Maine Antique Digest May 2015

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Maine Antique Digest, May 2015 7-D
- FEATURE -
Greek Tragedy Turns to
Saleroom Joy
An early surprise in the “Of Royal and Noble Descent”
sale held by Sotheby’s on February 24 came with
the offer of lot #3. One of 20 lots that came to auc-
tion via “a member of the Princely Family Sayn-Wittgen-
stein,” which has its origins in 14th-century Germany, it
was catalogued as Italian and dated to 1810-20. The body
of this 3¼" diameter, seemingly unmarked snuffbox is one
of cut and polished granite and the mounts are gold, but
what really appealed to bidders was the Roman micromo-
saic of a mask from Greek tragedy that decorates the lid.
This surely must have lay behind the move from an estimate
of $7500/10,000 to a final, winning bid of $67,570.
Munnings on Exmoor, and Not a Horse
or Pony in Sight
Why is the landscape by Sir Alfred Munnings reproduced
here included in this month’s London selection?
Well, quite simply because I really like it, and I suspect
somebody at Christie’s South Kensington must have taken a fancy
to it as well, for it formed the catalogue cover illustration to their
March 12 sale of Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite, and British impressionist
pictures.
The distant skyline also worked very well on the website version
of the catalogue, where the standard opening page format usually
includes a small illustration of the printed catalogue and, as a banner
heading, a detail from whatever it is that features on that cover. Not
everything fits the bill, or even the space, but in this instance the long
Exmoor skyline worked a treat.
Munnings (1878-1959) is best known—and at his most expen-
sive—for and with pictures featuring horses and their riders, but his
very traditional and, as here, slightly impressionistic landscapes have
many admirers as well. This one, Withypool, looking towards Wins-
ford Hill, Exmoor, a signed, 21" x 30" oil on canvas, sold for a ten
times estimate $241,395 to a British collector.
The catalogue entry acknowledges the help given by Lorian Peralta-
Ramos, who is to include the picture in her forthcoming catalogue
raisonné of the artist’s work, but the enthusiastic, evocative, almost
poetic and wholly admirable appreciation of the picture’s merit, I am
told, was the work of department specialist Tom Bruce:
“Viewing the present lot, it is easy to feel what the artist must have
enjoyed whilst standing at his easel that day: a cool breeze, com-
plemented by the warmth of the late summer sun, its brilliance set-
ting alight the pre-autumnal reds, oranges, and golds of the leaves,
in anticipation of the sunset to come; the silence of the landscape
is broken only by the bleat of a sheep, a snort from his hunter, and
occasional unscrewing of the top from his flask. The lowering sun
casts light across the undulating hills, and long shadows—particu-
larly those of the sheep—punctuate the landscape, rolling down the
slopes towards the woodlands below.
“The juxtaposition between the lush, bushy foliage—tired by
the heat of the summer—and the smoother surface of the grasses,
are captured by the masterful speed of Munnings’ brush, and bold
sweeps of impasto give depth to the landscape and trees. Notably the
artist used both ends of the brush, unconventionally drawing into the
oil with the top end, to add texture to the foliage in the foreground.”
How could one resist such a splendid sales pitch?
Christie’s also note that Munnings “revelled in the sublime beauty
of the English countryside, and it could be said that his paintings of
such scenery were expressions of his soul. …Exmoor indisputably
shows the artist at his best.”
Sir Alfred Munnings’ Withypool, looking towards Winsford Hill, Exmoor,
perhaps undervalued—there being not a horse to be seen, only impres-
sions of sheep—but definitely not unappreciated at a ten times estimate
$241,395 at Christie’s South Kensington.
Imperial Flower Arranging and Red Army Winter Manoeuvres
Around 80 Fabergé flower
and fruit studies are known
to have survived since they
first began to be created in Russia
in the 1880s. Carl Fabergé him-
self often produced the design, but
many skilled artists and goldsmiths
were then employed in setting the
precious stones, enamelling the
flowers, adding the gold stalks and
grasses, etc., and finally assem-
bling the flowers.
Russian aristocrats, it seems,
were known for their love of flow-
ers and for their botanical knowl-
edge, and St. Petersburg, we are
told, was home to countless florists,
some of whom supplied Imperial
palaces with fresh flowers that had
been transported on ice by train
all the way from France! Flower
studies such as those so exquisitely
manufactured by Fabergé were
always very costly, but they never
wilted so became popular in these
same wealthy circles.
According to Christie’s, who had
the jewelled and guilloché enamel
gold-mounted rock crystal study
of cornflowers seen above in a
Russian art sale of November 24
last year, the Empress Alexandra
Feodorovna was the first member
of the Russian Imperial family
to purchase such a piece—a yel-
low rose acquired in 1895. This
purchase undoubtedly prompted
further high placed patronage of
Fabergé flowers and among early
admirers were the Empress Maria
Feodorovna and the Grand Duch-
ess Maria Pavlovna in Russia, as
well as Queen Alexandra, consort
of England’s King Edward VII.
This particular cornflower study
of circa 1900 has a finely textured
silver-gilt stem with two branches,
each terminating in a flower-head,
while the trumpet-shaped petals are
enamelled in translucent blue over a
striped guilloché ground, with rose-
cut diamond-set stamens and pistils.
And in case anyone was wonder-
ing why someone would put such a
precious thing in a glass of water,
I should point out that Fabergé’s
elegant creations were often dis-
played in rock-crystal vases
that were so carefully carved
in a trompe l’oeil technique
that they appeared to contain
water.
A little over 6½" tall over-
all, this apparently unmarked
example was sold for
$492,505, but quite a num-
ber of cornflower studies are
recorded. Apart from those
now in the Hermitage, there is,
for example, one in the British
royal collections, acquired by
our present Queen Elizabeth
II from Wartski’s, and there
is also one in the Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts. Others
have been seen at auction in
very recent times.
In the March 2013 issue of
M.A.D., we featured another,
boasting three flower-heads
and a single oat spray, that had
sold for $694,515 at Sotheby’s
in London, while in 2011, in
their NewYork rooms, another
with just a single bloom and
one oat spray had reached
$662,500 against a very mod-
est estimate of $50,000/70,000.
Dating from the post-rev-
olutionary era in Russia, the
porcelain vase seen at left was
also part of the Christie’s sale.
Painted with Red Army sol-
diers out shooting, riding, and
skiing in a stylised snowy land-
scape, it was made in 1929 in
the Soviet (former Imperial)
Porcelain Factory and bears the
signature of the painter Ivan
Ivanovich Riznich.
A porcelain painter and
sculptor who in 1926 graduated
from the Pavlovsk Art School,
Riznich had an extraordinarily
long and successful career at
the factory, working right up
until his death in 1998, aged 90.
Standing just short of 13"
high, the vase made almost six
times what had been predicted in
selling at $398,545.
A Fabergé cornflower study, sold
for $492,505 by Christie’s.
A 12¾" high porcelain vase,
designed in the Soviet era for
the State Porcelain Factory and
decorated by Ivan Ivanovitch
Riznich with Red Army soldiers
shooting, riding, and skiing
in winter conditions, sold for
almost $400,000 by Christie’s.
“I returned to my book—Bewick’s History of British
Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally
speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages
that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank.
They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl;
of ‘the solitary rocks and promontories’ by them only
inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles
from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to
the North Cape….
“…With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy
at least in my way. I feared nothing but interruption, and
that came too soon. The breakfast-room door opened.”
These are words drawn from the opening chapter of
Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece, Jane Eyre, in which the
young Jane hides behind a curtain and loses herself in
a copy of Thomas Bewick’s much-loved and admired
work—a book, said a Sotheby’s cataloguer, that nour-
ished the imagination of the children of Haworth Parson-
age and one that “provided the first copybook for all four
of the Brontë children.”
There are surviving drawings by all four of the Brontë
siblings based on Bewick’s vignettes of rural life, and
in 1832 Charlotte wrote of Bewick’s “enchanted page /
Where pictured thoughts that breathe and speak and burn
/ Still please alike our youth and riper age.”
Signed and dated October 23, 1829, the 2¾" by 4 1/8"
pencil drawing on card reproduced here was copied by
Charlotte from the second volume of Bewick’s …British
Birds and shows an angler sheltering behind a tree as rain
lashes down.
I have a good friend and neighbour who just happens
to be a major collector of Bewick’s work and, somewhat
curious regarding what, in the catalogue illustration at
least, appeared to be not just a representation of driving
rain but some sort of binding around the upper part of the
tree, I took it along to ask his opinion.
Had Charlotte misinterpreted Bewick’s original image?
He tended after all to work on a very small scale, albeit
in exquisitely fine detail in producing his wood-engrav-
ings. Though my friend owns a great many of Bewick’s
original blocks, this was not one of them and he too was
intrigued by what appeared to be Charlotte’s slightly dif-
ferent take on the original.
In the end, it all proved to be simply a matter of cata-
logue reproduction—and something that will, I fear, be
repeated here. When I looked at the online image, which
could be enlarged, it became clear that in the printing of
the catalogue image, some of Charlotte’s “rain lines” had
simply disappeared.
In a book sale of December 9 last year, the little draw-
ing, now framed and glazed, sold at $20,550.
“…With Bewick on My Knee, I Was Then Happy”
Copied from one of Thomas Bewick’s exquisitely detailed
wood-engraved vignettes, this drawing by Charlotte Brontë
sold for $20,550 at Sotheby’s.