To those old-timers in the art market who profess to have “seen it all” in the past few decades, the Coronavirus now spreading across the globe must be jarring and disorienting. For no one has seen this measure of uncertainty in recent memory.
Stories
Japanese Art
A prominent mid-western family was selling their longtime vacation home on Maui. Suddenly they needed to make plans for all of the contents in the house. The most valuable paintings would be sold at auction in New York and London. But there were also two Japanese screens, long displayed in one wing of the house. The family, faced with the prospect of clearing out and selling the house, wondered aloud: “Why don’t we just leave these screens for the new owner?”
Jewelry
Ronald Varney Fine Art Advisors is highly experienced in working with families and individuals in the sale of major private collections. These usually comprise paintings and sculpture as well as furniture and decorations. But we also handle single objects of all kinds. Some of these are of great rarity and distinction yet have been hidden away and long forgotten, their value alluring but unclear.
David Smith, Welded
Smith’s most conspicuous trait was a furious, passionate, even violent energy. His capacity for sustained hard physical labor was astonishing.
—Garnett McCoy
Gazing out my fifth floor window at the University Club in Chicago, through the leaded panes and across the street to the sculpture park below on the grounds of the Art Institute, I can’t help noticing one work in particular, though far off. It’s Cubi VII (1963) by David Smith, mammoth and dazzling in stainless steel.
Walking along Michigan Avenue and taking in the façade of the museum, with the names of Leonardo, Canaletto, Giotto and other famous artists through the centuries etched into the stone high up near the roofline, one senses the scope and grandeur of the art that lies within this hulking, neo-classical fortress. Cubi VII is thus like a teaser for the Art Institute and its vast, diverse riches. But tucked away in the park in the shadow of the museum it also seems an apt, if unintended, metaphor for David Smith’s own life and career. Read More “David Smith, Welded”
Centers of Influence
The paintings in the living room looked impressive, almost regal. The whopping Pissarro landscape over the fireplace was mesmerizing; but then one noticed a radiant floral still life by Matisse, a portrait by Manet, other works by Cézanne, Boudin and assorted Modernists like Utrillo, Soutine and Vlaminck; and on into a gallery in this spacious Northern California house one encountered a Modigliani portrait on one wall, a Van Gogh on another, and scattered pictures by minor 19th century French artists rounding out the rooms. Here was an old-money collection of taste and style, one which, in the booming current art market roiling with new money and eager buyers the world over, should be worth a fortune.
Invisible
This sale of the principal contents of Sutton Brailes Manor is being conducted on instructions from the Treasury Solicitor, the owner, the reclusive Mrs. Dorothea Allen, having died intestate. No next of kin has been traced, despite a nationwide search, and Mrs. Allen’s life remains shrouded in mystery.
—Introduction to Sotheby’s Catalogue, 4th September 1990
When I first read these words in the Sotheby’s catalogue for the sale of furniture, pictures and decorations from a lovely but otherwise unremarkable manor house in Warwickshire, I couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of the phrase “shrouded in mystery.” It seemed so unusual in this context.
Read More “Invisible”
Amateurs
Strindberg, who had enjoyed painting since university, had already exhibited his paintings the year before in Sweden to critical incomprehension: one critic likened a canvas to dirty bed sheets hung out to dry.
—Sue Prideaux, Strindberg: A Life
Trophies Old and New
The entire façade of this building is clothed in ornament, like hieroglyphs on the columns and walls of temples in ancient Egypt.
—Description of the Guaranty Building (1898), Buffalo, New York
Victoriana
Then came the moment for the Queen to receive the Crown, and for all the peers and peeresses to put on their coronets. As the Queen knelt for the Crown to be placed on her head, a ray of sunlight fell upon her, and the Duchess of Kent, overcome by the scene, overwrought by mingled emotions, burst into tears.
—Edith Sitwell, Victoria of England
A Principality of Porcelain
I had been thinking of Letitia Roberts, whom I hadn’t seen in years, when all of a sudden there she was at The Met, checking her bag right next to me at the 81st Street entrance cloakroom on a miserable weekday in March. I was about to use my new membership at the museum by having lunch with a friend in the Balcony Lounge when I turned to see her.