Lot 106. Burmese Ruby and diamond bracelet, circa 1920s. Estimate HK$1,100,000 - 1,800,000 (US$140,000 - 230,000). © Tiancheng International

Of art deco style, the bracelet set with twenty oval rubies together weighing approximately 18.70 carats, decorated with baguette, tapered baguette and brilliant-cut diamonds together weighing approximately 15.75 carats, mounted in 18 karat white gold, length approximately 172mm, engraved with French Hallmark.

Tiancheng International. HONG KONG SPRING AUCTION, Jewellery and Jadeite, 4 June · 1 pm

Lot 119. Icy jadeite 'ruyi' and diamond pendant. Estimate HK$1,800,000 - 2,800,000 (US$230,000 - 360,000). © Tiancheng International

Suspending an icy jadeite of fine translucency and soft apple green colour, suffused with bright emerald green patches, carved as a ruyi, to a brilliant-cut diamond-set surmount and rondelle, mounted in 18 karat white gold, accompanied by an adjustable black cord.

Ruyi measuring approximately 67.88 x 40.78 x 13.78mm.

Tiancheng International. HONG KONG SPRING AUCTION, Jewellery and Jadeite, 4 June · 1 pm

Lot 120. 15.29, 10.87 and 10.83 carats diamond ring. Estimate HK$7,500,000 - 10,000,000 (US$962,000 - 1,280,000). © Tiancheng International

The ring simply set with three emerald-cut diamonds weighing 15.29, 10.87 and 10.83 carats respectively, mounted in 18 karat white gold. Ring size: 6¼

Accompanied by GIA report numbered 1152493928, dated 7 June 2013, stating that the 15.29 carat diamond is K colour, Internally Flawless clarity, with Excellent Polish and Symmetry;

reports numbered 6202478357 and 7208478333, dated 31 July 2015, stating that the 10.87 and 10.83 carat diamonds are J colour, VVS2 and VS1 clarity respectively, one with Excellent Symmetry and the other with Excellent Polish;

Tiancheng International. HONG KONG SPRING AUCTION, Jewellery and Jadeite, 4 June · 1 pm

Lot 170. Fine 50.10 carats Burmese (Mogok) "Pigeon's Blood" ruby and diamond necklace. Estimate HK$5,800,000 - 7,800,000 (US$745,000 - 1,000,000). © Tiancheng International

Composed of forty-one cushion-shaped, oval and round rubies together weighing 50.10 carats, decorated with brilliant-cut diamonds together weighing approximately 45.00 carats, mounted in 18 karat white and yellow gold, length approximately 408mm.

Accompanied by GRS report numbered GRS2012-102023, dated 8 November 2012, stating that the 50.10 carat rubies are natural, Vivid Red (GRS type "Pigeon's Blood") colour, of Burmese (Mogok) origin, with no indication of thermal treatment; 

Lotus premium report numbered 5942-7558, dated 3 August 2016, stating that the 50.10 carat rubies are natural, Red colour, of vivid saturation and medium-deep to deep tone, of Burmese origin, with no indications of heating or treatment; with colour type, stating that 'The deep carmine colour of these gems earns them the Lotus "Royal Red" distinction.'

Tiancheng International. HONG KONG SPRING AUCTION, Jewellery and Jadeite, 4 June · 1 pm

Lot 192. Coral, icy jadeite, gem-set and diamond 'flamingo' ornament-brooch. Estimate HK$78,000 - 98,000 (US$10,000 - 12,600). © Tiancheng International

Lot 193. 7.05 carats Diamond ring, Harry Winston. Estimate HK$4,000,000 - 6,000,000 (US$513,000 - 770,000). © Tiancheng International

Lot 209. Yellow diamond and diamond necklace. Estimate HK$1,500,000 - 2,500,000 (US$192,000 - 320,000) © Tiancheng International

The starburst necklace composed of forty-four variously-shaped yellow diamonds together weighing 45.83 carats, embellished with brilliant-cut diamonds weighing approximately 7.60 carats, mounted in 18 karat white and yellow gold, length approximately 460mm.

Accompanied by 43 GIA and 1 IGI reports, stating that the 45.83 carat yellow diamonds ranging from 2.13 and 0.43 carats, are natural, Fancy Intense Yellow to Fancy Light Yellow colour, VVS1 to SI2 clarity, two with Excellent Polish and Symmetry, seventeen with Excellent Polish and two with Excellent Symmetry.

Tiancheng International. HONG KONG SPRING AUCTION, Jewellery and Jadeite, 4 June · 1 pm

© Gilles Tapie

RICHMOND, VA.- The fast-paced sights and sounds of the fashion runway have come to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts this spring with Yves Saint Laurent: The Perfection of Style, a multifaceted exhibition that opened May 6, and continues through August 27, 2017. Drawn from the unparalleled collection of the Paris-based Fondation Pierre Bergé– Yves Saint Laurent and other private collections, this breathtaking exhibition offers an intimate and comprehensive look at the lifetime achievement of Saint Laurent, one of history’s most radical and influential fashion designers. 

Featuring 100 examples of haute couture and ready-to-wear garments–some never shown publicly before–this exhibition reveals Saint Laurent’s artistic genius, as well as his working process, and the sources of his design inspiration. VMFA is the only East Coast venue for the exhibition, which has been organized by the Seattle Art Museum in partnership with the Paris-based Fondation. 

In addition to haute couture ensembles and ready-to-wear clothing, Yves Saint Laurent: The Perfection of Style includes costume jewelry and other accessories, photographs, drawings, films, and video from the Fondation’s vast archive. The exhibition traces the trajectory of Saint Laurent’s style as it developed throughout the course of his career, beginning in 1953 with the “Paper Doll Couture House” that he created as a teenager, which is being shown for the first time in the United States. Ensembles early in the exhibition focus on his formative years at the House of Dior, including an example of a short evening dress from his successful “Trapeze” collection, which marked his debut as a fashion designer when it was shown in Paris in 1958. The exhibition continues with his groundbreaking designs of the 1960s, which revolutionized the fashion industry. During this decade, Saint Laurent liberated modern women from the constraints of strict gender codes by creating clothing—such as the safari jacket, the pantsuit, and the tuxedo—which he borrowed from the male wardrobe. Visitors also will see how Saint Laurent was inspired by the work of other artists, including Piet Mondrian and Tom Wesselmann, as well as African art and ancient Greek vase painting. 

 El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) (Candia, Crete, 1541-Toledo, 1614), Portrait of Antonio de Covarrubias y Leiva & Portrait of Diego de Covarrubias y Leiva, c. 1600. Oil on canvas, 68 x 57 cm, Museo del Greco, Toledo. 

BILBAO.- The presentation of two important works from the collection of the Museo del Greco (Toledo), Portrait of Antonio de Covarrubias y Leiva and Portrait of Diego de Covarrubias y Leiva, two oil paintings of the same size (68 x 57 cm) executed by El Greco around 1600, provide the starting point for this new edition of the Guest Work programme, which will be accompanied by various lectures and encounters with experts and artists aimed at strengthening the visiting public's involvement in this programme. 

The two portraits by El Greco are displayed in Room 7 of the museum, which is devoted to 16th- and early 17th-century court portraiture and its role as a representation of power through the concept of majesty and dynastic interests. Portraits of Philip II, his sister Juana de Austria and his grandson Felipe Manuel de Saboya create a pictorial sequence initiated by Anthonis Mor at the Spanish Habsburg court and continued by Sánchez Coello and Pantoja de la Cruz, culminating with Velázquez. Well acquainted with this tradition, Pourbus made use of it in his portrait of Marie de Médicis, Queen of France. These portraits from the museum's permanent collection provide a context for the two by El Greco, which are presented here as outstanding examples of the artist's contribution to secular portraiture of this period. In addition, two further works by the artist from the museum's permanent collection will be on display in Room 8, in this case depictions of religious subjects: Saint Francis in prayer before a Crucifixion (ca.1587-1596) and The Annunciation (ca.1596-1600). 

Portraiture evolved at the court in Madrid in response to the requirements for depicting the monarch and his family. Nonetheless, it was in Toledo and thanks to the presence of El Greco that secular portraiture in the form of depictions of illustrious local men developed in a particularly spectacular manner. 

The Imperial City was home to a number of exceptionally gifted portraitists, among them Blas de Prado, who is particularly known for the time he spent in Morocco to paint the Sultan's family as a commission from Philip II of 1593; the little-known Antón Pizarro, who painted the outstanding portrait of A Gentleman of the Solís Family with his Son (private collection), a work that reflects the late portraits by his master El Greco in its typology and its immediate and intense presentation of the sitter; and the painter Juan Sánchez Cotán, celebrated for his still lifes and for his portrait of Brígida del Río, the bearded Woman of Peñaranda, which was in the collection of Pedro Salazar de Mendoza, administrator of the Hospital de Tavera. The inventory of the latter's possessions, drawn up on 13 June 1629, includes "two portraits of the Covarrubias", which can be identified as the two now in the collection of the Museo del Greco. 

El Greco made a fundamental contribution to the development of the portrait in Spain. His generally bust-length figures set against plain backgrounds, the faces in three-quarter profile and depicted with profound psychological intuition, constitute a magnificent gallery of depictions of society of the day. The painter adapted his approach to the civic atmosphere of the city and earned the esteem of Toledo's leading families, who commissioned their portraits from him. The notable realism with which the sitters' personalities are conveyed, combined with the chromatic range and the influence of Venetian models, make them precedents for Velázquez's portraits. As a portraitist El Greco left a body of markedly intense images of the individuals who trusted in his artistic abilities, from humanists such as the Covarrubias brothers to the anonymous gentlemen who have entered the collective memory as archetypes of the grandeur and sombreness of Spain of this period. 

El Greco  (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) (Candia, Crete, 1541-Toledo, 1614), Portrait of Antonio de Covarrubias y Leiva, c. 1600. Oil on canvas, 68 x 57 cm. Museo del Greco, Toledo.

Antonio de Covarrubias was a prestigious jurist and one of El Greco's closest friends, who helped to introduce him to Toledo's ecclesiastical and intellectual circles following the death of Diego de Castilla in 1584. The artist depicts him here in his old age with a slight sense of movement that conveys his interior vitality or possibly anxiety, a reflection of his life-long deafness. Covarrubias wears a black lawyer's gown buttoned at the chest and another white garment beneath it, visible at the neck. 

El Greco depicted Covarrubias on at least two other occasions; on the right in profile in The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, wearing ecclesiastical dress and with a grey beard. Another version of the present painting has been in the Musée du Louvre since 1941, where it arrived as part of an exchange between the Spanish and French governments to facilitate the return of various works that had been illegally removed from Spain in the past. 

El Greco praised Covarrubias in an annotation in his copy of Vitruvius's treatise: "that Antonio de Covarrubias (whom one might call a wonder of nature) who possesses not only Ciceronian eloquence and elegance and a perfect knowledge of the Greek language, but also infinite goodness and patience, and this makes him so dazzling as to disturb my sight and prevent me from continuing." 

El Greco  (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) (Candia, Crete, 1541-Toledo, 1614), Portrait of Diego de Covarrubias y Leiva, c. 1600. Oil on canvas, 68 x 57 cm. Museo del Greco, Toledo.

The portrait of Diego de Covarrubias is notable for the restrained vivacity and serenity of the sitter's expression. Like his brother Antonio, Diego was educated to a high level and held prominent positions in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. El Greco never met him as he died a few months before the artist arrived in Toledo in 1577 and he probably based his image on the much less spontaneous one by Alonso Sánchez Coello. Antonio and Diego de Covarrubias were the sons of Alonso de Covarrubias, one of Renaissance Spain's most celebrated architects. They attended the Council of Trent together as legal advisers and their remarkable erudition was praised by numerous foreign commentators. 

A classic example of the Renaissance humanist, Diego de Covarrubias was a theologian, jurist, senior professor at the University of Salamanca and Bishop of Segovia. El Greco depicts him with grey hair and beard, a frontal glaze and set against a plain background. He wears a soutane, a white surplice and a black biretta. Suspended from a white ribbon around his neck is a green pectoral cross of gold and emeralds of the type worn by bishops. 

Executed around 1600, these two portraits are outstanding examples of El Greco's contribution to the history of portraiture in Spain, in which he is considered to have introduced the psychological portrait in the form of images that reveal the subtle and difficult to capture element of the sitter's inner life. 

by Luis Alberto Pérez Velarde, Curator, Museo del Greco (Toledo)

Installation view. 

NEW YORK, NY.- Over the course of six decades, Stephen K. Scher—a collector, scholar, and curator—has assembled the most comprehensive and significant private collection of portrait medals in the world, part of which he and his wife, Janie Woo Scher, gave to The Frick Collection last year. 

To celebrate the Schers’ generous gift of what is the largest acquisition in the museum’s history, the Frick presents more than one hundred of the finest examples from their collection in The Pursuit of Immortality, on view from May 9 through September 10, 2017. The exhibition is organized by Aimee Ng, Associate Curator, The Frick Collection, and Stephen K. Scher. 

Comments Director Ian Wardropper, “Henry Clay Frick had an abiding interest in portraiture as expressed in the paintings, sculpture, enamels, and works on paper he acquired. The Scher medals will coalesce beautifully with these holdings, being understood in our galleries within the broader contexts of European art and culture. At the same time, the intimate scale of the institution will offer a superb platform for the medals to be appreciated as an independent art form, one long overdue for fresh attention and public appreciation.” 

The exhibition, taking place in the lower-level galleries, showcases superlative examples from Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, England, and other regions together with related sculptures and works on paper from the Frick’s permanent collection, helping to illuminate the place of medals in a larger history of art and their centrality in the history of portraiture in Western art. 

A short film demonstrates one method by which medals were made, and visitors will have the opportunity to handle a reproduction of one of the most famous medals of the Renaissance. 

Antonio di Puccio Pisano, called Pisanello (ca. 1395–1455), Leonello d’Este, Marquess of Ferrara (1407–1450), ca. 1445. Copper alloy, cast, diam.: 2 11/16 in. (6.89 cm). The Frick Collection; Gift of Stephen K. and Janie Woo Scher, 2016 © 1998-2017 The Frick Collection.

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ARTISTIC INVENTIONS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
Portrait medals are one of the most important artistic inventions of the Italian Renaissance and flourished as an art form across Europe for four centuries. Created to be exchanged and distributed as tokens of identity—sometimes among intimate circles of friends, sometimes from powerful rulers to their subjects—they make the absent present, evoking the fullness of the individuals they commemorate through the likeness, imagery, and text they carry. 

Today, medals are generally associated with awards, but during the Italian Renaissance, their primary function was to pay tribute to individuals and to shape and promote their identities. Typically, the front of the medal, or obverse, bears the person’s likeness, usually in profile, while the reverse presents biographical imagery, such as a coat of arms or personal allegory. Inscriptions declare the sitter’s titles, qualities, or motto. The reverse of a medal commemorating Cecilia Gonzaga, for example, who entered a nunnery instead of marrying the suitor chosen by her family, celebrates her chastity with an allegorical female figure accompanied by a subdued unicorn; according to medieval tradition, the fierce animal could be tamed only by a virgin. The medal’s obverse leaves no room for misinterpretation, reading in a ring around Cecilia’s portrait: “Virgin Cecilia, daughter of Gianfrancesco I, Marquess of Mantua.” Over time, medals were also made to mark events such as marriage, death, and military victory, as well as to express religious and political ideas. 

With their inscriptions and reverses, portrait medals typically provide more information than portrait paintings or sculptures. In addition, their small size and the durability of their materials (including bronze or copper alloy, lead, silver, and gold) make them more resilient than paint or stone. As eminently portable objects, they historically had a broader reach than portraits in other media. Far outlasting the mortals they commemorate, medals offered a means by which individuals—or at least their identities—could live forever. Appropriately, medals were sometimes buried with the dead and in the foundations of buildings, invested as everlasting relics in eternal resting places. 

In general, medals are made using one of two techniques: casting (pouring molten metal into a mold) or striking (using physical force to shape a blank disk between two dies). The first Renaissance medals were cast using a process similar to that used to make bronze sculpture. Striking, the technique used since antiquity to form coins, became popular for making medals in the early sixteenth century with the development of the screw press (adapted from the printing industry), and allowed for refinement of detail, higher relief, and larger size. Medals are often confused with coins, which, as currency, are struck at mints from specific materials at specific weights. As they are commemorative, medals can be any size, weight, and material and are generally larger than coins. Like much of Renaissance culture, they were inspired by the culture of ancient Greece and Rome, in this case, by coins. 

The first portrait medal has historically been attributed to the painter Antonio di Puccio Pisano, called Pisanello, who, while working in Ferrara for the Este court, produced a medal in about 1438 depicting John VIII Paleologus, the Byzantine emperor. He went on to cast at least twenty-six medals of contemporary individuals that are distinctly larger than anything that could then be struck at a mint, and which translated into metal the celebrated naturalism he achieved in his painted portraits. Scholars have pointed to other objects that may have influenced him—from seals to Roman pottery lamps to Etruscan mirror backs and covers—and it is perhaps because of the richness of Pisanello’s sources that the art form he developed was so complex, versatile, and popular. Nearly pristine medals in the Scher Collection, including those of Cecilia Gonzaga and Leonello d’Este, contrast with the deteriorated state of some of Pisanello’s contemporaneous paintings, underscoring how effective the medal can be as a vehicle of perpetuity. The reverse of Leonello’s medal presents the encounter between an old man and a young man, both bearing baskets of olive branches. Celebrating Leonello’s good governance, the image represents the combination of youth and experience, the balance of strength and caution, which brings peace (symbolized by the olive branches). 

Pierre-Jean David d’Angers (1788–1856), Joséphine Bonaparte (1763–1814; Empress Consort of France 1804–10; Queen Consort of Italy 1805–10), ca. 1832. Gilt copper alloy, cast, diam.: 7 in. (17.78 cm). Scher Collection; Promised gift to The Frick Collection © 1998-2017 The Frick Collection.

A FLOURISHING ART FORM FOR FOUR CENTURIES 
Medals provided an arena for creative expression for artists of various media, and painters, printmakers, sculptors, goldsmiths, and others across Europe adopted the art form.The development of the medallic art in the main geographic areas represented in the Scher Collection—Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and England—is a dynamic field of research. With some caution, one can identify characteristics of a region, although any distinguished medals collection will reveal many exceptions to the rule. 

Following the tradition begun by Pisanello, medals produced in Italy can be characterized by idealized and, at the same time, naturalistic portraiture in classical style, with inventive reverses that celebrate individuality. Bronze sculptors including Antico and Bertoldo di Giovanni, whose sculptures from the permanent collection are included in the exhibition, advanced the genre by adapting their talents to medals. Comparing a sculptor’s statuettes or reliefs to his medals reveals how he grappled with the related, but unique, challenges of medal-making. It also situates the medal in a fuller context of artistic production. The unusual border of Bertoldo’s medal of Filippo de’ Medici demonstrates the sculptor’s innovation of a typically generic feature: attached to the border, a winding banderole extolls the sitter’s virtue (VIRTVTE SVPERA [by higher virtue]); a miniscule Medici coat of arms declares his lineage; and bizarre flower-like forms probably represent tassels suspended from the clerical hat that Filippo de’ Medici, an archbishop, would have worn. On the medal’s reverse, Bertoldo presents the scene of the Last Judgment. Evidently, he thought the medal was an appropriate format for such a monumental composition, and it has long been suggested that Michelangelo (one of Bertoldo’s pupils) drew from it when he painted his gigantic Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. 

Medals by German artists tend toward exacting portraiture and typically carry heraldic imagery on the reverse, in contrast to the individualized reverses of Italian medals. Hans Reinhart the Elder exemplifies the technical accomplishment of German artists. In his famous Trinity medal, the body of Christ and the cross from which he hangs were cast separately then soldered onto the cast medal; they are fully in the round, inviting viewers to marvel at the detail achieved in such an intimate scale. 

Medallic art in France largely followed Italian models until the end of the sixteenth century, when Guillaume Dupré, sculptor to Henri IV, began to cast medals and medallions (essentially, large medals) characterized by their subtlety and precision that, arguably, surpass the results achieved through striking. Struck medals dominated French medallic production under the patronage of Louis XIV in the seventeenth century until, beginning in the 1820s, the sculptor Pierre-Jean David d’Angers revived the cast medals of the Renaissance, albeit with a Romantic accent. The vivacity of David d’Angers’ portraits, such as that of Empress Josephine, is rooted in his expressive modeling in wax. Although the artist’s medallion features a posthumous portrait, it captures the first wife of Napoleon as though she had sat before him. 

The art of the medal flourished during the Dutch Golden Age, and artists in seventeenth-century Amsterdam favored a technique of casting two thin shells and soldering them together. These hollow medals achieve impressively high relief as exemplified in Wouter Muller’s medal commemorating the death in battle of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp. When turned, the almost fully en face portrait offers a profile view of the sitter. Like this example, the majority of Dutch medals of the period relate to events and individuals associated with battles with other European powers. 

English medalists developed in large part from the tradition of coin production, and thus striking was the favored technique. One of the most impressive medallic creations of the nineteenth century was struck to celebrate Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee, which presents the queen at age seventy-eight on the obverse and at eighteen on the reverse, the two portraits representing the sixty years of her reign. 

In a collection of portrait medals, the individuals depicted converse with one another, take their place in a narrative of the world, and, to some degree, live on. Those who commissioned them surely must have entertained the idea that their images and identities would survive into the future, just as ancient coins had. In their pursuit of immortality, men and women entrusted their legacies to these small-scale monuments, which dignify fleeting human life with the remembrance of lives lived and outlast, in turn, each beholder who encounters them anew.

Sebastian Dadler (1586–1657), Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1608; r. 1637–57), dated 1649. Silver, struck, diam.: 3 1/16 in. (7.76 cm). The Frick Collection; Gift of Stephen K. and Janie Woo Scher, 2016.

Installation view. 

Louis Anquentin, Inside Bruant’s Mirliton (l’intérieur de Chez Bruant: Le Mirliton), 1886-87. Oil on canvas, 145 x 157 cm. Private collection.

BILBAO.- The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is presenting Paris, Fin de Siècle: Signac, Redon, Toulouse - Lautrec, and Their Contemporaries , an exhibition that analyzes the Parisian art scene, underscoring the most important French avant-gardes of the late 19th century, particularly the NeoImpressionists, Symbolists, and Nabis. The leading exponents of these movements are represented in the show by approximately 125 paintings, pastels, drawings, and prints. 

Fin-de-siècle Paris was a time and place of political upheaval and cultural transformation, during which sustained economic crisis and social problems spurred the rise of radical left-wing groups and an attendant backlash of conservatism that plagued France throughout the late 1890s. In 1894, President Sadi Carnot fell victim to an anarchist assassination, while the nationally divisive Dreyfus Affair began with the unlawful conviction for treason of Alfred Dreyfus, an officer of Alsatian and Jewish descent. Such events exposed France’s social and political polarization: bourgeois and bohemian, conservative and radical, Catholic and anticlerical, anti-republican and anarchist. Mirroring the facets of an anxious, unsettled era, this period witnessed a spectrum of artistic movements. By the late 1880s, a generation of artists had emerged that included NeoImpressionists, Symbolists, and Nabis. Their subject matter remained largely the same as that of their still-active Impressionist forebears: landscapes, the modern city, and leisure-time activities. However, the treatment of these familiar subjects shifted and these scenes were joined by introspective, fantastical visions and stark portrayals of social life. 

The exhibition takes a closer look at these avant-garde movements, concentrating especially on some of the most prominent artists of that time: Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Maximilien Luce, Odilon Redon, Paul Signac, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Félix Vallotton. The ambition to spontaneously capture a fleeting moment of contemporary life gave way to the pursuit of carefully crafted works that were anti-naturalistic in form and execution and sought to elicit emotions, sensations, or psychic changes in the viewer. Despite their sometimes contradictory stances, these artists shared the goal of creating art with a universal resonance, and there was even overlap among members of the different groups. Surveyed together, the idioms of this tumultuous decade map a complex terrain of divergent aesthetic and philosophical theories, while charting the destabilizing events at the brink of a new century. 

Théo van Rysselberghe, Kalf Mill in Knokke or Windmill in Flanders (Le Moulin du Kalf à Knokke or Moulin en Flandre]), 1894. Oil on canvas, 80 x 70 cm (31 1/2 x 27 9/16 inches). Private collection.

Gallery 305: Neo-Impressionism 
The Neo-Impressionists debuted as an entity in a gallery of the Eighth (and last) Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1886, led by Georges Seurat. That same year, Félix Fénéon, an art critic and champion of these artists, coined the term “Neo-Impressionism” in a review. When Seurat died at an early age, Paul Signac took his place as the leader and theorist of the movement. The principal Neo-Impressionists—Henri-Edmond Cross, Maximilien Luce, Seurat, and Signac—were joined by the former Impressionist Camille Pissarro as well as other like-minded artists, such as Belgian painter Théo van Rysselberghe, from nearby countries. These vanguard painters looked to scientific theories of color and perception to create visual effects in Pointillist canvases, inspired by the optical and chromatic methods developed by scientists. The theories of French chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul set out in the Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors, and Their A pplication to the Arts (in French, De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs et de l’a ssortiment des objets colorés, 1839) and American physicist Ogden Rood in Modern Chromatics (1879) were particularly influential. 

Achille Laugé, The Flowering Tree (L'arbre en fleur), 1893. Oil on canvas, 59.4 x 49.2 cm (23 3/8 x 19 3/8 inches). Private collection ©Achille Laugé, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2017

This modern, revolutionary painting technique was characterized by the juxtaposition of individual strokes of pigment to evince the appearance of an intense single hue. By thus orchestrating complementary colors and employing mellifluous forms, the Neo-Impressionists rendered unified compositions. The representation of light as it impacted color when refracted by water, filtered through atmospheric conditions, or rippled across a field was a dominant concern in their works. Most of the Neo-Impressionists shared left-wing political views, evident, for example, in Pissarro’s and Luce’s depictions of the working classes. The idealized visions of anarcho-socialism or anarchocommunism were also manifest in the utopian scenes that the Neo-Impressionists frequently represented in their works, which often married ideological content and technical theory. But even when not guided by political objectives, the Neo-Impressionists’ shimmering interpretations of city, suburb, seaside, or countryside reflected a formal quest for harmony. 

Maximilien Luce, View of London (Cannon Street) (Vue de Londres [Cannon Street]), 1893. Oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm (25 9/16 x 31 7/8 inches). Private collection ©Maximilien Luce, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2017

Camille Pissarro, The Delafolie Brickyard at Éragny (La Briqueterie Delafolie àÉragny), 1886-88. Oil on canvas, 58 x 72 cm (22 13/16 x 28 3/8 inches). Private collection.

Paul Signac, Saint-Tropez, Fontaine des Lices, 1895. Oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm (25 9/16 x 31 7/8 inches). Private collection.

Gallery 306: Symbolism 
Symbolism began as a literary movement in the 1880s and its principles were codified in 1886 when poet Jean Moréas published the “Symbolist Manifesto” in the French newspaper Le Figaro . But the idealist philosophies and highly stylized formal qualities of the idiom quickly infiltrated the visual arts. The term "Symbolism" is applied to a variety of artists who shared anti-naturalistic goals. Sometimes Neo-Impressionist or Nabis works were identified with Symbolism because of their peculiar forms and allusive subject matter, such as those by Maurice Denis, who looked to religion and allegory and used sinuous lines and flattened zones of color or all-over patterning. Indeed, artists associated with Symbolism did not always define themselves as such. One of the most important was Odilon Redon, although his eerie noirs of floating, disembodied heads, creeping spiders, and scenes unmoored from reality, their meaning enigmatic and locked in hermeticism, are closely associated with the Symbolist style. 

Maurice Denis, April (The Anemones) (Avril [Les anémones]), 1891. Oil on canvas, 65 x 78 cm (25  9/16 x 30 11/16 inches), Private collection ©Maurice Denis, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2017

Most of the artists connected to Symbolism were averse to materialism and had lost faith in science, which had failed to alleviate the ills of modern society. They chose instead to probe spiritualism and altered states of mind, believing in the power of evocative, dreamlike images. Decorative idioms, nourished by Art Nouveau’s organic motifs and arabesque forms, permeated their work. 

Paul Ranson, The Young Girl and Death (La jeune fille et la mort), 1894. Graphite and charcoal on paper, 55.2 x 33 cm (21 ¾ x 13 inches). Private collection.

Symbolist art embraced mythic narratives, religious themes, and the macabre world of nightmares, abandoning the factual for the fantastic, the exterior world for the drama of psychological landscapes, the material for the spiritual, and the concrete for the ethereal. Although deeply rooted in narrative, Symbolism sought to elicit abstracted sensations and, through subjective imagery, to convey universal experience. These impulses responded to a yearning engendered by the dark side of modernity—the search for the transcendent. 

Odilon Redon, Pegasus (Pégase), Ca. 1895-1900. Pastel on paper, 67.4 x 48.7 cm (2 9/16 x 19 3/16 inches). Private collection.

Henri-Edmond Cross, The Promenade or The Cypresses (La Promenade or Les cyprès), 1897. Color lithograph, image: 28.3 x 41 cm (11 1/8 x 16 1/8 inches), sheet: 43 x 56.8 cm (16 15/16 x 22 3/8 inches). Private collection.

Gallery 307: The Nabis and the Print Culture in the 1890s 
Following the 1890 exhibition of Japanese prints at the École des Beaux-Arts, printmaking experienced a renaissance in France, both in lithography and woodcut. This revival was launched primarily by the Nabis, along with artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The Nabis (from the Hebrew word meaning “prophets”) were a loosely connected brotherhood whose art was influenced by the flat planes of color and pattern of Paul Gauguin’s Synthetism and by the abrupt cropping and twodimensional compositions of Japanese prints. Renouncing easel painting, the Nabis’ work crossed media to prints, posters, and illustrations for journals such as La Revue blanche , co-owned by their patron Thadée Natanson. 

Pierre Bonnard, The Little Laundry Girl (La petite blanchisseuse), 1896. Color lithograph, 29.3 x 19.6 cm (11 9/16 x 7 11/16 inches). Private collection ©Pierre Bonnard, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2017

As a “low” art exempt from the academic rules that governed painting, printmaking offered an artistic freedom that many found attractive. During the 1890s artists experimented with the possibilities of the stark contrasts of the woodcut, as Félix Vallotton did with his inventive use of black-and-white in scathing commentaries on Parisian society. Other Nabis, like Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, were enthralled with color lithography and tested the limits of the medium in myriad ways, even introducing manipulations during the printing process, by working closely with master printer Auguste Clot. They produced posters and print portfolios commissioned by dealers, perhaps most importantly gallerist Ambroise Vollard. 

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril, 1899. Color lithograph, 55.5 x 37.9 cm (21 7/8 x 14 15/16 inches). Private collection.

Toulouse-Lautrec turned his energies to the art of the poster, creating highly reductive yet incisive scenes of city life. These large-scale, eye-catching, brilliant creations were short-lived advertisements pasted along the streets of Paris. Passers-by (potential consumers) were inevitably seduced by exciting caricature-like portrayals of the bohemian venues they advertised: the caféconcerts of Montmartre or the famed performers who headlined there, including La Goulue (the glutton) and Jane Avril. The lively, often unconventional existence celebrated in these prints and posters came to define fin-de-siècle Paris.

Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, The Very Illustrious Company of the Chat Noir (La très illustre Compagnie du Chat Noir), 1896. Lithograph, 62 x 39.5 cm  (24 7/16 x 15 9/16 inches). Private collection.

Félix Vallotton, The Stranger (L´étranger), 1894. Woodcut on paper, 22.4 x 17.9 cm (8 13/16 x 7 1/16 inches). Private collection.

Lot 380. A 'Ding'-type persimmon-glazed bowl, Northern Song – Jin dynasty, 11.2 cm, 4 3/8  in. Estimate 60,000 — 80,000 HKD. Photo: Sotheby's.

with the deep rounded sides rising from a short foot, covered overall with a metallic russet glaze, stopping at the foot to reveal the grey stoneware body

Sotheby's. Chinese Art, Hong Kong, 01 Jun 2017, 02:00 PM

Lot 381. A small moulded 'Yaozhou' celadon-glazed 'chrysanthemum' bowl, Northern Song dynasty, 10 cm, 4 in. Estimate 50,000 — 70,000 HKD. Photo: Sotheby's.

decorated to the interior with chrysanthemum medallions on a scrolling foliate ground, the exterior with radiating lines, covered with a lustrous olive-green glaze

Sotheby's. Chinese Art, Hong Kong, 01 Jun 2017, 02:00 PM

Lot 382. A white-glazed square moulded ‘floral’ dish, Liao – Song dynasty, 12.2 cm, 4 3/4  in. Estimate 30,000 — 50,000 HKD. Photo: Sotheby's.

the interior moulded with a stylised floral and foliate design, surrounded by the everted sides divided with raised ridges, covered overall save for the flat base with an ivory-toned glaze

Note: Compare a Liao dynasty dish of similar form, moulded with two butterflies on the interior, from the collection of Nancy Cohn and Allan Katz, sold at Christie's New York, 13th/14th September 2012, lot 1385. 

A small molded glazed white-ware square dish, Liao dynasty (907-1125), 4 3/16 in. (10.6 cm.) across. Price realised USD 5,625 at Christie's New York, 13th/14th September 2012, lot 1385. © Christie's Images Ltd 2012

Sotheby's. Chinese Art, Hong Kong, 01 Jun 2017, 02:00 PM 

Lot 383. A Qingbai foliate cupstand, Song dynasty, 13.7 cm, 5 3/8  in.. Estimate 120,000 — 180,000 HKD. Photo: Sotheby's.

delicately modelled in the form of a small cup-shaped receptacle with a thin lipped mouthrim supported on a foliate 'dish' and tall hollow foot bordered with three bands, the 'dish' with an elegantly outcurved lobed rim and an interior divided into six lobes with pinched notches, applied overall save for the rim of the 'dish' and footring with a transparent pale blue glaze pooling to a deeper blue to the recesses 

Provenance: Galaxie Company, Hong Kong, 4th April 1998.

Lot 384. A crackled celadon-glazed bowl , Song dynasty, 14.4 cm, 5 5/8  in. Estimate 80,000 — 120,000 HKD. Photo: Sotheby's.

of conical form with a short tapered foot, covered overall save for the footring with a yellowish-green glaze suffused with a fine network of extensive crackles

Lot 268. An exceptional 15.03 carat ‘pigeon blood’ Burmese ruby and diamond ring. EstimateCHF 10,000,000 - CHF 15,000,000 (USD 9,953,632 - USD 14,930,448). © Christie's Images Ltd 2017

Set with an oval-cut ruby, weighing approximately 15.03 carats, within a round brilliant-cut diamond surround, ring size 5 ¾, mounted in gold

Accompanied by report no. 17040012 dated 5 April 2017 from the Gubelin GemLab stating that the origin of the ruby is Burma (Myanmar), with no indications of heating, that the colour may also be called 'pigeon blood red' in the trade, an Appendix letter, two Information sheets on 'Rubies from Mogok, Burma' and 'Unheated rubies' and a Gemmological Portrait.

Report no. 1082230 dated 23 February 2017 from the AGL American Gemological Laboratories stating that the origin of the ruby is Burma (Myanmar), with no gemological evidence of heat and no clarity enhancement, that the colour may also be called 'pigeon blood red' and an Appendix letter stating that 'this gem possesses a richly saturated color that is typical of fine quality rubies (...). In addition, this rare stone possesses a remarkably high clarity for a ruby of this exceptional size and color'. 

Further accompanied by report no. 91618 from the SSEF Swiss Gemmological Institute stating that the origin of the ruby is Burma (Myanmar), with no indications of heating, and an Appendix letter.

Accompanied by 10 diamond dossiers dated 2016 and 2017 from the GIA Gemological Institute of America stating that: 

Carat Colour Clarity Report no. Shape
0.84 F VVS1 2226777442 Round
0.84 F VS2 5246235209 Round
0.84 F VS2 1243181957 Round
0.83 F VVS2 6245873882 Round
0.83 F VS1 2257133035 Round
0.83 F VS2 1247994153 Round
0.82 F VS2 6245649186 Round
0.81 F VS2 5236150372 Round
0.80 F VS2 6241541535 Round
0.80 F VS2 7241888651 Round

Christie's. Magnificent Jewels, 17 May 2017, Geneva

Lot 262. A 56.03 carats Type IIa diamond necklace, by Chopard. Estimate CHF 5,000,000 - CHF 7,000,000 (USD 4,976,816 - USD 6,967,542). © Christie's Images Ltd 2017

Set with a detachable pear-shaped diamond, weighing approximately 56.03 carats, to the pear-shaped diamond line necklace, 48.0 cm, mounted in platinum and gold, in blue leather Chopard pouch. Signed Chopard, no. 0810

Accompanied by report no. 2185188825 dated 24 February 2017 from the GIA Gemological Institute of America stating that the 56.03 carat diamond is D colour, VVS2 clarity; also with a working diagram indicating that the clarity of the diamond is potentially Internally Flawless, and a Diamond Type Classification letter stating that the diamond has been determined to be Type IIa.

Christie's. Magnificent Jewels, 17 May 2017, Geneva

Lot 221. A 4.05 carat fancy deep blue diamond ring. Estimate CHF 5,000,000 - CHF 7,000,000 (USD 4,976,816 - USD 6,967,542). © Christie's Images Ltd 2017

Set with a fancy deep blue square cut-cornered diamond, weighing approximately 4.05 carats, to the plain hoop, ring size 6 ¼, mounted in platinum.

Accompanied by report no. 5171955696 dated 14 October 2016 from the GIA Gemological Institute of America stating that the diamond is Fancy Deep Blue colour, VS1 clarity.

Christie's. Magnificent Jewels, 17 May 2017, Geneva

Lot 265. Formely in the Doris Duke Collection. A superb diamond fringe necklace. Estimate CHF 3,000,000 - CHF 5,000,000 (USD 2,986,090 - USD 4,976,816). © Christie's Images Ltd 2017

The square, old and baguette-cut diamond necklace, suspending to the front twelve graduated tassels, each set with cushion, old and baguette-cut diamonds, to the single and old-cut diamond scrolling side motifs, 38.5 cm, mounted in platinum, carefully restored with age appropriate diamonds. Signed Cartier

Provenance: Cartier New York, 30th April 1937 $65,000
James H R Cromwell (1896-1990), as a gift for his wife Doris Duke whom he married two years earlier 
Mrs Doris Duke (1912-1993)
Christie’s New York, Magnificent Jewels from the Doris Duke Collection, 2 June 2004, lot 68

Note: The early 20th century was the golden age of young and rich debutantes with names that still resonate today: Consuelo Vanderbilt, Barbara Hutton and, of course, Doris Duke. Doris Duke was born in 1912 to American tobacco magnate, James ‘Buck’ Buchanan Duke, and his second wife, Nanaline Holt Inman. She pursued a life full of passion and adventure. Just like the father she adored, she was most passionate about charity. At age just 21, she created Independent Aid, later to become the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. It is today one of the largest national foundations ever created by a woman. 

Doris Duke and James Cromwell at their estate, Shangri La, in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1939. Courtesy of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Archives, Duke Farms, Hillsborough, NJ

In June 2004 Christie’s was proud to offer for sale The Doris Duke Collection, sold to benefit The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The auction of her jewels totalled just under $12 million and was at the time the highest sale total for any private jewellery collection sold at auction in America. 

 Doris Duke, 23 March 1940. CSU Archives/Everett Collection/Bridgeman Images

Lot 68 was ‘A diamond and platinum necklace mounting, by Cartier’ purchased at Cartier New York on April 30, 1937 for $65,000. Only the mounting was auctioned as Doris Duke had all of the larger diamonds in this important necklace unmounted. Over the years, she set and re-set the stones in many other pieces of jewellery, following trends and exploring avant-garde jewellery designs. Interestingly, just the mounting achieved almost as much at auction as the original purchase price of the necklace in 1937. The buyer subsequently spent years painstakingly replacing all of the missing stones with age appropriate diamonds, restoring the necklace to its former glory.

Christie's. Magnificent Jewels, 17 May 2017, Geneva