Displaying items by tag: Portrait

Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale took place on June 18, 2013 in London. The sale garnered $100.4 million and sold 84% by lot and 87% by value. The top lot of the night was Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866-1944) Studie zu Improvisation 3 (1909), which sold for $21.1 million, a few million shy of its $24.7 million high estimate. The painting is from the artist’s renowned “Improvisation” series, which signaled his transition into abstraction. Many of Kandinsky’s works from this period reside in museum collections.

Other highlights from the sale include Amedeo Modigliani’s (1884-1920) portrait of the art dealer Paul Guillame (1916), which brought $10.6 million; Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Femme assise dans un fauteuil (1960), which sold for $9.5 million; Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) landscape painting Sainte-Adresse (1873), which garnered $4.4 million; and Auguste Rodin’s (1840-1917) iconic marble sculpture Eve après le péché (1900-1915), which earned $4.4 million. Records were set for Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) and Eugène Boudin (1824-1898).

Jay Vincze, International Director and Head of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s London, said, “There was great depth of bidding on works of high quality at all price levels, with strong participation from many new and existing collectors from both traditional and growth markets.”

A man was arrested on June 13, 2013 at London’s Westminster Abbey for defacing a portrait of Queen Elizabeth the II. The painting was commissioned in honor of her 60 years as England’s matriarch and was put on display May 23.

The incident took place during the afternoon when the assailant, a 41-year-old male, spray-painted The Coronation Theatre by Australian-born artist Ralph Heimans. The work, which is part of Westminster Abbey’s permanent collection, has been taken off public view.

Police arrested the man for alleged criminal damage and he was taken to a London police station where he remains in custody.

England’s Ashmolean Museum has acquired one of the most important Pre-Raphaelite paintings remaining in private hands. John Everett Millais’ (1829-1896) portrait of John Ruskin, the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, has been on loan to the institution since January 2012. The work was officially given to the museum by the Art Council England under the Acceptance in Lieu of Inheritance plan, which stipulates that under British tax law debts can be written off in exchange for objects of national significance. The painting recently appeared in Tate Britain’s highly successful exhibition Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde.

Millais, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, was commissioned to paint the portrait in 1853 by Ruskin himself. While working on the painting, Milliais fell in love with Ruskin’s wife, which ultimately led to the breakdown of the Ruskins’ marriage, Millais’ friendship with Ruskin, and the artist’s involvement with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. After marrying Ruskin’s wife, Effie, Millais gave the portrait to a friend in Oxford, Henry Wentworth Acland. The portrait remained in Acland’s family until his descendants sold it at Christie’s in 1965, where the late owner of the painting purchased it.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which formed in 1848, was a group of English painters, poets, and critics who rejected the traditional approaches to art and painting established by the Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael (1483-1520) and Michelangelo (1473-1564). Instead, the Pre-Raphaelites turned to medieval and early Renaissance art for inspiration often painting subjects from Shakespeare and the Bible. Pre-Raphaelitism, which rattled Britain from 1848 to 1900, was considered the country’s first avant-garde movement.

An iconic painting by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was the top lot at Sotheby’s auction of Impressionist and Modern Art yesterday, May 8, 2013 in New York. Les Pommes (1889-90), a still life of apples on a table, sold for $41.6 million, exceeding its high pre-sale estimate of $35 million. The second highest earning work at the auction was Amedeo Modigliani’s (1840-1929) L’Amazone, a well-known portrait of Baroness Marguerite de Hasse de Villers, which sold for $25.9 million falling within its presale estimate of $20 to $30 million. Both of the works were from the collection of philanthropists Alex and Elisabeth Lewyt and will fund a foundation set up in their honor to contribute to their favorite causes including animal welfare.

Other major sales included a Fernand Léger (1881-1955) painting previously owned by Madonna, Trois Femmes a la Table Rouge, which sold for $7.2 million (estimate: $5-7 million); a Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) sculpture of his muse Sylvette, which garnered $13.6 million (estimate: $12-$18 million); and three bronze sculptures by Auguste Rodin (1840-1916) including a version of his famed The Thinker, which brought $15.3 million (estimate: $8-$12 million).

The total sale netted over $230 million, just under the pre-sale high estimate of $235.1 million.

Next month, Sotheby’s and Christie’s will hold some of their most anticipated auctions. The major sales of Impressionist, modern, and contemporary art are expected to garner at least $1 billion. Most of that money will be generated from the contemporary art auctions, which have been the highest earning in recent years. The Impressionist and modern art sales are expected to bring a joint $383 million while the contemporary auctions are estimated at over $700 million.

Highlights from the auctions include the renowned collection of vacuum-cleaner tycoon Alex Lewyt at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on May 7, 2013. The 200-piece collection is valued at $65 million and includes a still-life by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) that carries a $25 million estimate and a portrait by Amedeo Modigiliani (1884-1920), which is expected to garner anywhere from $20 million to $30 million.

Christie’s Evening Sale of Contemporary Art on May 15, 2013 will be lead by Jackson Pollock’s (1912-1956) Number 19, a seminal drip painting, which is expected to sell for $25 million-$35 million. It is the most important work by the artist to appear at auction in the past two decades.

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction on May 14, 2013 is also expecting a number of high priced sales. Francis Bacon’s (1909-1992) Study for Portrait of P.L. is estimated to sell for $30 million to $40 million and a painting by Barnett Newman (1905-1970), which is deemed one of the most important works from the Abstract Expressionist School, is also expected to bring $30 million to $40 million.

Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale will be held on May 8, 2013 and includes works by Claude Monet (1840-1926), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), and Alfred Sisley (1839-1899).

Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Woman in an Armchair (Eva) (1913), which was recently gifted to the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art by philanthropist and cosmetics mogul, Leonard A. Lauder, is currently on view in the institution’s Lila Acheson Wing for modern and contemporary art. The painting will exhibited for three months as part of a preview of Lauder’s monumental bequest to the museum.

Lauder’s gift, which is said to be worth at least $1 billion, includes 78 Cubist paintings, drawings, and sculptures and will significantly improve the Met’s 20^th century holdings. The gift includes 33 works by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), 17 by Georges Braque (1882-1963), 14 by Juan Gris (1887-1927), and 14 by Fernand Léger (1881-1955). The entire Lauder collection will be exhibited at the Met during the fall of 2014.

Woman in an Armchair (Eva) is one of Picasso’s most arresting paintings. A portrait of his mistress, Eva Gouel, the work epitomizes the Cubists’ rejection of the traditional interpretations of space, time, and perspective. The highly eroticized masterpiece was lauded by the founding father of Surrealism, André Breton (1896-1966), in his groundbreaking text Surrealism and Painting (1928).   

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City will present Diego Velázquez’s (1599-1660) Portrait of Duke Francesco l d’Este, one of the most important portraits by the Spanish painter, through July 16, 2013. The painting is on loan from Italy’s prestigious Galleria Estense in Modena and has never traveled to the United States before. The exhibition, Velázquez’s Portrait of Duke Francesco l d’Este: A Masterpiece from the Galleria Estense, Modena, will coincide with the opening of the Met’s renovated New European Painting Gallery, 1250-1800.

Velázquez, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV, painted d’Este, the Duke of Modena and Reggio Emilia, while he was visiting Madrid in 1638 to meet with King Philip and ask for his support. The commanding portrait of the 17^th century ruler is a key work of baroque portraiture as well as a prime example of Velázquez’s artistic contribution to Spanish diplomacy.

The Galleria Estense acquired the portrait of d’Este in 1843 where it joined works by Tintoretto (1518-1594), El Greco (1541-1614), and Paolo Veronese (1528-1588). The museum also boasts a strong collection of decorative works, musical instruments, archaeological material, and sculptures. The Galleria was damaged in 2012 when a series of earthquakes struck the region of Emilia-Romagna. Restoration of the building has begun but will require years of repair. In the meantime, while many of the museum’s works are being held at the Ducal Palace in Sassuolo, Velázquez’s portrait will make a highly anticipated appearance to New York.

Sotheby’s will offer the Collection of Alex and Elisabeth Lewyt in a series of auctions in New York and Paris beginning on May 7, 2013. The works, which include paintings and drawings by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), will lead Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Sale in New York. Proceeds from the sale will benefit a charitable foundation to be created in the couple’s name. The 200 works, which also include illustrated letters by artists such as Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), are expected to garner anywhere from $67 million to $98 million.

The first sale of the series will present a selection of 20 works from the Lewyt’s collection. Highlights include a seminal Cézanne still-life titled Les Pommes, which the Lewyts bought from the Wildenstein Galleries in 1953; Modigliani’s sensual portrait of the socialite Marguerite de Hasse de Villers titled L’Amazone; and various works by Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Georges Seurat, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque (1882-1963), and Marc Chagall (1887-1985).

Alex Lewyt, a New York-based vacuum cleaner inventor who died in 1988, and his wife, Elisabeth, an animal-welfare activist who died this past December, began amassing their remarkable collection in the 1950s.  

To celebrate their sponsorship of the George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonné Supplement, Rachel Cozad Fine Art in Kansas City, MO presents an exhibition of four paintings by the American artist George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879). Three of the paintings on view were recently discovered and have never been on public display. The works on view, which have been added to the artist’s updated Catalogue Raisonné, are Baiting the Hook, Horse Thief, and two portraits.

Since 2005, 15 newly authenticated paintings by Bingham have been added to his oeuvre of approximately 500-recorded paintings. Renowned art historian E. Maurice Bloch and the University of Missouri Press first published The Paintings of George Caleb Bingham: A Catalogue Raisonné in 1986; the comprehensive Catalogue included all of Bingham’s known paintings at the time of publication. In 2005, art historian Fred R. Kline and the Kline Art Research Associates launched The George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonné Supplement. The ongoing project is aimed at updating Bloch’s Catalogue while maintaining the high standard of scholarship on Bingham’s life and work that Bloch set in motion.

 Rachel Cozad Fine Art, which specializes in modern and contemporary art as well as 19^th and 20^th century American art, has a special focus devoted to Bingham. Bingham, who is best known for his paintings of American life on the frontier along the Missouri River, was a pioneer Luminism, a landscape painting style characterized by its careful depiction of light, the use of aerial perspective, and the practice of concealing visible brushstrokes.

In 2010, the UK’s National Trust was given five paintings from the estate of the late Edna, Lady Samuel of Wych Cross, the widow of Harold, Lord Samuel of Wych Cross, a property developer, philanthropist, and prominent art collector. Among the bequest was a portrait of an ornately dressed man believed to be a relatively unremarkable 17^th century painting. Although the work bears a signature and date reading “Rembrandt 1635,” experts believed it to be a later copy or the work of one of the Dutch master’s pupils.

The painting, which spent nearly two years in storage, has just been identified as an authentic Rembrandt (1606-1669) self-portrait worth over $30 million. The painting hadn’t been examined since 1968 and recent X-ray analysis along with newly found circumstantial evidence from the Rembrandt Research Project indicates that the work is in fact genuine.

The self-portrait is the only Rembrandt in the National Trust’s collection of 13,500 paintings and will remain on view at Buckland Abbey through the end of tourist season. Once it is taken off view the painting will be undergo a thorough cleaning and further technical analysis. Experts will perform dendrochronology to date the beech panel the work is painted on, the paint will be analyzed, and the painting will be x-rayed again to check for under-drawings.

David Taylor, the National Trust’s curator of paintings and sculpture, expects to have a final confirmation on the painting by early next year.