Displaying items by tag: Still Life

A bouquet of wildflowers painted by Vincent van Gogh weeks before his death is going on the auction block in New York City. Sotheby's says "Still Life, Vase With Daisies and Poppies" could sell for $30 million to $50 million Nov. 4.

Van Gogh painted it at the home of his physician, Dr. Paul Gachet, in 1890. It's one of the few works he sold during his lifetime.

Few people have ever visited Oak Spring Farms, the grand home here of Rachel Lambert Mellon, better known as Bunny. If they had, they would have seen a Pissarro, unframed like a flea market find, above the living room fireplace. Upstairs, a still life by van Gogh hung above her bathtub. Antique porcelains — cabbages, asparagus, artichokes — were artfully arranged on practically every surface.

Mrs. Mellon was the matriarch of an American dynasty whose fortune and art holdings rivaled that of the Fricks, Carnegies and Morgans. But perhaps most notably, she was a passionate collector of a bygone era. She didn’t pay attention to what was in fashion; she didn’t think about future financial returns.

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth has acquired the painting, Peaches and Grapes in a Chinese Export Basket (1813), by artist Raphaelle Peale (1774-1825). It’s the first work by Peale to enter the museum’s collection, a still life purchased in memory, Carter officials say, of museum founder Ruth Carter Stevenson, who died in 2013.

The painting, which carries an estimated $1 million value, will be on view beginning Tuesday.

“Raphaelle Peale is considered the first American still-life artist,” Carter director Andrew J. Walker said in a statement. “His paintings established the tradition in this country, and they remain among the most magnificent images of their kind ever created. Adding this superb painting by Peale gives depth to the collection, and it also provides us an opportunity to tell the story of how still life became a respected art form.”

Art Detective is a ground-breaking initiative that connects public collections in search of information about their oil paintings with specialists and members of the public with relevant knowledge. Whether it is to discover the name of a beautiful 1930s society hostess or the artist behind a Dutch seventeenth- century still life, Art Detective will help collections put names to unidentified sitters, places and events depicted in their paintings and the unknown artists behind works.

Art Detective addresses the serious issue of insufficient – and declining – specialist knowledge within public art collections. It is available to all 3,000 or so collections that participate in Your Paintings, the website created by the PCF in partnership with the BBC. The vast majority of these participating collections – many of which are not museums – do not have fine art curators, whilst many have lost experienced curators through funding cuts over the years.

The American Art Fair is celebrating its sixth year at the Bohemian National Hall in New York now through December 5. The show opened on Sunday, December 1 with a gala preview, which also marked the beginning of American Paintings Week.

The American Art Fair focuses on American 19th and 20th century art and features top-notch exhibitors such as Adelson Galleries, Avery Galleries, Driscoll Babcock Galleries, Godel & Co. Fine Art, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, John H. Surovek Gallery and Questroyal Fine Art. This year’s show marks the first time that Tom Veilleux Gallery will be counted among the exhibitors.

Galleries will present everything from landscapes, portraits and still lifes to studies and sculptures. Highlights include a portrait by John Singleton Copley (Alexander Gallery), a landscape by Childe Hassam (Driscoll Babcock Galleries) and other works by Maurice Prendergast (Adelson Galleries), Marsden Hartley (Questroyal Fine Art), and Jacob Lawrence (Jonathan Boos).

A rare early color image of Vincent Van Gogh’s Six Sunflowers was recently located in Japan and reveals that Van Gogh had created a bold orange frame for the still life. The original framed painting, which was part of a private Japanese collection, was destroyed in an American bombing raid during World War II.

The image is part of an extremely rare portfolio produced in Tokyo in 1921 and has been reproduced in The Sunflowers are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece by the Van Gogh expert, Martin Bailey. The image is significant because it reveals that Van Gogh had intended to present his Six Sunflowers in a dramatic way – the bright orange sharply contrasting with the painting’s blue background. This framing technique would have been revolutionary in 1888 as pictures were traditionally hung in gilt frames or in the case of very modern works, white frames.

Van Gogh painted four pictures of sunflowers in 1888 with three, six, fourteen and fifteen blooms. The last two paintings are among some of the best-known artworks in the world and are housed in Munich’s Neue Pinakothek and London’s National Gallery, respectively. Three Sunflowers is currently part of a private collection and has not been exhibited in living memory.

The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. is currently hosting the exhibition Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928-1945, the first in-depth look at the Cubist master’s works preceding World War II. During this period, Braque used the theme of still life to hone his pioneering Cubist style. The exhibition presents 44 works from this period as well as related objects that help trace the artist’s evolution from a painter of still lifes to interiors in the late 1920s, to large-scales spaces in the 1930s, to personal interpretations of everyday life in the 1940s.

The exhibition brings together Braque’s Rosenberg Quartet (1928-1929) for the first time in 80 years. The four canvases were used as models for marble panels in the Paris apartment of Braque’s art dealer, Paul Rosenberg. All in varying degrees of completion, the works come together to reveal the different stages of Braque’s artistic process.

Duncan Phillips, founder of the Phillips Collection, was a well-known champion of Braque’s work and helped introduce his paintings to a wider American audience through acquisitions and exhibitions. Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928-1945 will be on view at the Phillips Collection through September 1, 2013.

After a whirlwind of auctions last week in New York, which included a historic $495 million post-war sale at Christie’s, Phillips’ Contemporary Art Evening Sale on May 16, 2013 seemed quite subdued. The boutique auction house’s sale garnered $78.6 million and sold 81% by lot and 88% by value.

The highlight of the night was Andy Warhol’s (1928-1987) Pop Art masterpiece, Four Marilyns (1962), which sold for $38.2 million. The sale confirmed that Warhol remains a powerful presence in the art market. During the auction two other Warhol works were sold -- Flowers (1964), which brought $2.4 million and Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) (1967), which sold for upward of $2 million. Other major sales that night included Jean-Michel Basquiat’s (1960-1988) Untitled (1961), which garnered over $4 million and Roy Lichtenstein’s (1923-1997) Still Life (1972), which also sold for upward of $4 million.

Phillips has undergone a number of changes in the past year. Following the departure of Chairman Simon de Pury in December 2012, the company changed its name from Phillips de Pury & Co. to Phillips. In February 2013, the auction house revealed 10,000-square-feet of new gallery space at the company’s headquarters on Park Avenue in Manhattan. The expansion was an attempt to compete with the major auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

An iconic painting by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was the top lot at Sotheby’s auction of Impressionist and Modern Art yesterday, May 8, 2013 in New York. Les Pommes (1889-90), a still life of apples on a table, sold for $41.6 million, exceeding its high pre-sale estimate of $35 million. The second highest earning work at the auction was Amedeo Modigliani’s (1840-1929) L’Amazone, a well-known portrait of Baroness Marguerite de Hasse de Villers, which sold for $25.9 million falling within its presale estimate of $20 to $30 million. Both of the works were from the collection of philanthropists Alex and Elisabeth Lewyt and will fund a foundation set up in their honor to contribute to their favorite causes including animal welfare.

Other major sales included a Fernand Léger (1881-1955) painting previously owned by Madonna, Trois Femmes a la Table Rouge, which sold for $7.2 million (estimate: $5-7 million); a Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) sculpture of his muse Sylvette, which garnered $13.6 million (estimate: $12-$18 million); and three bronze sculptures by Auguste Rodin (1840-1916) including a version of his famed The Thinker, which brought $15.3 million (estimate: $8-$12 million).

The total sale netted over $230 million, just under the pre-sale high estimate of $235.1 million.

Next month, Sotheby’s and Christie’s will hold some of their most anticipated auctions. The major sales of Impressionist, modern, and contemporary art are expected to garner at least $1 billion. Most of that money will be generated from the contemporary art auctions, which have been the highest earning in recent years. The Impressionist and modern art sales are expected to bring a joint $383 million while the contemporary auctions are estimated at over $700 million.

Highlights from the auctions include the renowned collection of vacuum-cleaner tycoon Alex Lewyt at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on May 7, 2013. The 200-piece collection is valued at $65 million and includes a still-life by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) that carries a $25 million estimate and a portrait by Amedeo Modigiliani (1884-1920), which is expected to garner anywhere from $20 million to $30 million.

Christie’s Evening Sale of Contemporary Art on May 15, 2013 will be lead by Jackson Pollock’s (1912-1956) Number 19, a seminal drip painting, which is expected to sell for $25 million-$35 million. It is the most important work by the artist to appear at auction in the past two decades.

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction on May 14, 2013 is also expecting a number of high priced sales. Francis Bacon’s (1909-1992) Study for Portrait of P.L. is estimated to sell for $30 million to $40 million and a painting by Barnett Newman (1905-1970), which is deemed one of the most important works from the Abstract Expressionist School, is also expected to bring $30 million to $40 million.

Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale will be held on May 8, 2013 and includes works by Claude Monet (1840-1926), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), and Alfred Sisley (1839-1899).