Antiques Trade Gazette 41
at a profit
Above a Tlingit mosquito mask sold for €230,000 (£209,010) at Christie’s.
Right: Brazilian feathered headdress, €20,000 (£18,180) at Binoche et Giquello.
Above: Dutch still life, €150,000 (£136,365) at Jean Marc Delvaux.
a 12in (31cm) high Kanak mask from New Caledonia left its €50,000-70,000 estimate behind to take €350,000 (£318,180). Yet again this was a piece with
a notable and, in this case, primary provenance, having been collected as long ago as 1850 by an Irish colonel, Philip Doyne Vigors, on the East Coast of New Caledonia during a four-month voyage on the Southern seas on board HMS Havannah. The colonel’s detailed and
enthnographically valuable journal of this voyage includes a fine drawing of the mask, which is listed as having been one of the objects bought by barter during the voyage. Apart from these two sales there
was also a notable result recorded at Drouot on December 12 where Castor Hara sold a pre-Columbian artefact, a three-part metal ornament for a chief from the Mochica I Culture (100-300AD)
Freshness the key to selling shellfish and fruit at €150,000
for €290,000 (£181,820). It had formed part of the collection of Julieta Guillot inherited from her father Alvaro Guillot- Munoz. On December 9, a 330-lot sale at
Binoche et Giquello (devoted to artefacts from the Americas both North and South) was led at €20,000 (£18,180) by a colourful feathered headdress from the Rikbaktsa Indians of the Rio Juruena and Rio Sangue areas in Brazil’s Mato Grosso.
A MARKET-FRESH collection of Northern Old Master paintings included in Jean Marc Delvaux’s sale on December 16 yielded a bid of €150,000 (£136,365) for a well-composed, 2ft 7in x 3ft 6in (81cm x 1.08) Dutch still life by Pieter Claesz (1597-1669) featuring a classic combination of shellfish, fruit and drinking glasses. Monogrammed and dated PC 16
lower right, the oil, illustrated above, had not been on the market since the 1950s and was formerly in the collection of the Chevalier de Stuers. The auctioneers also took €48,000
(£43,635) for a smaller Flemish still life of fruit oysters and an open pie, by Joris van Son (1623-67), but bearing the signature J D De Heem. The prices in both instances were well
over estimate. Beaussant Lefèvre’s sale at Drouot
Left: a New
Caledonian Kanak mask, €350,000 (£318,180) at Sotheby’s.
Right: pre-Columbian Mochica Culture chieftain’s ornament, €200,000 (£181,820) at Castor Hara.
on December 2 featured a half-length portrait on panel of the goddess Diana painted by Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem (1563-1638) monogrammed and dated 1607. The 2ft 2in x 19in (66 x 49cm) panel
had a provenance to a 1776 sale of J v d H, the 19th century collection of Dr Felix Bamberg and, following the Second World War, to the Paris dealers Curt Benedict. The price of €180,000 (£163,635) was just under the €200,000-250,000 estimate. The auctioneers did rather better in
their mixed discipline sale of December 21 with a 17in x 10in (43 x 25cm) pencil, gouache and watercolour sketch by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)
Above: Rodin drawing, €190,000 (£172,730) at Beaussant Lefèvre.
of Prometheus, executed around 1875 and based on a figure of Apollo by Michelangelo in the Bargello in Florence. The drawing, shown above, will
feature in a forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Rodin’s drawings and paintings by Christina Buley-Uribe, from whom a certificate dated 15th September 2011 will be supplied to the purchaser. Estimated at €15,000-20,000, it realised €190,000 (£172,730).
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