Lot 129. A 70.32 carats diamond bracelet, by Harry Winston. Estimate USD 200,000 - USD 400,000. Price realised USD 319,500. © Christie’s Images Limited 2017.

Designed as a graduated series of circular-cut diamonds, within a marquise and pear-shaped diamond cluster surround, 7 1/4 ins., mounted in platinum, in a Harry Winston navy leather case and and outer box. Signed Winston for Harry Winston, no. 1216, with maker's mark.

With six pear-shaped diamonds, weighing approximately 1.83, 1.82, 1.80, 1.70, 1.18 and 1.06 carats and the remaining thirty-four pear-shaped diamonds weighing a total of approximately 22.11 carats 

With two circular-cut diamonds, weighing approximately 1.19 and 1.14 carats and the remaining eighteen circular-cut diamonds weighing a total of approximately 10.53 carats 

With forty marquise-cut diamonds, weighing a total of approximately 25.96 carats

The total weight of the diamonds is approximately 70.32 carats. 

Christie's. Magnificent Jewels, 26 April 2017, New York, Rockefeller Center

Lot 120. A blue and white bottle vase, circa 1640; 38 cm, 15 in. Estimate 5,000 — 7,000 GBP. Lot sold 10,000 GBP. Photo: Sotheby's 2017

the globular body rising from a short spreading foot to a tall slightly waisted neck and flaring mouth, painted around the exterior in rich cobalt-blue tones with scholars seated conversing in a garden, all below a band of stylised flowers at the neck.

Lot 107A. A fine Dehua figure of Guanyin, Qing dynasty, 18th century; 28 cm, 11 in. Estimate 6,000 — 8,000 GBP. Lot sold 62,500 GBP. Photo: Sotheby's 2017. 

seated in lalitasana, wearing long flowing robes, the face with a serene downcast expression and hair ornately tied and set with jewellery, the reverse impressed with a gourd-shaped He Chaozong mark . 

Lot 311. A rare green-glazed stoneware lamp, Sui dynasty, 6th century; height 8 1/4 in., 21 cm. Estimate 5,000 — 7,000 USD. Lot sold 68,500 USD. Photo: Sotheby's 2010.

supported on a wide shallow tray, the kneeling figure resting on a circular plinth, applied with a ring of pendent lotus petals, gripping the rim of the holder in his hand, supporting a cylindrical nozzle with four cylindrical grooves, the glassy crackled glaze of translucent olive-green color and variable thickness.

Provenance: Sotheby's London, 6th July 1976, lot 78.
The British Rail Pension Fund Collection.

Exhibited: Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1977 - 1988.

Lot 304. A 'Ge' octogonal vase (bafanghhu), Song dynasty (960-1127); height 8 1/2 in., 21.6 cm. Estimate 400,000 — 600,000 USD. Lot sold 1,762,500 USD. Photo: Sotheby's 2010.

very thinly potted, of pear shape and octagonal section, resting on a slightly flared foot pierced with a circular aperture on the sides, rising from a swelling body and tapering to a gently everted mouth, the collar with a double-band of horizontal raised ribs, flanked by a pair of tubular handles, applied overall with a lustrous opaque creamy-gray glaze, suffused with black and gray craquelure among finer golden-orange crackles, the footrim unglazed and burnt to a dark-brown color in the firing.

Provenance: Collection of an old Chinese-American family, by repute.

Note: Ge ware is one of the most celebrated wares of Chinese ceramics, along with the first 'official' 'Ru', and the extensively copied guan. According to Regina Krahl in her discussion of this group in Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994, Vol. One, p. 213, 'Originally, the term Ge, often mentioned in classical Chinese literature, may have been applied to a distinct ware from a specific but unidentified kiln; later, however, it appears to have turned into a connoisseurs' term for wares with certain features.'

The shape of this vase, referred to as fanghu (the ba preceding denotes the eight sides), is based on ritual bronze prototypes that were discovered and excavated during the Song dynasty. The Northern Song emperor Huizong (r. 1101-25) was a keen collector of both archaic bronzes and jades and commissioned the production of ceramic vessels after bronze pieces in his collection.

Francis Bacon, Three Studies for a Portrait, Oil on canvas, 1976, Estimate: £10,000,000-15,000,000. © Christie’s Images Limited 2018

LONDON.- Christie’s will offer The Eye of the Architect, a diverse collection of Modern and Post-War art, during ‘20th Century at Christie’s’, a series of sales that will take place in London from 20 February to 7 March 2018: Impressionist and Modern Art and The Art of the Surreal Evening Sales (both 27 February), Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale (28 February) and Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale (6 March). 

Focusing primarily on figurative compositions, this tightly curated group of works not only reveals the collector’s discerning eye and architectural mind, but also a passion for artists who continuously sought to push the boundaries of tradition in their art. Including works by some of the most celebrated masters of the twentieth century avant-garde, from Pablo Picasso to Francis Bacon, Giorgio de Chirico to Joan Miró, and Fernand Léger to Giorgio Morandi, this varied group is united in their intimate scale and exploration of similar thematic concerns. The group will be led by Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for a Portrait (1976, estimate: £10,000,000-15,000,000), the artist’s penultimate ode to his great muse Henrietta Moraes, whose stark depiction of facial features and realist palette reveal the influence of Picasso on Bacon’s work. Further highlights include Pablo Picasso’s Figure (1930, estimate: £3,000,000-5,000,000), a portrait that plays with form to give the face a sculptural quality reflected in Bacon’s deconstruction of human form in Three Studies for a Portrait. These are offered alongside Giorgio de Chirico’s rare and early, melancholic mannequin-figure portrait Testa di manichino (1916-17, estimate: £800,0001,200,000), Fernand Léger’s visionary, machine-inspired portrait L’usine (Motif pour le moteur) (1918, estimate: £900,000-1,200,000), Giorgio Morandi’s highly subtle, architectural still life Natura morta (1942, estimate: £600,000-900,000), and Joan Miró’s sharply defined geometric painting Tête d’homme (1931, estimate: £700,000 – 1,000,000). The works will be on view in Hong Kong (5 to 8 February 2018) and New York (8 to 15 February 2018) before being exhibited in London from 20 February to 6 March 2018. 

Francis Bacon, Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction, 6 March 2018 
Unseen in public since its inclusion in Francis Bacon’s historic exhibition at Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris, in 1977, Three Studies for a Portrait (1976) is the artist’s penultimate ode to his great female muse Henrietta Moraes. Across three cinematic panels, spiked with abstract colour and texture, the artist develops the 1969 portrait Study of Henrietta Moraes into a fully-fledged triptych. It is the last of only six portraits of Moraes painted in his celebrated 14-by-12-inch triptych format, the first of which now resides in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Throughout the 1960s, Moraes played a central role in Bacon’s cast of bohemian Soho subjects, inspiring many of his finest paintings. The present work signals an important turning point in his practice, following the death of his lover George Dyer shortly before his 1971 Grand Palais retrospective. In 1974 Bacon had taken a studio in Paris, drawn to the city where the couple had spent their final moments. By 1976, his grief had begun to fade, sparking not only a stream of new subjects but equally a return to old friends. Bacon’s earlier portrait of Moraes had been derived from a still of the actress Emmanuelle Riva in Alain Resnais’s 1959 film Hiroshima mon amour, a serpentine strand of wet hair trailing across the centre of her face. With its themes of love and memory, the film’s imagery continued to haunt Bacon as he began to come to terms with his loss. Exhibited at Claude Bernard alongside the mournful ‘black triptychs’ and self-portraits painted in the wake of Dyer’s death, it represents a glimpse of light at the end of a long, dark tunnel: a poignant reflection on his golden Soho days. 

Francis Bacon, Three Studies for a Portrait, 1976. Oil on canvas, Estimate: £10,000,000-15,000,000. © Christie’s Images Limited 2018.

Francis Outred, Chairman and Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art EMERI, Christie’s: “It is an honour to unveil this outstanding triptych, last seen in public at Bacon’s landmark exhibition at Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris, in 1977. It is an incredibly moving portrayal of Henrietta Moraes: out of the darkness emerge three beautiful, near-sculptural heads, whose colourful features pivot and shift around the strand of hair bisecting the face. Whilst the influence of Picasso is clear, Bacon’s painterly language of scumbling and sharp, abstract flicks of the brush is uniquely his own.” 

Pablo Picasso, The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale, 27 February 2018 
Figure of 1930 is one of a rare and outstanding series of oil paintings depicting totemic, monumental, and often aggressive-looking female figures towering against a pale blue sky, which Pablo Picasso painted during what has come to be known as his ‘bone-period’ of the late 1920s and early 1930s. This ‘bone-period’ is so-called because of Picasso’ predilection at this time for creating surprising, highly sculptural, skeletal-like figures. Occurring at a time when Picasso's art was also informed by the then prevailing culture of Surrealism, these paintings underline Picasso’s admiration for African and Oceanic sculpture (also a centre of Surrealist focus at this time). Picasso was emotionally torn during this period between the joys of his burgeoning affair with the young Marie-Therese Walter and a growing animosity towards his wife Olga. The result of this volatile mix of emotion and influence was the creation of a series of works that rank among the artist’s most visionary, inventive and disturbing pictorial creations. It was these distorted and sculptural-looking figures made by Picasso in the late 1920s and early 1930s that were to prove so influential upon artists like Henry Moore and Francis Bacon. 

 Pablo Picasso, Figure, 1930. Oil and charcoal on panel. Estimate: £3,000,000 – 5,000,000. © Christie’s Images Limited 2018.

Olivier Camu, Deputy Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art, Christie’s: “This magnificent collection of fifteen twentieth century paintings by some of the greatest artists of the century was assembled by an innovative architect forty years ago and hidden ever since from the public eye. It is fascinating for its tight focus: all the works are of an intimate similar size and date from between 1916 and 1976. They are all figurative, either portraits or still lifes, highly structured and all emanating from the cubist, neo cubist or metaphysical and surrealist mould. The diversity and strength of this group offers an insight into some of the most radical avant-garde movements that were born during the twentieth century. It is a pleasure to present such a carefully curated collection in London.” 

Giorgio de Chirico, The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale, 27 February 2018 
Executed while Giorgio de Chirico was stationed in the Italian city of Ferrara during the First World War, Testa di manichino (1916-17) is one of the great and rare revolutionary series of ‘metaphysical paintings’ that the artist pioneered between 1912 and 1918. Taking the comparatively rare form of a portrait that depicts one of the strange and enigmatic mannequin-like personages who came to populate de Chirico’s art during this period, the painting presents, in surprising close-up, the seemingly curious image of one of his philosopher-poets gazing directly at the viewer from a construction of geometric tools and drawing implements. For de Chirico, the disquieting image of the mannequin that came to distinguish his work during the years of the First World War had grown out of the faceless statues and shadow-bound sculptures populating the enigmatic piazzas and metaphysical landscapes of melancholy he had painted in Paris. Originally a fusion between an artist’s dummy and a classical Greek statue, de Chirico’s mannequins grew, in Ferrara, to become lonely symbols of otherworldliness in his work. 

Giorgio de Chirico, Testa di manichino, 1916-17. Oil on canvas. Estimate: £800,000-1,200,000. © Christie’s Images Limited 2018.

Joan Miró, The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale, 27 February 2018 
In January 1931 Joan Miró made a series of inflammatory statements during an interview with the Spanish journalist Francisco Melgar, in which he boldly proclaimed his intentions to bring about the death of painting. Painted less than a month after the infamous interview, Tête d’homme illustrates the dramatic shifts that were occurring in Miró’s art, as he struggled to free himself of the mental block which was inhibiting his painterly practice. The finely crafted paintings which followed, including Tête d’homme, were transitional canvases that proved pivotal to Miró’s subsequent development as a painter. Sharply defined geometric elements, including triangles, quadrangles and circles, began to infiltrate his paintings during this period, lending his compositions a greater sense of structural complexity.  

Joan Miró, Tête d'homme, 1931. Oil on canvas. Estimate: £700,000 – 1,000,000. © Christie’s Images Limited 2018.

Fernand Léger, Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, 27 February 2018 
L’usine (Motif pour le moteur) is one of a series of dynamic and dazzlingly coloured paintings that Fernand Léger painted in 1918 after his discharge from the French army. Among the most important works of Léger’s career, this series of mechanically inspired paintings served as a potent visual manifesto of the artist’s new post-war beliefs and aims as an artist. He witnessed at first hand the immense and brutal power of the machine: the rapid rattle of the machine gun, the rumbling aggression of tanks, and the constant hum of air craft swooping into battle above him. Man too had become a machine, depersonalised and anonymous. Having witnessed the industrialisation of the world, Léger was fascinated with factories, engines and metallic objects. The various lines and planes of flattened colour that depict the metallic pistons, struts, cogs, wheels and axels of L’usine (Motif pour le moteur) seem to be working against each other to create a sense of magnificent force.  

Fernand Léger, L’usine (Motif pour le moteur), 1918. Oil on board. Estimate: £900,000-1,200,000. © Christie’s Images Limited 2018.

Giorgio Morandi, Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, 27 February 2018 
At first glance, Giorgio Morandi’s still-life paintings appear deceptively simple. At his studio and home in Bologna, he dedicated himself to depicting his beloved and carefully accumulated collection of quotidian objects. Yet, with closer scrutiny, the quiet, still, timeless worlds that these paintings present are in fact steeped in poetry and mystery; enigmatic, sometimes near abstract realms of colour, line and form. At the time that he painted Natura morta, 1942, Morandi had just begun to work in series, making subtle changes to his compositions by removing, adding, or moving, sometimes almost imperceptibly, his chosen repertoire of objects, and tracking these changes over a number of paintings.  

Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta, 1942. Oil on canvas. Estimate: £600,000-900,000. © Christie’s Images Limited 2018.

The collection also includes works by Juan Gris and Georges Braque.

Lot 351. A pair of waistless 'zitan' tables, Qing dynasty, 19th century; 33 by 45 by 15 3/4 in., 84 by 115 by 40 cm. Estimate 30,000—50,000 USD. Lot Sold  254,500 USD. Photo: Sotheby's 2010.

each with two rectangular top panels set within a rectangular frame, continuing down to fluted legs of rectangular cross-section and ending in scroll-end feet, the apron of lattice and archaistic scroll form (2).

Sotheby's. Fine Ceramics and works of Art. 15 Sept 2010. New York

Lot 341. A 'huanghuali' square-corner cabinet (fangjiao gui), Qing dynasty, 18th century; 75 3/4 by 40 by 42 1/2 in., 192.4 by 101.6 by 108 cm. Estimate 10,000 — 15,000 USD. Lot Sold 158,500 USD. Photo: Sotheby's 2010.

the large cabinet set with a pair of hinged doors composed of single-board floating panel within rectangular frames, all above a blind rectangular panel and a plain apron, the shorter sides with similar aprons, opening to reveal the interior with two shelves, the upper shelf enclosing two drawers.

Lot 343. A rare and unusual 'huanghuali' square table (kangji), 17th century; 11 1/2 by 30 3/4 by 30 3/4 in., 29.3 by 78 by 78 cm. Estimate 10,000 — 15,000 USD. Lot Sold 158,500 USD. Photo: Sotheby's 2010.

the two panel top set within a square frame, all above a waisted section carved and pierced with archaistic scrolls and simulated bamboo nodes on each corner, continuing down to the shaped apron carved with confronting dragons, flanked by animal-head cabriole legs terminating in claw and ball feet. 

Provenance: Private Collection, South West England, since the 1950s.

Note: Of all of the ornate designs on the present table, it is one small feature -- the simulated bamboo nodes carved onto the corners of the waisted section -- that sets it apart from other kangji. A huanghuali four-poster bed in the Palace Museum is the only other comparable known, illustrated in Furniture of the Ming and Qing Dynasties (I): The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 2002, no. 1, where double bamboo nodes are featured above the legs.

Peter Hujar, Self-Portrait Jumping (1), 1974, gelatin silver print, purchased on The Charina Endowment Fund, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2013.108:1.37. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

NEW YORK, NY.- The life and art of Peter Hujar (1934–1987) were rooted in downtown New York. Private by nature, combative in manner, well-read, and widely connected, Hujar inhabited a world of avant-garde dance, music, art, and drag performance. His mature career paralleled the public unfolding of gay life between the Stonewall uprising in 1969 and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. 

In his loft studio in the East Village, Hujar focused on those who followed their creative instincts and shunned mainstream success. He made, in his words, “uncomplicated, direct photographs of complicated and difficult subjects,” immortalizing moments, individuals, and subcultures passing at the speed of life. 

Peter Hujar: Speed of Life—on view at the Morgan from January 26 through May 20—presents one hundred and forty photographs by this enormously important and influential artist. Drawn from the extensive holdings of his work at the Morgan and from nine other collections, the show and its catalog follow Hujar from his beginnings in the mid-1950s to his central role in the East Village art scene three decades later. The catalog features full-page reproductions of one hundred and sixty photographs, essays by curator Joel Smith, Philip Gefter, and Steve Turtell, and the first fully researched chronology, exhibition history, and bibliography to be published on Hujar. 

The exhibition was organized by the Morgan and Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid. After opening at Fundación MAPFRE in Barcelona, Spain, it traveled to the Fotomuseum, The Hague, the Netherlands. Following its Morgan showing, it will be exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive later in 2018. 

“Peter Hujar published only one monograph in his lifetime and did not have his first solo gallery show until he was forty-two,” said Colin B. Bailey, director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “Yet, today, critical appreciation of the full scope of his work is at an all-time high. Best known for the searching intimacy of his photographic portraits, he also distinctively explored landscapes, architecture, and the nocturnal city in works of stark beauty. The downtown New York he captured is a small, intensely creative world that no longer exists, which helps explain why his work is so resonant for young artists today. The Morgan is delighted to present the first in-depth look at this remarkable artist.”  

Peter Hujar, Public Garden, Taormina, Sicily, 1959. Gelatin silver print, 2013.108 © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

The Exhibition 
Speed of Life adopts the form of a traditional retrospective while staying true to how Hujar wanted his work to be exhibited. In his gallery shows, Hujar displayed prints either in isolation or in large groupings that flirted with disorder. He fine-tuned the layout of his final gallery show (1986) until no one type of image (portrait, nude, animal, still life, landscape, cityscape) appeared twice consecutively. Each of his subjects thus held to its own identity, rather than illustrating an imposed theme. The arrangement also emphasized his inventive range, proposing echoes among seemingly unrelated images and highlighting preoccupations that united his entire career.  

Peter Hujar, Daisy Aldan, June 19, 1955, gelatin silver print, The Morgan Library & Museum, gift of Stephen Koch; 2016.58. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Portraiture 
Hujar was easy to meet but difficult to know closely. He participated in a dizzying array of social scenes and subcultures without becoming a part of them. For him, the camera provided a means of creating a relationship between author and subject founded on intimacy, silence, and trust. 

His earliest known exhibition print portrays his former high school English teacher (Daisy Aldan, June 18, 1955), posing in the midtown photography studio where Hujar worked as an assistant after graduating from high school in 1953. The portrait, reflecting the lively and gentle humor they shared, foreshadows the simplicity Hujar would cultivate in his portraiture. Daisy Aldan (1918–2001) was the first adult to encourage him to pursue photography and art. A former child radio actor and a lesbian who was a translator, poet, and editor, in 1953 she founded the small literary magazine Folder, which published a roster of rising New York talent, including John Ashbery, one of Hujar’s future subjects. 

Hujar met Susan Sontag through their mutual friend, artist Paul Thek, in Sicily in 1963. Sontag later contributed the introduction to Hujar’s 1976 monograph Portraits in Life and Death. It included his iconic reclining portrait of the writer. At the time, The New York Review of Books had begun publishing the six essays that would be collected in her book On Photography (1977). 

Peter Hujar, Susan Sontag, 1975, gelatin silver print, purchased on The Charina Endowment Fund, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2013.108.8.2310. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

The reclining portrait is a genre of photograph Hujar made his own. He relied on it as a means of reaching something unique in every sitter. To face a camera lens from a reclining position is an unfamiliar and provoking experience. It stirred a distinct reaction from everyone who experienced it, from playwright Charles Ludlam’s shy deflection to the quizzical skepticism of Hujar’s close friend Fran Lebowitz.  

Hujar’s Social and Political World 
In the mid-1960s, as several of Hujar’s artist friends found success, he remained at the periphery of the art world. He lacked an outlet for his work, but photographed crowds at events such as parades and antiwar rallies. In 1969, when he was working for fashion and music magazines, he at last put his art to explicit political use. In late June, a police raid inspired fierce resistance from the patrons of the Stonewall Inn, in the West Village. Hujar’s boyfriend at the time, Jim Fouratt, arrived on the scene to organize for the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), the first political group to cite homosexuality in its name. Hujar agreed to make a photograph for a GLF poster. The poster, portraying a jubilant group of GLF members under the slogan COME OUT!!, appeared in late spring 1970 in advance of the gay liberation march that marked the first anniversary of Stonewall. 

Peter Hujar, Gay Liberation Front Poster Image, 1969, gelatin silver print, purchased on The Charina Endowment Fund, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2013.108:1.76. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

The Christopher Street Pier, on the Hudson River at West Tenth Street, was known familiarly in the 1970s as “the sex pier.” A place to see others displayed and to display oneself, it was also a site where a photographer could work openly. The pier is an idyll in Hujar’s photographs. Despite its extralegal, outsider status, it exists under broad sunlight, seamlessly a part of city life. During a heat wave on Easter weekend in 1976, Hujar photographed a man framed by his crossed legs on the pier’s wooden ledge. The place and the mood are instantly recognizable in the image, which later appeared on the cover of an issue of The Village Voice celebrating gay life on the tenth anniversary of Stonewall. 

Peter Hujar, Christopher Street Pier (2), 1976, gelatin silver print, purchased on The Charina Endowment Fund, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2013.108:1.84. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

In the early 1970s Hujar consciously turned his back on the commercial mainstream, deciding that the hustle of fashion and music photography “wasn’t right for me.” Moving into a loft above a theater at Twelfth Street and Second Avenue in 1973, he pursued a bohemian life of poverty, taking paying jobs only when necessary and focusing on the subjects that compelled him. The crumbling East Village, increasingly crime-ridden and arson-prone, was a place where artists could live without thinking much about money. It was also the right place and time to catch the first prefigurations of punk emerging in music, art, and fashion. Hujar was led that way by his instincts, his rock-journalist contacts, and his interest in absurdist drag and performance. 

In September 1973, transgender Warhol Superstar Candy Darling (born James Lawrence Slattery) was hospitalized for lymphoma. She asked Hujar to make a portrait of her “as a farewell to my fans.” Out of several dozen exposures, Hujar chose to print a languorous pose in which Candy’s banal, fluorescent-lit hospital room looks as elegant as the studio props in a Hollywood starlet’s portrait. Hujar later wrote that his style cues came from Candy, who was “playing every death scene from every movie.” The image became the most widely reproduced of Hujar’s works during his lifetime. 

Peter Hujar, Candy Darling on her Deathbed, 1973, gelatin silver print, collection of Ronay and Richard Menschel. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

The subjects of his art, Hujar wrote, were “those who push themselves to any extreme” and those who “cling to the freedom to be themselves.” He lavished a portraitist’s attention on subjects who defied it in some way, such as drag performer Ethyl Eichelberger. The most photographed person in his body of work, Ethyl remains an insistently “double” subject, in whom neither actor nor role predominates. From 1978 to 1984, Hujar photographed Ethyl for flyers advertising the stage personae Nefertiti, Auntie Bellum, Medusa, Jocasta, Carlota Empress of Mexico, Hamlette, and a dozen more.  

Diverse Motifs in Hujar’s Work 
The exhibition features suites of photographs that highlight recurring themes in Hujar’s art. 

On his contact sheets, he often marked images in which a linear element guides the eye from the top left to the bottom right of the frame, as seen in his study of dancer Sheryl Sutton (1977). The motif, for which he offered no interpretation, is suggestive but ambiguous; it could be a diagram of decline, a gesture of self-cancellation, or perhaps something else entirely. 

Peter Hujar, Sheryl Sutton, 1977, gelatin silver print, purchased on The Charina Endowment Fund, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2013.108:1.46. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Portraiture of bodies is another preoccupation in Hujar’s last decade of work. Bodies, he proposed, might be read as freely as faces for character, emotion, or life story. He photographed bodies in the extremes of youth and old age, bodies displaying unique features, and bodies in transient states, notably pregnancy and arousal. A pair of photographs depicts photographer Gary Schneider in contorted positions. Hujar declined to direct him in any explicit way. After a long period of false starts, Schneider says, “my defenses were dropped and I became comfortable, and then there was a very strong communication between us.” An interest in the interiority of his subject is characteristic of Hujar’s work. 

Peter Hujar, Gary Schneider in Contortion (2), 1979, gelatin silver print, purchased on The Charina Endowment Fund, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2013.108:1.79.© Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

With the same sensitivity that he brought to human subjects, Hujar made portraits of closedoff entities such as skyscrapers, bodies of water, and animals. When photographing dogs, livestock, or even snakes, he would speak to them in a constant, ordinary conversational tone. Hujar’s animals often appear to be holding a pose, as if they were people who, understanding what a camera does, arrange themselves like a photograph. 

Peter Hujar, Hudson River, 1975, gelatin silver print, purchased on The Charina Endowment Fund, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2013.108:1.54. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Peter Hujar, Boy on Raft, 1978, gelatin silver print, purchased on The Charina Endowment Fund, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2013.108:1.97.© Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Peter Hujar, Horse in West Virginia Mountains, 1969, gelatin silver print, collection of Ronay and Richard Menschel. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Peter Hujar, Dog, Westtown, New York, 1978, gelatin silver print, purchased on The Charina Endowment Fund, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2013.108:1.98.© Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Peter Hujar, Steel Ruins (13), 1978, gelatin silver print, purchased on The Charina Endowment Fund, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2013.108:1.67. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

In 1981, a brief affair between the photographer and the young artist David Wojnarowicz evolved into a mentoring bond that changed both their lives. On their excursions to blighted areas around New York, Hujar crafted the portrait of a city in free fall, complementing Wojnarowicz’s dark vision of Reagan-era America. In his final seven years, he continued chronicling a creative downtown subculture that was running out of time in a fast-changing city. Peter Hujar died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1987. 

Thirty years after his death, Hujar’s photographs are more widely known than they were in his lifetime. They come across as more empathetic than those of an older artist, Diane Arbus, and more soulful and psychological than those of a younger one, Robert Mapplethorpe. It was beauty that moved him to make photographs. Hujar admired the present-mindedness of his contemporary, Andy Warhol, but felt closer to nineteenth-century forebears like Julia Margaret Cameron and Mathew Brady. Like them, he wrote, “I compose the picture in the camera. I make the print. It has to be beautiful.” 

Peter Hujar, Ethyl Eichelberger as Minnie the Maid, 1981, gelatin silver print, purchased on The Charina Endowment Fund, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2013.108:1.41.© Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

The Peter Hujar Collection at the Morgan 
The Morgan owns the most comprehensive public collection of Peter Hujar’s work. In addition to over one hundred photographic prints dating from 1955 to 1985, the collection includes more than 5,700 contact sheets, representing nearly every black-and-white exposure made by the photographer. It also contains his job books and print inventories, correspondence, snapshots by and of Hujar and his friends, and tear sheets from features he published in periodicals such as Harper’s Bazaar, GQ, and The Village Voice.

Peter Hujar, Gary Indiana Veiled, 1981. Gelatin silver print, 2013.108 © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Lot 250. An iron-red and underglaze-blue 'Dragon' dish, Qianlong mark and period (1736-1795); 6 7/8 in.; diameter 6 7/8 in., 17.5 cm. Estimate 8,000 - 10,000 USD. Lot sold 17,500 USD. Photo: Sotheby's 2010.

the interior painted with a central medallion featuring an iron-red dragon amidst underglaze-blue rolling waves, the exterior further decorated with a band of nine dragons in various positions against a wave ground below a linked cash border, the base painted with a six character Qianlong seal mark

Sotheby's. Fine Ceramics and works of Art. 15 Sept 2010. New York

Lot 262. A large 'famille-rose' vase, Qianlong seal mark and period (1736-1795); height 25 in., 63.5 cm. Estimate 20,000 — 30,000 USD. Lot sold 60,000 USD. Photo Sotheby's 2010

the ovoid body supported on a slightly splayed foot rising to a waisted neck, the body painted with stylized lotus scrolls between an upright stylized lappet border just above the foot and a ruyi-head border at the shoulders, the neck further decorated with a row upright stylized lappets below iron-red bats and lotus scrolls, the mouth painted with a turquoise ruyi-head border, the base inscribed with a Qianlong seal mark.

Provenance: A European Private Collection.

Sotheby's. Fine Ceramics and works of Art. 15 Sept 2010. New York

Lot 263. A fine blue-ground 'famille-rose' vase, Qing dynasty, Daoguang period (1821-1850), Shende Tang mark; height 13 3/8 in., 34 cm. Estimate 60,000 — 80,000 USD. Lot sold 140,500 USD. Photo Sotheby's 2010

the body well painted with four roundels within a gold collar, each finely painted with 'one hundred boys at play' reserved on a pale blue enamel ground between Buddhist Emblems born amidst scrolling lotus, the tall waisted neck set by a pair of stylized iron-red and gold dragon handles, the base with four-character iron-red Shende Tang zhi mark 'made for the Hall of Prudent Virtue'.

Provenance: Acquired in New York in 1958.

Sotheby's. Fine Ceramics and works of Art. 15 Sept 2010. New York

Lot 398. A Copper-Red Decorated 'Three Fish' Stem Cup, Yongzheng mark and period (1723-1735); height 4 3/4 in., 12.1 cm. Estimate 7,000 — 9,000 USD. Lot sold 20,000 USD. Photo Sotheby's 2010

the shallow bowl with flared rim supported on a hollow slightly tapered stem, decorated on the exterior in underglaze-red with three fish, six-character Yongzheng mark in underglaze-blue inside the foot.

Sotheby's. Fine Ceramics and works of Art. 15 Sept 2010. New York

Lot 397. A pair of iron-red 'Dragon' wine cups, Jiaqing marks and period (1796-1820); height 2 in., 5cm. Estimate 6,000 — 8,000 USD. Lot sold 6,250 USD. Photo Sotheby's 2010

each with deep rounded sides rising to a flared rim, well painted in iron-red with two dragons in pursuit of 'flaming-pearls' amidst scrolling clouds, all above a short straight foot (2).

Sotheby's. Fine Ceramics and works of Art. 15 Sept 2010. New York

Lot 399. A yellow and green-glazed incised jar (zhadou), Jiaqing mark and period (1796-1820); height 3 1/4 in., 8.3 cm. Estimate 5,000 — 7,000 USD. Lot sold 15,000 USD. Photo Sotheby's 2010

the globular body supported by a short slightly splayed foot rising to a flared neck, the exterior incised with a dragon and a phoenix in pursuit of 'flaming pearls' amidst flames and cloud scrolls below a keyfret border and a row of stylized lappets, the base incised with a six-character seal mark.

Sotheby's. Fine Ceramics and works of Art. 15 Sept 2010. New York

Lot 403. A 'famille-rose''Landscape' bowl and cover, Jiaqing mark and period (1796-1820); diameter 6 3/4 in., 17.2 cm. Estimate 8,000 — 12,000 USD. Lot sold 21,250 USD. Photo Sotheby's 2010

the tall flared sides painted with a lush landscape of walled compounds on islands amidst water linked by bridges, the water scattered with boats and fishermen, the domed cover similar decorated with the same scene, the indented knop and base each painted with a turquoise ground and a six character sealmark in iron-red (2).

Provenance: Christie's New York, 22nd March 1990, lot 342

Sotheby's. Fine Ceramics and works of Art. 15 Sept 2010. New York

Lot 405. A pair of 'famille-rose' jardinieres and stands, Qing dynasty, Guangxu period (1875-1908); width of stand 6 3/4 in., 17.3 cm. Estimate 8,000 — 12,000 USD. Lot sold 21,250 USD. Photo Sotheby's 2010 

each of rectangular form tapering to four bracket feet, the white ground finely painted with a continuous scene of birds amidst leafy branches of purple and pink peonies, inscribed in iron-red Dayazhai beside the Tian Diyi Jia Chun sealmark just below the mouthrim, the stands similarly decorated (4).

Note: It is rare to find jardinieres which have survived with their stands. An identical jardiniere but without its stand from the collection of the Palace Museum is illustrated in Guanyang Yuci: Official Designs for the Manufacture of Imperial Porcelain in the Palace Museum, Beijing, 2007, pl. 33.

Sotheby's. Fine Ceramics and works of Art. 15 Sept 2010. New York

Lot 404. A 'famille-rose' bottle vase, Xuantong mark and period (1909-1911); height 15 5/8 in., 39.8 cm. Estimate 25,000 — 30,000 USD. Lot Sold 37,500 USD. Photo Sotheby's 2010

the globular body and waisted neck painted with numerous iron-red bats amidst multi-colored clouds, the shoulder painted with a band of stylized lotus scrolls separated by gilt shou characters, all between a ruyi-head border at the flared mouthrim and a band of upright lappets encircling the foot, the base inscribed with a six-character reign mark in iron-red. 

Sotheby's. Fine Ceramics and works of Art. 15 Sept 2010. New York

Lot 1813. A very important and magnificent Imperial pearl court necklace (chao zhu), Qing dynasty, 18th century; diameter 134 cm., 52 3/4 in. weight: 330 g. pearl diameter 9.60 - 10.65 mm. Estimate 8,000,000 — 12,000,000 HKD. Lot sold 67,860,000 HKD. Photo: Sotheby's 2010.

consisting of a strand of 108 freshwater Eastern pearls divided into groups of twenty-seven by four fotou (Buddha heads') large coral beads flanked by pairs of lapis-lazuli, the foutou at the back connected to a green gourd-shaped foutouta ('Buddha head stupa'), suspending a gold filagree beiyun ('back cloud') oval plaque inset with a large chartreuse quartz cabuchon encircled by smaller spinel and sapphire cabochons, the reverse with a gold cloud design against a fine gold filagree,  flanked by a pair of coral bats and two pearl beads,  terminating with a large eggplant-shaped red tourmaline (rubellite) bead with a gold filagree calyx, suspended from a yellow silk tape wrapped with blue and white cords and tiny seed pearls, the three jinianstrands of turquoise beads each further suspending a similar red tourmaline eggplant-shaped drop, cinnabar lacquer box.

Provenance: From a Japanese Collection, by repute.

Note: Accompanied by a Pearl Report from Gubelin Gem Lab, Lucerne, Switzerland, certificate no. 0911002, stating that the pearls are "natural freshwater pearls."

The importance of the present court necklace or chaozhu is immediately evident in the use of large white and flawless Eastern pearls – one of the most treasured and precious materials employed for the wardrobe and paraphernalia exclusively made for the emperor and his family members. The seated portrait of the Yongzheng emperor wearing a formal court attire, in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, and included in the National Palace Museum's recent grand exhibition Harmony and Integrity. The Yongzheng Emperor and His Times, Taipei, 2009, pl. I-3 (see p. 52) depicts Yongzheng wearing an almost identical, if not the same chaozhu as that in this catalogue. While chaozhu were made in a variety of precious and semi-precious materials, with a number of examples in important museums and collections, those made with dongzhu or Eastern pearls are extremely rare. There are only five other known Eastern pearl chaozhu in China, all located in the Palace Museum in Beijing.  One necklace is from the Shunzhi period and the four others are all 19th century.  There is a sixth one possibly located in the Shenyang Palace Museum. The National Palace Museum in Taiwan does not own any.  The Eastern pearl chaozhu is considered to be of the highest grade of cultural importance. 

A painting on silk of an Imperial pearl necklace, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is published in Gary Dickinson and Linda Wrigglesworth, Imperial Wardrobe, Toronto, 2000, p. 158. See further five chaozhu in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the museum's special exhibition of Ch'ing Dynasty Costume Accessories, Taipei, 1986, cat. nos. 54-58, made of gold, turquoise, amber, jade and fruit stone. The chaozhu was introduced as part of the official ceremonial attire by the Qing rulers, a design that was based on the Buddhist rosary such as the Ming example illustrated in Jewellery and Costumes of Ming Dynasty, Beijing, 2000, pl. 195. The earliest basic rules relating to the Imperial wardrobe was set down by Abahai in 1636. After the Manchu conquest in 1644, his rules were revised and augmented. The new regulations were recorded in the Huangchao liqi tushi ('Illustrated Regulations for the Ceremonial Paraphernalia of the Qing Dynasty'), an eighteen juan monumental manuscript that includes thousands of illustrations and lengthy text, scrupulously laying down all that concerns the 'proper' paraphernalia for the emperor and his court. Costume and jewellery are well represented in this manuscript for both men and women, starting with the emperor down through all the ranks of the imperial clan and the whole of the court and civil service. The emperor's own accessories are meticulously documented, with specific instructions given for four necklaces of different colours to suit the different types of occasions the emperor attended.1

According to the Huangchao liqi tushi the emperor's principal chaozhu was made of Eastern pearls. The significance of freshwater pearls to the Emperor cannot be emphasized enough. Eastern pearls were harvested from the three main rivers in Manchuria, the Yalu, Sungari and Amur. Hence they were treasured by the Manchu rulers for their association with their 'homeland'. Rules also specified that only the emperor and his family members were allowed to wear this precious pearl that was made into necklace or sewn into Imperial robes. The famous jifu belonging to Rongxian, daughter of the Kangxi Emperor, made of yellow silk and decorated with dragons embroidered with 100,000 Eastern pearls, was part of her dowry when she married Prince Wuergan in 1691.2 Another pearl-embroidered dragon robe belonging to the Qianlong emperor is now in the collection of the Capital Museum in Beijing.

 Strict rules also applied to the number of pearls used for the making of chaozhu as well as the sequence of the setting of the beads. Necklaces consisted of 108 beads, with a bead of a different colour or material, called the fotou (Buddha's head), placed between groups of 27. Additionally, there are three strands called jinian extending at two sides and a decorative strap in the centre of the back. It appears that the use of pearl combined with four large beads made of coral in between two lapis-lazuli beads, and the jinian strung with turquoise was also specified. The crown prince was allowed to use any semi-precious stones strung on apricot-yellow thread, while the emperor's sons and imperial princes of the first two degrees were supposed to use amber with golden-yellow strings, while everyone else belonging to the court would use any stone with blue-black thread.3

The meticulously executed filigree work on the large oval plaque embellished with precious and semi-precious stones is reminiscent of that seen on a number of Imperial gold pieces, including the gold ewer and cover, from the Kempe Collection, sold in these rooms, 11th April 2008, lot 2305; and on a butterfly-form gold brooch decorated with a variety of colourful stones, from the Qing court collection and still in Beijing, published in Zhongguo meishu quanji, vol. 10, Beijing, 1987, pl. 199 (fig.1). Compare also three Qianlong period boxes inlaid with precious stones on a gold filigree ground illustrated in Masterpieces of Chinese Miniature Craft in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1971, pl. 41. The workmanship of gold accessories and vessels is of the highest quality suggesting that they were made in the Palace Workshop located in the Forbidden City.

1 See Margaret Medley, The Illustrated Regulations for Ceremonial Paraphernalia of the Ch'ing Dynasty, London, 1982, p. 17.
2 Mo Chuang, 'Pearl robe of the Emperor K'ang-his's Daughter', China Features, Beijing. 
3 Gary Dickinson and Linda Wrigglesworth, Imperial Wardrobe, Toronto, 2000, p. 158.

Sotheby's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS & WORKS OF ART, Hong Kong, 08 Apr 2010