Art Market
September brings a flurry of highly personal collections to market, with 18th-century porcelain and Victoriana among the highlights. In June, impressive results in London and Paris confirmed that sculpture is in demand – and that ‘hybrid’ auctions are her
Susan Moore previews singleowner collection sales in September and reviews auctions in London and Paris
Preview
September is the month when single-owner collections are slotted into the auction calendar – not the high-profile estates of modern and contemporary art that are the staple of the New York Fall season, but often idiosyncratic, highly personal holdings that bear witness not only to a collector’s lifelong passion but also to a particular time and place.
Sotheby’s New York begins with some 117 pieces from a historic collection of 18th-century Meissen porcelain, amassed by the Berlin collectors Franz and Margarethe Oppenheimer in the early decades of the 20th century. While 239 pieces were published in 1927 in a threevolume catalogue written by the leading scholar of the day, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, the collection grew to embrace some 332 porcelains and ranked among the great assemblages of German porcelain at the time. What made it unique, however, was its focus not only on the Meissen manufactory but also on arguably its most beguiling productions: wares decorated in the chinoiserie style. Particularly telling is a famous and probably unique pair of Augustus Rex hexagonal vases and covers of around 1735–40, which reflect the cosmopolitan vocabulary and appeal of this precious European ‘white gold’ (Fig. 2). Based on Japanese Arita prototypes, bearing vignettes of Turkish figures painted after engravings by the French artist Charles François Silvestre (1667–1738), they found their way to England where they were copied at the Chelsea porcelain factory in around 1752–56. While the early history of these pieces is unknown, some 10 porcelains here are believed to have been commissioned by Augustus the Strong of Saxony and intended for his famous Japanese Palace in Dresden.
Of Jewish ancestry, the Oppenheimers had the double misfortune of suffering Nazi persecution in both Germany and Austria, where they fled in 1936. It was in Vienna that they were forced to sell their collection to a Germanborn Dutch banker, before fleeing via Budapest and Stockholm to the United States. All of the pieces here were subsequently acquired for the proposed Führermuseum, repatriated to the Netherlands and eventually transferred to Dutch museums. They were restituted to the couple’s heirs earlier this year. The Sammlung Oppenheimer is expected to realise more than $2m on 14 September.
Across the Atlantic, Christie’s London unveils a collection focused not on one medium or manufactory but on the fine and decorative arts of an era. ‘An Aesthetic Odyssey – The Peter Rose and Albert Gallichan Collection’ is more than the sum of its parts, and best understood in the context of the spectacular interiors they lovingly created in their Regency villa in Brighton. Begun in the s, when the Victorian Revival was in its infancy, theirs is perhaps the last of the great collections of Victoriana inspired by the pioneering scholar-collectors Charles and Lavinia Handley-Read and so effectively disseminated by various curators at the Victoria and Albert Museum and by the dealers Andrew Patrick of the Fine Art Society and Michael Whiteway. This eclectic, carefully researched ‘collection of collections’ was arranged thematically throughout the house.
A deep-green Aesthetic Movement booklined study brought together examples of the New Sculpture such as Lord Leighton’s bronze Sluggard and Frederick William Pomeroy’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa of
( , – , ); avant-garde metalwork and light fittings by W.A.S. Benson; parcel-gilt ebonised furniture, including cabinets attributed to Daniel Cottier filled with elegant, clear and opaline glass by James Powell & Son; and ceramics and metalwork designed by Christopher Dresser. The red dining room evolved around the theme of the Grand Tour, its walls hung with, for instance, the Pre-Raphaelite John William Inchbold’s Venice from Lido to Giudecca of ( , – , ). Edward Hughes’s studio version of William Holman Hunt’s masterpiece The Light of the World ( , – , ) hung on the peacock-blue walls of the drawing room, joined by Minton porcelain and Reformed Gothic oak furniture (Fig. ). In the kitchen, a splendid ‘medieval’ cabinet by Bruce Talbert stood laden with Arts and Crafts pewter and lustreware. Most eccentric was the Nature Room, crowded with stuffed animals, shell pictures and outlandish Burmantofts animal vases. The or so lots are expected to fetch in the region of m on
September, and will benefit the educational trust the couple established to promote the study of th-century English fine and decorative arts. Estimates from .
The taste of the aesthete and designer Jasper Conran owes much to his mentor Christopher Gibbs in its predilection for interesting pieces with illustrious country-house provenance. Conran has owned a succession of beautiful homes, each one of which prompted the expansion of his eye and collection. After he sold his New Wardour Castle apartment and downsized, some lots of paintings, furniture and sundry works of art were dispatched to Christie’s for sale in auctions live ( September) and online ( – September). The catalogue introduction singles out as a formative experience a childhood visit to Longleat; indeed, an early major purchase, from Gibbs, was an Elizabethan picture, the full-length allegorical portrait of around recently identified as Anthony-Maria Browne, nd Viscount Montagu, which had hung at Battle Abbey ( , – , ; Fig. ). This anonymous but intriguing Tudor portrait presents the young aristocrat, a persecuted Catholic, against distant fires and shipwrecks; these perhaps allude to a family curse pronouncing that ‘by fire and water thy line shall come to an end’, which could be said to have been realised in , when the th Viscount Montagu was drowned in the Rhine less than two weeks after the family seat of Cowdray House burned down. From Longleat comes a George II eight-branch giltwood chandelier of around – attributed to Benjamin Goodison ( , – , ). Around m is expected in total, with estimates from .
Early vernacular furniture and textiles from the collection of Lady Hamlyn are to be found at Bonhams on September. The star turn here is an early th-century mythological tapestry depicting episodes from the life of Aeneas, its characters presented in medieval dress. South Netherlandish, it was probably woven – and possibly the work of Peter van Aelst ( , – , ).
In Paris on September, Christie’s offers the eclectic collection of Monsieur and Madame Jean-Marc Forneri. The couple began by buying furniture – notable here are th-century Transitional pieces, including a commode stamped by the royal cabinet-maker JeanFrançois Oeben ( , – , ). To this they added antiquities, ethnographic sculpture, Old Master paintings and drawings, and modern and contemporary art. Another group in the collection comprised Renaissance painted enamel vessels, especially grisaille ware, including a large oval dish with gilt highlights, dated , by the Limousin enameller Pierre Reymond and depicting Joshua’s defeat of the Amalekites. The piece returns to auction bearing the provenance of the Earl of Rosebery at Mentmore Towers and an estimate of , – , .
During Asia Week in New York, Sotheby’s offers the last tranche of the collection of Stephen Junkunc III, one of the th century’s great collectors of Chinese art ( – September). To Christie’s on September come two exceedingly rare silver vessels once in another renowned collection, that of the Swede Carl Kempe. Most arresting is the dish embellished at its centre with a stout, silver-gilt rhinoceros, a creature still roaming across southern China at that time, here bearing on its back three stylised blossoms ( m– . m).
Review
Some semblance of normality returned in June, which saw its usual season of sales in London and Paris, the most important of them live. Even so, recent initiatives are here to stay: these sales were also livestreamed as hybrid in-person and online events, condensed into marathon single sessions that attracted thousands rather than the usual hundreds. Christie’s dual-venue ‘ th/ st Century: London to Paris’ on June, for instance, attracted registered bidders from countries across five continents; the decision to begin this ‘evening sale’ in the afternoon underlining the importance of Asian bidding. According to Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti, this sales season saw unprecedented bidding from the region. As the firm’s half-year figures revealed, Asian clients contributed a record
per cent – over bn – to its worldwide live and online sales in the first half of . It came as no surprise when Christie’s announced a massive investment in its Asian Pacific business. Its four storeys in the Henderson in Hong Kong, a tower designed by Zaha Hadid Architects due to open in , will house a saleroom and gallery spaces (both Christie’s and Sotheby’s currently rely on the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre as a saleroom).
As for the London/Paris evening sale itself, the sell-through rates were impressive – per cent was sold by lot, per cent by value (the day sales were hardly less successful and both Christie’s and Sotheby’s reported their best summer seasons since and respectively). London provided . m of the
m total. Premiums were paid for works fresh to the market, with Picasso’s L’Étreinte
of making the top price of . m, Gia- cometti’s Homme qui chavire fetching . m, and Bridget Riley’s Zing of selling over its estimate for her second highest auction price, . m. (The evening established only one new auction record.) A similar pattern emerged in Paris, where the collection of Francis Gross far exceeded expectations, realising . m. The star of the various-owner Paris sale was the ubiquitous Pierre Soulages, all three of whose works soared beyond their estimates. Peinture x cm, avril
realised . m ( . m). Earlier, at Sotheby’s sale of the Collection Rambaud on June, Peinture x cm, novembre had sold on target for . m. Some lots were guaranteed at Christie’s evening sale, and one work withdrawn.
At the back-to-back sales of British and modern & contemporary art at Sotheby’s London the previous evening, those numbers were conspicuously higher and included the star lot of both sales – evidence that major consignors still require certainty. Lucian Freud’s
portrait of David Hockney did not need it, attracting five bidders who pushed the price comfortably over estimate to . m. Several lots more than doubled expectations among the British offering, works by Frank Auerbach, an exceptional Peter Lanyon and two Hockneys. Even more heated was the competition for Hurvin Anderson’s Maracas (double) of
, estimated at , – , and sold for , , and for an untitled burnished hand-built terracotta pot of by Magdalene Odundo (b. ; Fig. )). This eloquent piece deserved the sole auction record price of the sale. Estimated at , – , , it changed hands for , . The . m sale was per cent sold by lot.
‘Modern & Contemporary Art’ realised m, and was per cent sold by lot. Again, the sole auction record (for a work on paper) was found for an extraordinary piece: Emil Nolde’s watercolour Meer mit Abendhimmel und Segelboot (Sea with Evening sky and Sailing Boat) of around , a vivid expression of the artist’s mastery of the medium and idiosyncratic use of heightened complementary colour (Fig. ). The work rose above expectations to change hands for , . There was, however, no doubting the top lot of the sale, Tensions calmées ( ) by Wassily Kandinsky. This major abstract work had been acquired by Solomon Guggenheim in but deaccessioned from his eponymous museum in
, when it fetched , . Now it made
. m. Once again, Asian participation was strong, the spend doubling over the year.
Elsewhere, sculptures stole the day. The highlight of the Modern British and Irish Art sale at Bonhams on June was a group of six bronzes by Lynn Chadwick, consigned by the artist’s family. Presiding over the group was Maquette Jubilee II. This stately male and female couple walking against the wind, their cloaks billowing like the tail feathers of a dove, their faces blank polished bronze, belong to the sculptor’s most admired series. Conceived in and the last of an edition of nine, the piece came with an estimate of
, – , and sold for , . At Sotheby’s Paris sale of Old Master paintings, drawings and sculpture on June, the group of bronze classical deities by Michel Anguier ( – ) similarly starred, each god represented by their temperament and accompanied by their animal attribute. Melancholy Pluto was the finest known example of this rare model, and quadrupled the low estimate to sell for , , while Agitated Neptune, illustrated on these pages in June, soared five times over, realising . m.
At Christie’s Paris, immense prices were also found for the finest of the African and Oceanic sculpture from the collection of Michel Périnet which realised a record . m. All lots sold, found over m, three over m. Not all of the highest prices were anticipated. The most valuable lot was a rare mask from the tiny Mortlock Islands in Micronesia, collected in , its white face and minimal detail suggestive of a ghostly spirit (Fig. ). It was claimed for . m (estimate , – , ), an auction record for any Oceanic work of art. A Fang ebony head once owned by Maurice de Vlaminck fetched . m, a new record for a piece from Gabon. The Musée du quai Branly pre-empted a malu openwork board by the Sawos people of Papua New Guinea for
, . Though not precisely sculpture, Jean Dunand’s Art Deco masterpiece, the Les Palmiers smoking room, confected out of textured lacquered and engraved metal plates, soared to a record . m at Phillips highest-grossing design sale, in London on June. New auction records were also set for Ron Arad, Carlo Scarpa and Katsu Hamanaka.
June also provided further proof that the most valuable works of art are not necessarily sold by leading auction-houses. On June, Enchères Champagne in Épernay found a mighty . m – well over three times the high estimate – for a bravura small oval Philosopher Reading (c. ) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (Fig. ). At Nagel Auktionen in Stuttgart, European museums and Chinese collectors vied for an imperial gilt-bronze figure of Vajrabhairava, its inscription dating the sculpture to . It changed hands in the firm’s massive , lot Asian art sale on – June for . m, the highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction in Germany.