Sotheby's London Sale of Victorian & Edwardian Art Includes 100 Works by Leading Artists |
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| Written by Jessica Holmes |
| Tuesday, 15 December 2009 06:11 |
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Herbert James Draper (1864-1920) was an artist drawn to the dramatic possibilities of classical mythology in the late 19th century and this sale will offer a recently rediscovered painting by him. Ariadne – estimated at £60,000-80,000 – was known to exist but has never been seen by the public. In 1905 Draper exhibited a painting entitled Ariadne Deserted by Theseus at the Royal Academy which was bought by a private collector at the time. Draper was then asked to paint a replica for a collector in America but the owner of the first picture was unwilling to delay delivery whilst a copy was made. Draper suggested painting a variant of the Royal Academy exhibit using the detailed sketches he had retained. Thus the present work was produced with an alternate composition comprising a tighter focus on the figure of Ariadne. The Green Waggon by Sir Alfred Munnings (1878-1959) is among a strong group of works by the artist to be offered in this sale. Munnings had a particular affinity with the gypsy way of life – their simple, rural and nomadic existence – and this painting is one of the finest of its type. The gypsies are all models who the artist had met on the hop farms of Hampshire and he harmoniously incorporates the group into the English countryside. It is estimated at £400,000-600,000. The female figure in various guises was one of the favourite subjects of Victorian artists and Sotheby’s sale includes a group of pictures which display a range from the classical to the mythological, through the contemporary. Spring Flowers by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) from 1911 depicts a vase of yellow narcissi held up by an auburn-haired girl. In the year before his death, Alma-Tadema painted a series of pictures in which the beauty of young women was essentially emphasised by blooms of flowers. Here, the subtle contrast of the yellow petals with the girl’s crepe-like cascade of red hair is reminiscent of painters of the Aesthetic Movement, particularly Albert Moore. The agate window seen behind was based on precedents the artist had seen at Pompeii and recreated in his studio at Townsend Road. However, rather than the usual Graeco- Roman maidens painted by Alma-Tadema, the figure in the present work bears closer resemblance to an Edwardian girl at home. Spring Flowers is estimated at £80,000-120,000. An oil on canvas by John William Godward (1861-1922) invites comparison with the many classical subjects on offer in Sotheby’s sale. Lycinna was painted in 1918, four years before the artist’s suicide in 1922. Considered as one of the best, and the most serious of Alma-Tadema’s followers, Godward devoted himself to classical subjects painted with an extraordinary technical mastery. The present work – which takes its title from the name of the first love of Sextus Propertius, one of the greatest of all Roman elegiac poets – depicts Lycinna demurely dressed in violet and seen against a wall of varying marbles. By 1905, Godward felt his style of painting was no longer receiving critical acclaim and as a result he ceased to exhibit, selling his pictures through an agent and various dealers. This freedom gave him carte-blanche to paint what he wanted. This extended to the artist’s move to Rome with his Italian model and it was here that Lycinna – estimated at £60,000-80,000 – was painted. The subject of the watercolour of Psyche by Sir Edward John Poynter (1836-1919) was familiar to the artist not only from the source material of the 2nd century but also through William Morris’ retelling in The Earthly Paradise (circa 1868-1870). Painted in 1884, it shows the melancholy maiden drawing aside a curtain to look from a balcony over Cupid’s pleasure garden. Poynter made a series of paintings and watercolours depicting heroines of antiquity and the present example was exhibited at the Royal Watercolour Society. It is estimated at £100,000-150,000 and comes to the market from a European private collection. Several examples of traditional Victorian genre paintings will highlight the sale. A fine example is Short Change by James Collinson (1825-1881). After meeting Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt in 1848, Collinson was invited to become a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood but resigned two years later on religious grounds. Turning to genre subjects in the 1850s – after several years when he gave up painting – he displayed extraordinary technical skill together with a particular sympathy for the disadvantaged in society. This makes his work an invaluable and reliable source of information about the lives of ordinary people of the period. Collinson painted Short Change in 1858 and exhibited the work that year at the British Institution. The painting is suffused with humour; in a sparsely furnished interior a boy returns from market and attempts to conceal a whistle in his left hand from the woman who is clearly expecting change from her shopping. It is estimated at £50,000-70,000.
‘Problem Pictures’ was the term coined for a charming late Victorian phenomenon whereby visitors to the Royal Academy exhibitions were invited to solve ambiguous conundrums posed by certain paintings. They often became the subject of great debate and many newspaper columns were filled with differing opinions on their meanings. Sotheby’s sale includes a distinguished example by The Honourable John Collier (1850-1934). The Garden of Armida presents the viewer with visual clues to discern the drama’s narrative. The subject was based upon the epic Italian poem of 1581, Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tarso. It told of the Christian warrior Rinaldo and a pagan sorceress named Armida who holds crusaders captive in an enchanted Syrian garden. Collier modernises the subject by depicting a young gentleman in contemporary evening dress, surrounded by a coterie of beautiful women carousing with glasses of wine at an al fresco banquet in a forest. He appears to be caught between temperance and temptation in a stoic resolve to resist his female companions’ charms. John Collier was born in London and raised to the peerage as Lord Monkswell. Supported by leading artists of the day in his chosen career, Collier was a prolific painter who produced at least a thousand pictures during his lifetime. The Garden of Armida is estimated at £100,000-150,000. An important work by Charles Robert Leslie (1794-1859) – Sir Plume Demands The Restoration of The Lock, from Alexander Pope’s ‘The Rape of The Lock’ – is of particular historical interest. The figure of Sir Plume was based on none other than John Everett Millais and Leslie painted this scene at Hampton Court Palace with some of the furniture, including the screen and chairs, painted from examples owned by Lord Egremont at Petworth House. The picture, which depicts a scene from Pope’s mock-heroic poem of 1712, is estimated at £40,000-60,000. Paintings by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893) have performed extremely well at Sotheby’s auctions over the last five years. The December sale will offer Princes Dock, Hull with an estimate of £200,000-300,000. The industrial cities of Britain and their commercial growth were the source of immense inspiration for Grimshaw, who celebrated the age of industry, commerce and conspicuous wealth with a series of paintings in which moonlight and lamplight contrast with one another, and skeletal trees or ship’s rigging are interchangeable. In the present picture of the docks at Greenock on the Clyde, a horse-drawn omnibus makes its way along the wet cobbled road with passengers sitting atop, whilst a hanson stops to await a more affluent customer. The imposing three-domed building visible through the hazy evening fog was the Dock Offices, now Hull Maritime Museum, and the monument is that of William Wilberforce, the Yorkshire MP and anti-slavery campaigner. Grimshaw’s growing popularity with art collectors in the northern urban cities encouraged him to paint scenes such as this. In recording the contemporary port’s role within Victorian life, they appealed directly to Victorian pride and energy. Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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