Displaying items by tag: fine art

Each year,  the Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show welcomes a flock of eager collectors, leading art and design professionals, and top international dealers to the Palm Beach County Convention Center. A hallmark of the Palm Beach social season, the elegant show presents premier offerings ranging in style from classical to contemporary and thoughtful programming that fosters the understanding and appreciation of art and antiques.

One of the most highly-anticipated elements of the 2015 Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show is the Designer Showcase, which features six captivating vignettes created by the world’s most influential interior designers, including Campion Platt, Suzanne Kasler, Gil Walsh, William and Phyllis Taylor of Taylor & Taylor, Lars Bolander, and Jennifer Garrigues. The designers have been asked to create spaces using fine art, furniture, and decorative accessories from exhibitors in the show.

On Friday, January 23, 2015, collectors, first-time buyers, and a variety of art, antique, and design professionals, including dealers, interior designers, and curators, will gather at New York City’s historic Park Avenue Armory for the prestigious Winter Antiques Show. Now in its 61st year, the distinguished event will welcome seventy-three exhibitors offering fine and decorative arts from antiquity through the 1960s, with one-third of the show’s participants specializing in Americana and the rest featuring European, English, and Asian objects. The unparalleled quality of the works exhibited at the Winter Antiques Show has helped establish the event as the most esteemed antiques show in the country.

The Syndicat National des Antiquaires (SNA) -- or the French National Union of Antique Dealers -- announced that it will launch a new fair aimed at young collectors this spring. Paris Beaux-Arts, which will be held at the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground center adjacent to the Musee du Louvre, will complement the SNA’s prestigious Biennale des Antiquaires.

The long-running Biennale des Antiquaires, which is celebrated for its elegant atmosphere, blue chip offerings, and elite guest list, specializes in rare antiques, fine art, jewelry, silver, and porcelain. The SNA intends for Paris Beaux-Arts to be equal to the Biennale in quality and range, but with a stronger emphasis on modern and contemporary art.

From a Roman marble head of Heracles dating back to the middle of the 2nd century CE exhibited by Galerie Chenel, to Giorgio de Chirico’s 1950 painting “Ettore e Andromaca” at Galería Manuel Barbié, and a Eugène Printz rosewood cabinet at Galleria Robertaebasta, the Brussels Antiques and Fine Arts Fair (BRAFA) will offer an unusual mix of collectibles.

“I want to make BRAFA the most eclectic fair of its kind because this eclectic outlook is one of the main distinguishing features of Belgian taste,” said Harold t’Kint Roodenbeke, BRAFA president, adding, “Our credo is quality: quality of the exhibitors, quality of the works of art, and the quality of the event for visitors.”

The auction of Rachel “Bunny” Lambert Mellon’s estate, which offered collectibles from a $39.9 million Mark Rothko painting to a rabbit-shaped doorstop for more than $5,000, fetched $218.1 million at Sotheby’s (BID) in New York.

The 1,521 objects including fine art, furnishings and jewelry owned by Mellon, who died in March at the age of 103, were offered in three sales over five days that ended yesterday. Ninety-eight percent of the lots sold.

Collectors sought a piece of the history of the American socialite, who was married to the late banking heir Paul Mellon. Sotheby’s said more than 5,000 visitors came to see the collection in one week at its New York headquarters.

Among the lesser-known idiosyncrasies of the Frick Collection is that it has never had a painting by John Singer Sargent, the in-demand Gilded Age portraitist. But Sargent’s “Lady Agnew of Lochnaw,” a supremely stylish dark-haired beauty afloat in a voluminous white satin and chiffon tea gown, looks so at home at the Frick that visitors may mistake her for a resident.

As it did last year with masterworks from the Mauritshuis, the Frick has welcomed 10 paintings from the Scottish National Gallery, in Edinburgh, home to a renowned collection of fine art from the Renaissance to the end of the 19th century. The new show, “Masterpieces From the Scottish National Gallery,” running through Feb. 1, is a quieter sort of exhibition, exemplified by the under-the-radar entrance of “Lady Agnew."

Christie’s announced it has been entrusted with the sale of the Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, the distinguished American scholar, dealer and collector of Asian Art who passed away in August 2014. Widely recognized throughout Asia and the Americas for his ground-breaking role in the study and appreciation of Asian Art, Mr. Ellsworth was a distinguished connoisseur who opened new arenas of collecting to Western audiences and built a successful business purveying the very finest works of art to his generation’s foremost collectors. His personal collection of over 2,000 items was assembled over a lifetime and widely recognized as the most important grouping of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian sculpture, paintings, furniture and works of art. To celebrate this exceptional collection and the generous and benevolent man behind it, Christie's is organizing free public exhibitions and a special five-day series of auctions and online-only sales to be held during Asian Art Week at Christie's New York in March 2015. A global tour of highlights from the collection kicks off November 21 in Hong Kong, and will continue to stops throughout Asia and Europe prior to the New York sales.

The Salon Art + Design Fair, the sister fair of the esteemed Paris Biennale, opened to the public on Friday, November 14, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. Produced in collaboration with France’s Syndicat National des Antiquaires, the Salon hosted a collector’s preview for VIP guests on the evening of November 13.

Launched in 2012 by Sanford L. Smith + Associates, the Salon welcomes over fifty leading galleries offering fine and decorative arts and design from 1890 to the present.

On Monday, November 10, Sotheby’s offered works from the collection of Rachel “Bunny” Mellon -- a gardening and design icon, an ardent philanthropist, and the wife of Paul Mellon, the heir to the Mellon banking fortune. The auction, which took place in New York, fetched a total of $158.7 million, far exceeding the sale’s presale estimate of $82.9 million to $120.1 million. All of the forty-three lots offered sold -- a testament to Mellon’s keen eye and impeccable taste. 

“Property from the Collection of Mrs. Paul Mellon: Masterworks” presented a curated selection of fine art, ranging from seventeenth-century still lifes to masterpieces of the twentieth century.

On November 4, Christie’s London will offer works from the collection of the late architect and designer David Collins. Collins, who passed away in 2013, was known for his affinity for shades of blue and his masterful use of texture. Melding British refinement with metropolitan chic, Collins and his eponymous London-based studio created sophisticated and luxurious interiors for a swath residences, restaurants, hotels, and high-end retailers. Some of Collins' most celebrated projects include the Old World-inspired Wolseley restaurant in London, the Berkeley Hotel’s striking Blue Bar (also in London), and The Charles, which houses some of New York City’s most coveted private residences. 

“Luxury–Colour–Texture” comprises 192 lots from Collins’ Kensington property and includes furniture, lighting, and works of art.