100 Top Treasures
November 2007
22 At Sea
On an early September evening in 1893, James McNeill Whistler was rowed out into the open ocean just off the Isle of Brehat, in Brittany. There, while the boatman steadied his boat and as Whistler timed his brushstrokes to the swells of the waves, he painted on a 7-inch by 10-inch mahogany panel a work he later titled "Violet and Blue: Among the Rollers." "I painted the panel out in the full sea," Whistler wrote in a letter to his most trusted picture restorer, "and some of the spray got upon it—and the salt made it a very long time in drying … Perhaps you might gently wash it with a little beer in a soft brush—and that might take off any salt…." Long cleaned of its salt, the painting was purchased by the Detroit Institute of Arts for $1,001,000 (including a 10 percent buyer premium) at a July 2006 auction held at Cottone’s Auctions in Rochester, New York (though news of the sale was withheld until December 2006). According to Kenneth John Myers, the DIA’s curator of American art, Whistler painted about 150 small plein-air works. "It has to be in the top 10 percent of his best works of his scale," Myers says. "The work, which shows just a greenish-blue sea in the foreground and a blue sky with some purple sunset clouds and a tiny, little sailboat on the horizon line, almost reads like a Rothko. This painting points to a moment in the history of art when Whistler is marking a stage away from representationalism toward abstraction." In addition to Myers’ visceral response to the painting as "gorgeous," he is also aware of the importance the work had to Whistler: "One of the things that struck me about this painting was that it came with an incredible paper trail, in part a reflection of how much Whistler valued it." In an 1894 letter Whistler wrote to Edward Kennedy, his primary New York dealer, the painter says of his three diminutive Brittany seascapes, of which this was one, that they "are, so all the world are agreed, the finest things of the kind I have painted." —D.M.
23 Toy Land
Made of cuddly stuffed toy animals clustered into planet-like spheres, Mike Kelley’s room-sized installation, despite its cryptic title, has a certain cozy appeal. Then again, "Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites" (1991–99), also seems to be some extra-terrestrial chimera designed to play with our perceptions. The work sold for $2,704,000 last November at Phillips de Pury & Company in New York. The orb-like assemblies of plush toys are surrounded by 10 wall-mounted fiberglass "deodorizers" that intermittently emit pine-scented sprays. Says Kelley: "My wish was to come up with something resembling a mix of Darth Vader’s mask and futuristic car design." —D.K.
24 Spotlight on Suburbia
Lisa D. Freiman, curator of contemporary art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, likens the color photographs of Gregory Crewdson to "full-scale genre films [that] incorporate the classic iconography of American suburban life." While the familiar details of suburbia do come into focus in the photographs, there is also often a "bizarre, mysterious" aura to the work, adds Freiman, who oversaw the museum’s purchase last December of Crewdson’s 1998 work "Untitled (Beer Dream)," a 47 ½-inch by 59 ½-inch print. "This untitled photography is an early one from the first year of Crewdson’s ‘Twilight’ series, produced between 1998 and 2002," says Freiman, who calls Crewdson "one of the most ambitious photographers working today." This photograph, Freiman says, "has many important characteristics associated with his work, such as a dreamlike aesthetic, an uncanny psychological use of light and dark and generic suburban houses, lawns and inhabitants." And as with many of Crewdson’s photographs, the scene depicted incorporates a concentrated burst of light, cinematic and disquieting. The museum would not disclose the final purchase price, but prints of Crewdson’s photographs routinely sell in the low five figures. —D.M.
25 Fruitful Arrangement
The most important watercolor by Paul Cézanne remaining in private hands was sold at Sotheby’s New York in May. Owned by Chinese art dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi for nearly two decades, "Nature morte au melon vert" (1902–06), brought $25.5 million. The work boasts a distinguished and varied provenance beginning with Ambroise Vollard, Cézanne’s first dealer, and has since been in the collections of Robert von Hirsch and the British Rail Pension Fund. It was at that 1989 sale that Eskenazi purchased the watercolor for a then-record $4.3 million. "As truly A-One paintings grow rarer, the market has embraced top prices for works on paper. This watercolor is the equivalent of a $60- to $80-million painting," comments David Norman, a chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art department. "It speaks to Cézanne’s quest to capture volume and construct pictorial space through the application of brilliant strokes of color." —D.G.
26 Lone Figure
A well-dressed woman of a certain age sits in a deserted hotel lobby looking pensively out of a window. That is the subject of Edward Hopper’s "Hotel Window" (1955), which sold at Sotheby’s New York last November for a record $26.8 million. "It is an example of the strength of the American paintings market and will make people take notice internationally that Hopper can command that price," says Peter Rathbone, co-director of Sotheby’s American paintings department. The large canvas (40" x 55") expresses the loneliness of American urban life in the mid-’50s but also, in Hopper’s own words, defined "the whole human condition." "It was a typical theme for Hopper," says Rathbone. "People are loners in their own world." —D.G.
27 Saintly Pose
Rembrandt was not interested in rendering idealized views—even of a saint. In "Saint James the Greater" (1661), he depicts the famous apostle who went from being a Galilean fisherman to one of Christ’s closest confidants with greasy, unkempt hair, dirty fingernails and the worn clothing typical of an exhausted pilgrim. As George Gordon, a senior specialist in the Sotheby’s Old Master paintings department in London wrote in a catalogue note, St. James "is unconcerned about outward appearance… [and] his arduous earthly life is stressed as a counterpart to his spirituality." Rembrandt’s portrait, theorized to be one of at least six portraits of New Testament figures he painted late in his career, sold at Sotheby’s New York in January for $25,800,000. The work, the only late religious painting by Rembrandt still in private hands, was consigned by the Shippy Foundation and sold to an anonymous buyer. Of this portrait and others by Rembrandt of New Testament figures, Gordon adds that "they are personal and humane in approach, contemplative and spiritual in character, brooding and thoughtful in mood, predominately monochromatic and dark in tone, but luminous in lighting and painted with a surprisingly broad palette." —D.M.
28 How Swede It Is
When Scott Erbes, curator of decorative arts at Louisville’s Speed Art Museum, embarked on a search for a great example of 1920s Swedish design, he kept finding two types of pieces: those in the decidedly Modernist context of the period or others that were an amalgam of more fanciful period styles, as exemplified in this cabinet by Carl Per Hendrik Malmsten. "The best Scandinavian design of the period that combines the Art Deco with the English Arts and Crafts is of exceptional quality," says Erbes, "and this cabinet from 1919 is one such example. And you don’t encounter this style much in other museums in this country." In post–World War I Sweden, Malmsten was regarded as the country’s most important designer of luxury furniture, and his creations gave rise to what the English art critic Morton Shand later referred to as "Swedish grace." Erbes secured the purchase of the cabinet in December from Jacksons 20th Century Design of Stockholm. "I can’t relate the actual purchase price," he says, "but material of this quality is undervalued in the marketplace and works like this can sell for between the mid- and upper five figures." —D.M.
29 Protective Figure
At the Sotheby’s New York sale of African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art in May, a Solomon Islands canoe prow ornament sold for $216,000. The distinctive carving, an anthropomorphic torso with oversized head, bent arms and inlaid blacklip oyster-shell eyes, once served as a figurehead for a large canoe used for public functions such as headhunting and ritual fishing expeditions. "Canoes had these representations of the spirit attached to the prow of the boat as protection, calling on them to bring calm waters," says Heinrich Schweizer, head of Sotheby’s department of African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art. Sotheby’s had previously sold the ornament in 1999 for $123,500. The carving has a distinguished provenance. It was acquired by Prague artist Adolf Hoffmeister in 1938 from Charles Ratton, a pioneer French dealer of Oceanic art. —D.G.
On an early September evening in 1893, James McNeill Whistler was rowed out into the open ocean just off the Isle of Brehat, in Brittany. There, while the boatman steadied his boat and as Whistler timed his brushstrokes to the swells of the waves, he painted on a 7-inch by 10-inch mahogany panel a work he later titled "Violet and Blue: Among the Rollers." "I painted the panel out in the full sea," Whistler wrote in a letter to his most trusted picture restorer, "and some of the spray got upon it—and the salt made it a very long time in drying … Perhaps you might gently wash it with a little beer in a soft brush—and that might take off any salt…." Long cleaned of its salt, the painting was purchased by the Detroit Institute of Arts for $1,001,000 (including a 10 percent buyer premium) at a July 2006 auction held at Cottone’s Auctions in Rochester, New York (though news of the sale was withheld until December 2006). According to Kenneth John Myers, the DIA’s curator of American art, Whistler painted about 150 small plein-air works. "It has to be in the top 10 percent of his best works of his scale," Myers says. "The work, which shows just a greenish-blue sea in the foreground and a blue sky with some purple sunset clouds and a tiny, little sailboat on the horizon line, almost reads like a Rothko. This painting points to a moment in the history of art when Whistler is marking a stage away from representationalism toward abstraction." In addition to Myers’ visceral response to the painting as "gorgeous," he is also aware of the importance the work had to Whistler: "One of the things that struck me about this painting was that it came with an incredible paper trail, in part a reflection of how much Whistler valued it." In an 1894 letter Whistler wrote to Edward Kennedy, his primary New York dealer, the painter says of his three diminutive Brittany seascapes, of which this was one, that they "are, so all the world are agreed, the finest things of the kind I have painted." —D.M.
23 Toy Land
Made of cuddly stuffed toy animals clustered into planet-like spheres, Mike Kelley’s room-sized installation, despite its cryptic title, has a certain cozy appeal. Then again, "Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites" (1991–99), also seems to be some extra-terrestrial chimera designed to play with our perceptions. The work sold for $2,704,000 last November at Phillips de Pury & Company in New York. The orb-like assemblies of plush toys are surrounded by 10 wall-mounted fiberglass "deodorizers" that intermittently emit pine-scented sprays. Says Kelley: "My wish was to come up with something resembling a mix of Darth Vader’s mask and futuristic car design." —D.K.
24 Spotlight on Suburbia
Lisa D. Freiman, curator of contemporary art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, likens the color photographs of Gregory Crewdson to "full-scale genre films [that] incorporate the classic iconography of American suburban life." While the familiar details of suburbia do come into focus in the photographs, there is also often a "bizarre, mysterious" aura to the work, adds Freiman, who oversaw the museum’s purchase last December of Crewdson’s 1998 work "Untitled (Beer Dream)," a 47 ½-inch by 59 ½-inch print. "This untitled photography is an early one from the first year of Crewdson’s ‘Twilight’ series, produced between 1998 and 2002," says Freiman, who calls Crewdson "one of the most ambitious photographers working today." This photograph, Freiman says, "has many important characteristics associated with his work, such as a dreamlike aesthetic, an uncanny psychological use of light and dark and generic suburban houses, lawns and inhabitants." And as with many of Crewdson’s photographs, the scene depicted incorporates a concentrated burst of light, cinematic and disquieting. The museum would not disclose the final purchase price, but prints of Crewdson’s photographs routinely sell in the low five figures. —D.M.
25 Fruitful Arrangement
The most important watercolor by Paul Cézanne remaining in private hands was sold at Sotheby’s New York in May. Owned by Chinese art dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi for nearly two decades, "Nature morte au melon vert" (1902–06), brought $25.5 million. The work boasts a distinguished and varied provenance beginning with Ambroise Vollard, Cézanne’s first dealer, and has since been in the collections of Robert von Hirsch and the British Rail Pension Fund. It was at that 1989 sale that Eskenazi purchased the watercolor for a then-record $4.3 million. "As truly A-One paintings grow rarer, the market has embraced top prices for works on paper. This watercolor is the equivalent of a $60- to $80-million painting," comments David Norman, a chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art department. "It speaks to Cézanne’s quest to capture volume and construct pictorial space through the application of brilliant strokes of color." —D.G.
26 Lone Figure
A well-dressed woman of a certain age sits in a deserted hotel lobby looking pensively out of a window. That is the subject of Edward Hopper’s "Hotel Window" (1955), which sold at Sotheby’s New York last November for a record $26.8 million. "It is an example of the strength of the American paintings market and will make people take notice internationally that Hopper can command that price," says Peter Rathbone, co-director of Sotheby’s American paintings department. The large canvas (40" x 55") expresses the loneliness of American urban life in the mid-’50s but also, in Hopper’s own words, defined "the whole human condition." "It was a typical theme for Hopper," says Rathbone. "People are loners in their own world." —D.G.
27 Saintly Pose
Rembrandt was not interested in rendering idealized views—even of a saint. In "Saint James the Greater" (1661), he depicts the famous apostle who went from being a Galilean fisherman to one of Christ’s closest confidants with greasy, unkempt hair, dirty fingernails and the worn clothing typical of an exhausted pilgrim. As George Gordon, a senior specialist in the Sotheby’s Old Master paintings department in London wrote in a catalogue note, St. James "is unconcerned about outward appearance… [and] his arduous earthly life is stressed as a counterpart to his spirituality." Rembrandt’s portrait, theorized to be one of at least six portraits of New Testament figures he painted late in his career, sold at Sotheby’s New York in January for $25,800,000. The work, the only late religious painting by Rembrandt still in private hands, was consigned by the Shippy Foundation and sold to an anonymous buyer. Of this portrait and others by Rembrandt of New Testament figures, Gordon adds that "they are personal and humane in approach, contemplative and spiritual in character, brooding and thoughtful in mood, predominately monochromatic and dark in tone, but luminous in lighting and painted with a surprisingly broad palette." —D.M.
28 How Swede It Is
When Scott Erbes, curator of decorative arts at Louisville’s Speed Art Museum, embarked on a search for a great example of 1920s Swedish design, he kept finding two types of pieces: those in the decidedly Modernist context of the period or others that were an amalgam of more fanciful period styles, as exemplified in this cabinet by Carl Per Hendrik Malmsten. "The best Scandinavian design of the period that combines the Art Deco with the English Arts and Crafts is of exceptional quality," says Erbes, "and this cabinet from 1919 is one such example. And you don’t encounter this style much in other museums in this country." In post–World War I Sweden, Malmsten was regarded as the country’s most important designer of luxury furniture, and his creations gave rise to what the English art critic Morton Shand later referred to as "Swedish grace." Erbes secured the purchase of the cabinet in December from Jacksons 20th Century Design of Stockholm. "I can’t relate the actual purchase price," he says, "but material of this quality is undervalued in the marketplace and works like this can sell for between the mid- and upper five figures." —D.M.
29 Protective Figure
At the Sotheby’s New York sale of African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art in May, a Solomon Islands canoe prow ornament sold for $216,000. The distinctive carving, an anthropomorphic torso with oversized head, bent arms and inlaid blacklip oyster-shell eyes, once served as a figurehead for a large canoe used for public functions such as headhunting and ritual fishing expeditions. "Canoes had these representations of the spirit attached to the prow of the boat as protection, calling on them to bring calm waters," says Heinrich Schweizer, head of Sotheby’s department of African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art. Sotheby’s had previously sold the ornament in 1999 for $123,500. The carving has a distinguished provenance. It was acquired by Prague artist Adolf Hoffmeister in 1938 from Charles Ratton, a pioneer French dealer of Oceanic art. —D.G.
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