100 Top Treasures
November 2007
94 Quite a Dish
A pair of Regency silver-gilt sideboard dishes sold anonymously at Sotheby’s New York in May for an impressive $644,800 (est. $250,000–$350,000). At the center of the large circular dishes is a triumphant Amphitrite, female companion to Neptune, on a seashell chariot. The dishes were designed and executed by the royal goldsmiths Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, London, 1819, and were based on a design by the artist Thomas Stothard. While it is not known who commissioned them, among the possible clients are the Prince Regent (later King George IV) or his two brothers—the Duke of York and the Duke of Cumberland. "The dishes are monumental in scale [25-inch diameter], sculptural in their conception and superlative in their quality," says John Ward, a Sotheby’s silver specialist. —D.G.
95 Candid Camera
Giorgio De Chirico (lower left) wore a laurel wreath. Marcel Duchamp smoked a pipe, and Truman Capote knelt on a chair while wrapped in a cocoon of an overcoat. When Irving Penn took (and still takes) photographs of famous painters, sculptors, writers and musicians, the most unlikely or prosaic details can come to be the defining feature of the subject. In April, upon acquiring 35 portraits in a gift from Penn himself and an additional 32 as purchases, the Morgan Library & Museum’s director, Charles E. Pierce Jr., commented, "These remarkable works vividly capture the individual behind the art as only Mr. Penn can." Although values for Penn portraits vary widely depending on their subject, a 1984 print of his "Café in Lima" (1948), a fashion photo shoot for Vogue magazine, sold at a February 2007 Christie’s auction for $132,000. —D.M.
96 Indian Trade
The Delaware (or Lenape) people were often on the move. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, they occupied portions of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri, and then, between 1830 and 1840, settled in Kansas. Sometime around 1830 a Delaware woman fashioned this bandolier bag, composed of corn-yellow, red, amber and blue glass beads, which featured a strap she made from a wool trade blanket that was then edged with a luminous red satin. A buyer at a farm auction in Ohio 20 years ago purchased the bag for $100. In September 2006, Cowan’s Auctions of Cincinnati, sold it to an unidentified buyer for $115,000. "The Delaware bandolier bag brought the price it did not only because of its craftsmanship, but because of the scarcity of such material from this area," says Danica M. Farnand, Cowan’s specialist in American Indian art. "Early American Indian objects from the east are highly desired due to the fact that many objects were taken to Europe and remain today in European museums and collections." —D.M.
97 Not Home Sweet Home
The colors are autumnal, the mood is somber, the lines redolent of the medieval and the modern. Egon Schiele’s "Einzelne Häuser (Häuser mit Bergen)" (c. 1915), is said to represent the artist’s mother’s hometown in what is now the Czech Republic, where Schiele himself lived briefly but not happily as an adult. The painting, "Individual Houses (Houses with Mountains)," with a fragment, "Monk I," on the verso, sold at Christie’s New York in November 2006 for $22,416,000, a world auction record for Schiele. "Schiele’s landscapes involve a strange and heady mixture of his own deeply personal references," says Conor Jordan, a senior vice-president and senior specialist in Impressionist and Modern art at Christie’s New York. —D.K.
98 Beauty From Sadness
The reviews are in on Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s "Mater Dolorosa" ("Our Lady of Sorrows"): "He knows the secret of making flesh palpitate and translating life." "A prodigious workman of marble, he knows how to make it vibrate under his nervous and nimble hand." "[The bust] represents the most striking expression of modern tendencies in sculpture." Although these remarks were written in 1870 when Capreaux exhibited this white marble bust at the Paris Salon, viewers today still would agree. The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, purchased the master work, regarded as Carpeaux’s last great marble, in December 2006 from a private dealer in New York for a sum that can be estimated, given previous sales of Carpeaux works, in the mid- to high six figures. According to contemporary accounts, the model for the bust was a woman Carpeaux encountered in a Parisian street. She was grieving for the death of her child and the artist took her to his studio where she served as the model for this bust—"a head in tears, face emaciated, with a sincere attitude of maternal sadness, and the true tears of a mother," as another writer of the day commented. —D.M.
99 Rhead Record
Frederick H. Rhead was a Staffordshire potter who immigrated to the United States in 1902 and as David Rago, head of Rago Arts and Auction Center in Lambertville, New Jersey, says, "became the Forrest Gump of American art pottery." Explaining his comment, Rago notes that Rhead was involved in many areas of pottery and worked for several companies, although he is probably best known as the English "father of Fiesta ware." Last March Rago sold a rare Rhead vase for a record price of $516,000. Made in Santa Barbara, California, around 1915, the 11-inch-high piece is etched with a stylized landscape. The buyer was Rudy Ciccarello, founder and president of the Two Red Roses Foundation, a Florida-based institution dedicated to the acquisition, exhibition and restoration of works from the American Arts and Crafts Movement. "The vase captures the languor and sensibility of the California plein-air artists working at the same time and place," says Rago. He also points out the vase was made entirely by Rhead’s own hand, with no work delegated to assistants. —D.G.
100 Keep Up with the Joneses
While on a trip to New York City a couple of years ago, Gail Andrews, director of the Birmingham Museum of Art, saw a circa-1785 Gilbert Stuart portrait of John Jones of Frankley on view at Richard L. Feigen & Co. When she returned home to the museum, she shared her enthusiasm with the museum staff, citing it as a particularly fine example of Stuart’s work in England while he was apprenticed to Benjamin West. "Because our director was so passionate about her desire to purchase the work for our collection, it was decided that its acquisition would be the perfect way to honor her 30 years at the museum," says Graham Boettcher, the museum’s curator of American art. And, so, in a surprise ceremony, the museum presented the work to Andrews, whereupon it entered the permanent collection. Although the purchase price was not revealed, full-scale Stuart portraits can easily approach $1 million. —D.M.
A pair of Regency silver-gilt sideboard dishes sold anonymously at Sotheby’s New York in May for an impressive $644,800 (est. $250,000–$350,000). At the center of the large circular dishes is a triumphant Amphitrite, female companion to Neptune, on a seashell chariot. The dishes were designed and executed by the royal goldsmiths Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, London, 1819, and were based on a design by the artist Thomas Stothard. While it is not known who commissioned them, among the possible clients are the Prince Regent (later King George IV) or his two brothers—the Duke of York and the Duke of Cumberland. "The dishes are monumental in scale [25-inch diameter], sculptural in their conception and superlative in their quality," says John Ward, a Sotheby’s silver specialist. —D.G.
95 Candid Camera
Giorgio De Chirico (lower left) wore a laurel wreath. Marcel Duchamp smoked a pipe, and Truman Capote knelt on a chair while wrapped in a cocoon of an overcoat. When Irving Penn took (and still takes) photographs of famous painters, sculptors, writers and musicians, the most unlikely or prosaic details can come to be the defining feature of the subject. In April, upon acquiring 35 portraits in a gift from Penn himself and an additional 32 as purchases, the Morgan Library & Museum’s director, Charles E. Pierce Jr., commented, "These remarkable works vividly capture the individual behind the art as only Mr. Penn can." Although values for Penn portraits vary widely depending on their subject, a 1984 print of his "Café in Lima" (1948), a fashion photo shoot for Vogue magazine, sold at a February 2007 Christie’s auction for $132,000. —D.M.
96 Indian Trade
The Delaware (or Lenape) people were often on the move. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, they occupied portions of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri, and then, between 1830 and 1840, settled in Kansas. Sometime around 1830 a Delaware woman fashioned this bandolier bag, composed of corn-yellow, red, amber and blue glass beads, which featured a strap she made from a wool trade blanket that was then edged with a luminous red satin. A buyer at a farm auction in Ohio 20 years ago purchased the bag for $100. In September 2006, Cowan’s Auctions of Cincinnati, sold it to an unidentified buyer for $115,000. "The Delaware bandolier bag brought the price it did not only because of its craftsmanship, but because of the scarcity of such material from this area," says Danica M. Farnand, Cowan’s specialist in American Indian art. "Early American Indian objects from the east are highly desired due to the fact that many objects were taken to Europe and remain today in European museums and collections." —D.M.
97 Not Home Sweet Home
The colors are autumnal, the mood is somber, the lines redolent of the medieval and the modern. Egon Schiele’s "Einzelne Häuser (Häuser mit Bergen)" (c. 1915), is said to represent the artist’s mother’s hometown in what is now the Czech Republic, where Schiele himself lived briefly but not happily as an adult. The painting, "Individual Houses (Houses with Mountains)," with a fragment, "Monk I," on the verso, sold at Christie’s New York in November 2006 for $22,416,000, a world auction record for Schiele. "Schiele’s landscapes involve a strange and heady mixture of his own deeply personal references," says Conor Jordan, a senior vice-president and senior specialist in Impressionist and Modern art at Christie’s New York. —D.K.
98 Beauty From Sadness
The reviews are in on Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s "Mater Dolorosa" ("Our Lady of Sorrows"): "He knows the secret of making flesh palpitate and translating life." "A prodigious workman of marble, he knows how to make it vibrate under his nervous and nimble hand." "[The bust] represents the most striking expression of modern tendencies in sculpture." Although these remarks were written in 1870 when Capreaux exhibited this white marble bust at the Paris Salon, viewers today still would agree. The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, purchased the master work, regarded as Carpeaux’s last great marble, in December 2006 from a private dealer in New York for a sum that can be estimated, given previous sales of Carpeaux works, in the mid- to high six figures. According to contemporary accounts, the model for the bust was a woman Carpeaux encountered in a Parisian street. She was grieving for the death of her child and the artist took her to his studio where she served as the model for this bust—"a head in tears, face emaciated, with a sincere attitude of maternal sadness, and the true tears of a mother," as another writer of the day commented. —D.M.
99 Rhead Record
Frederick H. Rhead was a Staffordshire potter who immigrated to the United States in 1902 and as David Rago, head of Rago Arts and Auction Center in Lambertville, New Jersey, says, "became the Forrest Gump of American art pottery." Explaining his comment, Rago notes that Rhead was involved in many areas of pottery and worked for several companies, although he is probably best known as the English "father of Fiesta ware." Last March Rago sold a rare Rhead vase for a record price of $516,000. Made in Santa Barbara, California, around 1915, the 11-inch-high piece is etched with a stylized landscape. The buyer was Rudy Ciccarello, founder and president of the Two Red Roses Foundation, a Florida-based institution dedicated to the acquisition, exhibition and restoration of works from the American Arts and Crafts Movement. "The vase captures the languor and sensibility of the California plein-air artists working at the same time and place," says Rago. He also points out the vase was made entirely by Rhead’s own hand, with no work delegated to assistants. —D.G.
100 Keep Up with the Joneses
While on a trip to New York City a couple of years ago, Gail Andrews, director of the Birmingham Museum of Art, saw a circa-1785 Gilbert Stuart portrait of John Jones of Frankley on view at Richard L. Feigen & Co. When she returned home to the museum, she shared her enthusiasm with the museum staff, citing it as a particularly fine example of Stuart’s work in England while he was apprenticed to Benjamin West. "Because our director was so passionate about her desire to purchase the work for our collection, it was decided that its acquisition would be the perfect way to honor her 30 years at the museum," says Graham Boettcher, the museum’s curator of American art. And, so, in a surprise ceremony, the museum presented the work to Andrews, whereupon it entered the permanent collection. Although the purchase price was not revealed, full-scale Stuart portraits can easily approach $1 million. —D.M.
email this article
print this article
digg this
del.icio.us
RSS