Nature morte à "L'Espérance", painted in Tahiti in 1901
Signed and dated Paul Gauguin 1901 (lower right)
Oil on canvas (66,2x76,2cm)
Estimate £7,000,000-£10,000,000 (US$11,291,000-US$16,130,000) (Lot 17)
«Nature morte à 'L'Espérance' is an historic picture painted in 1901, towards the end of Paul Gauguin's legendary stay in Tahiti. This picture has passed through the hands of a very prestigious array of prominent collectors including Gustave Fayet, one of the people who helped to found Gauguin's reputation and whose collection, including this picture, was shown at a retrospective dedicated to the artist at the 1906 Salon d'Automne, an exhibition that was to have a marked influence on many of the great pioneers of modern art including Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Nature morte à 'L'Espérance' is one of four showing sunflowers which he painted that year, doubtless in part as a tribute to his friend and fellow artistic pioneer Vincent van Gogh, who had died just over a decade earlier. One of the other sunflower still life compositions, Fleurs de tournesol dans un fauteuil, is now in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, and another similar composition is in the Fondation E.G. Bürhle, Zurich; a fourth in a private collection is the only vertical example of the group, and thus appears to be a more overt reference to Van Gogh. Nature morte à 'L'Espérance', which Françoise Cachin has described as perhaps the best of the group in her monograph (F. Cachin, Gauguin, trans. B. Ballard, Paris, 1990, p. 239), differs from the others in the inclusion of two artworks in the background, a reproduction of Puvis de Chavannes' L'Espérance from around 1872 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) and Edgar Degas' print Le petit cabinet de toilette of 1879-80. Puvis de Chevannes' L'Espérance is a study for his major composition Allégorie de L'Espérance (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore) [...]
Provenance:
_ Property from a private european collection.
_ Acquired from the estate of the below by the present owner in 1996.
_ Joanne T. Cummings, Chicago, by descent from the below in 1985.
_ Nathan Cummings, Chicago, by whom acquired in 1956.
_ Robert Rutherford McCormick, Chicago, by 1930, and thence by descent to Mrs. Robert Rutherford McCormick.
_ Chester H. Johnson, Chicago.
_ Paul Rosenberg, Paris.
_ Gustave Fayet, Igny.
André Derain (1880-1954)
Bateaux à Collioure, painted in 1905
Signed a derain (lower left)
Oil on canvas (38,4x46cm)
Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium £5,865,250 US$9,419,592 €6,903,399 (Christie's London, February 9th 2011, Lot 16)
Estimate £4,000,000-£6,000,000 (US$6,452,000-US$9,678,000)
Lot sold to Anonymous
«Bateaux à Collioure is one of the pictures that André Derain painted during his historic stay in the French coastal town of the same name, where he had gone to join his fellow artist and friend, the older Henri Matisse. There, the two worked alongside each other, blazing the trail of the movement that would, in the Salon d'Automne that was held sometime after their return to Paris later that year, be dubbed the 'Fauves.' The wildness that lent the loosely-joined movement its name is clear in the bold, brightly blazing colours of Bateaux à Collioure, with the broad areas of red and yellow making up the foreground, the lapis flecks that convey some of the shimmering water and the boats, and the green of the sky. This painting perfectly embodies Derain's statement that, 'Fauvism was for us a trial by fire... The colours became sticks of dynamite. They had to explode into light' (Derain, quoted in N. Kalitina, André Derain, Leningrad, 1976, p. 9) [...]
Provenance:
_ Property from a private swiss collection.
_ Acquired by the present owner circa 1960.
_ Anonymous Sale, Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 17 June 1960.
_ Ambroise Vollard, Paris.
Georges Braque (1882-1963)
Nature morte à la guitare (rideaux rouge), painted in 1938
Signed and dated G. Braque 38 (lower left)
Oil and sand on canvas (81x100cm)
Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium £3,961,250 US$6,361,768 €4,662,391 (Christie's London, February 9th 2011, Lot 5)
Estimate £3,500,000-£5,500,000 (US$5,645,500-US$8,871,500)
Lot sold to Anonymous
«Painted in 1938, Nature morte à la guitare (rideaux rouge) dates from a crucial period when Georges Braque began to create elaborate still life and interior compositions that were filled with a new vitality, in part due to the more ambitious scale of the motifs depicted. In the case of Nature morte à la guitare (rideaux rouge), this is evident in the fact that the table - the guéridon, that icon of late Cubism - is viewed from a distance that incorporates the various elements, be it the fruit, the crockery, the musical instrument or indeed the curtains themselves within the view. Rather than showing a clutch of objects in close-up, this gives a richer sense of the fabric of the interior in Braque's own world, plunging the viewer into his universe [...]
Provenance:
_ Sold by the Art Institute of Chicago.
_ A gift from the below to The Art Institute of Chicago in 1959.
_ Mr and Mrs Albert D. Lasker, New York, by whom acquired from the below in January 1947.
_ Paul Rosenberg & Co., London and New York, by whom acquired directly from the artist in 1938.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
Danseuses jupes jaunes (Deux danseuses en jaune), executed circa 1896
Signed Degas (lower right)
Pastel and charcoal on joined paper (60,2x42,4cm)
Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium £5,417,250 US$8,700,104 €6,376,103 (Christie's London, February 9th 2011, Lot 9)
Estimate £3,000,000-£5,000,000 (US$4,839,000-US$8,065,000)
Lot sold to Anonymous
«Danseuses jupes jaunes (Deux danseuses en jaune) is a highly-finished pastel dating from circa 1896 which shows Edgar Degas' most favoured theme, the ballet, captured in the explosive palette that marked his works from this period. Here, two dancers are shown resting against the painted theatre backdrop, one adjusting the straps and facing us, the other facing away with her hands on her back, as though stretching. This is an informal glimpse of life behind the curtain, of a world of incredible athleticism, movement and action in a rare moment of repose and respite, yet that atmosphere of informality is belied by the incredible finish of the surface, which Degas has eked out not in a mere instant, capturing an intimate moment, but instead with an incredible build-up of often hatched strokes of pastel, creating his distinctive palimpsest-like accumulation of colour. This is especially visible in the areas of shadow, for instance at the dancers' feet [...]
Provenance:
_ Property of a private european collector.
_ Bruno and Paul Cassirer, Berlin (no. 173), by whom acquired from the below galeries on 27 April 1899, and thence by descent to the present owner.
_ Galeries Durand-Ruel, Paris (no. 3942), by whom acquired directly from the artist on 15 October 1896.
Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)
Terrasse à Vernon, painted in 1923
Signed and dated BOnnard 23 (lower right)
Oil on canvas (120x105cm)
Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium £7,209,250 US$11,578,056 €8,485,287 (Christie's London, February 9th 2011, Lot 10)
Estimate £3,000,000-£4,000,000 (US$4,839,000-US$6,452,000)
Lot sold to Anonymous
***WORLD RECORD FOR THE ARTIST AT AUCTION***
«Painted in 1923, Terrasse à Vernon is a colourist masterclass, showing the view from Ma Roulotte, the Norman home of Pierre Bonnard. This picture, which was one of only three that Bonnard selected to be exhibited at the Salon d'Automne that year, and which was very well-received, is saturated with luscious greens, lapis and turquoise, while the ground has a sunny feel that is enhanced by the glimmer of light of the young woman watching the artist - or the viewer. The composition itself deliberately avoids classical perspective or a sense of over-central emphasis, to drag the viewer's attention, ensuring that our eye grazes across the entirety of the canvas, taking in the landscape as a whole while also enjoying such details as the blue and white stripes of the table-cloth, the red petals of the flowers or the landscape that stretches out in the background, or rather which reaches up the height of the canvas to the horizon, two thirds of the way to its top. This is a device that Bonnard used in many of his most accomplished landscapes, satisfying his innate passion for monumental canvases filled with colour - the legacy of his Nabi past [...]
Provenance:
_ Property of a private french collector.
_ M. Léon Delaroche, by whom acquired from the below galerie, by 1935, and thence by descent to the present owner.
_ Galerie d'Art Moderne, Lausanne.
_ Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, by whom acquired directly from the artist in 1923.
No comments :
Post a Comment