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A natural pearl and diamond pendant-necklace, circa 1930

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A natural pearl and diamond pendant-necklace, circa 1930. Sold for £20,000 (€26,627). Photo Bonhams.

The drop-shaped natural pearl measuring 10.1 x 10.3 x 15.0mm, with rose-cut diamond cap, suspended from a pendant of geometric and scrolling design, pierced and set throughout with old brilliant and single-cut diamonds, with a central marquise-cut diamond within a single-cut diamond border, suspended from a fine adjustable chain, mounted in platinum, principal diamond approximately 1.10 carats, remaining diamonds approximately 1.75 carats total, pendant length 4.8cm

Accompanied by a report from The Gem & Pearl Laboratory stating that the pearl is natural, saltwater. Report number 09240, dated 14 January 2014.

Bonhams. FINE JEWELLERY, 30 Apr 2014 14:00 BST – LONDON, NEW BOND STREET


Square-Sided Jar, Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Wanli mark and period (1573–1620)

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Square-Sided Jar with Dragons, Phoenixes, Cranes, and Auspicious Symbols, Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Wanli mark and period (1573–1620)

Square-Sided Jar with Dragons, Phoenixes, Cranes, and Auspicious SymbolsMing dynasty (1368–1644), Wanli mark and period (1573–1620). Porcelain painted in underglaze blue. H. 7 7/8 in.; diam. of top 3 1/2 in. Gift of Russell Tyson, 1954.472. The Art Institute of Chicago ©2015 The Art Institute of Chicago.

Dish with Fish Swimming in Lotus Pond, Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Wanli mark and period (1573–1620)

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Dish with Fish Swimming in Lotus Pond, Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Wanli mark and period (1573–1620)

Dish with Fish Swimming in Lotus Pond, Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Wanli mark and period (1573–1620). Porcelain painted in underglaze blue with reserve decoration. Diam. 15.3 cm (6 in.). Bequest of Russell Tyson, 1964.659. The Art Institute of Chicago©2015 The Art Institute of Chicago,

Girolamo Francesco Mazzola, il Parmigianino (Parma 1503-1540 Casalmaggiore), A group of figures standing by a column

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Lot 21. Girolamo Francesco Mazzola, il Parmigianino (Parma 1503-1540 Casalmaggiore), A group of figures standing by a columnEstimate USD 200,000 - USD 300,000 © Christie's Image Ltd 2017

pen and brown ink, brown wash heightened with white, made up along the edges; 6 x 4 in. (15.1 x 10.2 cm.)

ProvenanceAntonio Maria Zanetti; his heirs, from whom acquired by
Giovanni Antonio Armano (according to the engraved inscription on the related etching by Rosaspina).
T. Philipe (L. 2451). 
Anonymous sale; Rieuner & Associés, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 12 April 2008, lot 12.
with Jean-Luc Baroni, London (cat. 2009, no. 3), where acquired by the present owner.

Literature: A.E. Popham, Catalogue of the Drawings of Parmigianino, New Haven and London, 1971, I, under nos. O.R. 93 and 521, II, pl. 202.
S. Folds McCullagh and L. M. Giles, Italian Drawings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago, 1997, under no. 217.

NotesA relatively new addition to Parmigianino’s œuvre, the present drawing was published by A.E. Popham in 1971 as a lost work. Until recently, it was known only through a reproductive print executed by Francesco Rosaspina (1762-1841) when the sheet was in the collection of the Venetian merchand-amateur Giovanni Antonio Armano (1751- after 1823), who acquired at least 70 Parmigianino drawings from the heirs of Antonio Maria Zanetti (1679-1757).

Datable to Parmigianino’s Roman years, the sheet features a series of standing draped women and possibly relates to the artist’s Marriage of the Virgin, an ambitious composition developed around 1525-27. Never brought to completion, the Marriage of the Virgin is known today through several preparatory drawings, including a sheet in the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (inv. EBA 223; D. Franklin, The Art of Parmigianino, New Haven, 2003, no. 42) for which the present drawing may constitute a detailed study for the figures standing in the right section. A drawing with a group of nine men, now in The Art Institute of Chicago (Fig. 1; inv. 1978.275), has been connected to the same project and possibly formed with this sheet a larger group of standing figure participating in a ceremony. 

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Fig. 1. Parmigianino, Group of Nine Standing Figures, Chicago, The Art Institute (Margaret Day Blake Collection, inv. 1978.275).

Deeply inspired by the classical monumentality of Raphael’s Vatican frescoes in the Stanze, Parmigianino brought his elegant draughtsmanship to maturity in Rome. It is expressed here with his characteristic looping, calligraphic penwork combined with pools of wash.

Christie's. Old Master Drawings, 24 January 2017, New York, Rockefeller Center

Cup and stand decorated with lotus seeds and petals, Korea, Goryeo dynasty (918–1392), first half of the 12th century

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Cup and stand decorated with lotus seeds and petals, Korea, Goryeo dynasty (918–1392), first half of the 12th century. toneware with incised design under celadon glaze. Overall: H. 3 7/8 in. (9.8 cm); Diam. 6 1/2 in. (16.5 cm). Rogers Fund, 1916, 16.143.2a, b © 2000–2017 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Lotus seeds and petals are carved on and around the raised center of this stand. When the cup is placed atop it, only the petals are visible.

Brush holder with lotus decoration, Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910), mid-19th century

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Brush holder with lotus decoration, Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910), mid-19th century. Porcelain with openwork design. H. 5 1/4 in. (13.3 cm); Diam. 5 1/4 in. (13.3 cm). Hewitt Fund, 1911, 11.142.1© 2000–2017 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Scholarly men of the Joseon dynasty collected and used tasteful accessories, such as this piece and the water droppers, for writing or painting. The lotus is an emblem of the Confucian scholar aptly used here to ornament an object for his study.

Gold head-dress, Ming dynasty (1368-1644)

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Gold head-dress, Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Height: 4 inches (circa). British Museum, 1938,0524.247© Trustees of the British Museum

A pair of gold pillow ends, Ming dynasty, Xuande reign (1425-1435)

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A pair of gold pillow ends, Ming dynasty, Xuande reign (1425-1435). 18.3 x 14.6 cm. British Museum, 1949,1213.1-2 © Trustees of the British Museum

decorated with two dragons and a flaming pearl among clouds. Two rows of inlaid semi-precious stones frame the dragons. Both plaques are pierced around the edge for attachment to a pillow. Worked in relief with chased detail and openwork, and inlaid with semi-precious stones. 

Notes: The plaques are pierced around the edge for attachment to a robe, probably for imperial use. Because they were regarded as the most valuable materials, gold and silver were limited in their use by Ming sumptuary laws. Such plaques can be seen as high-quality versions of embroidered rank badges. They are superb examples of early Ming jewellery.Michaelson 2006:

From 1652 all civilian and military officials were required to wear rank badges, displayed on three-quarter-length dark overcoats. These badges were smaller versions of the textiles decorated with birds and animal designs that had been applied directly or woven into robes during the Ming dynasty. In the Ming and Qing dynasties the imperial nobility wore round badges (representing heaven) decorated with dragons, while civil officials wore square ones (representing the earth) displaying different types of birds, according to their rank. Military officials wore square badges displaying animals, symbolizing courage. Ming emperors and their immediate family wore badges bearing dragons while the empress wore a phoenix, but in the Qing dynasty women wore the same badge as their husbands. This gold garment plaque, one of a pair, can be regarded as a high-quality version of the cloth rank badge. It was probably made for imperial use, because in the Ming dynasty only the emperor could use items decorated with five-clawed dragons. 

 


Bowl with silver gilt mount, Ming dynasty, about 1522–66, mounts dated about 1720–80

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Bowl with silver gilt mount, Ming dynasty, about 1522–66, mounts dated about 1720–80. Porcelain with incised and underglaze cobalt-blue decoration, and silver-gilt mounts, Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province; mounted in Germany; 12,3 x 19,8 cm. On loan from Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, PDF,A.691 © Trustees of the British Museum

This simple blue-and-white porcelain Jiajing period (AD 1522-66) bowl has been transformed in Europe by silversmiths. These craftsmen have added elaborate ormolu mounts as handles, foot and cover, transforming the bowl into a soup dish. The mounts are impressed with symbols including a pineapple. These are the marks of craftsmen working in Augsburg - then an independent state in Bavaria (Germany). Inside in underglaze blue is an eagle perched on a rock and waves in a roundel in the centre. The base has an inscription 長命富貴 (chang ming fu gui, 'Longlife riches and honour').

Attributed to Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Kitchen Still Life

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Lot 31. Attributed to Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Seville 1599-1660  Madid), Kitchen Still Life, oil on canvas, 28 by 36 5/8  in.; 71.5 by 93 cm. Estimate 1,500,000 — 2,000,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

Provenance: Private collection, Normandy, since the 19th century;
By whom sold, Evreux, Etude François Thion, Alliance Enchères. Cabinet Turquin et Mauduit, 11 April 1999 (as Ignacio Arias) for 575,000 FF;
Where acquired by the present owner.

Exhibited: New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, on loan, August 2002 - April 2005 (as Spanish School, 17th century);
Detroit, Detroit Institute of Art, on loan, March 2015 - September 2016 (as Attributed to Diego Velázquez).

NotesIn the context of the pan-European development of naturalism around 1600, in which artists in various urban centers began almost simultaneously to scrutinize their immediate surroundings and to probe human nature in novel ways, the learned Sevillian painter and teacher Francisco Pacheco (1564-1644) – to whom the twelve-year-old Diego Velázquez, his future son-in-law, was apprenticed for six years in 1611– appealed to his young pupils’ sense of modernity by couching his lessons in the “Imitation of Nature” in terms of ancient precedent.  In his erudite and progressive treatise Arte de la pintura, written some years later and published posthumously in 1649, Pacheco pointed to the stories recounted by Pliny the Elder in the first century C.E. of ancient Greek painters who stunned and delighted the public with their compelling imitations of the natural appearances of things.  He called these pictures bodegones and asked rhetorically: 

"Well, then, are bodegones not worthy of esteem?  Of course they are, when they are painted as my son-in-law paints them, rising in this field so as to yield to no one; then they are deserving of the highest esteem.  From these beginnings and in his portraits…he hit upon the true imitation of nature, thereby stimulating the spirits of many artists with his powerful example."1

The most commonly used catalogue raisonné of Velázquez’s works today includes – with some reservations related to condition – nine bodegones among the surviving canon of the artist’s authentic works. These paintings (generically named after the low-class eating places where ordinary people could purchase a meal) were extremely popular from the time of their creation, and ever since.  Some of these compositions contained biblical references, while others were completely secular in content.  Some were copied numerous times, both in the immediate aftermath of their creation, and years, even centuries, later.  By the 18th century, they were already being collected abroad by the likes of Catherine the Great and others, and by the end of the 19th century practically all of them had left Spain. Today not a single example within the prevailing Velázquez canon remains in Spain.  Since the early 20th century, all of the major examples have either belonged to public collections or been frequently exhibited in them; today all belong to museums (five of them in the United Kingdom) and have thus been freely assessed by the international community of specialists for a century, resulting in a lively and continually shifting disagreement on specific attributions.  In 1999, a previously unknown painting related to these came to light privately in France.  Now owned in Switzerland, the work has been on extended loan in recent years to two major museums in the United States where it could be seen, and it is the painting offered here.

The newly discovered painting is a bodegón representing kitchen utensils and other makings of a meal.  But as a picture devoid of any human figure, it is unique among all the known paintings of this type by Velázquez.  Viewed from a rather high viewpoint, the depicted objects include a rustic wooden bench upon which is set a glazed ceramic bowl, a simple tin pitcher, and a garlic.  Underneath it, on the floor, is a stack of two chipped, white bowls containing a mound of small eggplants, a brass mortar and pestle, and several red onions.  To the left, in the foreground, is a glazed ceramic stewpot being heated on a well-used stone brazier that gives a vivid glimpse of the fire burning within it.  With a strong contrast of light and shadow, the modeling of all these forms is sensuous and skillful, with great focus on the tactile distinctions of the various materials depicted.

From the moment of its appearance around 2000, the qualities of this painting were compared by those who viewed it to ones found in Velázquez bodegones like The Old Woman Frying Eggs, 1618, in the National Gallery of Scotland (fig. 1) or Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, 1618, in the National Gallery, London (fig. 2).  Indeed, the inanimate objects depicted in both these pictures offer compelling comparisons to those found in this newly discovered picture – beginning with the oil-stained and dirty brazier and glazed terracotta pottery emphasized by the sparkling highlights of white impasto, in The Old Woman Frying Eggs, as well as the warm glow of the brass mortar and pestle, or the dull sheen of tin seen in the both the oil lamps hanging on the wall behind the old woman’s head, or the pitcher on the bench in the new picture.  This is to say nothing of the red onions seen in both paintings, or the onions and garlic found in both the new painting and in Christ in the House of Martha and Mary.  The similarities are particularly close in the way the artist has observed the dried, crinkled roots of the red onions and garlic and studied the brittle, crumbling skin of a deconstructed garlic.  But in the two more famous paintings, such a skillful focus on the physical properties of things is paralleled by the palpable – if still a bit frozen – evocation of the human figures.

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Fig. 1. Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez, An Old Woman Cooking Eggs, 1618 © Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh/Bridgeman Images.

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 Fig; 3. Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez, Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, c. 1618 (oil on canvas. National Gallery, London, UK / Bridgeman Images

Velázquez used this same compositional conceit – a holdover from mannerist tradition – in another bodegón of this period, the well-known Christ at Emmaus, now in the National Gallery of Ireland (fig. 4), in which a mulata slave girl in the foreground pauses in her work, leaning on the table as though weary, staring blankly, unaware that behind her the risen Christ has revealed himself to his two disciples.  Although not at all well preserved, this painting achieves  a degree of psychological subtlety absent in any of the others.  Yet not satisfied with this, Velázquez painted a secularized version of the scene – one without the religious scene through the rear wall – which is in the Art Institute of Chicago (fig. 5).4  Equally damaged as the Dublin version, this painting has nevertheless recently been given a judicious and redeeming restoration that has allowed its considerable poetry to shine forth.  When both versions were shown side by side in last year’s Velázquez retrospective at the Grand Palais, in Paris, it was perfectly obvious that the Chicago version is one of the milestones of the artist’s early career.This assessment matters in view of what appears to be a literary reference to it – or rather a version of it – by Antonio Palomino, one of our principal sources of knowledge of Velázquez’s life and work.  And it matters even more in the present context, because of its documentation of lost works that confirm a larger oeuvre than the truncated one that has come down to us. 

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Fig. 4. Detail of Fig. 2

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Fig. 5. Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez, Three Musicians, circa 1616-17 (oil on canvas), Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, GermanyBridgeman Images.

In referring in his Life of Velázquez to the young artist’s success at painting humble people in their surroundings, Palomino refers to two lost bodegones, which may have been a pair, one of which was signed and represented a youth counting money while a dog eyed victuals on the table at which his master sat.  He goes on to describe its pendant:

"…Like this is another work in which one sees a board, used for a table, where there is a portable stove and, on top of it, a pot boiling, covered with a bowl, the flare, flames and sparks being vividly seen; there are also a tin-lined kettle, a jar of unglazed clay, some plates and bowls, a glazed jar, a mortar with its pestle and a head of garlic close to it; and one can see a basket of esparto hanging from a hook on the wall with a rag and other worthless stuff; and for guardian of this there is a boy, a jar in his hand and a coif on his head, who looks a ridiculous and comic fellow in this ignoble costume."6

It has long been noted that parts of this description describe exactly what one sees in the Chicago bodegón (notwithstanding Palomino’s mistake in identifying the figure in the painting as a boy rather than a young woman).  Yet he also refers to items not in the Chicago picture, such as the brazier with the boiling pot, where one can vividly see the fire and sparks within.  This has led to speculation about whether or not the Chicago painting – in addition to being a secular version of the work in Dublin – might not have been cut down, in which case the gaze of the maidservant would originally have been in the direction of the brazier, or whether Palomino was referring to yet a third picture with this motif.7  None of these would be unusual within the artist’s observed pattern of reusing and refining individual motifs as he proceeded to grow as an artist during this period.  Pertinent to whether or not the work offered here could have been part of the same composition as the Chicago picture, it must be admitted that it is unlikely the painter would have included two mortars and pestles in the same picture.  But Palomino’s reference is otherwise important because it confirms that the artist obviously dealt with the motif of the brazier on other recorded occasions than in the Edinburgh painting (though in this case without a bowl covering the boiling pot that Palomino described in the lost work).

To resolve this question, an analysis of the Chicago painting and the current lot was commissioned from Dr. Don H. Johnson, of the non-profit Thread Count Automation Project, which in recent years has provided, through its computer analysis of weave distortions, valuable insights into the canvases of Velázquez, Van Gogh, and the Impressionists.8  This report, dated November 2016, revealed that, while the two pictures were both painted on a plain-weave canvas of a similar type, only perhaps as much as 10 to 20 centimeters has been cut from the left side of the Chicago painting, and its overall height and shape have not been altered greatly.  The weave analysis of the current lot showed no signs of its having been altered in shape or size, this despite the fact that x-ray photography (fig. 6) reveals that an old center strainer bar left a mark off center that suggests a possible slight excision on the right side of the composition, even though the mark left by the original right-hand vertical stretcher bar is also still visible.  The only conclusions that can be drawn from this are that the excision was either very small or the vertical bar was always off center.9

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Fig. 6. Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez, Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus, circa 1618-20 (oil on canvas), National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, IrelandBridgeman Images.

Since it is certain now that the present lot is still in its original format, then one has to return to the fact that it is unique among those bodegones attributed to Velázquez in as much as it contains no figures.  As part of his teaching method, Pacheco was evidently trying to encourage his pupils to develop their mimetic skills by focusing their attention on inanimate objects whose stillness rewarded patient observation, and Velázquez was not his only apprentice who was exposed to this method.  A still life very similar to this one showing a similar bench with some large gourds and peppers on top, along with a bowl of eggplants and a stoneware mortar and pestle on the floor, appeared quite coincidentally in an auction in Mallorca around the same time as the present lot.10  A work by an obviously different hand, it is nevertheless very well preserved, unlined, and still on its original stretcher.  Therefore, although it is smaller than the present lot, we can be certain that it was not cut down and never contained any figural element.  Its configuration indeed suggests that both it and the present lot were probably painted in Pacheco’s studio as a test of technical skill. 

Aside from Velázquez, there were other student painters in the workshop at the same time.  One of them was Alonso Cano, two years Velázquez’s junior, who, although he coincided with Velázquez in the studio for only seven months in 1616-17, went on to study for five years with Pacheco.  No such works by him are known or have ever been cited.  Another was Francisco López Caro (1598-1661), a very mediocre talent who was also a childhood friend of Velázquez, but by whom only one known painting exists.11  That picture (fig. 7), today in the Museo del Prado, indeed is relevant to our discussion of the present lot, but the comparison serves only to underscore the tremendous gulf that exists between the skill of Velázquez, on the one hand, and, as Peter Cherry has written, an artist whose “drawing is weak, and [whose] handling of paint is unsubtle.”12  Velázquez’s short-lived younger brother Juan was also a journeyman painter, but is not documented among Pacheco’s apprentices, and no works by him are known or have ever been cited in the art historical literature. 

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Fig. 7. Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez, Kitchen Scenecirca 1618-20 (oil on canvas), The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA, Robert Waller Memorial FundBridgeman Images 

Not all the questions raised by this Kitchen Still Life can be answered with present knowledge, but the fact remains that its taut, confident naturalism and density of construction find no parallels among the numerous copies of Velázquez’s early bodegones or their many shallow imitations that have come down to us.  Where the painting does resonate powerfully is with the handful of works from around 1618 (in Edinburgh, London, Dublin, and Chicago) where, unlike any Spaniard before him – with the possible exception of Juan Sánchez Cotán in Toledo – Velázquez lavished upon the most humble of things in daily life a degree of seriousness that few artists had done before.  

William B. Jordan

1.  Quoted in translation from Enriqueta Harris, Velázquez, Oxford, 1982, pp. 194.
2.  José López-Rey, Velázquez. Catalogue Raisonné, Cologne (Taschen), 1999, vol. II, cat. nos. 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 16, 17, 18, 24.
3.  William B. Jordan in Spanish Still Life in the Golden Age: 1600-1650, exh. cat., Fort Worth (Kimbell Art Museum), 1985, p. 83.
4.  The religious scene in the background of the Dublin painting had been painted over at an unknown date, being discovered only during a cleaning in 1933.  Before that time, the Dublin version, then in the collection of Sir Alfred Beit, had sometimes been considered a copy of the Chicago painting.
5.  For a fortuna critica of the Chicago painting, see Guillaume Kientz in Velázquez, exh. cat. Paris (Réunion des musées nationaux/Grand Palais et Musée du Louvre), 2015, p. 124, cat. no. 16.
6.  Antonio Palomino, El museo pictórico y escala óptica, Madrid 1724 (ed. 1947), p. 893 (quoted in translation from López-Rey, op. cit., p. 18, cat. no. 18).
7.  See, for example, the discussion in Manuela Mena in Velázquez y Sevilla, exh. cat., Sevilla (Monasterio de la Cartuja de Santa María de la Cuevas), 1999, p. 178, cat. no. 82.
8.  The Project is the joint effort of Dr. C. Richard, Johnson, Jr., Cornell University; Dr. Don H. Johnson, Rice University; and Dr. Robert G. Erdmann, Rijksmuseum/University of Amsertdam.
9.  This odd bit of internal history in the object was commented upon in the conservation treatment report by Simon Howell, of Shepherd Conservation, Ltd, Wimbledon, where the picture was cleaned and restored in the year 2000.  Mr. Howell noted that a small amount of canvas could have been excised at the right, but that nevertheless there were nearly identical swag marks from the stretching process visible on all four sides.  This conforms with Don Johnson’s findings.
10.  Christie’s, Ca’n Puig y Castillo de Bendinat, Mallorca, Pintura, muebles, plata, porcelana y obras de arte pertenecientes a una familia de la nobleza mallorquina, 24-25 May 1999, lot 787, as Escuela española, circa 1620.
11.  William B. Jordan in Javier Portús (ed.), Donación de Plácido Arango Arias al Museo del Prado, Madrid (Museo del Prado), 2016, cat. no. 8.  For more on artists who were Velázquez’s youthful contemporaries, see Enriqueta Harris, “The Question of Velázquez’s Assistants, Velázquez in Seville, exh. cat., Edinburgh (National Gallery of Scotland), 1996, pp. 77-78.
12.  See Peter Cherry, Arte y naturaleza. El bodegón español en el Siglo de Oro, Madrid 1999, pp. 130-31. 

Sotheby's. Master Paintings & Sculpture Evening Sale, New York, 25 Jan 2017, 06:00 PM

Botticelli and Studio, The Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saint John the Baptist and an Angel

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Lot 11. Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, called Botticelli, and Studio (Firenze, 1445 - 1510), The Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saint John the Baptist and an Angel, tempera on panel, a tondo, diameter: 34 3/8  in.; 86.3 cm. Estimate 600,000 — 800,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

ProvenancePresumably sold by the Estate of Dominique Vivant Denon, Paris, Commissaire-Priseur Masson, "Description des objets d'arts qui compensent le cabinet de feu M. le Baron V," 2 May 1826 (as Botticelli, for 265 francs);
Del Nero collection, Rome, before 1890;
Leo Nardus (né Leonardus Salomon), Paris, by 1925 (as Botticelli);
By whom offered, Amsterdam, Mak van Waay, 26-27 May 1925, lot 9 (as Botticelli, bought in);
Leo Nardus (né Leonardus Salomon) and Arnold van Buuren, Haarlem (in joint ownership);
Confiscated from the van Buuren residence, Haarlem, August 1942 and transferred to the bank Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co, Amsterdam;
By whom sold, Cologne, Lempertz, 2 June 1943, lot 7 (as School Sandro Botticelli, sold for RM 19,000);
Private collection, Cologne;
By whom sold, Cologne, Van Ham Kunstauktionen, 14 November 2014, lot 502 (as Botticelli and Studio, sold pursuant to a settlement agreement between the consignor and the heir of Leo Nardus);
There acquired by the present owner. 

Literature: G. Mandel, in C. Bo, L'opera completa del Botticelli, Milan 1967, p. 99 under cat. no. 93 (as a variant of the Galleria Borghese tondo);
R. Lightbown, Botticelli, Paris 1990, p. 401, under cat. no. c50 (as a variant of the Abernon tondo);
N. Pons, Botticelli, Catalogo Completo, Milan 1989, p. 80, under cat. no. 91(as a variant of the Galleria Borghese tondo).

NotesThis impressive Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist and an Angel is a late work by Sandro Botticelli, one of the most distinctive and recognizable figures of the Italian Renaissance.  The tondo was most likely painted in the last five years of the artist’s life, between 1505 and 1510 with the assistance of members of his studio.  The composition is known in different iterations executed by both Botticelli himself and various members of his workshop.  According to Ronald Lightbown, each of the variants ultimately derives from a Madonna and Child with an Angel, formerly in the collection of Lord Abernon, of which an almost identical version is in the collection of the Bob Jones University, Greenville (fig. 1).1 In the Abernon and Greenville tondi, the Christ Child stands upright in his mother’s lap, while in the present painting he is cradled in a fold of her mantle, his legs kicking to the right.  The same model for these figures recurs in Botticelli’s Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist in the São Paolo Museum of Art, São Paolo (fig. 2) and again in the tondo of the same subject by a follower, this time with an older Saint John, in the Indianapolis Museum of Art (inv. no. 2014.85).  The model for each of the Madonna figures is the same, down to the green lining of the mantle folded over her knees and the forefinger of her left hand tucked under its trim.  The background and accompanying lateral figures vary, presumably according to the desires of the patron.

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Fig. 1. Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, called Sandro Botticelli (and Studio), Madonna and Child with an Angel / Bob Jones University

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Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen 1577 - 1640 Antwerpt), Study of a Horse with a Rider

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Lot 17. Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen 1577 - 1640 Antwerpt), Study of a Horse with a Rider, oil on canvas, 46 1/2  by 22 in., 118 by 56 cm. Estimate 1,000,000 — 1,500,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

ProvenancePossibly With Galerie Georges Petit, Paris;
Lucien Lambiotte, Brussels, by 1955;
Eric Lippens, Vlezenbeek, Belgium;
Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christie’s, 23 June 2015, lot 11 (as After Sir Anthony Van Dyck, measuring 118 by 82 cm., with later additions);
There purchased by the present owner. 

Exhibited: Genoa, Palazzo dell’Academia, Cento Opere di Van Dyck, June - August 1955, no. 5 (as by Sir Anthony van Dyck).

NotesThis newly discovered work is a rare example of a large-scale animal study by Rubens. Until recently, the painting had been associated with Sir Anthony Van Dyck, and was exhibited as a work by that artist in Genoa in 1955. However, the picture’s attribution has been impossible to discern with any certainty until now, thanks to a later added background that all but overwhelmed the original (fig. 1). The removal of this later addition has revealed a work of high quality, and a typical example of the spirited and rapidly painted oil sketches – seemingly "drawn by the brush"– for which Rubens is so celebrated.

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The painting can be dated to the early 1610s, when Rubens made a series of equestrian studies for use in both portraits and subject pictures. Such studies were required to help him cope with the increasing demands on his time. By his mid-thirties Rubens was one of the leading painters in Northern Europe, and commissions flooded in. To maximize his output he began to rely on studio assistants to help him, and key to guiding them wasa large number of studies by Rubens himself like the present example. Today, Rubens’ best known studies are the characterful heads designed to be repeated (or in modern parlance "cut and pasted") in multi-figural compositions. As a result, we often see the same characters appear with unnerving regularity in Rubens’ larger works (and sometimes even within the same painting).1

But the same was true of Rubens’ equestrian studies. For example, the same horse in the same pose can be seen in a number of Rubens’ equestrian portraits from this stage of his career, including his 12 foot high Portrait of Don Rodrigo Calderon on Horseback dated to 1612-15 (fig. 2, Royal Collection),the lost circa 1615 Portrait of Albert, Archduke of Austria,and the slightly later Portrait of Ladislas-Sigismund, Prince of Poland (Wawel Castle, Cracow).4 The two extant portraits are today believed to have been painted with significant studio assistance. Since such large works would have been among the most complex for Rubens’ assistants to master it is hardly surprising that he sought to replicate a well-established pattern through the repeated use of one original study, which would be copied and scaled up by assistants. Rubens would then apply much of the final detail himself. A concession to originality in such pictures was to change the color of the horse from grey to brown.

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Fig. 2. Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Don Rodrigo Calderon on Horseback, oil on canvas / Royal Collection Trust© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2016 / Bridgeman Images

But the original studies on which Rubens’ early equestrian works were based has until now remained something of a mystery. Three of the poses he used most often have been known through a now lost painting formerly in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, which was traditionally called The Riding School.5  In 1987 Hans Vlieghe recognized that the Berlin picture was not in fact intended to show an actual riding school, but was perhaps instead a “studio ‘prop’ [to be used] whenever an equestrian portrait was called for.”6 The Berlin picture showed three horses arranged together on a single canvas, on a landscape background, and in the three "attitudes" 17th Century viewers might have expected to see horses performing. The horse on the left was that used in the above mentioned equestrian portraits. The central horse is a semi-rearing grey horse in profile (performing a pesade), which can be seen in the large Wolf and Fox Hunt of about 1616 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) painted by Rubens and his studio.7 The horse on the right showed a "piebald" horse from behind. This pose, evidently unsuitable for both portraits and hunting compositions, is only known to have been used once by Rubens: in the foreground of his circa 1630 Henry IV at the Siege of Amiens in the Gothenburg Museum of Art (fig. 3).8

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Jean-Honoré Fragonard (Grasse 1732 - 1806 Paris), The Fountain of Love

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Lot 49. Jean-Honoré Fragonard (Grasse 1732 - 1806 Paris), The Fountain of Love, oil on canvas, 18 1/2  by 14 3/4  in.; 47 by 37.5 cm. Estimate 1,500,000 — 2,500,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

ProvenanceMonsieur Berend;
His sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 2 December 1889, lot 4;
There acquired by Marcel Bernstein;
Thence by descent to Henry Bernstein;
Bartoloni Collection;
With Wildenstein, New York;
Irwin Laughlin, Washington, D.C.;
Thence by descent to his daughter, Mrs. Hubert Chanler, New York;
By whom sold, London, Sotheby’s, 10 June 1959, lot 22;
With Wildenstein, New York;
From whom acquired by the late collector in 1988.

ExhibitedParis, Champs de Mars, Exposition des arts au début du siècle, 1891, no. 367;
Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art; Kyoto, Municipal Museum, Fragonard, March-June 1980, no. 81;
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fragonard, February-May 1988, no. 283A;
New York, Colnaghi, 1789 French Art During the Revolution, October-November 1989, no. 23;
Williamstown, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, Consuming Passion: Fragonard’s Allegories of Love, October 2007 – May 2008.

LiteratureG. Bourcard, Catalogue de dessins, gouaches, estampes, tableaux du XVIIIe siècle, Paris 1893, p. 190;
P. de Nolhac, J.-H. Fragonard, Paris 1906, p. 116;
G. Wildenstein, The Paintings of Fragonard, London 1960, pp. 28, 308, cat. no. 487,
reproduced fig. 200;
Wallace Collection Catalogues: Pictures and Drawings, London 1968, p. 117;
D. Wildenstein and G. Mandel, L’opera completa di Fragonard, Milan 1972, p. 109, cat. no. 518, reproduced fig. 518;
J. Ingamells, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Pictures III: French before 1815, London 1985, p. 155;
J.-P. Cuzin, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, vie et oeuvre-catalogue complet des peintures, Fribourg and Paris 1987, p. 332, cat. no. 374, reproduced, and cited p. 332, under no. 373, reproduced p. 212, fig. 263;
D. Sutton, “Selected Prefaces…, Jean-Honoré Fragonard: The World as Illusion,” Apollo, CXXV, February 1987, 300, pp. 112-113, reproduced p. 111, fig. 10;
P. Rosenberg, Tout l’oeuvre peint de Fragonard, Paris 1989, p. 118, cat. no. 409;
C. Bailey in 1789: French Art During the Revolution, exhibition catalogue, New York 1989, pp. 190-194, cat. no. 190, reproduced;
A. Molotiu, Fragonard’s Allegories of Love, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles 2007, pp. 37, 40-41, reproduced p. 40, fig. 30.

NotesThe Fountain of Love is one of the most distinguished creations of Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s mature career.  Executed circa 1785 as part of a series of four allegorical portrayals of love, this exquisite image has enchanted audiences for centuries with its display of delicacy and dynamism. In his portrayal of a theme with origins in classical poetry and medieval literature, a pair of lovers, bathed in an iridescent light and crowned with roses, rush out of a shadowy garden towards the edge of a fountain, their hair and clothes billowing behind them from the urgency of their movement. Plump putti frolicking in the spray of the fountain offer the pair a cup of its magical waters.  Balancing precariously on one foot, the two eagerly lean forward hoping to drink from the cup and quench the thirst of their blossoming yet passionate love.

Several autograph versions of The Fountain of Love are known: one signed example is in the Wallace Collection, London, and another more recent rediscovery, formerly in the collection of Lady Holland, was acquired in 1999 by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (figs. 1, 2).  The composition is also known through Nicolas François Regnault's 1785 engraving (fig. 3).  Increasingly popular and widely circulated, this print found its way into many private collections, and Marguerite Gérard, Fragonard’s sister-in-law and an accomplished artist in her own right, even included the print in her self-portrait, L’élève intéressante (1786, private collection, fig. 4). Scholars have long recognized the present version of The Fountain of Love, with its fluid and impressionistic brushstrokes, as an early realization of the composition by the artist. Characterized by Pierre Rosenberg as an "étude merveilleusement vaporeuse, peinte avec une grande légèreté," this work is not only smaller in size and pearlier in tone, but it also showcases a dynamic freedom unmatched by the other autograph examples.1  

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Fig.1. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Fountain of Love, oil on canvas, Wallace Collection, London.

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Fig. 2. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Fountain of Love, oil on canvas, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

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Fig. 3. Nicolas François Regnault, after Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Fountain of Love, engraving, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

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Fig. 4. Marguerite Gérard, L'Élève intéressante, oil on canvas, Private Collection.  

A quintessential Rococo artist, Fragonard illustrated themes of love and passion throughout his prolific and inventive career.  From the 1750s to the 1770s, many of his lighthearted portrayals of lovers dressed in contemporary clothing and reveling in lush gardens found their way into the private cabinets of French collectors. A notable example from this period is The Progress of Love (early 1770s, The Frick Collection, New York), a group of four allegorical paintings commissioned by Madame du Barry, the official mistress of Louis XV, as decorations for her pleasure palace at the Château de Louveciennes. Ultimately, however, she returned the paintings to Fragonard, replacing them with a neoclassical series of paintings by Joseph Marie Vien. While the reasons for her rejection are unknown, this replacement paralleled a larger movement toward a rediscovery of antiquity by the collecting public during the second half of the 18th century.

During the 1780s, Fragonard revisited his allegorical portrayals of love with a new series composed of four compositions, one of which was The Fountain of Love.  By this decade, a general interest in classical history had already been woven into French culture for over two decades.  Although he had spent much of his career working for private clients and avoiding public exposure, this allegorical group was emblematic of Fragonard's response to this shift in taste among the wider public. Here, he abandoned his characteristic bucolic and fête galante scenes championed by his predecessors, Antoine Watteau and François Boucher, in favor of works imbued with a classical past.  Furthermore, attesting to the popularity of this series among the wider art-buying public, a number of versions are also known of the other three compositions in the series: The Oath to Love (circa 1780; Rothschild Collection, Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire; Musée d’art et d’Histoire de la Provence, Grasse), The Invocation to Love (1780; private collection, New York; Musée du Louvre, Paris), and the famed Sacrifice of the Rose (late 1780s; the Resnick Collection, Beverly Hills; private collection, Paris; Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo, Buenos Aires).

While the present work preserves elements from Fragonard’s earlier career, including the playful putti and the soft atmosphere, Fragonard’s vision in this version of The Fountain of Love was distinctly unique.  This visionas observed by Colin Bailey, is “distinctive: pagan, celebratory, unremittingly carnal but thoroughly imbued with references from the Classical Past.”2 On the one hand, he returned the subject to its classical origins; on the other, he infused the scene with an atmosphere and dynamism first championed by the Baroque masters. A notable example arises in comparing the profiles of the two lovers with classical cameo portraits and with a pair of Roman heads in Peter Paul Rubens’ Tiberius and Agrippa (National Gallery of Art, Washington), a painting Fragonard may have seen when he visited The Prince of Liechtenstein’s collection in Vienna in 1774.

In Fragonard’s 1806 obituary, the Journal de Paris singled out The Fountain of Love as one of only three works that linked his name with “l'idée même des Grâces,” or, the very idea of the graces.3  Indeed, the technical prowess and imaginative spirit so characteristic throughout Fragonard’s career remains in full force in the present work. Not only does it prefigure the Romantic Movement that would later be championed by artists such as Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) and Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (1767-1824), but it also preserves the grace and brilliance that made Fragonard one of the most distinguished painters of the 18th century.

1. See P. Rosenberg, in Literature, p. 118.
2. See C. Bailey, in Literature, p. 193.
3. See Journal de Paris, no. 237, December 1806, p. 1742. The Fountain of Love was commemorated alongside another work from the series,The Sacrifice of the Rose, as well as Coresus and Callirhoe (1765, Louvre, Paris), the latter of which was exhibited to prolific acclaim at the Salon of 1765 and quickly acquired by the King

Sotheby's. Master Paintings & Sculpture Evening Sale, New York, 25 Jan 2017, 06:00 PM

Andrea della Robbia from a model Luca della Robbia, circa 1490-1500, Madonna and Child

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Lot 12. Andrea della Robbia (Florence 1435-1525) from a model Luca della Robbia (Florence 1399/1400-1482), circa 1490-1500, Madonna and Child, tin-glazed earthenware, 20 5/8  by 16 1/2  in.; 52.5 by 42cm. Estimate 150,000 — 250,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

NotesAndrea della Robbia belonged to one of the most distinguished families of sculptors in the Renaissance. He worked alongside his renowned uncle, Luca della Robbia (1399/1400-1482), and later led their workshop with unparalleled success. While Andrea conceived of his own compositions, he also improved upon those of Luca. Luca’s relief of the Madonna and Child, invented in the 1460s, a type known as the ‘Bliss Madonna’ or ‘the Madonna of the Niche’, is only known in two examples, one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (67.55.98) and the other in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (30.1042). The present relief is the only known version of Andrea's late 15th century re-interpretation of his uncle's iconic composition. It illustrates Andrea's mastery of the medium of glazed terracotta and the tender relationship between a mother and child. 

Here the Child leans adoringly into his Mother while steadying Himself by placing His tiny hands around the Madonna's neck. Their cheeks are almost touching; Her left hand grasps His supple skin and Her right hand gently clutches His foot, preventing Him from stepping outside of the framework. The Madonna gazes at the viewer knowingly while also creating a barrier with Her right arm; she is poised to protect her infant son from the outside world. This engaging composition depicts both vulnerability and reverence. The details of the edges of the Madonna’s drapery, it’s subtle folds, the locks of their hair, the attitude of the figures as well as the modest scale indicate that this relief was meant to be viewed from close proximity and therefore made for private devotion. 

The dialogue between the arts in Florence is also illustrated here, master sculptors inspired painters and vice versa. As Cambareri notes (op.cit., p. 93), Fra Filippo Lippi’s (1406-1469) painting of the Madonna and Child, circa 1460, commissioned by the Medici (fig. 1) and now in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, resembles Luca’s sculpture in both design and spirit, representing the figures within a scalloped niche with a ledge in the foreground. Both the New York and Boston versions of this composition place the figures within a niche embellished with scalloped motifs and gilding. The spandrels provided space for the patron’s coats of arms. 

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Fig. 1. Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1469), Madonna and Child, circa 1460, tempera on wood, Palazzo Medici-Riccardi

The present example was produced at a moment when ‘Robbiana’ became ever more advanced under Andrea’s leadership, and was often simpler in design in order to stimulate greater reverence in the viewer. The blue glaze represents the heavens and the luminous white exemplifies innocence and piety. Andrea was particularly influenced by the moral teachings of Savanorola; two of his sons, also important sculptors, became Dominican friars. His aesthetic was unadorned and didactic. The present sculpture is faithful to Andrea’s vision, it inspires contemplation while representing a quintessentially Renaissance image.

RELATED LITERATURE
A.P.Darr, Donatello e i suoi : scultura fiorentina del primo Rinascimento, exhibition catalogue, Milan, 1986, 79, p. 208
G. Gentilini, I Della Robbia. La scultura invetriata nel Rinascimento, Florence, 1992, pp. 60, 102, 163
I. Wardropper, European Sculpture, 1400-1900, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Haven and London, 2011, pp. 20-22 
M. Cambareri, Della Robbia. Sculpting with Color in Renaissance Florence, Boston, 2016

Sold with a copy of a thermoluminescence analysis report dated 29/09/2014 from Art-Test arte e Diagnostic stating that the sample taken, AO114, indicates that the date of the object is consistent with the presumed dating of the piece, 15th century.

Sotheby's. Master Paintings & Sculpture Evening Sale, New York, 25 Jan 2017, 06:00 PM

 

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt., A.R.A., R.W.S, The Madness of Sir Tristram

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Lot 113. Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt., A.R.A., R.W.S (Birmingham 1833 - 1898 London), The Madness of Sir Tristram. Watercolor and bodycolour, heightened with gum arabic and gold; signed with initials lower left: E.B.J., extensively inscribed (on a painted scroll), 585 by 558 mm; 23 by 21 7/8  in. Estimate 350,000 — 450,000 USD.  Photo: Sotheby's.

ProvenanceMrs Aglaia Coronio, née Ionides (1834-1906), 1893;
her executor's sale, 21 November 1906, lot 502;
Sir William Tate, 2nd Bt. (1842-1921);
by descent to his grandson, Col. M.R. Robinson, D.S.O., O.B.E.;
T. M. Robinson;
his sale, London, Christie's, 14 November 1967, lot 134 (1,500 gns. to Spens);
with Leger Gallery, London;
with Stone Gallery, Newcastle;
with Peter Nahum, 1976

ExhibitedLondon, Society of British Artists, 1892;
London, New Gallery, 1893, no. 1;
London, New Gallery, Winter 1899, no. 37;
London, Leger Gallery; Newcastle, Stone Gallery, Truth to Nature, 1968-9, no. 44;
Sheffield, Mappin Art Gallery, Burne-Jones, 1971, no. 16;
London, Art Council Exhibition, Burne-Jones, 1975-76, no. 76;
London, Hayward Gallery; Southampton, Southampton Art Gallery; Birmingham, City Museum and Art Gallery; Tokyo, Tokyo Shimbun, Victorian Dreamers, 1989, no. 27;
London, Tate Gallery, Burne-Jones Watercolours and Drawings, 1993, no. 18 
London, Tate Gallery, The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Watts, Symbolism in Britain 1860-1910, 1997-1998, no. 22;
Munich, Haus Der Kunst; Hamburg, Kunsthalle; Cardiff, National Museums & Galleries of Wales, Victorian Dreamers, 2006-2007 

LiteratureM. Bell, Edward Burne-Jones, London 1893, pp. 14 & 30;
F. de Lisle, Burne-Jones, London 1904, p. 67;
J. Maas, Victorian Painters, London 1969, pp. 144 & 158;
M. Harrison and W. Walters, Burne-Jones, London 1973, pp. 54-56, 75;
J. Christian, 'Early German Sources of Pre-Raphaelite Designs', Art Quarterly, vol. XXXVI, 1973, p. 68, fig. 20;
M. Johnson, Burne-Jones, London 1979, no. 6;
C. Wood, The Pre-Raphaelites, London 1981, pp. 115-116;
E. Prettejohn, Rossetti and his Circle, Tate Gallery, London 1997, p. 46, fig. 37;
C. Wood, Burne-Jones, London 1998, pp. 30, 31, 34 and 35

NotesSir Tristram de Lyonesse was one of the greatest of Arthurian knights. He was the son of Mediodas, King of Lyones and Elizabeth of Cornwall and revered not only for his fearlessness in battle but his hunting prowess. As a young man he met the beautiful Princess Iseult, daughter of King Angwish of Ireland, who was engaged to be married to Tristram’s uncle, King Mark of Cornwall. However, while on their way to the wedding, with Sir Tristram charged with the task of chaperoning the bride, the pair unwittingly drank a potion that caused them to fall deeply in love.

In the present watercolour Burne-Jones depicts a moment when Sir Tristram, believing Iseult to be carrying on an affair with his friend Sir Kehydius, is driven to madness. He has cast himself out of his castle to live, as a vagabond, in the remote forest. He only survives thanks to the kindness of herdsman and shepherds and here he is seen serenading his companions with a harp.

Burne-Jones was fascinated by the chivalrous world of King Arthur and his Knights. In 1855 he discovered, in a Birmingham bookshop, a copy of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, a book that was written in circa 1470 and that is today still considered to be the key English text on the subject. Dante Gabriel Rossetti believed it to be, along with the bible, one of ‘the two greatest books in the world’ and Burne-Jones noted that he and his friends ‘feasted on it long.’ The subject of the present watercolor is taken from the book of Sir Tristram de Lyones (Book IX), Chapter IV, Madness and Exile and the artist has inscribed the work with lines from Malory’s text on a scroll that is suspended from a tree:

So would Sir Tristram come onto that harp and harken the melodious sound thereof and sometimes he would harp himself thus he endured there a quarter of a year.

This highly finished watercolor is painted over a ‘cartoon’ for a stained glass window and dates to 1862. In that year Walter Dunlop, a Bradford textile magnate, had asked the newly-formed Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company to supply him with thirteen stained glass panels to decorate his home, Harden Grange, at Bingley in Yorkshire. The adventures of Sir Tristram were chosen as a subject and the firm commissioned Arthur Hughes (1832-1915), Val Prinsep (1838-1904), and Ford Maddox Brown (1821-1893) to make one panel each, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) to make two and William Morris (1834-1896) and Burne-Jones to create four apiece.1

Burne-Jones’ contributions to the cycle were: The Wedding of Sir Tristram; The Madness of Sir Tristram; King Mark preventing Iseult from slaying herself; and The Tomb of Sir Tristram.  Of the four, he worked up all but one of the preliminary cartoons into independent watercolors. These were as follows: the present work, King Mark preventing Iseult from slaying herself  (Birmingham City Art Gallery) and finally The Wedding of Sir Tristram (sadly destroyed in the Second World War).

There are a number of differences between the stained glass version of the ‘Madness’ and the present work (fig. 1). Most obvious is the setting in which Burne-Jones places the knight and his companions. Whereas in the glass image, the figures are seen in open country, with Sir Tristram’s castle visible in the distance, here, they are enclosed in a dark forest.

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Fig. 1. Sir Edward Burne-Jones, The Madness of Sir Tristram, Bradford City Art Gallery, stained glass

In this watercolor Burne-Jones successfully evokes the atmosphere of the medieval world. He has achieved this, in part, by drawing inspiration from artists of the early northern and Italian Renaissance. His passion for the old masters was both wide-ranging and profound. He spent many hours studying paintings and medieval manuscripts in London’s museums and he sought out prints and reproductions in books. Moreover, he made two important trips to Italy, via Paris, in 1859 and 1862. Sketchbooks from these tours survive in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and they demonstrate that he made copies of works by Giotto, Della Francesco and Botticelli. The manner in which Burne-Jones has chosen to place Tristram surrounded by a forest, carpeted with delicate flowers, suggests that he may have been thinking of Botticelli’s iconic Primavera (Uffizi, Florence).  The woodcuts of Albrecht Durer could also have been an influence as thick woodland settings appears in both Durer’s woodcuts: The Fall of Man and the Expulsion of Adam and Eve (fig. 2). Furthermore, Burne-Jones’ use of the rectangular scroll, that hangs from the branches of a tree, also echoes Durer, who often incorporated the design in his own compositions. 

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Albrecht Durer, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve, Woodcut.

This work has a long and distinguished history and has not only been widely reproduced in the literature, but has appeared in some fifteen international exhibitions between 1892 and 2007. It was first owned by Aglaia Coronio (1834-1906). She was the daughter of Alexander Ionides, who had moved from Greece to London in the 1820s and settled in Manchester. Later he moved his family to London and from 1864 lived at 1 Holland Park, his home becoming a center for artistic London society. Aglaia was strikingly beautiful and was painted by Rossetti, Watts and Burne-Jones,2 she was also a confidante of William Morris. Many members of the Ionides family were important patrons of the arts but perhaps the most significant was Aglaia’s brother, Constantine Ionides (1833-1900), for on his death, he left 1138 major pictures, drawings and prints to the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 1906, the work was acquired by Sir William Tate, 2nd Bt.  He was the eldest son of Sir Henry Tate, the sugar refiner, whose extraordinary business success enabled him to endow a new gallery at Millbank in London called The National Gallery for British Art. Today it is better known as the Tate Gallery. 

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Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Study for the Madness of Sir Tristram, London, Tate Britain

 

1. These stained glass panels are now held in the Bradford City Art Gallery.
2. Sir Edward Burne-Jones, The Mill, Victoria and Albert Museum.

Sotheby's. Old Master Drawings, New York, 25 Jan 2017, 10:00 AM


François Boucher (Paris 1703 - 1770), Study of a Young Chinese Woman Seated at the Table

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Lot 85. François Boucher (Paris 1703 - 1770), Study of a Young Chinese Woman Seated at the Table. Red, black and white chalk and brown wash on light brown paper, within pen and brown ink framing lines; signed, lower center, in black chalk: f Boucher.; 355 by 220 mm; 14 by 8 5/8  inEstimate 50,000 — 70,000 USD.  Photo: Sotheby's.

Provenance: Possibly sale of the collections of MM. Bellanger and Nan, Paris, 18 March ff. 1776: one of the "Quatre Femmes Turques & Chinoises, par le meme [Boucher]" in lot 20 (bought by Buldet for 4 Livres);
Private Collection, England;
sale, London, Christie's, 1 July 1997, lot 135,
where acquired by Bernadette and William M.B. Berger, Denver, Colorado

Exhibited: Aspen, Colorado, Old Master Paintings and Drawings from Colorado Collections, 1998, not numbered;
New York, The Frick Collection; Ottawa, The National Gallery of Canada, Watteau and His World:  French Drawings from 1700 to 1750, 1999-2000, no. 53;
New York, The Frick Collection, Fort Worth Texas, Kimbell Art Museum, The Drawings of François Boucher, 2003-2004, (catalogue by Alastair Laing), p. 128, no. 43, p. 129 reproduced

NotesThis wonderfully free spirited, spontaneous and large scale trois crayons drawing of a young Chinese girl is a rare example of one of Boucher’s première pensées for a chinoiserie project.  Boucher’s first foray into chinoiserie design was when he, together with Michel Aubert and Edmé Jeurat, produced engravings after Watteau’s original paintings of Chinese subjects for the Château de La Muette.  The series of prints was published in 1731 and remains an important record of Watteau's work as the originals were destroyed in the 18th century.  It was not, however, until the 1740s that Boucher really immersed himself in ‘le gout Chinois.’  Between 1740 and 1745 Boucher’s passion for chinoiserie design was reignited and as George Brunel fittingly comments, ‘he seems to have been seized by a veritable Chinese mania.’1

Whilst interest in the Orient and Far East was no new phenomenon in French society at the time, Boucher, along with the engraver and print publisher Gabriel Huquier (1695-1772), pushed this interest to another level by fulfilling the commercial demand for designs that could be translated into porcelain, terracotta, tapestry and furniture.

Boucher’s ‘China’, rather than a truthful representation of the Orient, was one of fantasy and masquerade.  It was in essence a reflection of the tastes of French 18th Century society sprinkled with a Chinese seasoning.  Boucher’s chinoiserie compositions did not differ so drastically from his other genre scenes: in fact, the base ingredients were the same but Boucher injected an exoticism by giving his figures Chinese costumes, and Chinese curiosities as attributes.  Boucher’s Chinese figures and objects were not, though, totally western fabrications; he was actually well versed in the details of oriental attire and possessions, and as a passionate collector himself, he was able to draw inspiration from his own extensive collection of Chinese objets d’art.

The Berger drawing is a splendid example of one of Boucher’s chinoiserie single figure studies.  As Alastair Laing observes, many of Boucher’s Chinese drawings for prints are often dry and formulaic.2  This is more a fact than a criticism, as they were executed in this manner, with linear accuracy and precision, for the engraving process.  It is therefore refreshing to see a more spontaneous work where one can detect the exuberance so often associated with Boucher as an artist.  Two other chinoiserie drawings that possess a similar freedom are A Chinese woman and four children around a well, a preliminary study for Curiostié Chinoise (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon) and A woman cooking for her children, a preliminary study for the engraving, in reverse, by Jean Joseph Balechou entitled Les Délices de L’Enfance.3

The Berger chinoiserie figure is not reproduced exactly in any of Boucher’s known paintings or prints, but does appear with some differences in a number of Boucher’s chinoiserie commissions.  As Alastair Laing has noted, the figure is probably closest to the young girl in The Chinese Woman Taking Tea, accompanied by two children and a Cat (fig. 1), an observation first made by Alan Wintermute when the drawing was exhibited at the Frick in New York in 2000.4  The Chinese Woman taking Tea is in the Earl of Chichester’s collection at Little Durnford, and is one of a pair of chinoiserie overdoors, en camaieu bleu, signed and dated 1742, and now divided between Wiltshire and Copenhagen.5  The young lady is depicted in reverse in the painting and there are other differences in the chair and her attire.  The two pendant purses seen in the present work are also absent in the painting.

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Francois Boucher, The Chinese woman taking tea, Earl of Chichester’s Trustees, Wiltshire, Little Durnford Manor

The figure of the young girl also features in a number of other projects, again in slightly different guises, in particular Boucher’s celebrated oil sketches for the tapestries at Beauvais, Le Festin de L’Empereur de Chine (fig. 2) and La Danse Chinoise (fig. 3).6  The girl also appears in Huquier’s engraving, Le Carillon (with differences and in reverse), one of a series of 12 prints from Scènes de la vie Chinoise. Finally, she appears once more, in reverse, in the print by Aveline, Le Concert Chinois.8

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François Boucher, Festin de L’Empereur de Chine, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon.

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François Boucher, La Danse Chinoise, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon.

1. G. Brunel, Boucher, London 1986, p. 166

2. A. Laing, The Drawings of François Boucher, exhib. cat., New York, The Frick Collection; Texas, Fort Worth, The Kimbell Art Museum, 2003-2004, p. 128, no. 43

3. A Chinese Woman and Four Children around a well, sale, London, Sotheby’s, 27 April 1977, lot 88 and A Woman Cooking for her Children, sale, London Sotheby’s, 4 July 1985, lot 85

4. Watteau and His World: French Drawings from 1700 to 1750, exhib. cat., New York, The Frick Collection; Ottawa, The National Gallery of Canada, 1999-2000, no. 53

5. François Boucher, exhib. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts; Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, 1986-87, p. 208, fig. 146

6. A. Ananoff, François Boucher, Paris 1976, vol. I, no. 224, fig. 677 (Festin de L’Empereur de Chine) and no. 227, fig. 684 (La Danse Chinoise)

7. P. Jean-Richard, L’oeuvre grave de François Boucher dans La Collection Edmond de Rothschild, Paris 1978, p. 276, no. 1125, reproduced fig. 1125

8. Ibid., p. 79, no. 201, reproduced fig. 201

Sotheby's. Old Master Drawings, New York, 25 Jan 2017, 10:00 AM

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino, A River Landscape with a Fisherman, a City in the Background

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Lot 46. Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino (Cento 1591 - 1666 Bologna), A River Landscape with a Fisherman, a City in the Background; Red chalk; bears old numbering in pen and brown ink: 45, 207 by 297 mm; 8¼ by 11¾ inEstimate 30,000 — 40,000 USD.  Photo: Sotheby's.

Provenance: Heinrich Wilhelm Campe (L.1391, his attribution on the verso in black chalk Jon. Franz Barbieri);
sale, London, Christie's, 7 July 1981, lot 155 (as Attributed to Aureliano Milani),
purchased by a European private collector,
by inheritance to the present owner 

Exhibited: Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Il Guercino, 1591-1666, I Disegni (catalogue by Sir Denis Mahon), 1992, p. 288, no. 185, reproduced

LiteratureP. Bagni, Il Guercino e il suo Falsario, I Disegni di Paesaggio, Bologna 1985, p. 54, no. 35, reproduced

Notes: This is an extremely rare landscape by Guercino executed in red chalk.  Only two other examples of landscapes by the artist in this medium are known, one in the Royal Collection, Windsor Castle,1 the other formerly on the art market.2  In the exhibition catalogue of 1992, Sir Denis Mahon observed that the present sheet, even more than the one at Windsor, conveyed all the characteristics of the artist's draftsmanship, and he also stressed the rarity of the use of this medium in Guercino's landscapes.  Comparing these two drawings, the present one in fact appears more vigorously drawn, yet also subtle in the variety achieved with the red chalk, a delicate medium that the artist used so often for his figures and compositional drawings, throughout his career.  It is in fact surprising how rarely Guercino made use of red chalk for his landscape drawings, a genre which he seems to have explored mainly for his own diversion. 

Generally executed in pen and ink, with varying degrees of finish (see also lots 25 and 26), these landscapes are never related to a painting; Guercino must have found this exercise both interesting and challenging, as he produced a great number of drawings of this type during the course of his life.

1. D. Mahon and N. Turner, The Drawings of Guercino in the collection of Her Majesty the Queeen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1989, pp. 101-103 

2. Sale, London, Sotheby's, 9 July 2003, lot 35 (A landscape with a tree and two travellers near a pond in the foreground, and distant buildings behind)

Sotheby's. Old Master Drawings, New York, 25 Jan 2017, 10:00 AM

Masters Week at Sotheby's: 550+ works of art from 14th-19th centuries

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NEW YORK, NY.- Sotheby’s annual Masters Week auctions in New York will be held from 25 – 27 January 2017. The auction series features rare and newly-discovered European paintings, drawings and sculpture spanning from the 14th through the 19th centuries. The Masters Week exhibitions will open to the public on 20 January in Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries with extended hours until 8:00pm on opening day. 

MASTER PAINTINGS EVENING SALE 
25 January 2017
 
Following the record-breaking sale of Orazio Gentileschi’s Danaë in January 2016, the Master Paintings Evening sale will be led by another striking painting by the artist: Head of a Woman (estimate $2/3 million), last seen in the landmark exhibition on Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2001. One of only two known panel paintings by the artist, Head of a Woman was executed during the first half of the 1630s, when Gentileschi was working at the court of King Charles I of England. Based on the inventory records and notes from 1637 / 1639, the picture was purchased from the artist by the King, suggesting that the King responded to the work personally, and had not directly commissioned it. Coming to the market for the first time in nearly three decades, the work is being sold in part to benefit the Department of European Painting and Sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

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Lot 38. Orazio Gentileschi (Pisa 1563 - 1639 London), Head of a Woman, oil on panel, 16 1/2  by 14 3/8  in.; 42 by 37 cm. Estimate 2,000,000 — 3,000,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's

Cf. my post Orazio Gentileschi (Pisa 1563 - 1639 London), Head of a Woman 

The sale also offers an outstanding group of Spanish paintings: from a large-scale religious scene by Francisco de Zurbarán, to a late work attributed to El Greco, to a detailed still life by Pedro de Camprobín y Passano. Leading the group is a newly-discovered painting attributed to Velázquez: Kitchen Still Life (estimate $1.5/2 million). According to renowned scholar William B. Jordan, the work is the only pure bodegón pantry painting of its kind by the artist. Qualities and aspects from this humble and intimate painting depicting kitchen utensils are replicated in other works by Velázquez, including ‘The Old Woman Frying Eggs’, in the National Gallery of Scotland. The Spanish section will also include a rare first edition of Francisco Goya’s first and most celebrated printed work Los Caprichos. [Madrid: Printed by Rafael Esteve for the artist, 1799.] (estimate $500/700,000). Consisting of 80 plates in the original binding, the book is generally considered the artist’s finest printed work, and remembered for its satirical presentation of society’s follies; many specific themes and allusions defy interpretation. 

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Lot 31. Attributed to Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Seville 1599-1660  Madid), Kitchen Still Life,oil on canvas, 28 by 36 5/8  in.; 71.5 by 93 cm. Estimate 1,500,000 — 2,000,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

Cf. my post: Attributed to Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Kitchen Still Life 

The Master Paintings Evening and Day Sales feature five Florentine tondi from the Italian Renaissance. Leading the group is The Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saint John the Baptist and an Angel (estimate $600/800,000), a late work by Sandro Botticelli and workshop. Most likely painted in the last five years of his life, the work features Botticelli’s crisp drapery folds and sharp outlines – distinguishing characteristics of his late works.  

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Lot 11. Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, called Botticelli, and Studio (Firenze, 1445 - 1510), The Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saint John the Baptist and an Angel, tempera on panel, a tondo, diameter: 34 3/8  in.; 86.3 cm. Estimate 600,000 — 800,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

Cf. my post: Botticelli and Studio, The Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saint John the Baptist and an Angel

Furthermore, the sale will offer a newly-discovered work by the celebrated Flemish painter Sir Peter Paul Rubens. Study of a Horse with a Rider (estimate $1/1.5 million) is a rare example of a large-scale animal study by the artist. Until recently the painting had been described as by a follower of Sir Anthony Van Dyck, however the authorship had been difficult to discern due to overpaint and background added later that dominated the original scene. With the removal of these later additions, the canvas has been revealed as a work of high quality, and a typical example of the spirited and rapidly painted oil sketches for which Rubens is celebrated. A similar composition and pose is evident in the foreground of Rubens’ Henry IV at the Siege of Amiens, at the Gothenburg Museum of Art.  

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Lot 17. Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen 1577 - 1640 Antwerpt), Study of a Horse with a Rider, oil on canvas, 46 1/2  by 22 in., 118 by 56 cm. Estimate 1,000,000 — 1,500,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's. 

Cf. my post: Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen 1577 - 1640 Antwerpt), Study of a Horse with a Rider

Following Sotheby’s unprecedented selling exhibition, GLAZED: The Legacy of the Della Robbia, the evening sale includes a quintessential Renaissance sculpture by the master Andrea della Robbia, Madonna and Child (estimate $150/250,000). Andrea worked alongside his famous uncle, Luca della Robbia, and later led their workshop with unparalleled success. The present example was produced at a moment when ‘Robbiana’ became ever more advanced under Andrea’s leadership, and was often simpler in design in order to stimulate greater reverence in the viewer. 

 

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Lot 12. Andrea della Robbia (Florence 1435-1525) from a model Luca della Robbia (Florence 1399/1400-1482), circa 1490-1500, Madonna and Child, tin-glazed earthenware, 20 5/8  by 16 1/2  in.; 52.5 by 42cm. Estimate 150,000 — 250,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

Cf. my post: Andrea della Robbia from a model Luca della Robbia, circa 1490-1500Madonna and Child

Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Fountain of Love (estimate $1.5/2.5 million) is one of four allegorical portrayals of love that the artist executed in the 1780s. The present work is one of the artist’s most distinguished compositions of his mature career – versions of the celebrated composition hang in the Wallace Collection, London and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The work, which combines a classical story with an atmosphere and dynamism, has enchanted audiences for centuries. The painting comes to the market for the first time in nearly 30 years, from the collection of Philadelphia sports team owner and entrepreneur Edward M. Snider. Separate release available. 

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Lot 49. Jean-Honoré Fragonard (Grasse 1732 - 1806 Paris), The Fountain of Love, oil on canvas, 18 1/2  by 14 3/4  in.; 47 by 37.5 cm. Estimate 1,500,000 — 2,500,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

Cf. my post: Jean-Honoré Fragonard (Grasse 1732 - 1806 Paris), The Fountain of Love 

OLD MASTER DRAWINGS 
25 January 2017
 
The Old Master Drawings sale features newly discovered or rarely seen drawings spanning four centuries and numerous countries. The sale is led by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones’, The Madness of Sir Tristram (estimate $350/450,000). In this highly finished watercolor, the artist successfully evokes the atmosphere of the medieval world by drawing inspiration from the early northern and Italian Renaissance, in particular, Botticelli’s Primavera. The Italian section is further distinguished by a rare preliminary study for a chiaroscuro woodcut by Parmigianino and important discoveries by Lelio Orsi and Nosadella. This season, the sale will present one of the most exceptional and comprehensive groups of works by François Boucher to come on the market in decades. The group of seven drawings is led by the spontaneous and large scale trois crayons drawing Study of a Young Chinese Woman Seated at the Table (estimate $50/70,000). Representing an important element in his career, Boucher re-uses these characters throughout his oeuvre enlivening them each time with a renewed sense of energy and vivid imagination. Additional British works on offer include exceptional works by Turner, William Blake and Gainsborough. A remarkable selection of seven works by Il Guercino offers rare landscapes in pen and ink and red chalk including A River Landscape with a Fisherman, a City in the Background (estimate $30/40,000) alongside superb figure drawings from all periods of the artist’s career.

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Lot 113. Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt., A.R.A., R.W.S (Birmingham 1833 - 1898 London), The Madness of Sir Tristram. Watercolor and bodycolour, heightened with gum arabic and gold; signed with initials lower left: E.B.J., extensively inscribed (on a painted scroll), 585 by 558 mm; 23 by 21 7/8  in. Estimate 350,000 — 450,000 USD.  Photo: Sotheby's.

 Cf. my post: Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt., A.R.A., R.W.S, The Madness of Sir Tristram

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Lot 85. François Boucher (Paris 1703 - 1770), Study of a Young Chinese Woman Seated at the Table. Red, black and white chalk and brown wash on light brown paper, within pen and brown ink framing lines; signed, lower center, in black chalk: f Boucher.; 355 by 220 mm; 14 by 8 5/8  inEstimate 50,000 — 70,000 USD.  Photo: Sotheby's.

Cf. my post: François Boucher (Paris 1703 - 1770), Study of a Young Chinese Woman Seated at the Table

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Lot 46. Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino (Cento 1591 - 1666 Bologna), A River Landscape with a Fisherman, a City in the Background; Red chalk; bears old numbering in pen and brown ink: 45, 207 by 297 mm; 8¼ by 11¾ inEstimate 30,000 — 40,000 USD.  Photo: Sotheby's.

Cf. my post: Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino, A River Landscape with a Fisherman, a City in the Background

Impressive 35.25 carats cushion-shaped diamond ring

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Impressive 35.25 carats cushion-shaped diamond ring. Sold 1,449,000 CHF at Sotheby's Geneva, 14 Nov 2007, lot 372

The cushion-shaped diamond weighing 35.25 carats, on a plain platinum mounting, size 50. 

Accompanied by GIA report no. 15728262 stating that the diamond is I Colour, VS1 Clarity.

Important 32.53 carats fancy vivid yellow diamond pendent necklace

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Important 32.53 carats fancy vivid yellow diamond pendent necklaceSold 1,337,000 CHF at Sotheby's Geneva, 14 november 2007, lot 309B

The fancy vivid yellow cut-cornered rectangular mixed-cut diamond weighing 32.53 carats suspended from a necklace set with brilliant- and step-cut diamonds, the clasp decorated with marquise-shaped stones, mounted in platinum and yellow gold, length approximately 440mm. 

Accompanied by GIA report no. 12472093 stating that the diamond is Fancy Vivid Yellow, Natural Colour, Internally Flawless.

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