38 New York Auctions Asia Week Auctions By Margaret Tao


BONHAMS The Dr Sylvan and Faith Golder Collection of Fine Chinese


Snuff Bottles, Part II Monday, 19 March, 10am 117 lots, $270,400-412,500


Tis is the second sale of the snuff bottle collection of Dr Sylvan and Faith Golder from Cincinatti. Te first half was sold in these rooms in September 2017. Te Golders loved travelling and assembled their collection between 1967 and 2015, from the best international dealers in the field. Tey were very active in Cincinnati art collecting circles and at the Taft Museum of Art, where a selection of their bottles were exhibited in 1997. Tey donated their Chinese archaic jades to the Cincinnati Art Museum. Teir snuff bottle collection, which was evenly split between the two sales, is quite comprehensive,


reflecting Faith


Golder’s interest in bottles made of hard stones and featuring numerous glass and porcelain bottles. One fine example is a yellow and russet jade


‘auspicious’ bottle, 1750-1850 (est $10/15,000).


Asian Works of Art Monday, 19 March, 10am 147 lots, $356,050-523,550


DOYLE


Tis March, the sale will be smaller than usual with a lower overall value. Te primarily decorative material ranges across all the Asian art categories and is from both estates and private collections. Te largest group and most prominent lots are Chinese. A Qianlong mark and period celadon-glazed double gourd vase from RM Chait Galleries in New York is very attractive (est $12/18,000). A Song-dynasty qingbai carved lobed dish, which came from Eskenazi Ltd in London and was exhibited at the Oriental Ceramic Society is also of interest ($6/8,000).


South Asian Art Monday, 19 March, 11am 72 lots, $4,700,000-5,600,000


Modern & Contemporary SOTHEBY’S


Tis is the first of their biggest sales series ever in the Indian, Himalayan


BONHAMS Indian, Himalayan & Southeast Asian Art, including Selections from the Elizabeth and Willard


Clark Collection Monday, 19 March, 3pm


Approximately 110 lots, $7,480,500- 10,724,000


Te sale has strengths across all the areas covered by this category, and all are from private collections. Most notable among these is that of eminent Asian art collector Willard ‘Bill’


Clark, best known for his


Chinese celadon glazed porcelain double gourd vase,


est $12/$18,000, Doyle


and Southeast Asian department. Numerous important works by Modernist masters form the core of this 99.9 percent privately sourced sale. Te leader is a seminal and historically important


painting by


Syed Haider Raza (1922-2016). Not only was it featured in the Venice Biennale in 1956 (the second year that Indian artists were shown there), but it is one of Raza’s largest works. Ville Provençale, oil on canvas, painted in 1956 was sold by his dealer, Galerie Lara Vincy, to a private collector and last seen at auction at Cornette de St Cyr in Paris in 2010. Te estimate is unpublished, but it is expected to fetch over $2.5 million. Te sale also includes nine or 10 works from the estate of Helen and Herb Gordon. He was a United States diplomat and the American Consul General to Calcutta from 1968-1975. Te group features some of the finest works by Bikash Battacharjee (1940-2006), a highly acclaimed Calcutta artist. Untitled (Rooftops), oil on canvas, signed and dated ‘Bikash’ 64-72 was painted then and is one of the more outstanding (est $120/180,000). A new initiative is a small section of


photography (about six-seven lots), featuring


India-based images by


international photographers Kenro Izu (b.1949), William Gedney (1932- 1989) and Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) and two by Raghubir Singh (1942-1999), currently the subject of a retrospective at the Met Breuer.


collection of Japanese art, for which he built Te Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture in Hanford, California, in 1995, and subsequently donated the collection to the Minneapolis Museum of Art. One of his pieces, a gray schist figure of Hariti,


circa 3rd century, from


Gandhara, leads the impressive group of Indian sculpture. Published since 1978, it was in the 1999 exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution: Devi: Te Great Goddess and is one of a handful of large free-standing figures of the only female deity ever portrayed in Gandharan art (est $200/300,000). A larger than life-size, grey schist, head of Buddha from the same period from Gandhara was published and exhibited in Pratapaditya Pal’s show, Sensuous Immortals, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1978 (est $300/500,000).


Te highlight of the sale is a gilt- copper figure Avalokiteshvara Sahasrabhujalokeshvara from Tsang Province in Central Tibet. Although the figure was published in Apollo 1968 and 1971 and in Indo Tibetan Bronzes by Ulrich von Schroeder in 1981, the inscription around its base has never been read until now. It names the famous Sakya teacher, Zhonnu Gyalchog,


two brothers,


A gilt-copper alloy figure of Avalokiteshvara Sahasrabhujalokeshvara, attributed by inscription to Sonam Gyaltsen, Central Tibet, Tsang province, circa 1430, height 67.7 cm, est $ 1/1.5 million, Bonhams


BONHAMS Chinese Works of Art and


Paintings Monday, 19 March, 12pm 220 lots, $1,900,000-2,800,000


Archaic bronzes, Buddhist sculpture, snuff bottles, jade and many pieces of porcelain as well as classical and modern paintings are part of the sale,


which is anchored by several private collections. A celadon double gourd vase with a lid is one of the most important of an interesting selection of de-accessioned pieces from the Currier Museum in New Hampshire (which has mainly American art), (est $60/90,000). Te collection of Tang Shaoji (1862-1938), the first premier of the Republic of China, who was assassinated in Shanghai, offers many examples of Qing dynasty porcelain. A private collection of tianhuang seals and a group of inside painted snuff bottles by Wang Xisan. Most of the early Chinese art from the Estate of Sally S Miller, from Baltimore, was acquired at JJ Lally & Company. A Tang-dynasty repoussé parcel gilt


silver bowl (est $80/120,000) and a Shang-dynasty, Anyang phase bronze ritual wine vessel, gu (est $70/100,000) are highlights. Te sale’s highest


Norbu Zangpo and Palzang and the artist, Sonam Gyaltsen who created it. Since Zhonnu Gyalchog founded a monastery called Jamchen Chode in 1430, the bronze can be dated to around that time. Tibetan sculpture reached its height in the 15th century, and this very large piece is representative of the best of this period (est $1,000,000/1,500,000). Te sculpture was with Oriental Antiquities Ltd., in London before 1968, was sold at Sotheby’s London in 1977 and has been in a UK private collection ever since.


Fine Chinese Paintings Tuesday, 20 March, 10am 156 lots, $4,000,000-6,000,000


CHRISTIE’S


Tis is one of the larger recent paintings sales in these rooms, and the works range in date from the Yuan dynasty to contemporary with important works from several periods, especially early classical examples. Most are family consignments, which are fresh to the market, and many came to the consignors directly from the artist.


priced lot, Ville Provençale by Syed Haider Raza, oil on canvas, painted in 1956, 104.7 x 200.4 cm, estimate upon request, Sotheby’s ASIAN ART MARCH 2018


however, is a hanging scroll in ink on paper of a horse, by 20th-century master, Xu Beihong (1895-1953), renowned for his very popular depictions of this subject (est $150/200,000), one of two modern works from the collection of Dr Gregory Dahlen.


Te top lot, an anonymous (13th/14th-century) handscroll in ink on paper, Sixteen Arhats, was thought to be a rare work by a Yuan-dynasty master and bears two collector’s seals by the Yuan painter Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322). Detached colophons give a detailed history of the painting up until it was exhibited at Frank


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