Tag Archives: New York

BOOK REVIEW: Duveen Brothers And the Market for Decorative Arts, 1880–1940

Duveen Brothers And the Market for Decorative Arts, 1880–1940

Charlotte Vignon

UK£44.95 / US$59.95
Hardback ISBN 978-1-911282-34-1
D Giles Limited in association with The Frick Collection, New York, 2019

 

Duveen.jpg

 

The name of Duveen is well-known in the annals of the American trait of collecting European art treasures in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their story has previously been related in various volumes written by others, some of whom were family members or involved with the company. Understandably paintings predominated in these previous works but wonderfully at last the decorative arts get their well-deserved centre stage spot.

 

French 18th century furniture, tapestries, Sèvres and Chinese porcelains and medieval and Renaissance works of art were among the items sold to the eager, wealthy American collectors. Relating the story from the firm’s point of view Charlotte Vignon looks at the pricing of the objects and the Duveen’s run-ins with the US tax authorities in which Duveen succeeded and was able to continue to enhance the lives and homes of collectors such as J P Morgan, John D Rockefeller Jnr, Marjorie Merriweather Post, Anna Thomson Dodge and Henry Clay Frick. Thanks to the firm’s records and archives held at the Getty Research Institute, one gets a good understanding of how Duveen functioned in New York, London and Paris and obtained such beautiful treasures at a time when the owners of English and European family collections were selling parts of their heritage for financial reasons. The importance of the house of Duveen was reflected in 1937 when they loaned tapestries to decorate an annexe at Westminster Abbey for the Coronation of King George VI.

 

It’s a remarkable story of connoisseurship and reveals to present day visitors to American museums and collections how these remarkable objects came to be there. Perfect!

 

 

 

gilesltd.com

A celebration of early drawings

Old Master Drawings 1465 to 1670, Les Enluminures, 23 East 73rd Street, 7th Floor Penthouse, New York, NY 10021, USA, 20th – 28th January 2017

GERMAN SCHOOL Adoration of the Magi (200 x 282 mm.) Germany, Swabia or Franconia, c. 1465-70

GERMAN SCHOOL
Adoration of the Magi (200 x 282 mm.)
Germany, Swabia or Franconia, c. 1465-70

Les Enluminures has been selling important early drawings to both collectors and museums since 1991. These early works are becoming scarcer to source and so this is a very special exhibition of thirteen remarkable drawings which include sketches for compositions and fully worked drawings.

GERMAN SCHOOL St. John the Evangelist (189 x 100 mm.) Upper Rhine, c. 1480-90

GERMAN SCHOOL
St. John the Evangelist (189 x 100 mm.)
Upper Rhine, c. 1480-90

The gallery’s Dr Sandra Hindman sums it up: “There remains much to be learned from early drawings, and because of their increasing rarity, as well as intrinsic artistic interest, every example merits close attention and further study. Here is an uncommon opportunity for private collectors and institutions alike to acquire an Old Master drawing that documents an early moment in the history of drawing.”

FLEMISH SCHOOL A Study of Monsters and Grotesques (267 x 416 mm.) Belgium, Antwerp (?), c. 1625-1650

FLEMISH SCHOOL
A Study of Monsters and Grotesques (267 x 416 mm.)
Belgium, Antwerp (?), c. 1625-1650

http://www.lesenluminures.com

PACE LONDON

Louise Nevelson, Pace London, 6 Burlington Gardens, London, W1, until 16th July 2016

 

© 2016 Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

© 2016 Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

I first came across Nevelson’s work many years ago in an article on the noted fashion designer Arnold Scaasi’s home published in Architectural Digest where one of her large sculptures was in his living room.

 

© 2016 Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

© 2016 Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Nevelson (1899-1998) was an important figure in the post-war New York art scene known for her garnering of scraps of wood and other materials from her local streets and transforming them into free-standing or wall-mounted works of small or large size, often in black or white.  This exhibition surveys her work from the mid-50s until her death in 1988.

© 2016 Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

© 2016 Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

 

pacegallery.com

Fit for a Queen

The Private Collection of Joan Rivers, Christie’s New York, 22nd June 2016; Online Auction 16th – 23rd June 2016

Joan_Rivers_03

‘Joan’s apartment was a reflection of the true Joan: warm, elegant and truly inviting’ is how the celebrity event designer Preston Bailey described this private world of a much-loved entertainer.

Lot 15 PRIVATE & ICONIC New York, Rockefeller Plaza Jun 22, 2016 A FRENCH TERRACOTTA BUST OF A WOMAN Price Estimate: 2,000 - 3,000 U.S. dollars

Lot 15
PRIVATE & ICONIC
New York, Rockefeller Plaza
Jun 22, 2016
A FRENCH TERRACOTTA BUST OF A WOMAN
Price Estimate: 2,000 – 3,000 U.S. dollars

Now the contents are being auctioned off with a portion of the proceeds going to the HIV/Aids charity God’s Love We Deliver and to Guide Dogs For The Blind. The latter reflecting her great love of dogs.  Some two hundred lots will be in the June 22nd auction with many items from her home eloquently reflecting her connoisseurship, wit and elegance.  The latter being especially obvious in her costumes – some by Bob Mackie – and in her jewellery by celebrated makers including Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Harry Winston, some of which are being sold in the online auction 16th – 23rd June.

 Joan_Rivers_06

She was, as many of you may know, a collector of Fabergé and in the words of Geoffrey Munn, Wartski’s director and author of the recent volume on the firm’s history ‘Joan’s connoisseurship was informed and intuitive’. ‘She was conscious of the importance of provenance.’

Lot 156 PRIVATE & ICONIC New York, Rockefeller Plaza Jun 22, 2016 A SET OF ELEVEN ITALIAN PORCELAIN DINNER PLATES AND A SET OF TWELVE DRESDEN PORCELAIN PLATES Price Estimate: 600 - 800 U.S. dollars


Lot 156
PRIVATE & ICONIC
New York, Rockefeller Plaza
Jun 22, 2016
A SET OF ELEVEN ITALIAN PORCELAIN DINNER PLATES AND A SET OF TWELVE DRESDEN PORCELAIN PLATES
Price Estimate: 600 – 800 U.S. dollars

I will leave the last word on her home to the great lady herself who once said that it was ‘where Marie Antoinette would have lived if she had money’.

Joan_Rivers_01

 I think she got that right!

 

Lot 134 PRIVATE & ICONIC New York, Rockefeller Plaza Jun 22, 2016 AN ASSORTED GROUP OF JOAN RIVERS' TABLE LINENS Price Estimate: 500 - 800 U.S. dollars

Lot 134
PRIVATE & ICONIC
New York, Rockefeller Plaza
Jun 22, 2016
AN ASSORTED GROUP OF JOAN RIVERS’ TABLE LINENS
Price Estimate: 500 – 800 U.S. dollars

 

http://www.christies.com/joanrivers

Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga Requests The Pleasure of Your Company

GOYA: THE PORTRAITS, The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London WC2, until 10thJanuary 2016

One of the pictures in this show is well-known to me through my interest in interior decoration.  It is the famous portrait of Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga, who in this exhibition is reunited with Goya’s portraits of his father and mother and sister.

Francisco de Goya Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga 1788 Oil on canvas 127 x 101.6 cm Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jules Bache Collection, 1949 (49.7.41) © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Francisco de Goya
Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga
1788
Oil on canvas
127 x 101.6 cm
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jules Bache Collection, 1949 (49.7.41)
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The portrait was bought from the famed art dealer Joseph Duveen by the American banker Jules S Bache in 1926 and it is believed that his daughter Kathryn was the driving force behind this purchase.  The latter was better known as Kitty Miller, wife of the renowned theatre producer Gilbert Miller, and she employed the noted designer Billy Baldwin to decorate their homes in New York, London and Mallorca.

It is her New York home that is the focus of this story for when Bache donated his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1949 there was a specific condition and that was that the picture could hang in Kitty’s drawing room for half the year.  In his book Billy Baldwin Remembers Baldwin recalls that when the painting was first hung in the drawing room the Millers sent out cocktail party invitations to New York society to come and meet Don Manuel Osorio de Zuñiga. So each year it hung there to Kitty’s great delight until her death in 1979, although in Legendary Decorators of the 20th Century, the famous interior decorator Mark Hampton says that “As she grew older, it became annually more difficult for the Met to get the painting back”.

Well, one can totally understand why she had such affection for this painting and now it is our turn to go and meet him.  While there are no cocktails being served there is the delicious treat of seeing more than sixty of Goya’s remarkable portraits.  It is such a good show you will most likely want to visit more than once – just like visiting the Miller’s!

 

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk

 

AMI SPANGLER TYGER’S DAWN at the Highgate Gallery

AMI SPANGLER TYGER’S DAWN: (1970 – 2013) NEW YORK TO NEW MEXICO at the Highgate Gallery, until 22nd May

Ami Spangler - High Desert (1979)

High Desert (1979)

As promised last year I am bringing the new exhibition of Ami Spangler’s artistic work to your attention. This time as well as the New York pictures of the 1970s, inspired by New York’s jazz scene, there are watercolours which she now paints at her New Mexico studio. These latter pieces reflect her continuing interest in the interaction of the human form and the cosmic and how the arts can have healing powers.

Sleep Dream

Sleep Dream

Mary Magdelene 3

Mary Magdelene 3

Venue:
Highgate Gallery, Highgate Literary & Scientific Institution,11 South Grove, London N6 (www.hlsi.net)
GALLERY OPEN:
Tuesday – Friday 1-5pm
Saturday 11am-4pm
Sunday 11am-5pm
FREE ADMISSION

http://www.amispangler.com