Master Drawings New York announces exhibitors for February fair

6 janvier 2025

Master Drawings New York announces exhibitors for February fair

Circle of Antonio di Puccio Pisano, called Pisanello (1394-1455), Study of the Head of a Greyhound. Second half of the 15th century. Black and red chalk on paper, 245 x 363 mm. Courtesy Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, London.

NEW YORK, NY.- Master Drawings New York has announced the exhibitors for the 2025 fair on view February 1-8. The annual show, a well-established and highly anticipated art fair held at more than two dozen galleries on New York’s Upper East Side, will open with a preview event on Friday, January 31. The exhibiting galleries will feature exceptional and rare works on paper from the 15th to the 21st centuries, as well as paintings and sculpture. The 19th edition of Master Drawings New York presents 28 exhibitors from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Zurich, and Vienna, including:

Abbott & Holder, London • Agnews, London • AH Arts LLC, New York • Ambrose Naumann Fine Art and Harry Gready, New York • C.G. Boerner, Düsseldorf and New York • Christopher Bishop Fine Art, New York • Colnaghi Elliot Master Drawings Ltd., London, Madrid, and New York • David Nolan Gallery, New York • Didier Aaron, Paris, London, and New York • Galerie Charles Ratton & Guy Ladrière, Paris • Galerie Gmurzynska, New York, Zug, and Zurich • Graham Shay 1857, New York • Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, London • Hazlitt Ltd., London • Jill Newhouse Gallery, New York • Les Enluminures, New York, Paris, and Chicago & Sam Fogg, London • L U L O • P A M P O U L I D E S, London • Marty de Cambiaire, Paris • Mireille Mosler Ltd., New York • Nicholas Hall and W. M. Brady & Co., New York • Nonesuch Gallery, London • Perspective Fine Art, Amsterdam and Vienna • Robert Simon Fine Art, New York • Shepherd W&K Galleries, New York and Vienna • Sprüth Magers, Berlin, London, Los Angeles, and New York • Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, London • The Maas Gallery, London • Victoria Munroe Fine Art, New York

New exhibitors include: Galerie Charles Ratton & Guy Ladrière, Les Enluminures, Nonesuch Gallery, The Maas Gallery, Perspective Fine Art, Galerie Gmurzynska, AH Arts, and C.G. Boerner.

“Following the success of the 2024 fair, which debuted under our new management, we are greatly looking forward to this next edition of Master Drawings New York, which will once again feature an extraordinary group of galleries that are international experts in the field,” said Christopher Bishop, President, Master Drawings New York and Director, Christopher Bishop Fine Art.

Known for his masterful depictions of animals, Pisanello has been described as 'one of the keenest observers and finest delineators of men's features and animals' forms that the art of the Western world has produced.' Many of his surviving drawings, and those of his school, are of animals that appear in larger works.

This fine drawing of a greyhound, of exceptional quality, was long attributed to Pisanello. Indeed, a very similar head of a greyhound appears, albeit in reverse, in the foreground of Pisanello's small panel painting of The Vision of Saint Eustace, where it is depicted coursing a hare. Probably painted between 1438 and 1442, the painting is today in the National Gallery in London. The position of the head of the hound in the present sheet is nearly identical to that of the dog in the painting, and both animals wear very similar collars.

Given its undeniable quality, it is unsurprising that this remarkable 15th century drawing has long held an attribution to Pisanello, under whose name it was exhibited at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris in 1932. The naturalistic representation of the muzzle of the greyhound, beautifully drawn in a subtle combination of black and red chalks, has something of the characteristics of a formal profile portrait, characterized by an innate nobility and dignity. The close study of the creature's nose and ear and intensely focused sharp eye, as well as the finely drawn smooth coat and studded leather collar with a buckle, all point to an artist of considerable skill.

A woman in the guise of a European allegorical figure (fl. 1580-1600), Attributed to Basawan, c. 1585-90. Ink heightened with gouache and gold on paper, 119 x 93 mm. Courtesy Les Enluminures, New York, Paris, and Chicago & Sam Fogg, London.

The beautiful Indian woman depicted in the guise of a composite European allegorical figure in this elegant, tinted brush drawing was made by the great Mughal master Basawan (fl. 1580 -1600). Basawan was the greatest painter at the court of Emperor Akbar I (r. 1556-1605), where he and the other artists in the imperial atelier were encouraged to take up Christian themes, techniques and iconography in their oeuvres.

Luca Cambiaso (1527 - 1585), The Flight into Egypt, ca. 1560. Pen and brown ink, brown wash, and traces of black chalk underdrawing on paper, 378 x 286 mm, 50.8 x 40.6 cm. Courtesy Robert Simon Fine Art, New York.

This expressive and boldly executed drawing is the work of Luca Cambiaso, the leading artistic personality in Genoa in the sixteenth century and one of the most dynamic draughtsmen in European art. The drawing dates from the mid-1550s to early 1560s at the height of the artist's power. At this moment in his career, defined by his "serene style," Cambiaso's compositions became more focused and reduced to their essential elements. The mule's hind quarters dominate the visual field and the outdoor setting is indicated by little more than the tree standing along the left edge of the sheet. The large scale of the drawing and the calligraphic penmanship, which lends a motion and drama to the scene, provide significant visual interest and appeal to the modern eye. Cambiaso's spontaneous handling fully exploits the dynamics of the quill pen-the lines are vigorous, animated, and possess a great suggestive power. Both vibrant and audacious in its depiction of the Flight into Egypt, this drawing represents an exceptional addition to Cambiaso's graphic oeuvre.

Cambiaso infuses the otherwise inert biblical narrative with dynamism by placing the figures close to the pictorial plane and orienting them along a steep diagonal, from the upper left to the lower right, giving the appearance that they are about to descend a steep slope and disappear from view. The artist employed a similar vertiginous compositional device in his drawing of the Chariot of the Setting Sun, in which the horses are similarly conceived. More explicitly, and using the same media, Cambiaso's drawing of Saint Martin and Beggar in the Princeton Art Museum displays a horse almost identically envisaged (Fig. 1). A horse seen from behind with its right rear leg raised was a leitmotif for the artist, with some details, such as the diagonal hatching to indicate the shadow on the underside of the hoof, closely repeated. Regarding the representation of the mule in the present drawing, it is important to note Cambiaso's acute sensitivity to the subject matter, even when composing with speed. In contrast to his many drawings that include horses with elaborate tack, such as the Saint Martin and the Beggar, our composition shows a plain stirrup and strap across the mule's hindquarters and its tail is not elaborately plaited. The treatment is in keeping with the theme of poverty that underlies this biblical subject (Matthew 2:13-15). The Holy Family were, after all, refugees, and the fact that Herod was intent on killing the child would appear to explain Joseph's somewhat anxious glance over his shoulder.

The drawing displays many of the salient characteristics of Cambiaso's draughtsmanship. In a manner entirely consistent with his working method, he first sketched his preliminary ideas with thin pen lines in a lighter ink over faint traces of black chalk and later confirmed or corrected them with a darker tone of brown. As is typical of the artist, spare hatching suggests the surrounding space and foreground terrain. Half-moon like circlets indicate pebbles in the foreground, with long looping lines defining the leaves of the palm tree, terminating in hooks as the pen shifts from right to left. Typically, limbs, hands, lips, noses and eyelids are slightly geometricized with circlets, triangles, ticks and hooks, and quick flicks of the pen indicate knees, muscles and tendons. The articulation of the Virgin's hand and the physiognomy of the infant Christ are nearly identical to those in Cambiaso's Virgin and Child with Putti, formerly in the collection of the Rugby School (Fig. 2). Tellingly, so too is the relationship between mother and child, as the Virgin intimately embraces the infant Christ.

Within the context of Cambiaso's drawings, the scale and format of this work, the quality of execution, and above all its striking interpretation of the subject suggest that it was conceived as an autonomous work rather than a preparatory study for a painting. Its monumentality, dynamism, and the clarity of narrative appear to connect it with a number of comparably large drawings illustrating the early life of Christ. These include two versions of the Holy Family at Rest preserved in the Rijksmuseum and the First Steps of the Infant Christ in Edinburgh. The early inscription on the verso of this sheet-"3. una Madonna che va in Egitto"-suggests it may have been the third in sequence of a series of subjects drawn on a similar scale in the same technique owned by an early collector. Cambiaso's only known treatment of the subject in paint is an altarpiece of La Fuga in Egitto that is mentioned in an early guidebook to Genoa as in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie al Molo outside the city, close to the Porta Lanterna (current location unknown).

Bartolomeo Neroni, called il Riccio (c. 1505-1571), The Virgin and Child with the Baptist, 1550-1560 Pen and brown ink, brown wash, over black chalk, 272 x 213 mm. Courtesy Nicholas Hall and W. M. Brady & Co., New York

Gottfried de Wedig (1583-1641), A Heavenly Musical Company - Possibly Saint Cecilia At Her Keyboard, 1608. Pen & ink with brown wash, with traces of black & red chalk, 145 x 195 mm. Signed with monogram u.m. GDW F / 1608. $15,000. Courtesy Nonesuch Gallery

Drawings by the early German artist Gottfried de Wedig are extremely rare, with just three examples in institutional collections worldwide: a passion scene in the Louvre, Paris; an adoration scene in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, new York; and an 'Allegory of the Fall and Redemption of Mankind', in the British Museum, London.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples 1598 - 1680 Rome), Portrait of a Man facing right, c. 1610, 1610. Black chalk with some red chalk, 139 x 107 mm - 27 x 22 cm. Courtesy Galerie Charles Ratton & Guy Ladrière, Paris.

This portrait drawing is a very early work by Bernini. It must be earlier than his Self-Portrait in the Uffizi [fig.1], with which it has important elements in common. However, it is less confidently drawn and less finished throughout. The most significant shared element is the drawing of the ear that is exceptionally detailed in the earlier drawing but differs from Bernini's own ear that, like the other ear, seems to be a life study of a body part rarely given much attention. There are only two other visible ears in Bernini portrait drawings - one of an "elderly man with mustache and small painted beard" in a private collection in New York; the other with Colnaghi's in 1993. Neither work can be precisely dated but the first was probably made by 1625, the second a little later. The remaining portrait drawings - all of male sitters - have ears covered by their hair.

Fig. 1 : Gian-Lorenzo Bernini, Selfportrait, Florence, musée des Offices The treatment of the eyes of both sitters reveals Bernini's careful study of this crucial feature in any successful portrait of the human face. In this early one, Bernini has placed the eyes in a suggestion of an oval hollow with a line on the lower edge of the upper lid but otherwise only white chalk beside the pupils and even a bit of white on the lid of the left [proper right] eye to define them. The far eye has a curved brown chalk line below the brow that seems too neat for Bernini but the same chalk is used for the nostrils. There is a well-defined eyebrow over the far eye but little visible hair over the near eye that may have been damaged by rubbing. Finally the pupils are correctly placed to make us believe the sitter is looking at us. In Bernini's own portrait, however, he has not managed the foreshortened eye on our right - it needed to be a bit smaller and less oval.
The nose in the early drawing is beautifully realized: the shadow on its right side defines the length of his elegant nose and a few white marks define its width. The nostrils are reddish-brown marks in the right spots but the mouth seems too small. The moustache and small goatee below also lack the brio of the black chalk describing the sitter's hair. Perhaps they were done after the sitter left. Finally the far side of the sitter's face is defined by an almost invisible contour line.

An important difference between these two drawings concerns an element that other artists making 3/4 view portrait drawings often get wrong, namely judging the scale between the head and the supporting neck and shoulders. In the earlier drawing the neck seems too short and the width of the shoulders not wide enough to match the size of the head. Bernini's treatment of the collar and shoulders in his own portrait has more generous proportions. His neck and chin are above the collar and his more skillful treatment of the collar seen in partial foreshortening allows us to imagine its hidden forms behind him and his upper torso. And one final difference - the earlier drawing uses trois crayons but Bernini uses them to greater effect in his own self-portrait.

The discovery of this drawing allows us to watch Bernini learning how to draw the head and torso of a male sitter and doing it before he began to do it in three dimensions. The unknown sitter who patiently sat for the teenage genius may have been a family friend. His small white collar and buttoned jacket implies that he was educated, and was maybe a minor cleric.

Ann Sutherland Harris
Professor Emerita, University of Pittsburgh

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino (1591-1666), Kneeling Saint Jerome with a Book, 1640. Pen and brown ink, 376 x 265 mm. Courtesy Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, London.

Guercino treated the subject of Saint Jerome in several paintings, mainly half-length in format, particularly in the late 1630s and the 1640s. This impressive sheet, which is of a scale unusual among Guercino's drawings, remains unconnected to any surviving painting by the artist.

As the Guercino scholar David Stone has written of this drawing, which is datable to around 1640, 'This exquisitely preserved St. Jerome, one of the most beautiful representations of this subject in Guercino's drawn oeuvre, may very well be preparatory for one of the many compositions of this iconography mentioned in the Libro dei conti. However, the sheet does not seem to connect to any of the extant paintings. The drawing is so suave, carefully controlled, and luminous in its overall effect - so complete in its composition - that it is worth considering that it was made as a kind of "meditation" on the subject rather than as a preparatory sketch. Such relatively complete and finished drawings could be given away as presents to friends; but they could also be saved (like so many of Guercino's drawings) as resources for him and his studio for future projects. Guercino was one of the first artists in history to consider drawings as complete works of art in their own right.'

The inscription '57. Pr. Fo. Cons' at the lower right of the present sheet identifies this drawing as coming from the collection of the Casa Gennari in Bologna. Similar inscriptions, which may be inventory numbers, appear on many drawings by Guercino with a Casa Gennari and Bouverie provenance. As Nicholas Turner and Carol Plazzotta have posited, 'It is likely that this annotation is a reference to the drawing's original location in the series of albums of drawings by Guercino preserved by the artist's heirs until the dispersal of the collection in the eighteenth century, the letters perhaps standing for 'Primo Foglio'.'

Charles-Joseph Natoire (Nîmes 1700 - 1777 Castel Gandolfo), View of the Palatine - Rome, between 1723 and 1728. Pen and brown ink, brown wash, white and blue bodycolour on traces of black chalk, old mount, 240 x 366 mm. Signed lower left : « C.Natoire », 26 x 39 cm. Courtesy Galerie Charles Ratton & Guy Ladrière, Paris.

Edme Bouchardon (1698 - 1762), Medea on a Chariot Drawn by Winged Dragons. Between 1723 & 1732. Red chalk, 240 x 360 mm. Courtesy Didier Aaron, Paris, London, and New York

The counterproof of our drawing is in the Cabinet des Arts Graphiques (Musée du Louvre, inc. 24670)

François Boucher (1703-1770), Des Pâtes, des talmouses toutes chaudes, 1737. Black and red chalk, 251 x 167 mm. Inscribed by the artist lower margin, petits patez tout chauds; and inscribed, lower right, f. boucher. Courtesy Nicholas Hall and W. M. Brady & Co., New York

George Dixon (1731-1785), A Basket of Flowers. 1762. Pen, ink, watercolour and gouache. 572 x 718 mm. Signed and dated. Courtesy Abbott & Holder, London

Maria Luigia Raggi (1742 - 1813), Capriccio of a River Landscape with Ruins, ca. 1775. Tempera on paper laid down on canvas, 36.8 x 62.9 cm - 50.2 x 76.2 cm. Courtesy Robert Simon Fine Art, New York.

Maria Luigia Raggi is one of the most elusive and fascinating landscape artists of 18th century Italy. While her body of work was first assembled on the basis of style, Raggi's artistic personality began to the take shape with the emergence of works monogrammed "M.l.r." and her identity was only finally rediscovered in 2003 after three works signed with her full name came to light. Born Battina Ignazia Raggi to a family of noble Genoese and Roman lineage, she entered a cloistered order of Turchine nuns in Genoa at the age of eighteen, taking the name Suor Maria Luisa Domenica Vittoria. Given the strict rule of the order, it is likely that Raggi never left the confines of her convent for the remainder of her long life. This is especially remarkable considering the idyllic vision and nostalgic evocation of an Arcadian existence expressed through the roughly 80 surviving works by her. Almost all of medium-to-small format and executed in tempera, Raggi's capricci are invented scenes which emerged completely from the mind of the artist. Her paintings-populated by everyday people and punctuated by imagined (and sometimes well-known) ancient ruins-represent what must have been a beautiful escape from an otherwise sheltered life.

The architectural elements throughout the painting reveal Raggi's knowledge of ancient monuments and sculpture, as well as her ability to invent passages based on familiar references. The prominent structure that serves as the centerpiece of a composition takes inspiration from the ruins of the Claudian aqueduct on the Palatine hill, as well as the apse of the Temple of Venus and Rome in the Roman Forum. Two additional striking details are the buildings and the large historiated vase in the left-hand portion of the composition seen beside and through the V-shaped tree. The structures-one a portico with a triangular entablature atop columns and the other an arena-are reminiscent of the Temple of Portunus or the Pantheon (with the addition of a church belltower) and the Colosseum. Additionally, the elaborate vase is based on a known type that were found in abundance in Rome. Decorated with a group of dancing bacchants that wind around the exterior of the vessel, the vase is a representation of a late Hellenestic kylix, like the Borghese Vase now in the Louvre, which were produced in Athens to satisfy Roman demand for lavish villa and garden decorations.

Thomas, the elder Malton (London 1726 - 1801 Dublin), A Ship of the Line of Seventy-Four Guns, c. 1776. Pen and black ink with grey wash, 117 x 126 mm. Courtesy Christopher Bishop Fine Art, New York

Pietro Antonio Novelli (1729 - 1804), A Fisherman giving a Lobster and Fish to a Young Woman with a Child, Circa 1790. Pen, blanck ink, grey wash. The verso reddened for transfer,375 x 525 mm. Courtesy Marty de Cambiaire, Paris

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804), Study Of A Man's Head, 18th Century. Red chalk, heightened with white, on blue paper, 205 x 135 mm. Bears collector's stamp l.l. (L.2604a). $18,500. Courtesy Nonesuch Gallery, London

Claude Hoin (1750 - 1817), Bust Length Portrait of a Young Man, 1802. Pastel on paper mounted on canvas, 390 x 310 mm, "Cde. goin. / 1802 / V". Courtesy Didier Aaron, Paris, London, and New York

Caspar David Friedrich (Greifswald 1774 - 1840 Dresden), Lady with a Shawl, 1804. Pen, ink and wash, 165 x 100 mm. Courtesy C.G. Boerner, Düsseldorf and New York

Caspar David Friedrich (Greifswald 1774 - 1840 Dresden), Study of Pine Trees, 1813 Pencil, 182 x 117 mm. Courtesy C.G. Boerner, Düsseldorf and New York

Jean-Baptiste Paulin Guérin (1783 - 1855), Portrait of Marie-Thérese-Baptistine Hains, at her tambour frame, 1810. Black pencil and estompe, 29.8 x 23.8 mm. Signed in pencil lower right: Paulin Guerin. Courtesy Colnaghi Elliot Master Drawings Ltd., London, Madrid, and New York

Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), Eventide. c.1858. Watercolour, gouache and gum Arabic, 203 x 432 mm. Signed. Courtesy Abbott & Holder, London

John Ruskin (1819-1900), Study of a Sunrise, circa 1860. Watercolour and bodycolour over traces of pencil, 241 x 322 mm. Courtesy Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, London

Ruskin was fascinated by the beauty and constantly changing effects of the natural world and recorded several dramatic studies of the sun both rising and setting. Indeed Ruskin is recorded as habitually watching the dawn and leaving his supper, from quite a young age, to watch the sunset. His father wrote to a friend about this habit saying, 'he visits as regularly as a soldier does his evening parade.' (3 xxii-xxiii). In later life, he had a turret window specially constructed at Brantwood, to allow him to see the sky at dawn from the comfort of his home.

In his series of lectures, The Two Paths, published between 1858 and 1859, Ruskin encourages his students to 'rise early, always watch the sunrise and the way the clouds break from the dawn'. (J. Ruskin, The Two Paths, 1858-8, p. 154). He believed that by trying to capture such views, artists were offered the opportunity to attempt to study and record the entire natural spectrum of colour and its subtle graduations from one colour to another, in one place and with a constantly changing emphasis on the range of possible colour combinations. Furthermore the fleeting nature of the effects meant that the spectator had a limited amount of time in which to do this, thus it served a secondary valuable purpose.

As he grew older, Ruskin began to differentiate between the value of sunrise and sunset, believing the former to be more crucial for artistic study. He felt that the slightly subdued range of colours, caused by the frequent veil of mist was of greater importance.

Two sunrises were shown at the 1879 exhibition of Ruskin drawings at Messrs Noyes & Blakeslee, Boston, October 1879: no. 89 Sunrise from Denmark Hill (1868) and no. 90 Study of Sunrise.

Eva Gonzalès (French, 1849 - 1883), Sketchbook with drawings of botanicals and sea creatures, c. 1865. Pen and ink with pencil on paperil on bound paper, 141 x 232 mm. Courtesy Jill Newhouse Gallery, New York

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882), Jane Morris, 1868. Coloured chalk on paper, 876 x 711 mm. Monogrammed and dated 1868, 112 x 92 cm. Courtesy The Maas Gallery, London.

William Bell Scott described Jane Morris as '...the ideal personification of poetical womanhood. In this case the hair was not auburn, but black as night; unique in face and figure, she was a queen, a Proserpine, a Medusa, a Circe - but also, strangely enough, a Beatrice, a Pandora, a Virgin Mary.' She was indeed an extraordinary looking woman, who became Rossetti's great muse and love after Lizzie Siddal, and was as pervasive a presence in Rossetti's later work as Lizzie had been in his early watercolours and drawings. It is Jane's face that we see in many of his most famous oil paintings: Aurea Catena, Reverie and La Pia (all 1868), in Mariana (1870), Pandora (1871), Proserpine (versions 1871-82), Venus Astarte (1877), La Donna della Finestra (1879), and in The Day Dream (1880). William Rossetti said 'It seemed a face created to fire his imagination, and to quicken his powers - a face of arcane and inexpressible meaning.'

Born in 1839, the daughter of an Oxford stablehand, Jane Burden came to the attention of the Pre-Raphaelite circle in the summer of 1857, when Rossetti, Morris and Burne-Jones were painting murals at the Oxford Union. Rossetti spotted her first, at the theatre, and, struck, asked her to sit for him (an early pen and ink drawing of her in a very similar pose is in the National Gallery of Ireland, dated 1858 and inscribed 'Oxford'. Our drawing is a revision of it, larger, in red chalks, almost exactly ten years later). The attraction was instant, but he was already engaged to Lizzie Siddal, and it was Morris, who had also fallen for her, that Jane married in 1859. Our drawing is one of the first that Rossetti drew of Jane at the onset of a period of renewed intimacy between them, nearly ten years after they had first met. Jane's husband cannot have been very happy - years later he said 'Sometimes Rossetti was an angel, and sometimes he was a damned scoundrel'. Jane sat for Rossetti in March 1868, and again in December. George Price Boyce wrote in his diary after a visit to Rossetti's studio on March 27th 'He has made beautiful studies for pictures from Mrs. Morris....' His friend W B Scott wrote at the end of the year: 'Gabriel has not tried painting, nor seen any doctor, nor seen the sweet Lucretia Borgia [meaning Jane Morris]. I have now come to the conclusion... - that the greatest disturbance in his health and temper... is caused by an uncontrollable desire for the possession of the said L.B.' Our drawing is close to the Kelmscott oil portrait, Jane Morris. A related drawing, also dated 1868, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, is closer to the oil of Mariana (1870, Aberdeen Art Gallery) that Rossetti painted for his patron William Graham, who, according to Marillier, had wanted a replica of the Kelmscott portrait, but took Mariana as a compromise. All three treatments relate back to our drawing, which was one of the earliest of a new kind that Rossetti intended to be framed and displayed, rather than to be used for preparatory studies, and which became an important source of income to him. They are richly drawn in layers of chalk of subtly different colours, sometimes over two sheets of tinted paper, joined horizontally or vertically, and are highly finished.

Marie Bracquemond (1840 - 1916),Study of young woman with mask, small study of hand with fan, Circa 1880. Crayon on rose paper, 35 x 30 mm. Courtesy Colnaghi Elliot Master Drawings Ltd., London, Madrid, and New York

Wilhelm Kuhnert (1865 - 1926), Portrait of a man Possibly Prince Kwaku Dua III, later known as Prempeh I (Otumfuo Nana Prempeh I) 1870 - 1931 King ruler of the Ashanti Empire, 1887. Pencil on paper, 300 x 235 mm. Signed to the bottom right 'W. Kuhnert 87. / . Aschanti Kuakū.', 43 x 37 cm. Courtesy LULO • PAMPOULIDES, London.

This striking drawing of a young man, signed and dated 1887, provides important evidence of Kuhnert's early fascination with Africa and its history. Although the exact circumstances of the drawing's creation remain unknown, Kuhnert inscribed the portrait with the terms "Aschanti" and "Kuakú." These key details allow us to identify the sitter as Prince Kwaku Dua III, who later became known as Prempeh I, King of the Ashanti Empire.

Prempeh I reigned from March 1888 until his death in 1931, during which time he valiantly resisted repeated attempts by the British Government to incorporate the Ashanti Empire into the Gold Coast Protectorate. In 1895, the British arrested him, and he was subsequently exiled to Sierra Leone and later the Seychelles. Prempeh was only allowed to return to Kumasi in 1925, and in 1926 he was officially recognised as the Chief of Kumasi.

This portrait not only highlights Kuhnert's skill as a draughtsman but also provides a glimpse into a significant historical figure at a pivotal moment in African history.

Paul Rink (1861-1903), Iris, 1892. Oil on canvas, in original frame, 150.5 x 108.1 cm. Signed & dated 'Paul Rink. 1892' Signed & titled verso, 186.4 x 144.5 cm. Courtesy Mireille Mosler Ltd., New York

Gustave Moreau (Paris 1826 - 1898 Paris), Hélène Glorifiée, 1896. Watercolor, gouache and shell gold on paper, 305 x 232 mm. Signed & inscribed 'Gustave Moreau HÉLÈNE GLORIFIÉE', 49.5 x 43 cm. Courtesy Mireille Mosler Ltd., New York

Gustav Klimt (Vienna state 1862 - 1918 Vienna), Sketches for "Will-o'-the-wisp [Irrlichter]", 1899-1900. Black crayon on paper, 17.875" x 12.375" mm. Courtesy Shepherd W&K Galleries, New York and Vienna

Strobl Cat. rais. nos. 685 and 711

John Singer Sargent, R.A. (1856-1925), Venice - Steps of a Palace, Circa 1905. Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour, 255 x 360 mm. Signed and inscribed lower left: to my friend Rathbone / John S. Sargent. Courtesy Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, London.

The steps depicted are at the base of Palazzo Contarini degli Scrigni e Corfu, a double-fronted palazzo just past the Accademia Bridge on the Grand Canal. Scamozzi added a classical palace to the existing structure in 1609 and the two facades stand side-by-side unaltered since Sargent's time. The present picture depicts the base of the Scamozzi facade and the structure beyond is the neighbouring Palazzo Mocenigo-Gambara. It is typical of Sargent's use of a very low viewpoint, at canal level, with water lapping at the base of the steps. It is painted looking south-south-east down the Grand Canal in the direction of the Accademia Bridge. Sargent sketched the palazzo in the early 1880s and it appears in later views of the Grand Canal as well.

This watercolour was given by Sargent to William Gair Rathbone VII (1849-1919) of the well-known trading house Rathbone's originally based in Liverpool. Rathbone married the American Blanche Marie Luling (1856-1938) in 1877 while representing the firm in New York before returning to the London office in 1879. He was a close friend of John Singer Sargent and they shared a mutual taste in music, both helping to promote the careers of several young composers. He commissioned work from Delius and held recitals in his home, including by Francis Korbay and Percy Grainger. At one point Rathbone also owned a Sargent drawing of Korbay (now Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). He, his wife, children and daughter-in-law were all sketched by the artist and Rathbone built up a collection of Sargent's watercolours through purchases and gifts from the artist.

Sargent preferred not to sell his watercolours and sketches, as he explained to Rathbone in 1904: 'I feel rather ridiculous at not wanting to sell that sketch, especially when such a friend and such a knowing one lusts after it - But if my sketches are not here, how could I prove to myself and others that I am not a duffer...These sketches keep up my morale and I never sell them.'

Sargent and Rathbone met several times in Venice, including in 1903 and 1906. One such occasion was in February 1906, when Sargent wrote about a sketch he was working on, asking if he would like to '...see some more watercolours? If so come on Wednesday after 3, but by daylight - and bring Miss Rathbone if she will'. He wrote again saying, 'As you always had a morbid liking for my watercolours, I consider that it would be "offenser le bon dieu" to allow you not to have some - so I am sending you a couple, which if I am not mistaken are among those you like, with a prayer that you will accept them.'

Sonia Delaunay (Ukraine 1885 - 1979 Paris), Project for the poster, Chocolate, 1916-1917. Watercolor on paper, 285 x 285 mm. Courtesy Galerie Gmurzynska, New York, Zug, and Zurich

Sonia Delaunay (French, born Ukraine, 1885-1979), Dress Design (Projet de robe), 1923, Paris. Ink and colored pencils on paper, 270 x 210 mm. Signed and dated lower left, numbered lower right. Courtesy Jill Newhouse Gallery, New York

Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Visage (Tete de Femme et Fleur), 1950. Brush and ink on linen laid down on board, 432 x 498 mm. Initialed 'HM' center right; Inscribed and dated 'Nice. 50' lower right. Courtesy AH Arts LLC, New York

Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (1795-1866), Standing nude, 1853-1854. Coated salt print from a paper negative, 144 x 100 mm. Courtesy Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs, New York.

Unidentified photographer attributed to the Circle of Charles Simart, Male nude, clutching ladder, 1856-1860. Salt print from an enlarged collodion negative, 438 x 282 mm. Courtesy Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs, New York.

Posté par Alain Truong à 13:40 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: Exhibitions, 15th century Art