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Lot 69041
Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton (French, 1827-1906)Jeune pêcheuse bretonne, Douarnenez, 1878Oil on canvas laid on board22-1/8 x 14-1/2 inches (56.2 x 36.8 cm)Signed and dated lower right: Jules Breton 1878 PROVENANCE:Henry Reinhardt, New York, by descent, 1918;Paul Watkins, Winona, Minnesota, acquired from the above;Christie's, New York, October 27, 2004, lot 130;Christopher-Clark Fine Art, San Francisco, California;Private collection, Las Vegas, Nevada, acquired from the above.Upon the occasion of the painting's sale in 2004, Christie's noted that "this work has been authenticated by Annette Bourrut-Lacouture and will be included in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné, Jules Breton, Painter of Peasant Life."During the late nineteenth century, an era marked by rapid industrialization and urbanization, Jules Breton's bucolic subjects were widely admired for their portrayal of rural life in France. The artist's rustic pastoral scenes depicted a simpler time, offered a reassuring sense of tradition and continuity, and championed the poor and laboring peasant class, for whom the artist had a deep affinity and admiration. Breton's first official artistic recognition came in 1855 for The Gleaners (National Gallery of Ireland), followed soon afterwards with a silver medal at the 1857 Salon for The Blessing of the Wheat in Artois (Musée des Beaux Arts, Arras), which was purchased by the French State. Throughout the ensuing decades, Breton's success continued unabated with awards, critical accolades, and enthusiastic patronage both in Europe and abroad. The artist's works were particularly sought-after in America following the Civil War, leading Breton to quickly become the most popular French artist across the Atlantic. In 1877, Samuel G. W. Benjamin wrote that "popular and artistic opinion is more united in favor of the merits of Jules Breton than upon any other living painter" (Contemporary Art in Europe, New York, 1877, p. 92).For Breton and his contemporaries, the agricultural region of Brittany provided the ideal backdrop for scenes of peasant life, as it does in the present work. The province became a popular destination for artists and tourists alike, when the first railway line from Paris was completed in the 1860s, because the traditional way of life there remained relatively unchanged and thus exceedingly picturesque. Age-old methods of farming and fishing were still in use, and Breton peasants, particularly the women, continued to dress in their distinctive traditional attire with bonnets, aprons, and wooden shoes. Douarnenez, a commune in western Brittany, was the location of a centuries-old fishing port, which provided the artist's inspiration for the present work.Painted in 1878 at the height of the artist's career, Jeune pêcheuse bretonne, Douarnenez depicts a young fisherwoman at end of her work day seated upon the rocky shore. Captured in a moment of reverie, the girl rests her chin on the end of her fishing pole, the fading warm late afternoon sun illuminating one side of her face. Since she is backlit by a sky nearing dusk, which glows near the horizon, the young Breton fisher girl is presented in near-silhouette, a very difficult visual effect to paint. By this period Breton's technique was marked by looser brushstrokes and more casual poses of his sitters, qualities that may have derived from the influence of the Impressionists, whose contemporaneous artistic innovations favored freedom of execution over a more static academic approach. A superb draughtsman and colorist, Breton utilized subtle gesture and muted color to create a tranquil mood in this poetic composition. As is the case with most of his peasant scenes, Breton does not dwell on the hardship of girl's labor in this work, opting instead to evoke a more poetic image of youthful wistfulness. HID12701242017
Lot 21
Nicholas Condy (1793-1857)Interior of an Irish Inn at BallyboylebooOil on canvas 47 x 63.5cm (18½ x 25”)SignedExhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1843, No. 415Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1843, Condy’s recently rediscovered depiction of an Antrim interior populated by twenty very different individuals and with a rich variety of objects on display is an invaluable portrayal of Ulster country life in the middle of the nineteenth century. Although he described the picture as Interior of an Irish Cottage at Ballyboyleboo, what is shown is an inn, tavern or shebeen, making it a rare early depiction of an Irish public house. In contrast, however, to the small body of work showing Irish pubs by artists such as Charles Henry Cook, Erskine Nicol and Nathaniel Grogan, which invariably feature the Catholic Irish peasantry in stereotyped attitudes often verging on the caricature – here the clientele seems distinctly more mixed in terms of class and confession with a noticeably military flavour. The primary interaction in the painting is between the doubly amputated figure standing on the right in smart but sober attire and the seated black man at left who has suffered the loss of just one foot and who leans back in his chair as he raises a toast. This is an extraordinarily rare image of racial equality in an Irish genre scene of this date. Where black figures appear at all in Irish painting of the period it is invariably as marginal, often servile, subsidiary figures as, for example, in Erskine Nicol’s The 16th, 17th (St Patrick’s Day), and 18th March (National Gallery of Ireland). It seems likely that equality – or at least the superficial appearance of equality – has been gained through shared endeavour on the battlefield, and that the seated black man is a veteran toasting his former commanding officer. Certainly the deportment and dress of the man standing, very comfortably it must be said, on his double prosthetic limbs, suggests his elevated social position. The gathering includes both army and naval elements. An advertising bill on the right seeks able seamen, while the format of Condy’s signature, ‘Lt. Condy bf 43rd regt’ reminds us that he had begun his career as an army officer, serving in the Peninsular War, and retiring on half-pay at Christmas 1818. Continuing the military theme, a bust of the Duke of Wellington looks down from a shelf at upper left in the somewhat indecorous company of candlestick and brass kettle (and with a canoodling couple directly beneath his gaze). Prints of naval victories adorn the walls while to the side of the chimney hangs a toleware candle box and pair of bellows. A drunken sailor has passed out under the table his clay pipe and glass lying smashed in front of him while a serving woman brings more refreshments to those at table – a punch bowl, small glasses for toasting and pipes. Music is provided by a fiddler in the background.Claudia Kinmonth notes that Condy’s Ulster subjects ‘convey a real sense of how poor people’s homes in Antrim may well have been in the 1840s’ (Claudia Kinmonth, Irish Rural Interiors in Art (2006) p. 94). However, he also mixes Irish and English elements within his work, sometimes reusing still-life motifs or even whole figurative groups with which he was pleased. On the shelf to the left, the silver-plated vessel with a pouring spout and a handle on the side was used for serving hot chocolate, a delicacy unlikely to be widely available in Irish pubs of the 1840s, and indeed it, and other elements of the composition, appear again in Estate Workers in a Kitchen Interior (Mount Edgcumbe House). Similarly, a small work in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery, Exeter, repeats almost verbatim the seated man shown here smoking a pipe. This is clearly a reduction from the present work, rather than the other way round, as the man’s motivation for turning round and looking upwards is lost when the figure is shown in isolation and removed from its context.Condy’s composition is artfully created and rather than the mere ‘slice-of-life’ recording of an interior and the objects within it, he offers knowing and witty allusions to the art of the past and also perhaps to that of his contemporaries. He relishes the chance to paint textures as different as scaly fish, metal, glass and ceramics and to record the differing way that light falls on each. The beautifully painted still-life in the lower right corner consisting of earthenware jug, crutch and broom resting on a barrel offers a deliberate reference to the art of David Teniers who time and again places a similar grouping of objects with a prominent diagonal formed by a brush or similar object to lead the eye into the composition. Similarly the still-life of fish may reference Teniers’s ‘well-kept kitchen compositions’ (‘de welvoorziene keuken’). The quotation of Teniers would have been recognised widely, as the seventeenth-century Flemish artist was synonymous with ‘low-life’ genre scenes such as this and his work was avidly collected and frequently engraved.Even more fundamental as a source of inspiration, however, was the phenomenally successful career of David Wilkie who applied the compositional dynamics of Teniers to modern-life subjects. Like Wilkie, Condy here deliberately echoes Teniers earthy ‘old master tonalities’ and shows a similar ‘delight in details and in rough irregular surfaces’ (David Solkin, Painting out of the Ordinary, Yale University Press, 2008, p. 12). Wilkie had also introduced a black soldier into his famous Chelsea Pensioners (Apsley House). Unlike Cushendall, the subject of another Ulster work by the artist, there is no townland in Antrim called Ballyboyleboo. It seems to be an Anglicization – exaggerating the Irishness of the name – of Ballyboley. In the rich account of life in Ulster of a couple of decades earlier written by John Gamble (published as Society and Manners in Early Nineteenth-Century Ireland, edited by Brendán Mac Suibhne, Dublin, 2011, p. 280, n. 4), Gamble records how he stopped ‘at a lone public house between Larne and Ballymena’ and enjoyed a session in which tall stories were narrated. Mac Suibhne suggests that this may be ‘the premises now call the Ballyboley Inn’. An earlier building on this site may also be the setting for Condy’s work, though an older inn only a few miles distant at The Battery is also a possible candidate.
Lot 277
BREGUET 'CLASSIQUE' No.925, REF. 3390: A GOLD DRESS WATCH, CIRCA 1990 automatic movement, guilloché silvered dial signed and numbered, with Roman numerals and blued steel Breguet hands, circular case with 'coin' edge and straight lugs with screwed bars, back inscribed 'AUTOMATIC / BREGUET 925' and with Swiss 18 carat marks, cabochon sapphire set crown, Movellato leather strap with gold tang buckle stamped '750' case 32mm diameter
Lot 1377
A Keramos pottery figure, circa 1940, modelled by Stefan Dakon as a young girl dressed as a hobo, carrying a sack on her back with a stick, raised on an oval base, black printed and impressed marks to base with numerals '2073 10', height 25cm, together with a Royal Dux figure of a girl wearing a blue and gilt dress, height 23cm, and a Royal Dux style centrepiece, modelled as two nymphs on a shell (minor faults).Buyer’s Premium 29.4% (including VAT @ 20%) of the hammer price. Lots purchased online via the-saleroom.com will attract an additional premium of 6% (including VAT @ 20%) of the hammer price.
Lot 378
Britains Commonwealth and Egyptian Troops sets 2030, Australian Infantry in Blue ceremonial dress with Officer, eight New Zealand Infantry, set 225, Kings African Rifles (bases repainted green) in original ROAN box, seven Egyptian Infantry and set 115, Egyptian Cavalry, in original ROAN box with an additional Officer (Condition Good, boxes Poor) 1956 (37)
Lot 513
John Tunstill's Soldiers Soldiers British Army set 27 (two) Infantry in khaki foreign service order (two), sets 21 and 28 Infantry in full dress, set 138 4th Hussars, set 20 Riflemen (two) and set 13 South Australian Infantry and Officers of the British Empire in original double row box in original boxes (Condition Excellent, boxes Good) (72 in eight boxes)
Lot 520
John Tunstill's Soldiers Soldiers set 131, Danish West Indies Police at ease, 137 Prussian Hussars marching (two), 137 German Hussars, marching, Canadian Highlanders set 133 at attention: Toronto Scottish (two), 48th, Stormont and Glengarry, and set 135 Lorne Scots marching, 131 Royal Marines, tropical dress and 132 Royal Marine Light Infantry in original cubeboxes (Condition Excellent, boxes Good) (88 in 11 boxes)
Lot 526
John Tunstill's Soldiers Soldiers 102B Orange Free State Artillery, 102 RMLI tropical dress at ease (three), 108E British Guiana Militia at ease (one rifle broken), 106 King's Own Borderers marching, 106D King's Own Scottish Borderers, 106E 5th Dragoon Guards marching, marching, 103A West German Panzer troops marching, 103D German Navy, WWII, at ease and 105E, German Navy Coastal Defence, WWII, at ease in original cube boxes (Condition Excellent, boxes Goo-Fair) (88 in 11 boxes)
Lot 529
John Tunstill's Soldiers Soldiers 131 Bahamas Police at ease (two), 131 Somerset Light Infantry, India, at ease (three), 131h Royal Malta Fencible Artillery, full dress, and Royal Malta Artillery, helmets, at ease, 133 Seaforth Highlanders of Canada at attention (one man missing) and 131 Royal Marines, white jackets, and Mediterranean khakis in original cube boxes (Condition Excellent, boxes Good-Fair) (87)
Lot 53
Britains set 312, Grenadier Guards in greatcoats with Officer in original Whisstock box (Condition Excellent, box Excellent) 1936, and set 114, Cameron Highlanders in service dress in original Whisstock box (Condition VeryGood-Good, some small white paint splashes on rifles, box Poor) 1952 (16)
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