Sale rooms
Promising
Henry Elwell
The great strength of the dollar, the post-Taubman honeymoon at Sotheby's and the tremendous success of the Chats- worth drawings sale at Christie's have given the sale rooms, and indeed the whole art market, a great boost and the promise of a very prosperous winter season. Phil- lips, on the strength of this tide, are holding their first Impressionist sale on 3 December. The department is run by Joachim Pissarro, great-great-grandson of Camille, and Joachim's younger brother, Lionel, is its Paris representative. They have gathered together, amongst other paintings, a Renoir and two Pissarros, as it were one for each of them, but ironically they haven't managed to secure Camille Pissarro's desk which is being sold the next day in an Impressionist sale at Christie's by yet another Pissarro descendant.
Sotheby's have two truly remarkable paintings in their Impressionist sale on 4 December: a magnificent early-blue- period Picasso and a Schiele of compelling intensity. The Picasso `La Gommeuse' is from the very beginning of his blue period, painted towards the end of 1901. Sotheby's have somewhat missed the point of the painting's title by translating `gommeuse' as 'lady of the night'. In fact it means someone who is overly dressed. The sultry girl in the painting of course is only wearing a flower in her hair and scarf round her neck, her heavy breasts and fertile-looking stomach only adding to her arrogantly louche expression. The painting has only been exhibited at the Chicago Arts Club in 1946 so this is a marvellous chance to see it. The Schiele `Liebespaar (Mann und Frau 1)' is so intense that, to begin with, one has to take short glimpses to accustom oneself to it. A man lies on a bed, his arms curved forward like bulls' horns; a woman kneels alongside him, her head dropped forward cradled by his left arm; his head is turned towards us with his face set in a threatening gaze. Also in the sale is Nolde's `Landschaft': two horses stand in an Expressionist landscape; one is tempted to think that this type of painting has done more for Malcolm Morley (recent winner of that Turner prize) than he has ever done for 'British art' in 1984.
Christie's have their important English picture sale on 23 November. Recovering from their failure to spot the Van Dyck bought from them by the National Portrait Gallery they have found another, a portrait of Ann Carr, Countess of Bedford. The face is all right but the rest of the painting as it appears now is undistinguished; perhaps it was previously thought to be a copy. There is in the sale, though, the most English of English paintings, Joseph Wright of Derby's conversation piece of Mr and Mrs Thomas Coltman. Thomas Coltman described himself thus when writ- ing to Sir Joseph Banks: 'I propose to go out with the hounds in the morning which I can do more easily than write a letter. No uncommon thing with a sportsman.' He was obviously unduly modest. The painting though, entirely serves its purpose. Mrs Coltman is mounted in red riding habit on a grey horse her head bent down towards her husband. He stands next to her, his arm resting on her knee; a groom is leading out his horse in the background and a spaniel balances the picture in the left foreground. It is a safe, pretty painting but as dull as might be imagined, so different and alive is a fluid and dark Gainsborough in the same sale.
On an entirely different note Phillips are holding rather a ghoulish sale on 28 November: Third Reich memorabilia. First lot: 'five nationalist slogans published by NSDAP as hung in schools etc, framed and glazed'; second lot: '11 nationalist slogans . . .' But also there are objects looted by the French from Hitler's 'wolf's lair' at Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, including his personal crystal seal, Adolphe Ziegler's erotic nude of Hitler's niece Geli that hung in Eva Braun's bedroom and four waterco- lours attributed to the Fiihrer himself. On the level of Tom Keating's artistic achieve- foodie to throw up on: 'a fine Sevres part dinner service' given to him on his 90th birthday.
In a more general vein Sotheby's are selling a fine D. H. Lawrence watercolour that he did for his fiancé Louise Burrows. 'It has taken me four hours and I have not finished the drawing. It will take me to finish 12 or 14 hours in all. Then I will give it you, and voila a day of my life.' Also in this sale on 6 December is an amusing black and white art deco drawing by Evelyn Waugh. A black waiter stands in front of a fish tank containing an octopus and two fishes and a statue is having its bottom pricked by a prickly pear. Chris- tie's have some very good furniture: a
splendid Louis XV table from the Duke of Abercorn on 6 December and a fabulous George III satinwood cabinet-on-a-stand on 29 November.
Finally, on a more frivolous note, Riccio the Renaissance bronzeur who did a side line in elegant pornography is being allowed out again. At the Venice exhibi- tion a group long since hidden in a museum was shown. Now, from a potting shed in East Anglia where it was consigned by its owner comes a group of a satyr and a nymph merrily companying (pp Robert Graves), the owner obviously more a missionary than their position. Christie's are selling it on 11 December and are hoping for £100,000.
Previous page
