Antiques Trade Gazette 37
July perspective
specialist Philip Mould, in partnership with the art investor Alfred Bader, paid an artist’s record £7.4m for Sir Anthony van Dyck’s last self-portrait, painted in 1640, the year before he died and just before he left England. Those who missed out at Sotheby’s will get a second chance to buy the 2ft x 19in (60 x 47cm) oval oil, as it will form the centrepiece of the Mould gallery show, unsurprisingly with a seven- figure asking price.
No Philip Mould show would be complete without one of his well- publicised discoveries. At a Bonhams portrait miniatures sale in May last year, he bought a 31
/2 in (9.2cm) diameter
A selection of works that form part of Master Paintings Week from July 3 to 9.
Left: Johnny Van Haeften has yet to set a price for Man Having to Choose between the Virtues and Vices, by Frans Francken II (1581-1642), the centrepiece of his exhibition.
Far left: The head of a bearded man, a sketch for The Visitation by Federico Barocci (c.1526-1612), 153
/4 x 12in (40 x 31cm) oil
on paper, laid down on canvas – estimated at £50,000-£80,000 from Bonhams.
Left: The Oyster Eater by Henri Stresor (1613?-1679), 3ft 6in x 2ft 11in (1.07m x 89cm) oil on canvas – in the region of £1.4m from Colnaghi.
Bottom left: Michael Tollemache Fine Art’s show of British Portraits 1640-1810 includes this portrait by John Constable (1776-1837) of Maria, 6th Countess of Dysart, in the character of Miranda, in The Tempest, signed and dated 1807 and priced at over £100,000.
Above: Rafael Valls’s exhibition of trompe l’oeil paintings will include this depiction of Hawking Equipment by Christoffel Pierson (1631-1714), a signed 191
/2 in x 2ft 2in (50 x 66cm) oil on canvas, priced at £120,000.
Top right: The Weiss Gallery, who celebrate their 25th anniversary this summer, have this study of Alice More, the second wife of Sir Thomas More, from the Studio of Hans Holbein the Younger (c.1497/98- 1543), which is priced at £380,000.
Far right: Ulysses recognises Achilles amongst the daughters of Lycomedes by Louis Gauffier (1762-1801), 2ft 8in x 3ft 9in (82cm x 1.14m) oil on canvas – in the region of £1m from Stair Sainty Gallery.
“The personal enthusiasms of dealers often make for interesting shows, and Rafael Valls’s passion has always been for trompe l’oeil painting”
supervision by his studio in Basel. Infra-red examination has also shown that it has been painted over an unfinished portrait of the Humanist scholar and philosopher Desiderius Erasmus, Sir Thomas More’s great intellectual rival and friend. It is priced at £380,000.
The personal enthusiasms of dealers often make for interesting shows, and Rafael Valls’s passion has always been for trompe l’oeil painting. Despite this, Valls has never before held a show dedicated to this deft and witty genre, but from June 28 to July 30 he will host his first to coincide with Master Paintings Week. One of Valls’ highlights is this trompe l’oeil of Hawking Equipmentby Christoffel Pierson (1631-1714), a Dutch glass painter as well as a painter of portraits and still lifes. The signed 191
/2
circular oil on paper catalogued as ‘Flemish School, 16th Century A Gentleman’ for £2640 (including 20% premium). However, Mould believes the subject of the painting to be none other than the immensely powerful Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, Charles V (1500-1558) and it now has a price tag of £22,500.
On an utterly different scale is the huge 5ft x 6ft 11in (1.42 x 2.11m) depiction of Man Having to Choose between the Virtues and Vices, by Frans Francken II (1581-1642), which will be unveiled as the showpiece at Dutch and Flemish specialist Johnny Van Haeften’s gallery, after he paid €6.1m (then £5.65m) for it at Dorotheum’s Old Master sale in Vienna in April this year. Van Haeften breathed a sigh of relief on the safe arrival of this 1635 oil on panel – he was forced to buy the piece unseen after the Icelandic volcano scuppered his flight out to view it in person. The price at Dorotheum was a record for Francken and for any painting sold at auction in Austria, but, at the time of going to press, Van Haeften had yet to decide on an asking price for this painstakingly detailed depiction of the human soul on its journey to Heaven or Hell. But let’s not forget the auctioneers,
and this year Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams have all joined the Master Paintings flock. This summer, London’s salerooms can boast a stellar line-up of paintings, perhaps crowned by Joseph Mallard William Turner’s (1775-1851) 1839 oil panorama of Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino, which comes onto the open market for only the second time in its history at Sotheby’s July 7 sale of Old Master and British Pictures, where it is estimated at £12m-18m. New participants this year are Bonhams, whose July 7 sale includes The head of a bearded man, an oil-on-paper sketch for the left-hand figure in The Visitationaltarpiece executed between 1584 and 1586 for the Chiesa Nuova in Rome by Federico Barocci (c.1526-1612), estimated at £50,000-80,000. The ancestral homes of the Spencer
family, Althorp and Spencer House, have provided two highlights for Christie’s sale on July 6. Portrait of a commander, three- quarter-length, being dressed for battleby Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) is estimated at £8m-12m, while King David by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Il Guercino (1591-1666), originally commissioned in 1651 by Giuseppe Locatelli for Palazzo Locatelli in Cesena, was acquired by the 1st Earl Spencer in 1768 and is estimated at £5m-8m. For a full list of participants and events, see pages 38-40.
in x
2ft 2in (50 x 66cm) signed all on canvas has an asking price of £120,000. If Rafael Valls loves trompe l’oeil, Clovis Whitfield’s poison is Caravaggio. The owner of Whitfield Fine Art has just completed a book on the turbulent painter and, to mark the 400th anniversary of his death, has mounted Caravaggio’s Friends & Foes, an impressive academic mixed loan and selling show of works by his contemporaries, open until July 23.
A couple of familiar paintings from
Europe’s salerooms are also due to re- emerge. In December 2009 portraiture
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