extraordinary effervescence of the 1750’s are among the lots on offer at Sotheby’s Old Masters evening sale in London on July 6. With its glorious monuments from Antiquity, masterpieces of the Renaissance and the Baroque, and a rarefied and international contemporary art scene, artists travelled from far and wide to be stimulated by this magnetic cauldron of art. The most successful of them were commissioned to record the favourite places of grand tourists and other foreign visitors. Such was the case for Claude Joseph Vernet who arrived in Rome in 1734 and who, with the leading local Roman painter of the time Giovanni Paolo Panini, would harness the city’s past and present, and together propel the art of landscape painting into a new era.

Panini’s magnificent view of Rome from 1751 shows the artist at the height of his powers (estimate £1-1.5 million) and Vernet’s impressive Mediterranean views – Le Soir and Clair de lune – were painted in 1752, (estimate £3-5 million). UPDATE: THE VERNET’S WERE UNSOLD

Tags: Giovanni Paolo Panini, sotheby's
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A NEW RECORD PRICE FOR A CUBIST MASTERPIECE

Tuesday, June 21st, 2016

FEMME ASSISE

Pablo Picasso’s Cubist masterpiece Femme assise sold for £43.3 million at Sotheby’s in London tonight. This is a new record price for any Cubist work at auction and the highest price for any work sold in London in over five years.

Femme assise of 1909 came to the market tonight having remained in a private collection since 1973 when it was acquired for £340,000. The sale also saw a record for a portrait by Amedeo Modigliani, as Jeanne Hébuterne (au foulard) of 1919 mde £38.5 million, the second-highest price for a painting sold in London in over five years. The evening sale of Impressionist & Modern Art at Sotheby’s totalled £103,280,000.

The price paid for Femme Assise was the highest price in London since the sale of Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Man I at Sotheby’s London in 2010 for £65 million.

(See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for June 5 and May 17, 2016 and World Sculpture Price Records)

Tags: Modigliani, Picasso, sotheby's
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A CARPET MADE FOR THE SUN KING AT SOTHEBY’S

Monday, June 20th, 2016

From opulent carpets made for the Sun King and Frederick the Great’s armchair to the intriguing Rothschild Orpheus Cup and gems of scientific innovation the sale entitled Treasures at Sotheby’s in London on July 6 offers much to the serious and wealthy collector. Inaugurated in 2010 this highly curated sale is one of the more notable of the year in decorative art. Combining royal and aristocratic provenance with craftsmanship and freshness to market the selection this summer includes furniture, silver, vertu, clocks, sculpture and works of art.

Henry House, Head of Sotheby’s Furniture and Decorative Arts Department, said: “Each of the 46 lots in the sale exemplifies the definition of treasure. Formerly the preserve of Kings, Princes and Popes, they celebrate the genius and craftsmanship of the greatest artists and artisans of their era.”

A ROYAL CARPET FOR THE PALAIS DU LOUVRE
PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF DIMITRI MAVROMMATIS
A Louis XIV Savonnerie carpet for the galerie du Bord de l’eau (grande galerie), Palais du Louvre Paris
Chaillot workshop of the Lourdet family, delivered on 10 June 1678 (£300,000-500,000) UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £341,000

SOUTH GERMAN, AUGSBURG, AROUND 1600
THE ROTHSCHILD ORPHEUS CUP (£600,000 – 800,000) UPDATE; THIS SOLD FOR £1,061,000

CHAIR FOR FREDERICK THE GREAT
A German rococo silvered armchair, attributed to Johann August Nahl, Potsdam, circa 1744-46 (£80,000-120,000) UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

Tags: SAVONNERIE CARPET, sotheby's, THE SUN KING
Posted in ART, AUCTIONS, COLLECTIBLES, FURNITURE | 1 Comment »

A GRAPHIC VERSION OF THE SCREAM BY MUNCH AT SOTHEBY’S

Monday, June 13th, 2016

Two momentous graphic works by Edvard Munch: The Scream and Self-Portrait will come up at Sotheby’s this month and in September. They are both dated 1895 and from a private Norwegian collection. They were originally owned by Olaf Schou, the Norwegian industrialist, art collector and patron who was a friend and great supporter of Munch’s. He acquired them directly from the artist. The Scream comes up at the evening sale of Impressionist & Modern Art in London on June 21 with an estimate of £800,000-1,200,000. Self-Portrait will be part of a Prints & Multiples sale in London on September 27. It is estimated at £50,000-70,000.

James Mackie, Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department, London, said: “Munch’s The Scream has transcended art history to reach a global consciousness and his lithograph of 1895 helped initiate the process of its mass proliferation. This exceptional impression has an impact no less powerful than Munch’s 1893 tempera and crayon version.”

EDVARD MUNCH
1863-1944
THE SCREAM
Lithograph, 1895 UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £1.8 MILLION

EDVARD MUNCH
1863 – 1944
SELF-PORTRAIT
Lithograph, 1895

Tags: Edvard Munch, sotheby's, The Scream
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MODIGLIANI MASTERPIECE AT SOTHEBY’S

Sunday, June 5th, 2016

Amedeo Modigliani – Jeanne Hébuterne (au foulard) UPDATE: IT SOLD FOR £38.5 MILLION

A masterpiece by Amedeo Modigliani – Jeanne Hébuterne (au foulard) – is among the highlights at Sotheby’s London Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale in London on June 21. In a private collection since 1986 it is now estimated to make more than £28 million. This elegant and lyrical work is among the most beautiful portraits Amedeo Modigliani painted of his lover Jeanne Hébuterne – revealing a tender moment between a pioneer in the world of modern art and his most loyal muse.

Jeanne met Modigliani in 1917, when she was a young art student, and for the next three years she was his constant companion and source of inspiration. The two were devoted to each other – with Modigliani even pledging to marry her, despite her family’s protestations. In January 1920, Modigliani died of tubercular meningitis. Following the funeral, a twenty-two year old, and reputedly heavily pregnant, Jeanne was taken to her parents’ home. There, inconsolable, she committed suicide by leaping from an upstairs window.

Helena Newman, Global Co-Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department, said: “The pioneering Modern style with which Amedeo Modigliani sensuously depicted the female form is inextricably bound with his lover and muse Jeanne Hébuterne. This painting is one of the most alluring portraits that Modigliani painted of her and the finest to come to the market in a decade.”

(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for May 17, 2016)

Tags: Modigliani, sotheby's
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A MASTERFUL SELF-PORTRAIT BY SIR PETER LELY

Wednesday, June 1st, 2016

Sir Peter Lely’s self portrait. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £869,000

The top lot at Mealy’s Lotabeg sale – Sir Peter Lely’s portrait of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde – might at 120,000 have seemed expensive to some, but perhaps it was a bargain. Now a masterful self-portrait by the artist is to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in London on July 6. His iconic portraits of Charles II’s pleasure-seeking court made him the natural successor to Anthony van Dyck and the “best painter in England” of his time but Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680) was also one of the great international draughtsmen of his age. Sotheby’s will offer three of his most intimate surviving portrait drawings: the self-portrait – one of only two in existence and the only one remaining in private hands – and portraits of the artist’s son, John and his wife, Ursula. Never seen on the market the works have remained in the possession of the artist’s direct descendants since they were drawn some 360 years ago.

Sotheby’s say the self-portrait, with its grand scale, is one of the most powerful and important of all drawings created in 17^th-century England. Made during the second half of the 1650’s, towards the end of the Cromwellian era, it shows the artist as a quietly self-assured and affable man in his mid to late thirties. It is estimated at £600,000-800,000. The portrait of John is estimated at £80,000-120,000, that of Ursula at £6,000-8,000.

(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for May 1, 2016)

Tags: SIR PETER LELY, sotheby's
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