LONDON.- Christie’s will offer an eclectic and carefully curated collection, titled An Adventurous Spirit: An Important Private Collection Sold to Benefit a Charitable Foundation, across two London sales in December 2018 and February 2019. Major works from the collection will be exhibited together in an exhibition in London during Christie’s Classic Week in early December. An Adventurous Spirit provides a remarkable view of a unique collection across many fields, from Impressionism to 20th Century Design, which was shown in beautiful homes in London, Saint Tropez and Saint Barths. Visitors to the galleries will witness a recreation of the extraordinary mis-en-scène, with masterpiece paintings presented alongside the great objects and artworks as they were shown in these exquisite homes. The Collection Sale on 13 December 2018, will describe the discerning eye of a significant collector, embracing paintings, drawings, sculpture, English and European Decorative Arts and 20th Century Design. Following the Collection Sale, five major paintings by Paul Signac, Gustave Caillebotte, Félix Vallotton, Edouard Vuillard and Giovanni Boldini will be highlights of the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on 27 February 2019. This inspirational and deeply personal collection provides evocative insights into the creative joy of collecting and connoisseurship and the matching of fine objects with Impressionist artworks.
Jussi Pylkkänen, Global President, Christie’s: “Every object and every painting in the collection has been chosen with considerable care and with a grand design in mind. These were homes of wonderful contrasts, filled with joy, and with refined objects which caught the eye and the imagination. The Signac is amongst the finest of the artist’s great Opus paintings, and certainly amongst the greatest of Signac’s works in private hands. The Caillebotte and the Vallotton are also museum quality pictures which will challenge the world records for the artists. Both were bought here at Christie’s and it is a privilege to be handling these works again and to see them exhibited as they have been shown by this great collector, and a close friend, for so many years.”
IMPRESSIONIST AND MODERN ART, 27 FEBRUARY 2019
The adventurous spirit of the late collector that amassed these works is reflected in the lives of the artists whose works were acquired. Gustave Caillebotte was a skilled sailor who introduced Paul Signac to the sport. Following the death of Signac’s great friend Georges Seurat, he set sail for the South of France, a voyage that would come to alter the course of his career forever. The most important painting by the artist to come to auction in twenty years, Le Port au soleil couchant, Opus 236 (Saint-Tropez) (1892, Estimate on Request) is one of the first and finest works that Signac painted in St Tropez. Rendered in Signac’s quintessential pointillist style, this painting is a masterpiece of the artist’s Opus works and is set to achieve a new auction record for the artist. Using individual dabs of vibrant, complementary colours, Signac captures the drama of sundown in the play of deep violet shadows on the water and the final golden rays of the day in the sky above the coastal hillside.
A rare, and only recently rediscovered Impressionist masterpiece, Gustave Caillebotte’s Chemin montant (Estimate on Request), painted in Trouville in 1881, brings together the two main aspects of the artist’s oeuvre: the iconic urban figure paintings of the 1870s, and his landscapes and garden scenes of the next decade. First exhibited in the 7th Exposition des Artistes Indépendants in 1882 in Paris, Chemin montant subsequently remained unseen for over a century until it was included in the landmark Caillebotte retrospective held in Paris and Chicago in 1994. This major rediscovery was followed by a landmark price made for the artist when the work was sold in Christie’s New York in 2003. With its dynamic perspective and compositional ingenuity, Chemin montant encapsulates the pictorial enigma that characterises the greatest of Caillebotte’s paintings, as well as exemplifying the artist’s gradual embrace of an Impressionist style. The visible brush strokes suggest the movement of a gentle wind across the lush foliage, while the play of light and shade in the foreground evokes the seeming vibration of the landscape under the summer sun.
With its daring composition and use of bold planes of colour, Félix Vallotton’s En promenade (painted circa 1895, estimate: £1,200,000-1,600,000) encapsulates the artist’s mastery of the pictorial vocabulary of Les Nabis. Combining the influence of Vallotton’s Nabi associates, Bonnard and Vuillard, the painting’s radical composition also reveals the importance of Japonism in the artist’s work of this time. Achieving the then world record price for the artist when it was acquired from Christie’s in 2006, this masterful painting has been requested for the forthcoming exhibition on the artist to be held at the Royal Academy, London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2019.
Edouard Vuillard’s Aux Pavillons à Cricqueboeuf, devant la maison (1911-34, estimate: £600,000-800,000) is one of 13 decorative panels commissioned by Josse Bernheim and Gaston Bernheim de Villers for their villa, Bois-Lurette, at Villers-sur-Mer.
Giovanni Boldini’s Portrait of Madame Roger-Jourdain (1898, estimate: £800,000-1,200,000) completes the group being sold in the February Evening Sale. Only recently identified by Christie’s specialists, the elegant and playful sitter was also a friend of Sargent, and a leading figure in Parisian art istic circles: her portrait by Besnard hangs in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
AN ADVENTUROUS SPIRIT, 13 DECEMBER 2018
Charles Cator, Deputy Chairman, Christie’s International: “Collections are more than an assemblage of individual works of art, however important: they are the story of a person’s life, intensely personal and evocative, with so many threads and themes. That was never more true than with this remarkable collection, tellingly eclectic, which very much bears the stamp of the person who created it. Whether in business, philanthropy or friendship, this brilliant and enquiring mind ventured along many different paths, always followed with perception, charm and amusement. Idiosyncratic in tastes and open to the unexpected, the interests and enthusiasms were keenly developed. This collection is a reflection of a richly varied life in many far-flung places.”
The December sale presents a wealth of disciplines and periods, comprising approximately 400 lots, spanning important 18th century English and European Decorative Arts, Impressionist, Modern British, 19th Century and Victorian paintings, Silver, Jewellery and 20th Century Design through to decorative lighting and soft furnishings. Estimates range from £300 up to £1.5 million.
PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS & SCULPTURE
The Whip, Trevelloe Wood by Sir Alfred Munnings, painted in Cornwall in 1913, shows the artist’s mastery as a colourist and his virtuosity in handling paint and building up rich surface impasto (estimate: £1,000,0001,500,000 million).
Further highlights include La marché a Saint-Tropez, by Albert Marquet (1905, estimate: £300,000-500,000); an exquisite pastel by Louis Anquetin (1891, estimate: £120,000-180,000); Jeune fille au chignon by Giovanni Boldini (estimate: £60,000-80,000); Jeune fille aux feuilles (Thème C Variation 8), Vierge à l'enfant sur une colonne devant la façade de Marquayrol by Henri Jean Guillaume Martin (circa 1915, estimate: £120,000-180,000); and a pen and ink drawing by Henri Matisse (1941, estimate: £200,000-300,000). Notable sculptures include Mons Fils by Chana Orloff (conceived in 1923 and cast during the artist’s lifetime, estimate: £70,000-100,000).
FURNITURE & DESIGN
The Decorative Arts are led by a superb pair of Régence ormolu-mounted and brass-inlaid amaranth Coquilliers attributed to André-Charles Boulle or Boulle Fils (circa 1720-30, estimate: £500,000-800,000) and a pair of George II white-painted side tables, almost certainly to a design by William Kent (circa 1735, estimate: £250,000-400,000). Key design lots include a much-coveted Flock of ‘Nouveaux Moutons’ – Transhumant, Belier, Agneaux by François-Xavier Lalanne, which will be offered in multiple lots (combined estimate: £360,000-540,000) and a pair of Symbolist gates, Circle of Leonardo Bistolfi (late 19th century, estimate: £20,000-40,000).
THEMES
There are numerous themes running through this collection from animals to travel heralding the collector’s diverse interests and sense of fun illustrated by a late 19th century bronzed terracotta model of a Bull Mastiff that guarded the collector’s London entrance hall (estimate: £1,000-1,500); a late 19th/early 20th century French polychrome tôle peinte fireside companion stand modelled with a dummy-board figure of a dog seated on a cushion (estimate: £1,500-2,500), models of yachts and even a toy fire engine (estimate: £300-500).
