14 13th November 2010 london selection
Contrasting views of a forgotten India
THE India and Beyond auctions, held at Bonhams (20/12% buyer’s premium) each spring and autumn alongside their Islamic series, are devoted to photographic, manuscript and printed material relating to travel and topography in the sub-continent. It was the ‘beyond’ that furnished
the auctioneers with the highest price in their latest October 5 sale when a rare album of early 20th century Tibetan photographs by John White realised £32,000. This was discussed in the Antiquarian Books section of ATG 1962. More unexpected was the interest
shown at the beginning of the sale for a smaller album of earlier views of Southern Indian topography. It contained 15 albumen prints,
including a three-part panorama, taken around 1855 by Andrew Neill, a photographer attached to the Indian Medical Service at Madras. Alongside a contents list by the
original owner of the album (identified only by the initials GWW), there was an interesting note reading: “the photographs were given me by the artist who took them, a medical officer of some native regiment at Trichinopoly whose name I have forgotten...”. There was also an additional album
leaf featuring images of two bridges with the caption “built by me in 1846-47”. Bonhams had reckoned on £4000-6000 for these but saw the lot pursued to no less than £28,000.
Right: Tower in ruins of
Kamalapur, one of 15 albumen prints of India taken c. 1855 by Andrew Neill and sold at Bonhams for £28,000.
Below: a Viennese enamel cigarette box – £3500 at Christie’s South Kensington.
Adam Scheid of Vienna c.1910, is decorated with an inscribed view of the very French-looking turreted Château of the Maharajah of Kapurthala at the hill station of Mussoorie and engraved to the front with the state arms. The box belonged to Alice Villiers
(1904-1985), a British born-dancer at the Folies Bergère who performed under the stage name Stella Mudge. Alice met and had a liaison with Paramijt Singh, Maharajah of Kapurthala in Paris, becoming his third wife in 1937 as Maharani Narider Kaur. The Maharajah had evidently inherited
his Francophile tastes for dancers and other things from his father Jagatjit Singh who employed a French architect to create a remarkable complex of buildings inspired by Versailles and Fontainebleau in his home state of Kapurthala in the early 1900s. Christie’s had reckoned on £500-600
Given the long and closely entwined
history between the two nations, items of Indian interest can crop up in any UK auction and frequently do. Pictured above is a small 4in (10cm) long enamelled Austrian silver cigarette
box that featured in Christie’s South Kensington (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) mixed media Interiors sale back on September 7 under the heading 'Indian Princely Interest'. The case, bearing the mark of Georg
Good Samaritans at Wartski
WARTSKI’S special loan exhibitions in aid of the Samaritans have become regular events. This year the West End firm are celebrating what they are most famous for, fabulous Fabergé under the title The Last Flowering of Court Art. The show comes courtesy of a private collection built up
by a London-based Russian couple, who started collecting just after the fall of the Soviet Union, making them amongst the first of the ‘New Russians’ to focus on the art of the Imperial goldsmith. Fifty-six pieces from their collection will be on display
and they cover the whole spectrum of Fabergé’s objets de luxe, from jewelled boxes to carved hardstones in the form or flowers, or more unusually people, plus photo frames and bell-pushes.
A particular fondness for animals is demonstrated by no
fewer than 17 examples. They range from a gold-mounted agate ostrich, to a tiny red squirrel formerly owned by Princess Margaret, to the model of a French bulldog shown right. The boldy defined canine is most unusually carved from
petrified wood, not a material that occurs very often in the Fabergé repertoire. He sports an enamelled gold collar set with rose diamonds and has large brilliants for eyes. The exhibition will run from November 23 to December
3, timed to coincide with the major Russian auctions in London. Admission is £8, including catalogue, to benefit the Samaritans.
www.wartski.com
for this, around what one might expect for an piece of Viennese enamel from this period, but the ‘Indian Princely Interest’ propelled it far beyond that, the hammer falling to an Asian buyer at to £3500. Anne Crane
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