Antiques Trade Gazette 45


Berlin


since the 1920s, was a re-offered lot. It originally appeared in Nagel’s February sale a year ago. Then it was bid from €18,000 to a substantial €85,000, a sum reportedly too strong for the top bidder, who apparently did not have the funds to pay for it. This time around it was in the catalogue at €15,000 and sold for a respectable €40,000 (£34,190) to the Italian trade. Many of the lots on offer in this sale


came from the private museum founded in 2003 by Gert Nagel, one-time owner of the auction house. Nagel has decided to disperse his varied collection and among the popular items was a painting by south German artist Anton Braith (1836-1905), Jungvieh am Klausenpass (Young Cattle at the Klausen Pass in Tyrol), painted a year before the artist’s death. The attractive estimate of €12,000 had the desired effect and a bidder on the phone invested €40,000 (£34,190) to beat off the competition. Another picture from Nagel’s museum


made the top price of the sale. Franz Roubaud’s (1856-1928) 2ft 4in x 3ft 7in (70cm x 1.1m) Circassian Horsemen at a River, had graced the cover of the auction catalogue and was moderately estimated at €15,000. Russian bidders joined in on the phones and in the room and the hammer fell at €65,000 (£55,550). From another source came a


characteristic 21 x 2ft 9in (54 x 82cm) oil on canvas of ducks in a pond by Alexander Max Koester (1864-1932), which more than doubled the estimate to sell at €45,000 (£38,460) to a local collector against determined bidding from several German dealers. Koester, who spent most of his career


painting ducks, has a dedicated following in Germany. Paintings by the Canadian artist Frederick Simpson Coburn (1871- 1960), on the other hand, are almost exclusively handled in the artist’s homeland and rarely make it to European auction houses. The last one to surface on the


continent was sold in Zurich over a decade ago. So when Nagel offered the 3ft x 5ft 11in (92cm x 1.82m) canvas Chatting on the Logging Trail from 1911, this was something of a rarity. Coburn, who was born near Montreal,


trained in New York, Berlin, at the Slade in London, in Holland and in Belgium, where he settled for several years. He illustrated numerous books, but his speciality was winter scenes, many of which were later used for Canadian Christmas cards. This particular painting was purchased at a Montreal gallery and had been in private hands for many decades. It ended up going for €33,000 (£28,200), to a London dealer who outbid the American competition.


Highlights of the March 4 Aguttes sale.


Above: Printz palmwood sideboard – €250,000 (£227,750). Right: Mucha wall lights – €98,000 (£89,090). Below right:W.A.S. Benson hanging lamp – €4000 (£3635).


Printz makes a triumphant return to Paris rooms


FOLLOWING the results seen at Beaussant Lefevre in February (see ATG No 1981), there were more strong prices for Printz palmwood at the Drouot in Paris earlier this month. On March 4 Aguttes (20% buyer’s premium), who have carved out their own niche in the design and decorative arts market, offered this 7ft 6in (2.3m) sideboard created c.1935-37, with two sets of double doors covered in oxidised brass. Signed in the usual way on the lower right with Printz’s monogram,


it topped its €150,000-200,000 estimate to sell for €250,000 (£227,270). The Art Nouveau era had its highlight too in this 227-lot offering.


A relatively rare example of Alphonse Mucha’s three-dimensional, as opposed to graphic, work came in the form of a pair of wall lights of c.1901 formed in bronze applied to pearwood backplates. Each was fashioned as a typical Mucha woman’s head surrounded by flowerhead sconces and applied with earrings and a necklace set with malachite, amethyst and lapis. These were a collaboration between Mucha and Adolphe-Armand


Truffier, the modeller, engraver and goldsmith who worked on a number of vases and lamps in organic style and had signed these pieces which were very similar to a single incomplete wall light that was included in an exhibition dedicated to Mucha held in Montpelier in 2009. The Aguttes pair, which measured 20in (51cm) high, including the


backplates, had been cast at the Gustave Leblanc Bardedienne Foundry c.1901. A €60,000-80,000 guide had been set but they ended up making €98,000 (£89,090). More unusually the sale also included a piece of English Art Nouveau


from the 1890s in the form of an elegant 2ft 6in (76cm) gilt-bronze hanging lamp. It was attributed to the English designer W.A.S. Benson c.1890 and was certainly in his style with its distinctive conical vaseline glass shade. It sold for a respectable €4000 (£3635) against a €2500-3000


estimate. £1 = €1.1


Anne Crane


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