PARIS.- The 4 auction houses gathered under the name OVA (The Auction Houses for the Aristophil Collections - Aguttes, Artcurial, Drouot Estimations and Ader) announced that the Spring series of sales will take place on 1 to 5 April 2019 at Drouot. 7 auctions will be offered, comprising over 1,500 lots estimated globally at €10M. For the first time since the inaugural sale on 20 December 2017, the Spring series will include the theme of ‘History’. 3 sales are curated upon this theme, 2 of which are dedicated to the most important figures of France and its neighbours and the third sale focuses on book bindings featuring the coat-of-arms of some of these personalities. 2 auctions will focus on Fine Arts, with interesting parallels between correspondences or essays and drawings and paintings by the same artists. A sale will present some of the greatest names of the French 19th and 20th centuries literature, and finally, an auction will consist of correspondences smuggled out of Paris by air during the siege of 1870-1871.

Since 20 December 2017, 14 auctions of the Aristophil Collections have been organised by the OVA (Aguttes, Artcurial, Drouot Estimations and Ader) at Drouot. Highlights include 3 lots selling above €1M among 10 lots that sold above €500K, 47 preemptions by museums and institutions and a total of sales that reaches €30.6M.

SALE N°15 • FINE ARTS
PART I: WORKS & CORRESPONDENCES OF PAINTERS
PART II: IMPRESSIONIST & MODERNS WORKS
Monday 1st April at 2pm, Drouot, Paris | Experts: Charlotte Reynier-Aguttes and Thierry Bodin
The first two auctions are dedicated to artists, acting sometimes as writers and sometimes as drawers or painters. They combine interesting parallels between works they created and letters they have sent or received. Places described in some letters can be identified into the paintings. It is as such in a large correspondence between Henri Martin and Émile Toulouse, architect of the Lot, a French region. The 389 letters they exchanged are about the estate the painter bought in the village of Marquayrol in 1899. Martin refers to the layout of the property, and in a painting also offered in the sale, titled Le Bassin (The Pound), one can identify the pound on which a young girl is seated as the pound set in the garden of Marquayrol. Other highlights of this sale include works by Boucher, Delacroix, Ingres, Sisley, Gauguin, Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, Giacometti, Mirò and many other artists drawn or described in ther daily or intimate life.

SALE N°16 • FINE ARTS
WRITTEN AND GRAPHIC WORKS BY ARTISTS FROM THE 16TH TO THE 20TH CENTURIES
Tuesday 2 April at 2pm, Drouot, Paris | Specialist: Guillaume Romaneix
Artcurial’s auction is complementary to the previous one. Two beautiful sketch books by Eugène DELACROIX (17981863) feature views of London, as the vaults of the Westminster cathedral and horses from the countryside during the artist’s visit in England in 1825. The guest book of Parisian restaurant Le Marais (1922-1951) features numerous signatures of 20th century artists, as illustrated by a view of Paris drawn in 1927 by Raoul DUFY (1877-1953). A signed autograph letter sent by Gustave COURBET (1819-1877) to Victor Hugo in 1864 tells the pressure he feels from the government, which he believes to be much worst than the poet’s exile in Guernsey. Other highlights include a signed letter by Pierre Paul RUBENS (1577-1640) sent to Jan Van der Neesen, envoy to the Duke of Mantua, written in Alicante in April (estimate: €30,000-40,000) along with 3 drawings by the Flemish painter estimated from €15,000 to €60,000.

SALE N°17 • LITERATURE
WRITERS OF THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES
Wednesday 3 April at 2pm, Drouot, Paris | Expert: Claude Oterelo
This auction includes literary manuscripts, autograph letters and complete works by some of the greatest names of French 19th and 20th centuries literature: Apollinaire, Balzac, Beaudelaire, de Beauvoir, Breton, Céline, Char, Cocteau, Dumas, Éluard, Flaubert, Gide, Hugo, Lamartine, Mallarmé, Maupassant, Musset, Pagnol, Ponge, Proust, Rimbaud, Sand, Sartre, Verlaine, Vian and finally, Zola.

SALE N°18 • HISTORY
PAGES OF HISTORY
Thursday 4 April at 2pm, Drouot, Paris | Expert: Thierry Bodin
The first ‘History’ auction of the Spring series focuses on great figures who have punctuated the history of France and its neighbours. Manuscripts, military, official or intimate correspondences, notes, thoughts and also paintings, sculptures and memorabilia that illustrate the lives of Kings and Queens (François Ist, Catherine de Medici, Louis XIII and Louis XIV), Napoléon Bonaparte, political figures as Mazarin and Tocqueville and writers whose works have marked their times. Napoléon will be particularly represented throughout the sale, as 2019 marks his 250th birthday.

SALE N°19 • HISTORY
GREAT HISTORICAL FIGURES
Thursday 4 April at 4:30pm, Drouot, Paris | Expert: Thierry Bodin
The second ‘History’ sale completes the first one. It includes written works, correspondences, books or memorabilia which have all belonged to Kings, Queens, Emperors, Empresses, Advisors, Ministers, Generals or close family members of these great figures. From Charles IX to the French Resistance with Charles de Gaulle and Jean Moulin, moments of lives are featured in this catalogue.

SALE N°20 • MAILING HISTORY
1870’S WAR
Friday 5 April at 2pm, Drouot, Paris | Experts: Alain Jacquart and Mario Mordente
Next year, the 150th birthday of the first French air postal service and the use of micro-photography will be celebrated. These communication tools were invented during the Parisian siege of 1870 to send or receive official or private correspondences in and out of Paris. This is when the “Ballons montés” (mail transported by gaz or hot air balloons), and “Boules de Moulins” (messages inserted in a metallic sphere thrown into the Seine and recovered once the German fronteers were passed) were created. Moulins was the name of the village chosen to centralise these spheres. The sale includes exceptional letters sent by both ways during the war of 1870-1871 along with documents regarding the sieges of Strasbourg, Metz and Belfort. Other letters featured in the auction were smuggled out of Paris with diplomatic pouches.

SALE N°21 • HISTORY
NAPOLEONIC LIBRARY
Friday 5 April at 4:15pm, Drouot, Paris | Expert: Dominique Courvoisier
The Napoleonic library gathers books that feature coat-of-arms on their bindings. One will identify the shield of Napoleon on books dedicated to medicine, natural history, literature and poetry. The coat-of-arms of Joséphine are also set on books about Napoleon when he was in captivity, about French and music history and the 6 volumes by Molière used to belong to Marie-Louise. Russian history will also be featured, as several books show the coat-of-arms of Tsars Alexander I and Alexander II.