Art market
The shocks of Parisian abstraction are recalled at Bonhams, as is the fate of poor Dolly Henry
AS Lucien de Guise mentioned in his Visual Arts feature on Orientalism (Country Life, October 2), Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910) was a truly remarkable man. The son of a Greek who had been enslaved during the 1822 massacre on the isle of Chios, but who had risen to become Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, Hamdi was not only an archaeologist, museum director and collector, but a highly accomplished artist who served as a bridge between Eastern and Western traditions.
He trained in Paris and has been called ‘the most Parisian of Ottomans, and the most Ottoman of Parisians’. There, he was strongly influenced by Jean-léon Gérôme, the leading French Orientalist painter, but, when he returned to Constantinople, he had a great advantage over his Western confrères in that he was a part of the culture and society that he portrayed. His 16in by 20in Young Woman Reading of 1880 is a case in point (Fig 2).
It may seem to be a typical harem subject, but it is not, quite. Traditionally, it has been given the title Reading the Qur’an, but, despite the prayer rug and censer, the beautifully poised and posed young woman is not reading the holy book. As the historian Edhem Eldern (a relative of the painter), has pointed out, the painted ‘Arabic’ words are decorative scribbling, except for Hamdi’s own name. The model, too, is far from the usual Western-viewed figure of titillation.
Now a star of the ‘Inspired by the East’ exhibition at the British
Museum, which is largely drawn from the collection of the Islamic Arts Museum, Malaysia, it entered that collection only just in time. In late September, it was offered at Bonhams, estimated to £800,000 and selling for £6,690,362.
This Bonhams sale of paintings running from 19th-century European and Victorian works to British Impressionism showed some liveliness in a market that has been in the doldrums for a while and covers the bumpy transition between the long 19th-century and 20thcentury Modernism.
By 1903, there were already two rival art exhibitions in Paris each spring, known by short titles as the Salon and the Nationale. Both were generally conservative in outlook, so, inevitably, a further split launched the Salon d’automne, which gave the art world a succession of shocks over the following decades.
One of the most widely enjoyed rows—it even reached the Chambre des Deputés—came in 1912, when a room was given to the Cubists, including Jean Metzinger, Léger, Modigliani and Picabia. A review by Le Petit Parisien’s critic Jean Claude fulminated that: ‘M. Léger walked his brushes on the canvas after having dipped them in blue, black, red and brown. It is stupefying to look at. The catalogue
says it’s a Woman in blue. Poor woman. Man on a Balcony, by M. Gleizes, is more comprehensible. At least in the chaos of cubes and trapezoids we find a man. I will say as much for the entry of M. Metzinger, Dancers. It has the effect of a puzzle that is not assembled properly.’
The 1912 exhibitions represented the decisive break between past and future. The Cubist room was the perfect contrast to the starring work at that year’s Salon a few months earlier. This was not only at the Salon, it was
of it—or rather, of two of its immediate predecessors. Henri Adolphe Laissement’s 49in by 70¼in Au Salon des Artistes
Françaises en 1911, showed the fashionable crowd in 1911 admiring Jules Alexandre Grun’s similarly gigantic painting of the 1909 Salon crowd (Fig 1). William Powell Frith would have loved them. In the Laissement, as in the Grun and Frith’s 1881
Private View at the Royal Academy, everyone is identifiable. Laissement and the balding Grun are prominent in the foreground, each wearing a recently awarded lapel ribbon as chevalier of the Legion d’honneur.
Laissement (1854–1921) had two strings to his bow. As well as large groups such as this, which sold for £125,062, he was a prolific producer of ‘Cardinal subjects’, highly finished confections of eminent clerics enjoying themselves in worldly ways. They seem sugary to us, but had a serious anti-clerical message for their original public.
There were none of his cardinals at Bonhams, but there was the very similar 18in by 15in
Le Gourmand (Fig 3), catalogued as by the Italian François Brunery (1849–1926). I say ‘catalogued as by’ because, many years ago, I found myself in an old house in Merton full of
painters producing such things on a near-industrial scale. The market was happy with this one, however: estimated to £5,000, it sold for £16,312.
Two British paintings that caught my eye were linked by quality, but otherwise interesting in different ways. As John Brett said himself, his 24in by 48¼in A strong sou-wester
on an iron-bound coast ‘is a thoroughly good picture’
(Fig 4). It shows a storm coming into the Cowlow Rocks at Sennen and was painted in 1883–84. Unfortunately, it proved too dark for the drawing room of the commissioner and then the Sydney Art Gallery, Australia, paid £210, but returned it, because the low price made them doubt its merit. This spoiled the market and, in Brett’s 1902 studio sale, it made only 56gns. Now, it reached a top estimate £15,062.
George Clausen’s 16in by 12in
Head of a Young Woman (Dolly
Henry), 1912, (Fig 5) gained poignancy with the knowledge that, two years after it was painted, the subject would be killed by her lover, the painter John Currie, who then shot himself. This wistful head made £10,062. Next week It’s time for a treasure hunt