100 Top Treasures
November 2007
79 Hometown Masterpiece
Philadelphia had collective panic when it was announced that "The Gross Clinic" (1875), a masterpiece by native son Thomas Eakins, was to be sold jointly to The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the soon-to-open Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The price: $68 million. The painting had been the property of Thomas Jefferson University, a Philadelphia medical school, since 1878, when it was purchased by alumni for $200. Wary of objections, the school gave local institutions 45 days to match the offer. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, in tandem with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, rose to the challenge in November 2006, banding together with city officials and foundations to keep the masterwork by the lifelong Philadelphia resident from leaving. The 8-foot by 6½-foot painting, one of the largest and most complex Eakins ever did, was considered revolutionary at the time for its candid and gory presentation of a medical procedure. When it was exhibited in New York at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2002, art critic Michael Kimmelman called it "hands down, the finest 19th-century American painting." —D.K.
80 Pastoral Scene
In the early 20th century, German collector Franz Koenigs amassed a collection of more than 2,500 drawings. At Christie’s New York sale of Old Master works in January, one of six Koenigs drawings offered was Aelbert Cuyp’s "The Edge of a Wood with Two Figures and Two Sheep to the Right, Dunes Seen Beyond." It sold to the Louvre for $844,800. The black chalkwork dates to the early 1640s and is similar stylistically to a Cuyp drawing from the same period now in the British Museum. "It is a subtly colored and textured landscape," says Jennifer Wright, Christie’s Old Master drawing specialist. "Cuyp had wonderful facility with the brush." The landscape may also have symbolic value. The placing of a bare tree next to a verdant one, Wright suggests, may indicate the passage of time. —D.G.
81 Philadelphia Empire
Charles Carpenter Jr. was a collector of Tiffany silver and modern paintings, but he also had an eye for Philadelphia furniture, particularly a pair of early 19th-century mahogany armchairs. In September 2006, his heirs donated the chairs to Winterthur Museum in Wilmington, Delaware. Exquisitely carved with gracefully curving dolphin arm supports, today they would sell in the mid six figures at auction, experts say. Dating from 1815 to 1825, when the Empire style was fashionable, they are a part of a larger suite. They also carry a traceable provenance. In 1964 the chairs were offered for sale to New York antiques dealer Ginsburg & Levy by then-owner Daniel Coxe, who provided detailed information on the original owner, Philadelphia merchant George Harrison. "The chairs complement our already strong representation of Philadelphia classical furniture," says Wendy Cooper, Winterthur’s senior curator of furniture. —D.G.
82 Royal Sculpture
What are the chances that two significantly important bronze heads of an oba (king) of the kingdom of Benin, in present-day Nigeria, would make news within the same week? At Sotheby’s New York sale of African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art in May, an oba, deaccessioned from the Albright-Knox Gallery of Art in Buffalo, New York, soared to $4.74 million. The buyer was French dealer Bernard Dulon. Featuring a high collar of necklaces, a cap with clusters of beadwork and strands of beads in front of each ear, the head has a hole in the top designed to hold a carved elephant’s tusk, a symbol of the wealth and power of Benin’s kings. The oba dates from between 1575 and 1625, and only 10 others from this period are known to exist. It was acquired in 1932 by the French dealer Louis Carré before the then-called Albright Art Gallery purchased it in 1935. "The Benin head of an oba is a masterpiece and one of a set of four sculptures commissioned during the installation ceremonies of two successive kings of Benin whose reigns encompass the ‘renaissance’ of Benin art," says Heinrich Schweizer, head of Sotheby’s African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art department. A week earlier, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts announced the acquisition in April of an oba from 1550 to 1650, the "middle period" of Benin art (shown below). The later oba is a little more stylized than the one sold at Sotheby’s, according to museum director and president William Griswold. The work, which joins three other Benin objects in the MIA’s collection, was acquired from Parisian dealer Alain de Monbrison for a seven-figure sum. —D.G.
83 Mark Up
A stunning pink dominates the canvas considered the first fully realized effort of Mark Rothko’s mature style; indeed, it is a work in which he successfully articulated the painterly dialectic he would maintain throughout the remainder of his career. "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)" (1950) brought $72,800,000 in a May sale at Sotheby’s New York. The price not only was well above the pre-sale estimate of $40 million, but more than triple the previous world auction record for Rothko of $22,416,000 and a new benchmark for any contemporary work of art at auction. The buyer was anonymous, but the seller was the present-day patriarch of one of the nation’s most famous families, David Rockefeller. A renowned banker, collector and philanthropist, Rockefeller purchased the painting for less than $10,000 in 1960 at the urging of Dorothy Miller, a prominent curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the institution co-founded by his mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. The seller at that time was Eliza Bliss Parkinson, niece of Lillie P. Bliss, another MoMA co-founder. The striking 81-inch by 55 ½-inch painting, the first abstract work in Rockefeller’s collection, hung for many years in his office at Chase Manhattan Bank. Its luscious main colors looking like a refreshing trio of summer sorbets, "White Center" is "Rothko’s breakout picture, where he found his form and his identity," states Tobias Meyer, worldwide head of contemporary art for Sotheby’s. [For more on "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)," see John T. Spike’s commentary in Closer Look, Art&Antiques, October 2007, page 192.] —D.K.
84 Think Pink
"It simply is the most complicated wristwatch in the entire Patek Philippe line," says Julien Schaerer, auctioneer and watch director for Antiquorum USA in New York. The pink-gold Sky Moon Tourbillon, Patek Philippe Ref. 5002, produced in 2002, sold for $1,240,400 at an Antiquorum USA auction last June. The price was an auction record for any wristwatch ever sold in the United States. Among its distinctive capabilities, the watch has "a chiming minute repeater," notes Schaerer. "It can be activated to chime every minute, as well as every hour and quarter-hour. The sound is deeper than a typical watch chime and somewhat like a cathedral gong." The large watch, which measures 44 millimeters (1.72") in diameter, also has a retrograde date mechanism, "so that once it gets to 31, it automatically jumps back to one," Schaerer says. "It also has four small dials to indicate the month, the day, phases of the moon and the next leap year." —D.K.
85 For the Birds
Peter Blume, director of the Ball State University Museum of Art in Muncie, Indiana, relates a story about the Abstract Expressionist painter Lee Krasner. She was once asked by an interviewer why the word "bird" appeared in so many of her paintings. According to Blume, "Krasner responded, ‘I get a bird image. I get a floral image, but I don’t go around consciously thinking these images up. But they come through." Of the 12-foot by 6-foot "Right Bird Left" that the museum acquired as a donation in December 2006, Blume describes the painting has having "the impact of a tropical rain forest contained in a glass house. It is bursting with joyful psychic energy that seems too much to be contained within the confines of the canvas." The art museum received the gift from David T. Owsley, grandson of one of the university’s founders, Frank C. Ball. "This picture is comparable to one that the Cleveland Museum of Art bought at auction and paid a couple of a million dollars for," says Blume. "David trained as an art historian and he had owned this painting since the 1990s, and his giving it to our museum is all part of his family’s legacy." —D.M.
Philadelphia had collective panic when it was announced that "The Gross Clinic" (1875), a masterpiece by native son Thomas Eakins, was to be sold jointly to The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the soon-to-open Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The price: $68 million. The painting had been the property of Thomas Jefferson University, a Philadelphia medical school, since 1878, when it was purchased by alumni for $200. Wary of objections, the school gave local institutions 45 days to match the offer. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, in tandem with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, rose to the challenge in November 2006, banding together with city officials and foundations to keep the masterwork by the lifelong Philadelphia resident from leaving. The 8-foot by 6½-foot painting, one of the largest and most complex Eakins ever did, was considered revolutionary at the time for its candid and gory presentation of a medical procedure. When it was exhibited in New York at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2002, art critic Michael Kimmelman called it "hands down, the finest 19th-century American painting." —D.K.
80 Pastoral Scene
In the early 20th century, German collector Franz Koenigs amassed a collection of more than 2,500 drawings. At Christie’s New York sale of Old Master works in January, one of six Koenigs drawings offered was Aelbert Cuyp’s "The Edge of a Wood with Two Figures and Two Sheep to the Right, Dunes Seen Beyond." It sold to the Louvre for $844,800. The black chalkwork dates to the early 1640s and is similar stylistically to a Cuyp drawing from the same period now in the British Museum. "It is a subtly colored and textured landscape," says Jennifer Wright, Christie’s Old Master drawing specialist. "Cuyp had wonderful facility with the brush." The landscape may also have symbolic value. The placing of a bare tree next to a verdant one, Wright suggests, may indicate the passage of time. —D.G.
81 Philadelphia Empire
Charles Carpenter Jr. was a collector of Tiffany silver and modern paintings, but he also had an eye for Philadelphia furniture, particularly a pair of early 19th-century mahogany armchairs. In September 2006, his heirs donated the chairs to Winterthur Museum in Wilmington, Delaware. Exquisitely carved with gracefully curving dolphin arm supports, today they would sell in the mid six figures at auction, experts say. Dating from 1815 to 1825, when the Empire style was fashionable, they are a part of a larger suite. They also carry a traceable provenance. In 1964 the chairs were offered for sale to New York antiques dealer Ginsburg & Levy by then-owner Daniel Coxe, who provided detailed information on the original owner, Philadelphia merchant George Harrison. "The chairs complement our already strong representation of Philadelphia classical furniture," says Wendy Cooper, Winterthur’s senior curator of furniture. —D.G.
82 Royal Sculpture
What are the chances that two significantly important bronze heads of an oba (king) of the kingdom of Benin, in present-day Nigeria, would make news within the same week? At Sotheby’s New York sale of African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art in May, an oba, deaccessioned from the Albright-Knox Gallery of Art in Buffalo, New York, soared to $4.74 million. The buyer was French dealer Bernard Dulon. Featuring a high collar of necklaces, a cap with clusters of beadwork and strands of beads in front of each ear, the head has a hole in the top designed to hold a carved elephant’s tusk, a symbol of the wealth and power of Benin’s kings. The oba dates from between 1575 and 1625, and only 10 others from this period are known to exist. It was acquired in 1932 by the French dealer Louis Carré before the then-called Albright Art Gallery purchased it in 1935. "The Benin head of an oba is a masterpiece and one of a set of four sculptures commissioned during the installation ceremonies of two successive kings of Benin whose reigns encompass the ‘renaissance’ of Benin art," says Heinrich Schweizer, head of Sotheby’s African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art department. A week earlier, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts announced the acquisition in April of an oba from 1550 to 1650, the "middle period" of Benin art (shown below). The later oba is a little more stylized than the one sold at Sotheby’s, according to museum director and president William Griswold. The work, which joins three other Benin objects in the MIA’s collection, was acquired from Parisian dealer Alain de Monbrison for a seven-figure sum. —D.G.
83 Mark Up
A stunning pink dominates the canvas considered the first fully realized effort of Mark Rothko’s mature style; indeed, it is a work in which he successfully articulated the painterly dialectic he would maintain throughout the remainder of his career. "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)" (1950) brought $72,800,000 in a May sale at Sotheby’s New York. The price not only was well above the pre-sale estimate of $40 million, but more than triple the previous world auction record for Rothko of $22,416,000 and a new benchmark for any contemporary work of art at auction. The buyer was anonymous, but the seller was the present-day patriarch of one of the nation’s most famous families, David Rockefeller. A renowned banker, collector and philanthropist, Rockefeller purchased the painting for less than $10,000 in 1960 at the urging of Dorothy Miller, a prominent curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the institution co-founded by his mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. The seller at that time was Eliza Bliss Parkinson, niece of Lillie P. Bliss, another MoMA co-founder. The striking 81-inch by 55 ½-inch painting, the first abstract work in Rockefeller’s collection, hung for many years in his office at Chase Manhattan Bank. Its luscious main colors looking like a refreshing trio of summer sorbets, "White Center" is "Rothko’s breakout picture, where he found his form and his identity," states Tobias Meyer, worldwide head of contemporary art for Sotheby’s. [For more on "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)," see John T. Spike’s commentary in Closer Look, Art&Antiques, October 2007, page 192.] —D.K.
84 Think Pink
"It simply is the most complicated wristwatch in the entire Patek Philippe line," says Julien Schaerer, auctioneer and watch director for Antiquorum USA in New York. The pink-gold Sky Moon Tourbillon, Patek Philippe Ref. 5002, produced in 2002, sold for $1,240,400 at an Antiquorum USA auction last June. The price was an auction record for any wristwatch ever sold in the United States. Among its distinctive capabilities, the watch has "a chiming minute repeater," notes Schaerer. "It can be activated to chime every minute, as well as every hour and quarter-hour. The sound is deeper than a typical watch chime and somewhat like a cathedral gong." The large watch, which measures 44 millimeters (1.72") in diameter, also has a retrograde date mechanism, "so that once it gets to 31, it automatically jumps back to one," Schaerer says. "It also has four small dials to indicate the month, the day, phases of the moon and the next leap year." —D.K.
85 For the Birds
Peter Blume, director of the Ball State University Museum of Art in Muncie, Indiana, relates a story about the Abstract Expressionist painter Lee Krasner. She was once asked by an interviewer why the word "bird" appeared in so many of her paintings. According to Blume, "Krasner responded, ‘I get a bird image. I get a floral image, but I don’t go around consciously thinking these images up. But they come through." Of the 12-foot by 6-foot "Right Bird Left" that the museum acquired as a donation in December 2006, Blume describes the painting has having "the impact of a tropical rain forest contained in a glass house. It is bursting with joyful psychic energy that seems too much to be contained within the confines of the canvas." The art museum received the gift from David T. Owsley, grandson of one of the university’s founders, Frank C. Ball. "This picture is comparable to one that the Cleveland Museum of Art bought at auction and paid a couple of a million dollars for," says Blume. "David trained as an art historian and he had owned this painting since the 1990s, and his giving it to our museum is all part of his family’s legacy." —D.M.
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