Maine Antique Digest April 2015

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6-D Maine Antique Digest, April 2015
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Letter from London
by Ian McKay, >
There are a lot of pictures in this month’s selection, some of
them very expensive ones, but added to the mix are some fine
old German glasses and a German broadsword, a Bellarmine
jug, some wall lights, an odd assortment of items from a “Gentle-
man’s Library” and what for want of a better term would have been
called by many “a dirty book.”
My selection of pictures
opens with just four items
from the very successful sales of
Impressionist, Modern and Sur-
realist works offered in London
in the first week of February. I
have focussed on the Impression-
ists and their successors and have
illustrated and briefly described
three of the bigger money-spin-
ners from sales whose aggregate
totals run to hundreds of millions
of dollars. I have also included a
third, rather less costly picture
by an artist whose work I have
long admired.
I could have selected other
works from these grand sales,
and I would be remiss if I failed
to mention the fact that in one
evening Sotheby’s recorded the
highest total for any auction ever
held in London, in any category,
but instead I have exercised
the “selection” option of these
reports by including pictures
from earlier, end of the old year
sales that caught my attention
and fancy.
There were no fewer than
five Monets in the $280 million
Sotheby’s Impressionist and
Modern art sale held on the eve-
ning of February 3 and leading
the pack was Le Grand Canal
(seen upper left), one of a well
known series of Venetian scenes
painted by the artist in 1908 and
a painting that has been on loan
to the National Gallery in Lon-
don since 2006. The estimate
was an expansive $30/45 million
and it came in at the lower end of
that range at $35,657,800 to an
anonymous bidder.
Le Grand Canal had been
sold for $12,896,000 in the auc-
tioneers’ New York rooms in
2005, but another of the Monets,
an earlier, 1887 canvas of Les
Peupliers à Giverny, was mak-
ing its first salesroom appear-
ance. An impression of sunset
seen through a rank of poplar
trees, it was a picture being sold
by New York City’s Museum
of Modern Art to boost their
acquisition funds and it sold at
$16,253,800—again towards
the lower end of expectations. It
went in the end to an American
private buyer, apparently under-
bid by the illusionist and collec-
tor David Copperfield.
Au lit: le baisier, seen far
upper right, marked a very rare
appearance in the salesrooms of
a major work by Henri de Tou-
louse-Lautrec. Painted in 1892,
it has changed hands half-a-
dozen times, but it has not been
publicly displayed for over 40
years and had never before been
offered at auction.
One of his images of the mai-
sons closes, or brothels, it is
one of a series of four composi-
tions in which Lautrec depicted
moments of tender intimacy
between women and is very
unusual in its viewpoint. The
two young women are in a lov-
ing embrace but their bodies are
foreshortened so that only their
faces and intertwined arms are
really visible.
The Lautrec sold to a Euro-
pean collector for $16,253,800,
the second highest price ever
paid at auction for the artist’s
work.
Something to add to my own
fantasy picture collection is
the snow covered street scene,
an 1875 oil by Alfred Sisley
that sold for $2,881,580 when
last seen at Sotheby’s in 2004,
but which in their February 3
On a balmy summer’s evening, a cres-
cent moon sets above the rows of
poplars on the far bank of the River Lys
in the wonderful, luminously atmospheric
oil seen below left, Soirée d’été by the
Belgian painter Emile Claus.
In a picture painted in August 1895—
that at least being the date next to the art-
ist’s initialled signature—the influence of
Monet and Pissarro may be discerned and
in the 1890s, said Sotheby’s (in whose
December 10, 2014, sale of 19th-century
European paintings it was offered), Claus
came to be recognised as a principal
exponent of Luminisme, a movement that
sought to integrate French Impressionist
and Neo-Impressionist techniques with a
distinctively Belgian tradition.
The banks of the Lys were the setting
for many of Claus’ more important works
and his home, the Villa Zonneschijn
(Sunshine), set beside the river and in the
grounds of which this work was painted,
became a focal point for artists and writ-
ers. The auctioneers suggest that the two
women could well be two of his students.
Were I a very rich man, I could hap-
pily live with this Claus on my walls but
to achieve that happy state, someone else
had to hand over the necessary $380,315.
Again set in the artist’s own garden, this
time at Lilla Hyttnäs in Sundborn, Holi-
day Reading is a large, 1916 watercolour
and gouache study (laid on canvas) by the
Swedish artist Carl Larsson that sold for
$681,430 in the same Sotheby’s sale.
This too was a picture to which the word
luminous could be attached—along with
fresh and vibrant, not to mention very
large, at least for a watercolour. Karin,
Larsson’s wife and the model seen most
often in his domestic studies, sits along-
side their youngest son, Esjbörn—the two
of them shaded by the branches and leaves
of a horse chestnut tree and engrossed in
whatever it is they are reading.
Again the table is set for tea.
Monet, Monet, Monet…It’s a Rich Man’s World
Claude Monet’s Le Grand Canal, sold for $35.66
million at Sotheby’s.
Au lit: le baisier by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, sold
for $16.25 million by Sotheby’s.
sale made just a little more, at
$3,261,620.
In 1871, following the Prus-
sian siege of Paris, Sisley had
moved with his family to the
village of Louveciennnes on
the river Seine, around 19 miles
from the capital. Sisley rented
the house seen at right of the pic-
ture reproduced above left, 2 rue
de la Princesse, and had Renoir
as a near neighbour.
Pissarro too had lived in
Louveciennes since 1869 and the
company of his fellow artists,
combined with the beauty of the
area, inspired some of Sisley’s
finest works. He was particularly
inventive and successful with
his wintery scenes, pictures that
showed a preference for a very
individual palette of blues, pinks
and subtle shades of grey.
Paul Cézanne’s Vue sur L’Es-
taque et le Château d’If, seen
above right, was one of the high
spots of the $260 million series
of Impressionist, Modern and
Surrealist sales held by Chris-
tie’s, February 4-6.
Once in the collections of
Samuel Courtauld, industri-
alist and founder of the Cour-
tauld Gallery and the Courtauld
Institute of Art in London, and
making its first appearance
on the market since 1936, this
Cézanne was bought by a New
York dealer at a high estimate
$20,486,590. Dated to 1883-85,
it was painted on one of the art-
ist’s last visits to the much loved
fishing port and seaside resort in
his native Provence.
The island fortress and prison
of Château d’If, seen on the far
horizon, was a sort of French
forerunner of Alcatraz, and
though nobody is ever thought
to have escaped incarceration
inside its walls, it is famous
in literature as a setting for the
Alexandre Dumas tale of The
Count of Monte-Cristo—who
does indeed make a daring
escape after 14 years locked up
on the island.
Alfred Sisley’s snow covered Route à Louveci-
ennes, sold for $3.26 million by Sotheby’s.
Paul Cézanne’s Vue sur L’Estaque et le Château
d’If, sold for $20.49 million at Christie’s.
Quiet Moments and Time for Tea in the Garden
Carl Larsson’s Holiday
Reading, a 27¼" x 39¼"
gouache and waterco-
lour study of his wife and
youngest son reading in the
shade of a horse chestnut
tree outside his studio, sold
for $681,430 by Sotheby’s
last year.
Emile Claus’ Soirée d’été of
1895, a 38½" x 51½" oil that
was acquired directly from
the artist by an Antwerp
couple and sold at Sotheby’s
last December by one of
their great-grandchildren. It
brought $380,315.