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Maine Antique Digest, April 2015 7-D
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here are numerous other versions
of the portrait of the musician
Hendrik Liberti seen here—one of
the best known hanging in the Alte
Pinakothek in Munich and another
to be seen in one of the 365 rooms
of Knole House in Kent, for exam-
ple—but it seems quite likely that
this is the original version, painted
in Antwerp, circa 1628.
Once part the incomparable pic-
ture collection of King Charles I of
England, it was among the treasures
sold off by the Commonwealth fol-
lowing the king’s execution in 1649.
Listed in the inventory of Whitehall
Palace as a portrait of “ye singing
man,” it was at the time sold for
£23 to the London based painter and
agent Jan Baptist Gaspars. It passed
through a number of other noble col-
lections over the years and was last
seen at auction in the early 1920s,
when it was acquired by the grand-
father of the “lady of title” who sent
it for sale at Christie’s on December
2 last year.
Untouched, of sound provenance,
and a fine example of the portraiture
of Sir Anthony van Dyck, it was
described by Christie’s as having
“a poetic quality,” while a preview
piece in
The Art Newspaper
said it
was “one of the artist’s most lan-
guorously languid portraits, the sitter
depicted in a state of aesthetic rev-
erie, his eyes dreamily distracted.”
Perhaps so. He may indeed be think-
ing about a new composition, but
might he also be simply bored?
In 1676, the celebrated diarist
John Evelyn saw the portrait in the
London house of the 1st Earl of
Arlington and described it as “An
Eunuch singing.” Liberti did indeed
sing as a young man in the choir
of the cathedral in Antwerp, but he
found fame as a composer and spent
40 years of his life as the cathedral
organist.
In the early years of the last cen-
tury, American collectors were
V
irtually forgotten for two centuries,
highly individual in his later still life
compositions and an artist about whom
very little is known, Adriaen Coorte
is now one of the most sought after of
all Dutch still life painters—a revival
ignited in the late 1950s by an exhibition
held at the Dordrechts Museum in the
Netherlands.
The little oil of three peaches and a
Red Admiral butterfly seen here, mea-
suring just 12¼" by 9¼" and executed on
paper laid down on a wooden panel*, was
sold to a European collector for a record
$5,391,020 at Sotheby’s on December 3,
2014. And what is more, it was making
an unexpected return to the London sales-
rooms just three years after having set an
earlier record in the London salesrooms—
something that does not usually bode well
for a picture’s chances.
In December 2011, having emerged
from a New Zealand collection that had
been its home since 1860, it had set a
record for the artist in selling for $3.216
million at Bonhams. I was convinced that
I had featured it in one of my London
selections at the time, and though I have
certainly had the odd Coorte in these
pages before, it seems that this was not
one of them—so I am pleased to
get this second chance.
Coorte’s carefully balanced
still life paintings, their delicate
colouring contrasted with dark
backgrounds and often setting the
produce on stone ledges, are, said
Sotheby’s, instantly recognisable
for their simplicity of treatment
and restricted range of subject
matter. The auctioneers also draw
comparisons with the highly indi-
vidual still life paintings of the
early Spanish painter Juan Sán-
chez Cotán (1560-1627).
But who was Coorte?
Thought to have been a native
of Middelburg in the watery
Dutch province of Zeeland, he
was active from 1683 to 1705.
The earlier of the 64 works now
accepted as genuine feature birds
and poultry and, say experts, are
sufficiently close in style to those
of Melchior d’Hondecoeter to sug-
gest that Coorte may have studied
with him in Amsterdam. The only
written record of Coorte, however,
is a mention in the yearbook of the
Painters Guild of St. Luke in Mid-
delburg, one that criticises him for
selling works independently of the
guild.
It has been suggested that he
was an amateur, or artist of inde-
pendent means, and the fact that
his paintings show little obvious
influence by the work of other art-
ists, and that Coorte exerted little if any
influence on others, this notion of a gen-
tleman artist following his own singular
artistic path has a certain appeal.
Asparagus, wild strawberries, peaches,
medlars, apricots, black and red currants,
cherries, gooseberries, and grapes, along
with nuts and shells, are Coorte’s sub-
ject matter, their combinations perhaps
influenced by seasonal availability. One
of Coorte’s asparagus pictures, sold for
$3.58 million by Christie’s in July 2012,
was featured in that year’s October issue
of
M.A.D.
*
It seems that from the mid-1690s
onwards, many of Coorte’s paintings were
painted on paper laid down on canvas, or,
as here, on panel. Coorte drew his basic
design on paper first, and then worked in
oils on top, a technique that is certainly
unusual in the 17th and 18th centuries
and may very well have been personal to
him. A similar study of two peaches and
a fritillary butterfly, which sold at Sothe-
by’s in 2006 for $922,130, was shown
during restoration to have been painted
over a page from the account book of a
merchant who was trading in the Baltic
port of Gdansk (Danzig) in the 1600s!
E
stablished in 1807 in Birming-
ham, the firm of F. & C. Osler
was a principal manufacturer
of light fittings and glass furniture.
Osler also had a London showroom
that helped underpin their reputation
as market leaders and as a busi-
ness with a reputation for quality
workmanship. There was an inter-
national, or at least British Empire
side to the firm as well, notably
with goods exported to the Indian
subcontinent, and in Calcutta, Osler
shared a showroom with the silver-
smiths, Hamilton & Co.
The set for four Victorian
gilt-bronze wall lights by Osler
seen here, the cut-glass shades
of inverted tulip form, sold for
$11,735 at Bonhams on November
19 last year.
F
ive lots from the Klaus Biemann collection of fine Ger-
man glass, sold by Bonhams on November 26, 2014,
are the focus of this piece.
Born and educated in Austria, Professor Klaus Biemann
obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in Innsbrück in
1951, but four years later accepted a research post at MIT,
moved to America and stayed
there until, having earned
many honours and even been
involved in NASA’s Viking
Mission to search for organic
compounds on Mars, he took
retirement in 1996.
Just three years earlier,
whilst attending an organic
chemistry conference in his
native Austria, he had met by
chance a distant cousin and
learned from him that they
were both great-great-great-
nephews to a famous 19th-cen-
tury glass engraver, Dominik
Biemann. A retirement hobby
beckoned.
Suitably inspired, Klaus
purchased his first goblet and
Singing, Composing or Just a Little Bored?
Sir Anthony van Dyck’s
three-quarter portrait of the
Flemish composer and organist
Hendrik Liberti (circa 1600-
1669), sold for $4.52 million by
Christie’s.
hugely enthusiastic buyers of
van Dyck portraits, but are
they still? All Christie’s would
say about the $4,522,645 bid
that secured this portrait was
that it came on the telephone.
However, in a
New York Times
report, a former
Antiques
Trade Gazette
colleague of
mine, Scott Reyburn, reported
that “the buyer was identi-
fied by dealers [whom he said
remained resolutely sitting on
their hands] as the British busi-
nessman James Stunt, who also
buys contemporary abstracts
by Oscar Murillo and Lucien
Smith.”
When offered by Bonhams in December 2011, this
still life of peaches and a Red Admiral butterfly by
Adriaen Coorte (c. 1660-after 1707) was acquired
by Noortman Master Paintings for a Dutch collec-
tor at what was then a record $3.216 million. Three
years on, and this time at Sotheby’s, it was once
more put up for sale and while many pictures mak-
ing rapid returns to the salesrooms suffer a loss,
Coorte’s little peaches did even better than before
and upped the record for his work to $5.39 million.
A Peach of a Still Life Ripens Once More into a
Record Breaker
Osler—Supplier of Light Fittings throughout the
Empire
A Crizzling We Will Go—Professor Biemann’s
Glasses
Friedrich Winter is a big name in this field, but while two examples of his work racked up
the highest bids, two others failed to sell—though this may have been a case of too many
riches in one go. The first Bonhams price list that I saw, issued immediately after the sale,
suggested that the 14¼" high goblet seen at right, deeply carved in the late 17th century
in
Hochschnitt
, or high relief, had failed to sell on an estimate of around $190,000/280,000.
But it subsequently emerged as the sale leader at $192,785, so presumably a post-sale deal
was agreed.
Decoration includes the cypher of Count JohannAnton von Schaffgotsch, whose family
had in 1687 granted Winter a special privilege to set up a water-powered glass cutting
works in Hermsdorf. In 1999, as part of the Otto Dettmers collection and at a time when
this market was rather stronger, it had sold for $176,520.
Sold for $54,080 at Bonhams was the Silesian goblet by Winter seen at left, another
piece produced in Hermsdorf, circa 1700, for his principal patrons. Just over 7½" tall, it
displays the von Schaffgotsch arms, incorporating a fir tree and the French motto
Aucun
temps ne le Change
(Untouched by Time).
☞