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Click here to subscribeA large Chinese porcelain famille rose verte baluster vase - first half 20th century, bearing a six character Kangxi mark, decorated with vases and a wine ewer, on a yellow, 'crocodile skin' style ground decorated with flowers and auspicious objects, above a lappet border to the foot and rim, 41cm high.* Condition: In good condition, with no faults. No chips, cracks, hairlines or restoration.
A pair of large Japanese porcelain baluster shaped vases - first half 20th century, painted with a phoenix, its tail issuing polychrome leaves and diaper reserves on a blue ground, the domed foot with lappet and stylised beast decoration and a similar band of stylised beasts to the neck, the rim with a band of ruyi motifs, iron red three character mark painted to base, 43.5cm high.* One vase in good condition with no faults. The second vase with a small chip to the rim, and a flake to the enamel to one of the diaper reserves. The inside of the neck has some flaking to the white surface, which appears to have been painted over the underlying glaze, but there is no damage evident to the neck of the vase, so it doesn't appear to be restoration.
Peter Wheeler (20th century): Whitefriars interest - an engraved glass panel, created by the young artist Peter Wheeler at Kingston College in the 1960s, for a national competition for an installation in the new Coventry Cathedral, wheel engraved with a female jester riding a hobby horse, 83 x 34.75cm, within a teak frame, in good condition with no damage. * Peter Wheeler worked at Whitefrairs after graduation, as Geoffrey Baxter's assistant. He introduced the first Studio range of low value, high cost glass at Whitefriars in 1969, under Baxter's supervision.
Two 19th century silver mustard pots - the first early Victorian, by Edward, Edward Jr., John and William Barnard, London 1839, drum form with pierced foliate scroll decoration, anthemion thumbpiece and joined scroll handle, 6.7cm high; the other George III, John Emes, London 1805, of barrel form with reeded borders and angular scroll handle, both with blue glass liners, silver weight 230g.
A 9ct gold, ruby and diamond sceptre brooch - first half 20th century, unmarked, tests as 9ct, the two-colour gold sceptre set with square cut rubies, one round cut ruby to the terminal and single cut diamonds, 6.4cm long, in a 'Hicklenton & Phillips, Goldsmiths, 90 Cheapside EC2' morocco case.
Four cased sets of silver tea and coffee spoons - first half 20th century, one set with a pair of sugar tongs, one set of Albany pattern coffee spoons in silver gilt; together with a cased christening spoon engraved 'Emily', Sheffield 1941, total silver weight 277g; and a cased set of six fruit knives with silver handles, Sheffield 1936, with stainless steel blades.
Joseph Marie Amiot (1718-1793) and the Missionaires of Bejing, Memoires concernant l’histoire, les sciences, les arts, les moeurs, les usages des Chinois, edited by Myon Paris 1776. In 15 volumes about 7700 pages. With 160 copper prints. Probably the second protection page of each volume missing. Numbered. Index. Old ex-libris inside cover page with several translations tabels of script signs. First founded and comprehensive description of China in Europe with multiple translations. In hard cover leather bound. Book backpage with gilded ornaments and descriptions. Numbered. 26,5 x 20,5 cm.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), notes pages Credo Mass in C dur,( KV257) from 17. of Novemeber 1776 premiere at the Cathedral of Salzburg, Mass for five instruments and four voices. In 22 handwritten leaflets on paper. All numbered 373 and described A.W.Mozart on the first page. Probably early copy from the late 18th Century. In soft cover with faux marble decorations , missing backpage. Completness not proved. Damages. 24 x 31 cm.
Otto van Veen (1556-1629): 'Amoris divini emblemate...', Antwerp, Plantin press, 16604to. Full title: 'Amoris divini emblemata, studio et aere Othonis Vaeni concinnata'. Gilt spine with five raised bands. Printed by Balthasar Moretus. Title + 60 pl. Otto van Veen (or Otto Vaenius ) was trained as a painter and humanist. He was born in Leiden in 1556. In 1572, because of the political situation, he fled to the Southern Netherlands with his family. In Liege he studied for a few years under Dominicus Lampsonius, then left for a five-year stay in Italy. After his return to the Southern Netherlands he stayed in Liege, Brussels and then settled in Antwerp. In each of these locations, he always tried to maintain favour with the Court. Until the return of his pupil Rubens from Italy, Vaenius was the leading painter in Antwerp. In his later years he turned to producing emblem books, notably Q. Horatii Flacci emblemata(1607),Amorum emblemata and Amoris divini emblemata. In 1612 he was appointed Master of the Archducal Mint. He moved to Brussels in 1615, where he died in 1629 (link). TheAmoris divini emblemata was published in 1615 (second edition: 1660). In the intro to the book, Vaenius relates how the archduchess Isabella suggested his earlier love emblems (Amorum emblemata, 1608) might be reworked ‘in a spiritual and divine sense.' After all, ‘the effects of divine and human love are, as to the loved object, nearly equal.' Both books indeed look very similar. Formally, the emblems are very much alike in structure: on the left-hand page first a Latin motto, then a group of quotations in Latin, and finally verses in several vernacular languages, on the right-hand page the picture. The visual unity ofAmorum emblemata, established among other things by the presence of the Cupid figure on all emblems but one is echoed inAmoris divini emblematain the ubiquitous presence of Amor Divinus and the soul (conveniently identified as such in the second emblem, link). Ref.: -Praz, p. 526 note. - Brunet V, p. 1025. - Landwehr, Low Countries 702.
Rene Theodore Berthon (1776-1859): Madonna of the Rosary, oil on canvas, dated 1845Work: 223 x 180 cm Frame: 246 x 205 cm The date rather difficult to read,although it is without any doubt in the 1840's. Rene Theodore Berthon (1776-1859) was a French painter, born in Tours in 1776 and died in Paris.He studied under the famous painter Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825). He painted portraits and religious and historical subjects, which gained him a certain reputation in the days of the First Empire and the Restoration. Some of his paintings are part of the Versailles collection. (link) He was the father of the portrait painter George Theodore Berthon, who emigrated to England and Canada, and the miniature painter Sidonie Berthon.
Austrian school: Portraits of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Joseph II, oil on canvas, second half 18th C.Work: 114,5 x 92,5 cm Frame: 119 x 98 cm Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina (Maria Theresia; 13 May 1717 - 29 November 1780) was ruler of the Habsburg dominions from 1740 until her death in 1780. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Transylvania, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands, and Parma. By marriage, she was Duchess of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Holy Roman Empress (link). Her son Joseph II (German: Josef Benedikt Anton Michael Adam; English: Joseph Benedict Anthony Michael Adam; 13 March 1741 - 20 February 1790) was Holy Roman Emperor from 18 August 1765 and sole ruler of the Habsburg lands from 29 November 1780 until his death. He was the brother of Marie Antoinette, Maria Carolina of Austria and Maria Amalia, Duchess of Parma. He was thus the first ruler in the Austrian dominions of the union of the Houses of Habsburg and Lorraine (link). Provenance: -Sotheby's, Regensburg, 'Die Furstliche Sammlung Thurn und Taxis', 19-21 October 1993, lot 3180 (StE13651 and StE13652;Schloss St. Emmeram).
A pair of impressive French gilt bronze eighteen-light floor standing candelabra in the manner of Pierre-Philippe Thomire, Paris, first half 19th C.H 268 - L 56 - D 56 cm (with base) Each surmounted by a two-tier bouquet of scrolling branches, each terminating with a foliate drip-pan and candle holder, centred by a stem with pine finial, the fluted support on acanthus-cast rims and scrolling palmettes, on a triangular base with paw feet, each raised on a further studded green-velvet lined plinth.
A pair of impressive French gilt bronze eighteen-light floor standing candelabra in the manner of Pierre-Philippe Thomire, Paris, first half 19th C.H 258 - L - 56 - D 56 cm (with base) Each surmounted by a two-tier bouquet of scrolling branches, each terminating with a foliate drip-pan and candle holder, centred by a stem with pine finial, the fluted support on acanthus-cast rims and scrolling palmettes, on a triangular base with paw feet, each raised on a further studded green-velvet lined plinth.
French school: Cimon and Pero or Caritas Romana, oil on canvas, 18th C.Work: 145 x 112,5 cm Frame: 162 x 130 cm Cimon was sentenced to starvation and imprisoned. It was there that his daughter Pero came to visit him. To keep him alive, Pero made her father drink at her breast. When the town magistrate was informed of this, he was so moved by the loving gesture of father and daughter that he released Cimon. Pero quickly became the ideal image of the child devoted to her parents. The idea that children, as a token of gratitude towards their upbringing, should care for their elderly and weakened parents is a derivative of this history. The term 'Caritas Romana' comes from the first known narrative on paper, in the nine-volume work 'Facta et dicta memorabilia' by Valerius Maximus from AD 31 (link).
German school: Portraits of Oscar I, king of Sweden and Norway, and his wife Josephine, oil on canvas, 19th C.Work: 70,5 x 57 cm Frame: 95 x 80,5 cm Oscar I (bornJoseph Francois Oscar Bernadotte; 4 July 1799 - 8 July 1859) was King of Sweden and Norway from 8 March 1844 until his death. He was the second monarch of the House of Bernadotte. As the only child of King Charles XIV John, Oscar inherited the thrones upon the death of his father. He married Josephine Maximiliane Napoleon (1807-1876), first by proxy at the Leuchtenberg Palace in Munich on 22 May 1823 and in person at a wedding ceremony conducted in Stockholm on 19 June 1823. She was the eldest daughter of Eugene de Beauharnais and his wife Auguste, Princess of Bavaria. She was thus step-granddaughter of Napoleon Bonaparte, granddaughter of his wife Josephine de Beauharnais and granddaughter of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria, which was reflected in the choice of her first name (link). This high quality pair is made after the 1823 marriage portraits by the German painter Joseph Karl Stieler (1781-1858).However, the Stieler portraits are no longer part of the same collection: the portrait of Oscar I was sold at Sotheby's, London in 1991 (Nov. 17, no. 99) and the Josephine paintingat Neumeister in 2015 (Oct. 29, 2015, Auktion 922, no. 11, €50.800, link). Provenance: -Sotheby's, Regensburg, 'Die Furstliche Sammlung Thurn und Taxis', 19-21 October 1993, lot 3086 (StE4295 and StE4296;Schloss St. Emmeram). Ref.: - U. von Hase, Josef Stieler 1781-1858. Sein Leben und sein Werk. Kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke, Munich, 1971, nr 99-101.
A pair of French Louis XVI style gilt bronze andirons with urns, first quarter 20th C.H 25 - L 130 cm A bronze adjustable fender: the rail with berried laurel border and centred by a cartouche mount, flanked by uprights surmounted by swag-hung urns, on waisted square section feet. Provenance: - Christie's, South Kensington, European Works of Art, Decorative Objects, Carpets and Furniture, including Chess, 25 June 1997, lot 227.
A Louis XV trumeau mirror with an 'Allegory of sculpture' by or in the manner of Carle Van Loo (1705-1765), dated 1741231 x 127 cm The assumed prime version of the 'Allegory of Sculpture' by Charles Vanloo is part of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (Mildred Anna Williams Collection, 1950.10). The date of the work is determined 1752-1753 (link).The work offered here may be an earlier version, which was first conceived as a salon decoration.
Two handcoloured engraved maps: N. Visscher (1618-1709): 'Magnae Brittanniae' (1695) and Homann heirs (1730-1848): 'Americae mappa generalis' (1746)Work: 55,5 x 46,5 cm ('Brittaniae') Frame: 76 x 66 cm Map of the British Isles,which pays tribute to William III, with full immense decorative title cartouche, second cartouche with 3 coats of arms and scale of miles with two cherubs. Work: 54 x 47 cm ('Americae') Frame: 77 x 63 cm Homanns' second map of America, which reflects the substantial new information obtained since the issuance of the first map of America by the patriarch of the Homann Family, Johann Baptiste Homann. The decorative cartouche includes some very lively visual imagery, including volcanos and a nice allegorical scene representing the people, flora and fauna of America. The interior of North America benefits from the knowledge obtained by the Jesuits in the Interior parts of North America, especially along the Mississippi River and English and Dutch information along the coast. The French are still the dominant force in the North, the Spanish in the South, immediately prior to the French and Indian War. The Great Lakes are only just now being accurately charted by D'Anville and later Mitchell. The west coast conforms to the French updates provided by De L'Isle and progeny. South America is substantially corrected from earlier models. The NW Coast of America and NW Passage are still unknown, but wishfully shown. Quivira is shown considerably east of its normal location. Quivira was the the legendary land of gold and silver. Francisco de Coronado began his search for Quivira in 1541, but found only Indian Villages. He did however report to the Spanish King that the land was suitable for growing all of the products of Spain. Quivira migrated progressively further North and East, until it disappeared in the late 18th Century. The map seems to be influenced primarily by the highly influential map of America by De L'Isle first issued in 1700, although the Haas retains some of the great mythical cartographic features in the interior regions. The map was likely bound into Homann's Atlas Scholasticus, one of the most popular and widely distributed atlases of the second half of the 18th century, which continued to be issued with periodic changes to the maps for over 50 years. Printed in Nuremberg, 1746. Ref.: -Lowery Collection 383. - Wagner 1746.
A pair of polychrome Flemish pottery Art Deco 'geometric' vases, probably Laigneil, Kortrijk, first half 20th C.H 47,5 cm Pieter-Jozef Laigneil (1870-1950) started his own pottery company in Kortrijk in 1898. The 'Kortrijksche Kunstpotterij' grew steadily. Up to 30 workers were employed there. Artists such as Emmanuel Vierin, Victor Acke and Jozef De Coene provided designs. The catalogue had 1155 models. After the First World War, the demand for art pottery - a luxury product - had decreased sharply and in 1926 the pottery closed its doors (link).
John Craxton R.A. (British, 1922-2009)Goatherd and Goat signed and dated 'Craxton 1950' (lower right)oil on canvas127 x 104 cm. (50 x 40 in.)Footnotes:ProvenanceThe Artist, by whom gifted as a wedding present to the parents of the current owners in 1961, thence by family descentPrivate Collection, U.K.ExhibitedChichester, Pallant House Gallery, John Craxton: A Modern Odyssey, 26 March-21 April 2024LiteratureIan Collins, John Craxton: A Modern Odyssey, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, 2023, p.82, fig.76 (col.ill.)In May 1946 – the first spring after World War Two – John Craxton flew away to Greece. At 23, the London-born nomad found his subject in Aegean life, light and landscapes. That passion would last until his death aged 87.By 1950 the artist was in his stride: exploring the ancient Greek world of the Eastern Mediterranean; exchanging a semi-Cubist approach in conveying jagged and rugged topography for a singular style taking in everything from mythology and archaeology to Byzantine mosaics. Despite many famous friends, Craxton depicted ordinary people – soldiers, sailors and herder families living close to nature as in Homeric times. If they all possessed a heroic aspect, they also appeared on the point of laughter. In quicksilver drawings and paintings taking ever longer, subject and artist seemed to share a secret joke as well as an all too evident joy in being alive.Always short of money, Craxton accepted free materials to produce a large painting for a 1951 Festival of Britain exhibition while briefly back in London. Cash prizes were a further lure. While pretending to be toiling in England, he then absconded back to Greece and his current home port of Poros. Drawing on a recent tour of Crete, when he had nearly been shot by a drunken gunman firing wildly while entering a house on a donkey to celebrate a shepherd's wedding, a hedonistic artist began the work which would become Four Figures in a Mountain Landscape (Bristol Museum & Art Gallery). He also completed Goatherd and Goat as the principal study and a stand-alone painting.Four Figures in a Mountain Landscape is an evocation of sun and shadow. Herders, two in light and two in darkness, lead a flock of goats from shelter in a mountain cave for milking at sunrise. Goatherd and Goat depicts the key foreground figure in the dazzle of dawn.Cast in the black garb of rural Cretan manhood, and with a traditional scarf lending a piratical look, the figure clasps a billy goat's horn in an image still to be seen across the untamed Mediterranean. But here an everyday encounter meets ancient and mythic themes. Much as Craxton loved goats – admiring their resilience in tough scenery they nibble into desert – there is also a link to the wild bull capture of antiquity and the bull leapers' fresco at the Minoan Palace of Knossos. Predictably, a happy victim of 'procraxtonation' he missed the Festival of Britain deadline – but for once with a good excuse beyond the pleasures of a social life in the sun. He was asked to design the décor for Frederick Ashton's 1951 Daphnis and Chloe ballet starring Margot Fonteyn, which launched a whole new personal and professional adventure. In 2011 David Attenborough found Four Figures in a Mountain Landscape in a Bristol City Art Gallery basement during a television documentary. Goatherd and Goat was unseen until the last leg of John Craxton's 2022-2024 centenary tour, taking in Athens, Chania, Istanbul and Chichester. We are grateful to Ian Collins for compiling this catalogue entry and to Richard Riley for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: ARAR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
Walter Richard Sickert A.R.A. (British, 1860-1942)Venetian Woman signed 'Sickert' (lower left)oil on canvas40.5 x 33 cm. (16 x 13 in.)Footnotes:ProvenanceRobin Craig Guthrie, thence by family descentPrivate Collection, U.K.Complete details of the identity of the sitter spontaneously captured in the present work are not known, but it is known that she was Venetian. The city meant much to Sickert. He lived and painted there in 1895, 1896, 1900, 1901 and 1903-4. One wife left him in Venice and he (unsuccessfully) wooed another. He not only painted its great and lesser sites, but first developed his characteristic interiors with figures there, posing local models in his rooms at Calle dei Frati. His command of Italian - and the Venetian dialect - was fluent. He visited the city for the last time in December 1929, perhaps in advance of the one-man showing of his work in the British Section at the Biennale in 1930 (he had shown a few works at the Venice Biennale in 1903 and 1912, and was to show a few more in 1932 and 1936).The present work was first owned by the artist Robin Craig Guthrie RSPP (1902-1971). According to Guthrie's son Professor David Maltby Guthrie, his father knew Sickert as a leading figure in the artistic circles of the Belsize Park and Camden Town area in which he also moved.Guthrie was primarily a portrait painter, though he also produced numerous landscapes particularly of the Sussex countryside where he grew up. He taught for a while at the Royal College of Art and his notable works include The Sermon on the Mount (Tate Collection) a portrait in oils of the actor Moira Shearer (National Portrait Gallery) and a panoramic painting of The Queen reviewing the Tank Regiment (the Tank Museum).We are grateful to Dr Wendy Baron for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
Christopher Wood (British, 1901-1930)At Marseilles signed and dated 'C Wood 27' (lower right)oil on canvas54.2 x 65.1 cm. (21 1/4 x 25 5/8 in.)Footnotes:ProvenanceMax Ede, 1951, thence by family descent to the present ownerPrivate Collection, U.K.ExhibitedCardiff, National Museum of Wales, British Romantic Paintings in the 20th Century, organised by the Arts Council of Great Britain, 27 July-22 August 1953, cat.no.70; this exhibition travelled to Aberystwyth, Gregynog Gallery of the National Library of Wales, Swansea, Glynn Vivian Art GalleryLiteratureEric Newton, Christopher Wood 1901-1930, The Redfern Gallery, London, 1938, p.70, cat.no.251The present, exceptional example by Christopher Wood has remained in the same family collection since it was acquired over seventy years ago by Max Ede (brother of Jim, the esteemed founder of Kettles Yard Gallery in Cambridge). Painted in 1927, it dates from a pivotal period for the artist, a year after meeting Ben and Winifred Nicholson and a year prior to his 'discovery' of Alfred Wallis in St Ives.Wood was blessed with a number of natural attributes that served him well in his pursuit of success - good looks, charm, talent, a supportive mother and endless ambition – but he also, by his own admission, enjoyed a certain amount of chance in the social connections he made, that contributed in no small part to his budding career and professional recognition. This good fortune began in London in 1920 when a nineteen year old Wood received an invitation to Paris from Alphonse Kahn, one of the most prominent collectors of the day who moved in all the right circles. Just six months after his arrival in Paris in March 1921 as a relative unknown, Wood declared in a letter to his mother that he had 'decided to try and be the greatest painter that has ever lived' (Richard Ingleby, Christopher Wood, An English Painter, Allison and Busby, London, 1995, p.13). This determination was borne not just from self-belief but from an admiration for the lives of the high-brow artistic community he found himself in, mingling with the likes of Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso and, crucially, a Chilean diplomat named Antonio (Tony) de Gandarillas. Tony was well connected, bisexual and glamourous all of which piqued Wood's interest and they remained close companions for years to come, with Gandarillas assuming the role of the young painter's greatest advocate.In 1926, Wood returned to England, spending time in both St Ives and London, and it was the latter where another pivotal meeting took place, with Ben and Winifred Nicholson. Cedric Morris had taken Wood along as a guest to the Nicholson's flat in Chelsea and having formed an instant connection they visited him the very next day at Tony's house in Cheyne Walk to view his recent paintings. Winifred recorded these in her memoir as 'masterpiece upon masterpiece....Here was England's first painter. His vision is true, his grasp is real, his power is life itself' (Op.Cit., p.142). The Nicholsons became lifelong friends, personally and artistically, and Wood was elected to the Seven & Five Society on their proposal. With Ben as Chairman and the driving force behind the Society, Wood exhibited four paintings in January 1927 to critical acclaim from the Sunday Times. It was also this year that Nicholson introduced Wood to art collector, Jim Ede, who became a great friend and supporter of his work. Ede famously went on to house his great collection of Wood's work and that of other St Ives artists, at his Kettle's Yard Gallery and it is believed he had a hand in helping his brother, Max, acquire the present work as a 50th birthday gift for his wife Kathleen in 1951. However, having started the year on a positive note and feeling his star was rising, a disappointing exhibition at Beaux Arts alongside the Nicholsons in April put his feet firmly on the ground again. Affected by the less than favourable reviews, he abandoned plans of a summer in London and retreated to France. There, he licked his wounds, first on a Mediterranean cruise followed by a trip to Cannes. And it was there, under the blazing skies of the French Riviera, whilst Tony was in rehab in Vichy for his 'debauchery', that Wood re-met Meraud Guinness, having initially made her acquaintance in London two years prior. Wood idealised the Nicholson's relationship and decided that he needed a Winifred to his Ben. Meraud fulfilled the criteria being beautiful, influential and an artist herself. They fell in love over the summer of 1927 and planned to marry but (both) sensing the disapproval of Meraud's parents, it was over before it really started. Her father, in particular, was unimpressed by the young painter's lack of money together with a clear opium addiction. At this time, Tony became unwell again, now in a nursing home in Nice and Wood visited him daily to offer support, grateful for an opportunity to repay the elder man's long kindness. And more bad news followed with the report of a dear friend, Rene Crevel, on his deathbed in a Marseilles hotel. In a letter to the Nicholson's from Marseille, he described the effect of the place and recent events on his work saying 'that the atmosphere of the place, coloured by his friends' serious illness, and the unavoidable introduction to the concept of mortality that went with it, was having a strange effect on his work. His painting was once again the only thing that really mattered. He was, he told them, simplifying his forms and giving '...a good firm edge to everything'' (Op.Cit., p.169). And so it was that, after a difficult personal period, Wood threw himself into painting in the South of France.Having been brought up close to the Liverpool docks, he had a natural affinity with the sea, and particularly with boats and harbours, which he would explore further in Cornwall and Brittany in the following years. At Marseilles was painted towards the end of a tumultuous 1927, and depicts the autumnal French quayside with boats and townscape sandwiched between two bands of brooding Prussian blue sky and water. His treatment of the large canvas is thoroughly modernist, as he utilises his usual broad and fluid handling. The evening scene is flattened and abstracted with the forms of the buildings reduced to tonal planes and the windows a patterned grid work. Eric Newton comments that Wood's 'best paintings are at the same time radiant and faintly sinister. Fra Angelico and El Greco, for once, seem to have met on common ground' (Christopher Wood 1901-1930, London, 1938, p.16). In the present work, offered at auction here for the first time, a muted palette and serene composition (for what must usually have been a bright, jostling location) lend the mood of contemplation so essential to Wood's mature style. And a poignant stillness reveals an artist surely deep in thought, reflecting on what had passed that year but also looking forward with confidence to what was yet to come, tragically unaware there would be just three short years left to realise his dreams.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
Edward Burra (British, 1905-1976)Dr Fu Manchu signed 'Burra' (lower right)pencil and watercolour61 x 48.9 cm. (24 x 19 1/4 in.)Executed in 1931Footnotes:ProvenanceWith The Lefevre Gallery, London, where acquired by the family of the present ownerThence by descentPrivate Collection, U.K.LiteratureAndrew Causey, Edward Burra: Complete Catalogue, Phaidon, Oxford, 1985, cat.no.80 (ill.b&w)A fictional character from a series of novels by English author Sax Rohmer, Dr. Fu Manchu is characterized by his goal to conquer the Western world using his hordes of henchmen and collection of mysterious tools. First appearing in The Insidious Dr Fu-Manchu in 1912, he was featured in cinema, television, radio, comic strips and books for over 90 years, becoming an archetype of the evil, criminal genius. A number of novels were produced until 1917 when the character took a fourteen-year absence before re-emerging with a vengeance in The Daughter of Fu-Manchu in 1931, the same year the present work was painted.As a voracious enthusiast of popular culture, Burra would have been very familiar with the character of Fu Manchu and it is likely the figure portrayed here depicts (or rather, in Burra's inimitable manner, partly suggests) one of his female conspirators. The original story details how Fu Manchu sent a woman to check if his target had been successfully murdered and she is described as 'A girl wrapped in a hooded opera-cloak stood at my elbow, and, as she glanced up at me, I thought that I never had seen a face so seductively lovely nor of so unusual a type. With the skin of a perfect blonde, she had eyes and lashes as black as a Creole's, which, together with her full red lips, told me that this beautiful stranger, whose touch had so startled me, was not a child of our northern shores.' The author further recounts her 'slim hand with jewelled fingers', 'big questioning eyes' and the 'bloom of her red lips, due to art not to nature'. Burra, perhaps more so than any other artist, is a master of the strange and the sinister and here is our accomplice, complete with the aforementioned wide eyes and ruby red painted mouth set against lurid green skin in the artist's typically grotesque fashion. Surrounding her is the evidence of her labour – a bloodied knife and even severed body parts such as eyes and ears can be located nestling amongst cheering imagery such as fruit, bright blooms and even pastoral animals. This combination of the malignant with the benign is signature Burra and leads to an overall strangeness in keeping with Surrealist affinities. Painted in the early 1930s during the artist's most critically successful period, a Surrealist influence is clear to see in Dr Fu Manchu through the skewed perspective, heightened palette and unnerving portraits (both recto and verso) and it is easy to understand how, with Burra's love of theatre and the macabre, the subject appealed.This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: ARAR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
Patrick Heron (British, 1920-1999)BLUE AND BLACK (3 CIRCLES) : JANUARY 1962 signed and titled 'PATRICK/HERON/BLUE & BLACK (3/CIRCLES). JAN 62' (verso)oil on canvas40.5 x 50.8 cm. (16 x 20 in.)Footnotes:ProvenanceWith Waddington Galleries, London, April 1962, where acquired byT.W. (Fello) Atkinson, thence by descent to the present ownerPrivate Collection, U.K.Heron's painting of the first half of the 1960s can be characterised by an increasingly apparent simplification of composition that plays into a complexity of how colour, shape and mark effect the ways space can be read in each work. A few years earlier, with paintings such as BROWN GROUND (WITH SOFT RED AND GREEN) : AUGUST 1958-JULY 1959 (Tate) the feeling of spatial equality – where there is no hierarchy between the largest colour area and any other shape – is achieved through painting and over-painting as he later described: 'The shape of colour, at this moment in my painting, was something I arrived at by allowing differing quantities of colour, of the liquid pigment itself, to expand and contract, to swim with or against one another under the tutelage of a swiftly moving soft blunt brush, nudging, scribbling, gliding, pushing or pulling the paint across the surface' (Patrick Heron, 'The Shape of Colour', Studio International, February 1974, p.71). The fact that the painting is not designed or drawn but the result of an 'active brush gives a charge to the painted surface so that the largest colour area is not a passive receptor or ground for other shapes. This activity of painting stimulated the appearance of a vocabulary of shape – organic, ragged lopsided discs, squares, and lozenges.With BLUE AND BLACK (3 CIRCLES) : JANUARY 1962 this vocabulary of shape formed through the 'active brush' has been adapted to minimise over-painting as can be seen in the differently weighted brushstrokes that define the blue and black colour areas. The density of medium allows the white primed surface of the canvas to be apparent. The three circles of the title are then described individually: by a decisive scratched line in the blue colour area to reveal white priming more directly, and within the black upright oblong: the upper disc defined by the handling of the thicker over-paint and also by the line partially scratched through the paint layers, the lower disc of blue revealed through (or on) the black shape. This painting, made up effectively of two colours and pared down shapes, becomes a celebration of the rich possibilities of painted colour to reveal spatial complexity.We are grateful to Dr Andrew Wilson for compiling this catalogue entry.The Patrick Heron Trust is in the process of researching the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work and would like to hear from owners of any works by Patrick Heron, so that these can be included in this comprehensive catalogue. Please write to the Patrick Heron Trust, c/o Modern British and Irish Art, Bonhams, 101 New Bond Street, London W1S 1SR or email britart@bonhams.com.This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: ARAR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
Keith Vaughan (British, 1912-1977)Three Figures and Cane Chair titled and dated '3 Figures & Cane Chair 1956' (on an artist's label attached to the backboard)gouache, pen and ink27 x 32 cm. (10 5/8 x 12 5/8 in.)Footnotes:ProvenanceWith The Redfern Gallery, London, 11 November 1966, where acquired byPeter VitiDuring the 1950s Vaughan's international reputation had grown. Seven gouaches had been included in an exhibition in Buenos Aires in 1950, the Brooklyn Museum showed others in 1953 and Durlacher Brothers of New York exhibited further gouaches in 1952, 1955 and 1957. By now, he had established himself as one of Britain's foremost handlers of the medium of gouache. Three Figures and Cane Chair is typical of Vaughan's somewhat ominous and portentous subject matter around this time. Small groupings of male nude figures, alternately bathed in bright light and shrouded in mysterious shadow, had been a favourite concern since he completed his major work First Assembly of Figures in 1952. Here, three figures in a domestic interior play out a mysterious ritual. It is an emotionally and sexually charged scene, not least because of its unexplained nature and the varying degrees of light and deep shadow on the two background figures. Here and there, on the furniture and parts of the figures, blank paper supplies areas of light tone, while skilful and sensitive use of drybrush drawing and opaque layers of gouache define the anatomical forms. It is interesting to note that Vaughan was the victim of an attempted blackmail the year he painted Three Figures and Cane Chair. Living as a gay man during the 1940s and 1950s, he harboured an underlying fear of discovery or public scandal. The memory of the incident haunted him for years and, perhaps, the anxiety and emotional disturbance he experienced may be felt in the erotic tension of the present work.We are grateful to Gerard Hastings for compiling this catalogue entry.This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: ARAR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
Dame Barbara Hepworth (British, 1903-1975)Maquette for Walk-In signed and numbered 'Barbara Hepworth 12/12' (on the base)bronze with a green and part-polished patina24.7 cm. (9 3/4 in.) highConceived in 1970 and cast by Morris Singer in 1971BH 514Footnotes:ProvenanceWith Gimpel Fils, London, February 1972, where acquired by the present ownerPrivate Collection, South AfricaExhibitedWest Bretton, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Barbara Hepworth: Centenary, 17 May-14 September 2003 (unnumbered, another cast)Wakefield, The Hepworth Wakefield, Barbara Hepworth: Art and Life, 21 May 2021-27 February 2022 (unnumbered, another cast); this exhibition travelled to Edinburgh, National Galleries Scotland, 9 April 2022-2 October 2022, St Ives, Tate, 26 November 2022-1 May 2023 Literature Sophie Bowness (ed.), Barbara Hepworth, The Plasters: The Gift to Wakefield, Lund Humphries in association with The Hepworth Wakefield, Farnham, 2011, pp.57 & 154The last two decades of Hepworth's life were marked by ill health and heartbreak. The death of her eldest son Paul and the ending of her second marriage to the artist Ben Nicholson, were exacerbated by a diagnosis of tongue cancer, a broken leg, and an increasingly aging body. And yet, in spite of all this she continued to develop her work in more and more innovative ways, incorporating new methods and materials. She went as far as to say in 1970 (the year that the present work Maquette for Walk-In was conceived) in an interview with her son-in-law Alan Bowness that 'even breaking my leg in 1967 was a good thing because it made me extend my arms as far as I could', shedding light on the sculptor's urge to create and innovate in the face of hardship (in 'Alan Bowness: Conversations with Barbara Hepworth', included in The Complete Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth, 1960-69, Alan Bowness (ed.), Lund Humphries, London, 1971, p.14).Hepworth first began working with bronze in 1956. After initially believing that the material was at odds with her practice, and her search for 'truth in material', she soon became enamoured with the possibilities that bronze provided. As a carver first and foremost, the discovery of a way in which to bring together carving and casting in her work saw a distinct shift in her practice. Not only was she able to explore a more monumental scale, but it also meant that she was able to increase her output in response to demand for her work, through the production of multiples. But working in bronze meant collaborating with foundries. Over the course of her career, Hepworth worked with four different foundries to produce her sculptures, but it was Morris Singer who she would choose to work exclusively with from 1963 until her death in 1975. She established a very close working relationship with the foundry and its manager, Eric Gibbard, which became fundamental to the success of her bronzes and the casting process.The art historian and close friend of Hepworth, Abraham Hammacher, noted of the artist's later works, particularly those conceived in the last seven years of her life, that it was 'the tension in the form; the structures; the verticality which remained dominant...; the vigour in the stacking of elements; the ever-varying, constantly renewed experience of piercing volume, with the piercing itself more than anything the hallmark of her spatial sense and sensations; the resumption of group compositions after a long interval; the dual character of her surfaces, firstly as the enclosing element of three-dimensional spatial forms and secondly as 'surface as such', accentuated in some manner (linear inscription, 'scratches', low relief, colour)'. (Abraham Marie Hammacher, Barbara Hepworth, Thames and Hudson, London, 1998, pp.195-6) The present work, Maquette for Walk-In, was conceived in 1970 after the monumental sculpture Three Obliques (Walk-In), arguably one of Hepworth's most impressive works in bronze. The sculpture is made up of three pierced and interconnecting monoliths, reminiscent of the standing stone monuments that Hepworth was familiar with, such as Avebury and Stonehenge, as well as those closer to home in Cornwall, perhaps Mên-an-Tol (meaning 'holed stone' in Cornish), located to the south of St Ives. Of her later sculptures, Hepworth observed that she envisaged them as 'objects which rise out of the land or the sea, mysteriously' (in 'Alan Bowness: Conversations with Barbara Hepworth', included in The Complete Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth, 1960-69, Alan Bowness (ed.), Lund Humphries, London, 1971, p.14). The circular piercing in each block contributes to the expansion of space within the work, revealing new perspectives, and inviting the viewer to participate directly with the sculpture. Hepworth increasingly found in her work that it was impossible to have one without the other; to think of the landscape without also thinking 'about the human figure and human spirit inhabiting the landscape. For me, the whole art of sculpture is the fusion of these two elements' (Barbara Hepworth in her essay 'A Sculptor's Landscape', included in Barbara Hepworth: Drawing from a Sculptor's Landscape, Cory, Adams and Mackay, London, 1966, p.10). Even the title of this work implies an invitation to the viewer to 'walk-in' to the work, to experience its totality, which whilst literally true of the monumental cast of the work, also rings true for the maquette. Moving around the sculpture, moving closer and further away, the viewer is afforded glimpses of the work in new configurations and observations. As the decades progressed, Hepworth became more explicit about the way in which she sought to encourage physical engagement between the viewer and the sculpture. She noted in 1968, that 'there's no fixed point for a sculpture, there's no fixed point at which you can see it, there's no fixed point of light in which you can experience it, because it's ever-changing and it's a sensation which cannot be replaced by words or colour or anything else at all, and your view of approaching a sculpture is totally different from a view where you walk backwards' (Barbara Hepworth in conversation with Edwin Mullins, included in Barbara Hepworth: Writings and Conversations, Sophie Bowness (ed.), Tate Publishing, London, 2015, p.213). And yet, Hepworth often used colour to emphasise the contract between spaces, interior and exterior, and to highlight the texture of the form as is visible here. The blue-green patina of the wide, expansive surfaces of Maquette for Walk-In is complimented by the caramel-golds of the polished edges, which peek through the pierced forms as the viewer moves around the sculpture, taking it in from every angle, as the artist suggests. Indeed, the benefit of her table-top works as opposed to the monumental 'walk-through' sculptures, is that these allow the viewer to take in the work all at once, to experience the form in its totality.We are grateful to Dr Sophie Bowness for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: * AR* VAT on imported items at a preferential rate of 5% on Hammer Price and the prevailing rate on Buyer's Premium.AR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
Patrick Heron (British, 1920-1999)5 DISCS IN RED : MARCH 1964 signed and titled 'PATRICK/HERON/5 DISCS/IN RED:/MARCH/1964' (verso)oil on canvas96.5 x 122 cm. (38 x 48 in.)Footnotes:ProvenanceWith Waddington Galleries, London, October 1964T. W. (Fello) Atkinson, thence by descent to the present ownerPrivate Collection, U.K.Literature'Dosez les couleurs osées', Elle, November 1967, p.123 (col.ill.) Alan Gouk, 'Patrick Heron II', Artscribe, no.35, June 1982, p.42 (ill.b&w)In the mid 1960s Heron declared how he and his British contemporaries were building on the achievements of the abstract expressionists in ways that were quite distinct from the new generation of US painters such as Jules Olitski and Kenneth Noland whose work was variously characterised as Post-painterly or Color-Field painting. Having visited New York in 1960 for his first solo exhibition at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery that year, Heron subsequently wrote to the American critic Clement Greenberg how pleased he was by the 'glow and resonance' of his own painting and to offer his recognition that 'The best American painting has a sort of bareness by comparison: and while this open clean bareness is terrific [...] it is not what I want (in my own work, that is).'[1] 5 DISCS IN RED : MARCH 1964 indicates quite what Heron had meant by this, and how his own painting had continued to quickly develop. In the space of two years he had moved from open and simplified compositions to paintings which were loosely conceived in broadly rectilinear – if still lop-sided and asymmetrical – ways. Their continued 'glow' and 'resonance' being the result of an increasing chromatic intensity, a continued reduction of overpainting that would soon lead to the reintroduction of drawing, and an amplification of his distinctively textural brush marks – remarking to Greenberg that 'My painting has always been unashamedly 'scribbled'.'[2] Heron's attention to the physicality of the act of painting and the marks that derive from it, corresponds to an attitude to colour and his desire is to 'saturate the surface of the canvas with [...] varying quantities of colour', manipulating 'the varied and contrasting intensities, opacities, transparencies; the seeming density and weight, warmth, coolness, vibrancy [...] Certainly I can get a tremendous thrill from suddenly seeing two colours juxtaposed.'[3] The wide variety of brush marks that can be seen in 5 DISCS IN RED : MARCH 1964 echoes its nuanced colour range, but also contrast with the degree to which the edges of each disc are now more distinctly defined and drawn – if still freehand and irregular. There is a visual jump between each disc and the neighbouring colour areas that he would start to explore even more acutely by the end of the decade when his painting process radically changed. But the consistent thread throughout the decade can be located in each painting's foundation on the physical quality of his spontaneous (yet deliberate) brush marks allied with an expression of spatial ambiguity and colour intensities that is so exhilaratingly expressed here in 5 DISCS IN RED : MARCH 1964. 1. Patrick Heron to Clement Greenberg, 9 May 1960, Clement Greenberg Papers, Archive of American Art, Smithsonian Library, Roll N69-91R.2. Patrick Heron to Clement Greenberg, 19 June 1962, Clement Greenberg Papers, Archive of American Art, Smithsonian Library, Roll N69-91R.3. Patrick Heron, 'A Note on my Painting', Art International, 25 April 1963, p.50.We are grateful to Dr Andrew Wilson for compiling this catalogue entry.The Patrick Heron Trust is in the process of researching the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work and would like to hear from owners of any works by Patrick Heron, so that these can be included in this comprehensive catalogue. Please write to the Patrick Heron Trust, c/o Modern British and Irish Art, Bonhams, 101 New Bond Street, London W1S 1SR or email britart@bonhams.comThis lot is subject to the following lot symbols: ARAR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
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