Sotheby's N.Y Sells 'The Temple of Jupiter Panellenius' by JMW Turner for $12.9 Million

Friday, 30 January 2009 00:39

 

NEW YORK CITY - Today at Sotheby’s New York, a magnificent work by Joseph Mallord William Turner - entitled The Temple of Jupiter Panellenius - has sold for $12.9 million / £9.1 million, a figure which represents the second highest price ever realised for a work by Turner at auction. Two bidders competed for the painting but the winning bid came from an anonymous buyer on the telephone. The Temple of Jupiter Panellenius had been in the private collection of the prominent fine art dealer Richard L. Feigen for over 25 years and it was one of the most important oil paintings by Turner to have remained in private hands.

The painting was a highlight of the retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work, JMW Turner RA, presented in 2008 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Dallas Museum of Art. One of only three oil landscapes by Turner to depict ancient Greece, the painting was first exhibited in 1816, the year it was completed and a time when Turner was at the height of his popularity as a British landscape painter.

Among the highlights of the outstanding offering is a pair of paintings by the Dutch master Frans Hals. The Portrait of a Man Holding Gloves (est. $8/12 million) and The Portrait of a Woman Holding a Handkerchief (est. $7/9 million) reveal the artist at the height of his powers. Hals dates both pictures 1637 and lists the age of the sitters as 37 and 36, respectively. Although Hals's early works were all conceived in bright colors and remarkably free brushwork, by the middle of the 1630s, fashions had changed. Hals's treatment of the present works epitomizes the new feeling of restraint. Although he restricts himself to a very limited palette, Hals has created here an almost infinite variety of tone and color.

The subjects are each set against a neutral, undefined background. A strong light comes in from the left, shining on the man's broad forehead and the woman's rosy cheeks. His sympathy for them and his skill is such that we feel we know this man and woman very well, though we do not even know their names. They are a well-to-do burgher couple, modest in their dress but with an underlying confidence that is apparent in their expressions, their gestures and their very posture. It is also the remarkable condition of The Portrait of a Man Holding Gloves and The Portrait of a Woman Holding a Handkerchief that allows us to appreciate the texture and variety of Hals's brushstrokes and the extraordinarily subtle range of his palette.

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