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Impressionist and Modern Art
Post-War and Contemporary Art
American Art
European and World Art
Impressionist and Modern Art
CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926) Le Mont Riboudet à Rouen au Printemps Signed lower right, "Claude Monet" oil on canvas 21 1/2 x 28 5/8 in. Painted in 1872 PROVENANCE: Durand-Ruel, Paris, acquired from the artist in February 1873 Gustave Caillebotte, Paris, acquired from the above circa 1876 Martial Caillebotte, Paris, by descent from the above Albert Chardeau, Paris, by descent from the above Sale: Galliera, Paris, 12th June 1964, lot 94 Maurice Lehmann, Paris Lester Osterman, New York, acquired by 1971 Wildenstein Gallery, New York Private Collection, USA, acquired by 1975 Wildenstein Gallery, New York Private Collection, acquired from the above by the family of the present owner LITERATURE: Henri Perruchot, 'Scandale au Luxembourg', in L'Œil, Paris, September 1955, discussed p. 45 Charles Merrill Mount, Monet: A Biography, New York, 1966, discussed p. 226 Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet. Biographie et catalogue raisonné, Lausanne & Paris, 1974, vol. I, no. 216, illustrated, p. 209; vol. V, no. 216, listed p. 26 Daniel Wildenstein, Monet, Catalogue raisonné, Cologne, 1996, vol. II, no. 216, illustrated p. 96
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Claude Monet completed this painting in 1872, after which it was purchased by Paul Durand-Ruel, Monet’s major patron and primary dealer, then by fellow painter Gustave Caillebotte for his private collection. The year 1872 saw great inspiration and productivity for Monet. It was the year that he painted the notable Impression, Sunrise, which was exhibited at the now famed 1874 Paris show that served as the debut of Impressionism. Earlier that spring while visiting his brother in a region northwest of Paris, Monet created many oil paintings observing the changing scenery as urban development took hold. Included among them was this more traditional landscape, which embraces the natural beauty of the French countryside, perhaps clinging to the idyllic charm of a rural landscape slowly disappearing. Monet’s delicate handling of soft light on the hillside dotted with houses and foliage translates atmospheric effects to canvas. The piece is a wonderful example of Monet’s characteristic process—to put paint to canvas outdoors, within the very setting that he aims to depict, moving with spontaneity and capturing the light of a fleeting moment.
GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE (1848-1894) Vue du Jardin de l’Artiste et de la Vallée de Yerres oil on canvas 19 1/8 x 25 1/2 in. Painted in 1877 PROVENANCE: Mary Cassatt, Chateau de Beaufresne, Mesnil-Theribus, until 1926 Private Collection, by descent Sale at Chateau de Monneville 1946 Jean and Francois Ryaux, France Collection of David Schaff, Washington Sotheby’s NY November 11, 1987, no. 9 Sale, Sotheby’s NY May 18 1990, no. 317 Private Collection, Canada, 1990 Private Collection EXHIBITED: 2014, Yerres, Ferme ornée, Caillebotte à Yerres, au temps de l’Impressionnisme, p. 94 LITERATURE: P. Wittmer, Caillebotte au jardin. La période d’Yerres (1860-1879), Saint-Rémy-en-l’Eau, Edition d’Art Monelle Hayot, 1990, illustrated pg. 65 M. Berhaut, Gustave Caillebotte, Catalogue Raisonné des peintures et pastels, Paris, 1994, no. 82, illustrated pg. 103
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Gustave Caillebotte’s scenes from his country home at Yerres display soft brushwork and a pastel palette typical of the Impressionists. Although closely associated with that movement, Caillebotte drew inspiration from other approaches as well, resulting in a style closer to Realism than many of his contemporaries. His noteworthy urban scenes employ flatter colors and dramatic perspectives inspired by Japanese wood block prints. Here, the artist’s delicate paint handling compliments his measured use of color. Naturalistic hues of the artist’s garden and the valley beyond – a bed of cool green and blue that divide the canvas into contrasting swaths of heavy and light tones – underscore the details touched by light. Caillebotte not only contributed his painting to the Impressionist movement, but also became a crucial benefactor upon receiving a sizable inheritance. He helped to fund exhibitions, purchased works for his own collection, and even paid rent for Claude Monet’s studio.
ALFRED SISLEY (1839-1899) Printemps a Veneux
Signed lower left, "Sisley" oil on canvas 28 3/4 x 35 3/4 in. Painted in 1880 PROVENANCE: Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie., Paris (acquired from the artist, by August 1891) Paul Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the above, 1901) Private collection, Paris (by descent from the above, by 1959) Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie., Paris (acquired from the above, 16 January 1962) Sam Salz, Inc., New York (acquired from the above, 23 January 1962) Stephen Richard and Audrey Currier (by 1967) Estate sale, Christie's, New York, 16 May 1984, lot 18 Howard B. Keck, Los Angeles (acquired at the above sale) Sotheby's, New York, 6 November 1991, lot 4 Sale, Christies's New York, 8 May 2013 Richard Green Gallery, London Private Collection, acquired from the above Private Collection, Wyoming EXHIBITED: Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie., Exposition de tableaux de Monet, Pissarro, Renoir & Sisley, April 1899, no. 134 (titled Le Printemps and dated 1878). Paris, Chambre Syndicale de la Curiosité des Beaux-Arts, L'art français au service de la Science française: exposition d'oeuvres d'art des XVIIIè, XIXè et XXè siècles, April-May 1923, no. 224 (titled Printemps and dated 1878). Paris, Musée des arts décoratifs, Cinquante ans de peinture française, 1875-1925, May-July 1925, no. 75 (titled Les pommiers en fleurs and dated 1882). Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie., Tableaux de Sisley, February-March 1930, no. 7 (titled Paysage and dated 1872). Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie., Exposition de tableaux par Alfred Sisley, January-February 1937, no. 29 (dated 1882). LITERATURE: G. Geffroy, Sisley, Paris, 1923 (illustrated, pl. 8; titled Le Printemps) G. Geffroy, Sisley, Paris, 1927 (illustrated, pl. 24) J. Jedlicka, Sisley, Bern, 1949, p. 30, no. 22 (illustrated, pl. 22; titled Frühling) V. Gilardoni, L'Impressionismo, Milan, 1951, p. 152, no. 43 (illustrated, pl. 43; titled Primavera and dated 1878 F. Daulte, Alfred Sisley: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Lausanne, 1959, no. 356 (illustrated; with incorrect provenance)
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CAMILLE PISSARRO (1830-1903) Les Gardeuses de Vaches
Signed lower left, "C. Pissarro 1883" mixed media, gouache and watercolor with charcoal on paper 11 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. Painted in 1883
This work shows a favored subject of Pissarro – the country peasant. The idea behind many of the artist’s works on paper is to convey to the viewer a sense of immediacy and relevance particularly of life in the countryside. The work presents his instantly recognizable soft, atmospheric effect in an idyllic setting.
PROVENANCE: Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris (12306), acquired on 25 August 1891 Paul and Joseph Durand-Ruel, Paris Anon. sale, Christie's, London, 3 December 1996, lot 112 Private Collection, Germany Anon. sale, Christie's, London, 24 June 2003, lot 47 Private Collection, USA Private Collection, California
Important not only for his artwork, Pissarro influenced the next generation of painters chiefly Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin. Cézanne described that “Pissarro was like a father to me”, and fellow Impressionist Mary Cassatt noted that Pissarro “could have taught stones to draw correctly.” This pastel was handled by the most important 19th century dealer of Impressionist works, Galerie Durand-Ruel, who acquired it on 25 August 1891.
EXHIBITED: Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, February 1892, no. 63 Paris, Galerie Marcel Bernheim, Premières Epoques de Camille Pissarro, May - June 1936, no. 42 Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Camille Pissarro, April 1904, no. 148 Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Camille Pissarro, tableaux et gouaches, January 1910, no. 77 LITERATURE: L. Rodo-Pissarro & L. Venturi, Camille Pissarro, Son art-son oeuvre, Vol. I, Paris, 1939, no. 1378, p. 272 (illustrated Vol. II, pl. 1378).
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SALVADOR DALÍ (1904-1989) Les Yeux Fleuris oil on canvas 27 x 19 3/8 in. Painted in 1944 PROVENANCE: Marquis Georges de Cuevas, Monte-Carlo Hans Schemke, France Private Collection, France Private Collection, England Private Collection, California LITERATURE: Robert & Nicolas Descharnes, "Dalí, Le dur et le mou, Sortilège et magie des formes, Sculptures et objets", Azay-le-Rideau, 2004, no. 580, illustrated p. 228
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This oil painting by the preeminent and wildly eccentric Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí amplifies a common theme not only in his work, but also in Surrealism as a movement. Dalí, a Spanish artist who moved to New York in 1940, often depicted eyes as both a symbol for the act of perception and as an allusion, and to promote a new way of seeing. To the Surrealists, eyes impart a sense of omnipotence and, in Dalí’s case, represent an obsessive desire to become a clairvoyant and explore the unconscious. In 1942 — a few months after his retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York — Dalí parlayed the idea of accumulated, or “flowering,” eyes into a grand oil and tempera painting for the set of his 1944 ballet Mad Tristan. In this painting from the same year, Les Yeux Fleuris, Dalí depicts three rows of four eyes with long lashes and a tear dropping on a brick wall backdrop. Its provenance traces to Marques Jorge de Cuevas, who also owned a similar painting by Dalí — the 15-foot-wide Yeux Fleuris, a 1931 tempera and oil on canvas that was used on the set for Mad Tristan. Dalí, like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, designed for theater productions as early as 1927 and later the extent of his work went beyond creating stage décor and costumes to providing the libretto for Bacchanale (1939) and Labyrinth (1941). Eyes appear in Dalí paintings throughout his career — as late as the 1981 painting Argus, which has five eyes. Most notably, the eye appears in paintings Dalí made for the dream sequences of the film Spellbound starring Ingrid Bergman and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. A lifetime of relentless controversy and selfpromotion, as well as an extraordinary body of paintings and sculpture, assured Dalí of what he wanted — immortality, or at least enduring fame that transcends art.
Post-War and Contemporary Art
ANISH KAPOOR (b. 1954) Blood Cinema
acrylic and steel 77 1/4 x 77 1/4 x 18 3/4 in. Executed in 2000 PROVENANCE: Lisson Gallery, London Lenore and Richard Niles Collection, United States Sale, Christie's London, 6 February, 2008, lot 32 Private Collection, acquired at the above sale Private Collection, California EXHIBITED: London, Lisson Gallery, Anish Kapoor, May-July 2000 San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Points of Departure II, November 2001-June 2002 The Figure In Process; De Kooning to Kapoor 1955-2015. Pivot Art + Culture Seattle. 1 December 2015 - 28 February 2016 LITERATURE: David Anfam, Donna De Salvo, Johanna Burton, Richard Deacon. Anish Kapoor, Phaidon, London
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Anish Kapoor, one of Great Britain’s most important and influential sculptors, has created monumental installations around the world, including Cloud Gate at Chicago’s Millenium Park, and Dirty Corner in the Gardens of Versailles. His work typically manifests in simple curved forms, usually monochromatic and richly colored, to draw the viewer through extraordinary scale and surface. Standing in front of one of Kapoor’s sculptures can be a sublime experience. Blood Cinema, a sculpture created in 2000, is nearly six-and-half feet in diameter. It is composed of acrylic, glass, and steel and rests on the floor like an oversized lens. One’s reflection does not appear as it would in a mirror; instead, the viewer’s perspective is warped and distorted through ethereal shades of red. The sculpture internally features a convex mirror, resulting in different visual effects when it is viewed from either side. Blood Cinema explores space, structure, and perception, and touches on a variety of metaphysical polarities, such as presence and absence, inward and outward, visible and invisible, light and dark. It is the viewer’s presence which activates these relationships, creating an individualistic experience that could not exist without the viewer’s participation.
TOM WESSELMANN (1931-2004) 1962 Plus 35 Nude Sketch II
Signed lower left, "Wesselmann '97" alkyd oil on canvas 43 x 58 5/8 in. Painted in 1997 PROVENANCE: Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Vancouver, BC Private Collection, Vancouver, BC, acquired from above 2001 Private Collection, Florida EXHIBITED: Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Vancouver, BC, "Tom Wesselmann: American Icon," 2001-2002
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Tom Wesselmann was a painter, who also worked with collage in many of his works. He was known as a Pop artist due to his use of culture and commercialism in his work, however Wesselmann himself never fully agreed with the label. He felt that American culture naturally influenced his work because he was living in it, and made aesthetic use of it, but that it wasn’t the subject of his work. This painting is inspired by sketches from his most well-known series, the “Great American Nudes,” which were directly influenced by Willem de Kooning’s “Women” series from the 1950s. Given Wesselmann’s background in cartooning, however, his women have a strikingly different appearance. He would reduce his models to their erogenous zones, detailing the figure in a graphic style. He said that he wanted to “make figurative art as exciting as abstract art.” This example, titled 1962 Plus 35 Nude Sketch II, features his classically recognizable nude with tan lines, and is flatly painted using vibrant colors. Her legs are parted in a carefree pose he used often, and her head is tilted toward the viewer in an inviting manner. This intimate painting was completed in 1997, the second in a series in which he revisited works and sketches he created in 1960s.
ANSELM KIEFER (b. 1945) San Loretto
mixed media on canvas 74 x 111 in. Executed in 2008 PROVENANCE: Private Collection of the artist Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria Private Collection, New York EXHIBITED: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, "Maria Walks Amid the Thorn"; 24 July 2008 - 27 August 2008, Salzburg, Austria
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Anselm Kiefer is one of the most important and influential European Contemporary artists because of his unique approach to painting and sculpture and the issues with which he wrestles. Kiefer’s work incorporates diverse materials including dirt, lead, ash, and other symbolically loaded media in order to contend with fraught cultural and political histories. Much of his work addresses themes of creation and destruction, often incorporating religious references. San Loretto, a large-scale mixed media piece typical of Kiefer’s style, references a story from the Catholic faith, in which the house of the Holy Family was miraculously transported out of Nazareth to Loreto, Italy, for protection during the Crusades. The story appeals to Kiefer's distinctive visual themes of ruin and renewal as the buildup of fragments and rubble on San Loretto coalesce into an image of a winged stone. Kiefer has said, “People think of ruins as the end of something, but for me they were the beginning. When you have ruins you can start again."
JEAN ARP (1886-1966)
Evocation d'une Forme Humaine Lunaire Spectrale cast cement 33 1/8 x 30 x 19 in. Executed in 1950 Edition 2/2 PROVENANCE: Groupe Espace, Paris Galerie des Quatre Mouvements, Paris Private Collection, California, September 1975 LITERATURE: C. Giedion-Welcker, Jean Arp, Stuttgart, 1957, p. 111, no. 101 (pink limestone version illustrated, p. 91; titled Human Lunar Spectral) I. Jianou, Jean Arp, Paris, 1973, p. 72, no. 101 (titled Humaine Lunaire Spectrale) A. Hartog and K. Fischer, Hans Arp, A Critical Survey, Ostfildern, 2012, p. 281, no. 101 (bronze version illustrated)
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Jean Arp is one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century for his ability to create abstract yet organic sculptures in a variety of media. He was a founder of Dada and participated in the surrealist movement. Rather than starting with a subject, Arp utilized form and chance to produce art. Evocation d'une Forme Humaine Lunaire Spectrale is a stellar example of Arp’s abstract biomorphic sculpture. It presents a smooth and graceful form that melds the human figure with an ethereal lunar landscape. Arp experimented with this form in diverse media and other iterations can be found in the collection of the Smithsonian's Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (in bronze), Museo d'Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro (in pink limestone), and the Dotremont Collection in Brussels (in white marble).
NORMAN ZAMMITT (1931-2007) North Wall
Signed verso, "September 1976, Norman Zammit" acrylic on canvas 96 x 168 in. Painted in 1976 PROVENANCE: Private Institution Collection, Wisconsin EXHIBITED: Los Angeles, The Getty Center, "Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture 1950-1970", October 1, 2011 - February 5, 2012
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North Wall was exhibited at the Getty Museum in the Pacific Standard Time exhibition tracing the history of art in L.A. from 1945 to 1980, which reignited interest in Light and Space and brought fresh eyes to the work of Zammitt. For this piece, the artist measured the width of each band and created parabolic graphs to calculate the exacting color progression — not only for aesthetic precision, but also for emotional and spiritual effect. The colors seem to radiate as they shift from dark bands of black and blue to fiery yellows, oranges and reds. The hard edges of these bands bring to mind the school of L.A. artists who worked in geometric abstraction during the same period, predominantly the 1960s and ’70s, particularly Karl Benjamin's classic stripe paintings. But Zammitt’s ethereal pictures defy any such classification. His edges appear seamless — a moment in space frozen in time. His late, longtime dealer, Joni Gordon of Newspace, suggested the exacting bands of brilliant color relate to Native Indian sand paintings, noting that the artist was raised on the Mohawk [Caughnawaga Indian] reservation near Montreal.
SADAMASA MOTONAGA (1922-2011) Untitled
Signed lower left "S. Motonaga" oil on canvas 16 x 12 1/2 in. Painted in 1966 PROVENANCE: Sadamasa Motonaga Estate Private Collection Fergus McCaffrey Private Collection, Houston
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Sadamasa Motonaga traveled to New York from Japan in 1966. His year-long residency there greatly informed his work. A member of the renowned Gutai Art Association, a Japanese avant-garde movement, Motonaga experimented with innovative painting styles and techniques. Brightly colored spills of paint characterize his most celebrated works as seen in the 1966 Untitled painting in this exhibition. This piece, an elegant composition with swirling pools of color, represents the moment just before a significant stylistic transition for Motonaga. During his year in New York, he began to create airbrushed works characterized by light, flat, and precise forms.
RICHARD PRINCE (b. 1949) Untitled (Portrait)(Boy)
Signed verso, “Richard Prince 2014” inkjet on canvas 65 3/4 x 48 3/4 in. Executed in 2014 PROVENANCE: with Gagosian Gallery, New York; Private Collection, New York, 2014, acquired from above EXHIBITED: Gagosian Gallery, New York, Richard Prince: New Portraits, 19 September 2014 - 24 October 2014.
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Richard Prince is one of the most influential names in contemporary art. Prince is part of The Pictures Generation, a loosely associated group of artists who appropriated mass media imagery to examine and question issues of stereotypes, cultural tropes, and the constructed narrative of images. Prince and The Pictures Generation helped to usher in post-modernism in art. Prince, in particular, centered appropriation within his art practice that both constructs and deconstructs the nature of images. This painting comes from his “Instagram” series in which Prince utilizes social media posts on which he has commented. This work and series ask us to question the meaning within the proliferation of “selfies” and how people use these images to create and to project a narrative of themselves.
M.F. HUSAIN (1915-2011) Brown Seal
Signed lower right, "Husain 78" oil on canvas 48 x 48 in. Painted in 1978 PROVENANCE: Purchased directly from the artist c. 1978/79 Private Collection, Connecticut
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M.F. Husain's narrative paintings, executed in a modified Cubist style, can be caustic and funny as well as serious and sombre. His themes—sometimes treated in series—include topics as diverse as Mohandas K. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the British raj, and motifs of Indian urban and rural life. Husain was associated with Indian modernism in the 1940s. His early association with the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group used modern technique, and was inspired by the "new" India after The Partition of 1947. Husain, a secular Muslim, triggered criticism for his often irreverent treatment of sensitive subject matter, including Hindu goddesses painted as nudes.
ARNALDO POMODORO (b. 1923) Disco in forma di rosa del deserto, studio I
Signed base, "Arnoldo Pomodoro '93/94, 2/6" bronze 23 in. dia. Executed circa 1993-94 PROVENANCE: Private Collection, New York (by descent to current owner) LITERATURE: A. Clerici, Il gioiello è un scultura, in “Italia Orafa”, Milano, giugno 1995, ill. p. 90 (another example illustrated). A. Colombo, Il cielo in una sfera, in “Luoghi dell’infinito, Avvenire”, Milano, giugno 1999, ill. p. 30 (another example illustrated). F. Guardoni, Arnaldo Pomodoro. Catalogo ragionato della scultura, Tomos I and II, Skira, Milan, 2007, no. 913, p. 714 (another example illustrated).
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Italian-born sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro uses his knowledge as a former architect and goldsmith to create the bronze, geometric sculptures for which he is best known. He begins with streamlined, classic lines, and then dissects the shapes, adding new ones within the original. He creates depth and wonder within the familiarity of geometry. These sculptures come in all sizes, but his crowning achievements are his large, freestanding commissioned works, which are installed in public and outdoor places. These include multiple renditions of his Sphere within a Sphere, as well as large discs, pyramids, cubes, and columns, which are variously located in Belvedere Fortress in Florence, the United Nations Plaza in New York, Amaliehaven park in Copenhagen, and the Palais-Royale in Paris, to name just a few. A quartet of sculptures jointly titled Forma del Mito stand outside Brisbane City Hall. This sculpture, like many of his works, has jagged protrusions and deep gouges, which give the piece a sense of motion, or transition—as if it were frozen in midst of shifting into another form entirely. It consists of two discs that appear to be skewered together by other discs and jagged shapes, which protrude from either side. The piece has been in a private collection since its creation in the early 1990s and other versions of the same work were exhibited in Europe and in Milan, where Pomodoro currently lives and works.
RICHARD TUTTLE (b. 1941) Untitled (Cloth and Paint Work #2) rope and oil on canvas 15 1/2 x 16 in. Executed in 1973 PROVENANCE: Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco Vera List Collection, New York Anthony Grant Fine Art Private Collection, California Anthony Grant Fine Art Private Collection, Houston
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Richard Tuttle is a seminal American postminimalist artist. Tuttle’s work is conceptual and meditative, crossing the boundary of sculpture, painting, and poetry, and often challenging the viewer. Untitled (Cloth and Paint Work #2) from 1973, a pivotal period in the artist’s career, evokes the earlier minimalism of his career while pushing towards material-based conceptual art. In the work he pays homage to Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. Textiles, as in this piece, play a large role in his oeuvre and become sites on which to focus performance, engagement, and meaning.
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG (1925-2008) Berm (Hoarfrost)
Signed in pencil, lower right, "Rauschenberg 75" solvent transfer on fabric with cardboard 62 1/2 x 35 1/2 in. Executed in 1975 PROVENANCE: Sonnabend Gallery Private Collection, purchased from the above in 1975 Sotheby's New York: Thursday, November 10th 2005 [Lot 00215]. Contemporary Art/ Morning Private Collection, Houston
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American artist Robert Rauschenberg helped to revolutionize art in the 20th century through his assemblages incorporating found objects and pop culture. For the Hoarfrost series, Rauschenberg used solvent to transfer images from newspapers and magazines to unstretched fabric. Hoarfrost is a kind of lacy film made up of minute, needle-like ice crystals. Rauschenberg evoked the transience of the hoarfrost by printing newspaper and magazine pages on overlapping layers of delicate fabrics. Other pieces in this series are in the collections of The Guggenheim, MoMA, SF MOMA, the National Gallery of Art and Tate.
AUGOSTINO BONALUMI (1935-2013) Untitled
Signed verso, "Bonalumi 83" vinyl tempera on shaped canvas 27 1/2 x 27 1/2 x 1 5/8 in. Painted in 1983 PROVENANCE: Private Collection, Florida Private Collection, by descent to current owner
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Painters are often concerned with creating dimension through perspective and shading, but Italian-born Agostino Bonalumi took dimensionality to a new level. He was a self-taught painter, though his formal studies involved technical and mechanical design. After spending time in the studio of Lucio Fontana and witnessing his slashed canvasses, Bonalumi produced his first “extroflection” painting. He would build frames and structures and use them to stretch his canvas, producing a three-dimensional effect. This allowed viewers to interact with his works in a novel way, which was important to him, as he said, “beauty has to be experienced, not described.” His canvasses are often monochromatic, sometimes brightly colored and sometimes all dark or stark white—but the paint is not what draws the eye. His works puncture the picture plane and demand attention via their use of space and texture. These pieces sport horizontal lines of extroflection running down the canvas, complemented by matching, painted lines in shades of a slightly different color than that of the main canvas. The first piece is a vibrant, rich red and the other a pure white. The extroflections in each piece have a slightly different shape—the red shorter with the angles resembling a boomerang in shape, and the white with greater protrusions appearing on either end. As Bonalumi intended with all his works, these paintings are best enjoyed when viewed from many different angles, to truly appreciate and experience the ways in which the shapes, dimensions, and colors interact with each other.
AUGOSTINO BONALUMI (1935-2013) Untitled
Signed verso, "Bonalumi 83" vinyl tempera on shaped canvas 23 5/8 x 23 5/8 x 1 5/8 in. Painted in 1983 PROVENANCE: Private Collection, Florida Private Collection, by descent to current owner
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Painters are often concerned with creating dimension through perspective and shading, but Italian-born Agostino Bonalumi took dimensionality to a new level. He was a self-taught painter, though his formal studies involved technical and mechanical design. After spending time in the studio of Lucio Fontana and witnessing his slashed canvasses, Bonalumi produced his first “extroflection” painting. He would build frames and structures and use them to stretch his canvas, producing a three-dimensional effect. This allowed viewers to interact with his works in a novel way, which was important to him, as he said, “beauty has to be experienced, not described.” His canvasses are often monochromatic, sometimes brightly colored and sometimes all dark or stark white—but the paint is not what draws the eye. His works puncture the picture plane and demand attention via their use of space and texture. These pieces sport horizontal lines of extroflection running down the canvas, complemented by matching, painted lines in shades of a slightly different color than that of the main canvas. The first piece is a vibrant, rich red and the other a pure white. The extroflections in each piece have a slightly different shape—the red shorter with the angles resembling a boomerang in shape, and the white with greater protrusions appearing on either end. As Bonalumi intended with all his works, these paintings are best enjoyed when viewed from many different angles, to truly appreciate and experience the ways in which the shapes, dimensions, and colors interact with each other.
HASSEL SMITH (1915-2007) Piano, Bass and Drums
Signed upper left, "HWS 1961" and titled lower middle, "Piano, Bass & Drums" oil on canvas 67 7/8 x 48 1/4 in. Painted in 1961 PROVENANCE: Paule Anglim Gallery, San Francisco 1980 Private Collection, San Francisco
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Hassel Smith was born in 1915 in Sturgis, Michigan. Matching his restlessness in painting, Smith moved back and forth between the Midwest and the West Coast of the United States and at one point settling in Cornwall and Bristol in the UK. After WWII, Smith joined the faculty of CSFA, teaching alongside Clyfford Still, who would become a lifelong friend, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Ansel Adams, and Richard Diebenkorn, along with visiting faculty Mark Rothko, another lifelong friend, and Ad Reinhardt. It was his friendship with Still that pushed Smith from figurative painting to Abstract Expressionism. These shifts in styles would become a hallmark of Hassel Smith’s career. In the 1970s and 1980s, Smith would embrace Hard-Edge Abstraction, contributing his unique spin via his “measured” paintings, which encompassed geometric shapes and numbers on grids. Using a system known only to him, Smith found rhythms in the paintings through the intervals and sizes of the shapes. Furthermore, unlike many Hard-Edge paintings that erased the hand of the painter, Hassel Smith’s paintings are lush in their varied brushstrokes and in their layered multi-hued surfaces.
CARL ANDRE (b. 1935)
Five Hundred Terms for Charles A. Lindbergh Signed verso, "Five Hundred Terms for Charles Lindberg (Carbon) 1962 Carl Andre" ink on paper on board 8 x 6 1/8 in. Executed in 1962 PROVENANCE: Collection of Hollis Frampton, acquired from the artist 1963 Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York Private Collection, Houston
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Carl Andre is an American artist who helped pioneer minimalist sculpture and was the husband of famed and celebrated artist Ana Mendieta. This is a classic text piece from the early 1960s and is typical of his poems which are composed by selecting individual words from source texts, and then ordering them on the page according to simple and self-evident criteria, which, in this case, is by alphabetical listing. Aviator Charles Lindbergh deep fascinated Carl Andre whom he returned to as a source for his poetry. This work with its structured repetition like his famed sculptures reflect the minimalism and post-minimalism emerging in the 1960s and the 1970s including fellow concrete poet Christopher Knowles.
DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD (b. 1949) Yellow River
steel 26 x 96 x 56 in. Executed circa 1984 PROVENANCE: Private Collection, California Private Collection, Colorado
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With extraordinary focus and conviction, Deborah Butterfield has created threedimensional images of horses from whatever a nature enthusiast and junkyard fan can find. But to listen to her talk about flesh and blood horses is to appreciate the depth of her bond to her subject – the blood and the death, the colic surgeries, the love and pain. Horses for her are really a metaphor for life and about having the courage to love knowing that loss and pain are sure to follow. Of crumpled, distressed, and wielded steel, Yellow River evinces what great art often does - an economy of means. Birthed in part from Wayne Thiebaud’s suggestion she work to fully assimilate the reclining form, Butterfield cites the compelling voluptuousness of the female form – an odalisque, or otherwise – with a horse’s most vulnerable state of lying down as touchstones of association.
RICHARD DIEBENKORN (1922-1993) Untitled
welded scrap iron 20 1/4 x 42 1/4 x 29 1/2 in. Executed circa 1951 PROVENANCE: Private Collection, Los Angeles LITERATURE: Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné pg. 399, fig. 1112 Diebenkorn in New Mexico
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Richard Diebenkorn was a primary figure in West Coast Abstract Expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement. As a student and then faculty member at the California School of Fine Arts in the late 1940’s, he worked alongside David Park, Elmer Bischoff, and Clyfford Still. Although influenced by these contemporaries, Diebenkorn’s style of expression was intensely individual. This rare sculpture comes from a period of experimentation and a burst of lyrical creativity that the artist experienced while in graduate school at the University of New Mexico. Like many American artists before him, Diebenkorn was enthralled with the atmosphere and landscape of the Southwest. He produced energetic and unpredictable canvases with bold, warm colors, barely contained within their underlying geometric structure. This welded iron sculpture demonstrates the far reaches of the artist’s exploration, establishing the essential linear framework that would come to characterize his later work. This piece appeared in the artist’s Master’s Degree Exhibition in 1951, and was the only sculpture included in the 2008 exhibition Diebenkorn in New Mexico.
MARC QUINN (b. 1964) (Red) Eclipse
Signed in pencil, on verso, "Marc Quinn 2018" oil on canvas 78 1/8 in. diameter Painted in 2018 PROVENANCE: Sotheby's Online: Wednesday, December 5, 2018 [Lot 00007] Private Collection, California
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Marc Quinn is one of the most influential members of the YBA or Young British Artists who emerged in the 1990s through their shocking artwork underpinned by radical new approaches to art making. A multidisciplinary artist, Quinn’s output explores and blurs the boundaries of art, science, and technology along with issues of corporeality, decay, and preservation. This painting is part of his series derived from scientific photographs of solar eclipses from the last 100 years. Quinn brings to the fore themes of temporality – the duration of an eclipse against human life, human life against the cyclical cosmos. What does it mean to capture a temporal action? The series name “Anthropocene” is a nod to the human effect on nature. Not just conceptually deep, the painting is aesthetically beautiful, capturing the explosion of reds, oranges, and yellows during the cosmic event. The circular canvas is sympathetic to the eclipse of the moon across the sun.
American Art
EDWARD HOPPPER (1882-1967) Farm House at Essex
Signed lower left, "Edward Hopper, Essex House" watercolor on paper 14 x 19 15/16 in Painted in 1929 PROVENANCE: Private Collection, Massachusetts Private Collection Kennedy Galleries, TInSc. New York Private Collection Craig F. Starr Associates, New York Private Collection, Virginia LITERATURE: Gail Levin, Edward Hopper, a Catalogue raisonnĂŠ, New York, 2006, vol. II, no. 242, illustrated p. 211.
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In the catalog for his 1933 retrospective, Edward Hopper wrote, "My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impressions of nature." Farm House at Essex is one of two watercolors that Hopper completed in Essex, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1929 while driving north to Maine with his wife, Jo. He spent summers in New England throughout his life, and often used watercolor to capture the landscape. The medium allows the artist to capture an instant impression of nature, here a spontaneous moment in rural Massachusetts. This piece speaks to the most enduring theme in Hopper's work: mood. Noted for the sense of melancholy in his realist paintings, Hopper’s scenes are often populated by few isolated figures, or in this case, vacant of any human presence. Instead, he centers on the formal aspects of the building and the temporal beauty of place.
ROBERT HENRI (1865-1929) Girl with Muff
Signed lower left, "Robert Henri" oil on canvas 57 1/4 x 38 3/4 in. Painted circa 1912 PROVENANCE: Private Collection, North Carolina
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Robert Henri’s Girl with Muff exemplifies the modernism emerging in America. Henri was a leading figure of the Ashcan School of American realism. He helped to organize a group of artists known as “The Eight” who pushed the boundaries of acceptable art. The Ashcan School steered art away from academic style paintings and depictions of the upper class. Instead, this group of artists lead by Henri brought a realism both in style and in content. Henri lead the charge in challenging the cultural beliefs of the Gilded Age. The portrait showcases Henri’s individualized realism and exuberant humanism of everyday life. Henri pushed against the repressive luxury of contemporaneous paintings and instead sought to integrate the world he inhabited and how to express the world he saw. This painting exemplifies his ability and interest in portraying people from all classes and backgrounds. The portrait highlights the burgeoning modernism in American art around the turn of the 20th century.
JOHN MARIN (1870-1953) Cape Split, Maine
Signed lower right, "Marin 45" oil on canvas 22 1/4 x 28 1/4 in. Painted in 1945 PROVENANCE: Mrs. C. Suydam Cutting, Bernardsville, New Jersey Downtown Gallery, New York Mrs. Walter Buhl Ford, II (Josephine F. Ford), Grosse Point Farms, Michigan Private Collection, Florida, by descent EXHIBITED: New York, An American Place, John Marin-Paintings-1945, November 1945-January 1946 Newark, New Jersey, Newark Museum, From the Collection of Mrs. C. Suydam Cutting, FebruaryApril 1954
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In Cape Split, Maine, abrupt, gestural brushwork echoes the turbulent waves and snaps of wind at sea. John Marin painted distinctly American subject matter including the cityscape of New York or as in this painting, the Maine coast. He melded post-impressionism with the budding modernism of the early 20th century. Marin made annual trips to Maine, inspired by its coast and landscape. Within this painting, Marin is able to fully realize his idea that “the true artist must perforce go from time to time to the elemental big forms – Sky Sea Mountain Plain”. Marin was part of Alfred Stieglitz's modernist circle and counted among his friends and champion Edward Steichen. A 1948 survey of directors, curators, and art critics voted Marin as the greatest painter in America.
STANTON MACDONALD-WRIGHT (1890-1973) La Gaite
Signed lower middle, "S. Wright" oil on canvas 50 x 36 in. Painted in 1958 PROVENANCE: Peyton Wright, New Mexico Private Collection, California
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Stanton Macdonald-Wright was a co-founder of the Synchromism movement, which combined abstraction and intense color. He was influenced by ideas that the qualities of color were connected to the qualities of music. He stopped painting this way in the 1920s, but his work experienced a revitalization in the 1950s, following a retrospective of his work at LACMA. Inspired by the renewed interest, Wright began producing works with increased passion; these works were considered Neo-Synchromism. La Gaîté is a phenomenal example of this period in Wright’s career, showcasing the brighter colors and larger canvases he favored during his personal renaissance.
WILLIAM WENDT (1865-1946) Spring
Signed lower right, "William Wendt 1916" oil on canvas 40 x 50 in. Painted in 1916 PROVENANCE: Private Collection, Southern California, acquired directly from the artist; Private Collection, by gift to the daughter of the above, 1932; Private Collection, by descent to the present owner EXHIBITED: Los Angeles, California, California Art Club, Seventh Annual Exhibition, October 5-31, 1916, no. 69 Detroit, Michigan, Detroit Museum of Art, Fifth Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists, April 16-May 31, 1919, no. 45 Toledo, Ohio, The Toledo Museum of Art, 1919 St. Louis, Missouri, City Art Museum of St. Louis, Fourteenth Annual Exhibition, 1919, no. 161 LITERATURE: Catalogue of the Fifth Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists, exhibition catalogue, Detroit, Michigan, April 1919, no. 45 J.A. Walker, Documents on the Life and Art of William Wendt (1865-1946): California's Painter Laureate of the Paysage MoralisĂŠ, Big Pine, California, 1992, p. 187, no. 640
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Spring, an unusually large-scale oil painting by William Wendt, depicts a huge expanse of blue, almost cloudless California sky over a wide, flat plain of verdant grass. The only other adornments to this landscape are stands of tall, thin trees that, in the forefront, seem to tower over the far distant snow-capped mountaintop. Wendt’s Impressionist style is evident in the detailed brushwork that makes up the sky. Using short dashes of blue upon blue, Wendt builds the varying color from dark at the top to lighter blue as it nears the mountain on the horizon. Looking closely, the sky almost appears to be a mosaic, but from further back, the colors and strokes blend seamlessly to create its soft, pastel look.
ANDREW WYETH (1917-2009) Star Route
watercolor on paper 21 1/4 x 29 in. Painted in 1977 PROVENANCE: Private Collection, California, 1977 EXHIBITED: "Andrew Wyeth - Recent Works (EX_NO 485)", The Art Emporium, Vancouver, Canada. Oct. 4, 1977 Oct. 18, 1977 "Andrew Wyeth in Perspective," Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, California. Oct. 8, 2011 January 22, 2012 LITERATURE: Art Emporium, introduction by Frank Fowler. Andrew Wyeth. Los Angeles: American Art Review Press, 1977. PE# 4899 Carla Breer Howard, "Wyeth In the Desert", Desert Magazine. November 2011. 14
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Andrew Wyeth is considered among the preeminent representational painters of the 20th century. Born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, Wyeth drew his subject matter from the world around him: the interiors and exteriors of the stone buildings, mills, and farms of the Brandywine River countryside, and in the summers, the clapboard houses and stark landscape of the Maine coast. In this full-sheet watercolor, Star Route (1977), Wyeth depicted a house on the road to East Friendship, Maine, not far from his own summer residence. While relying on keen visual observation, he pared down the elements of a composition to their most essential, giving his works an abstracted quality and imbuing them with a sense of quietude and stillness.
European and World Art
JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE (1725-1805) Portrait of Jeanne Philiberte Ledoux (1767–1840), half-length oil on panel 23 5/8 x 19 3/8 in. Painted circa 1790 PROVENANCE: E. Secrétan, Paris; his sale, Paris, 1 July 1889, lot 121 (FF 10,900), where acquired by the following with Charles Sedelmeyer, Paris (Probably) Yolande Lyne Stephens, London; her sale, London, 9-17 May 1895, lot 356. James Simon, Berlin with Knoedler, New York with Wildenstein, New York, 1929 Henry E. Stehli, New York; Sotheby's, New York, 30 November 1950, lot 18, where acquired by the following with Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York Dr. and Mrs. James H. Semans, Durham, North Carolina, 1960 Private Collection, gift from the above by 1976 EXHIBITIED: Paris, Sedelmeyer Gallery, 300 Paintings by Old Masters, 1898, no. 269 New York, Wildenstein, March-April 1929, no. 16 Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Art Museum, European and American Art from Princeton Alumni Collections, 7 May-11 June 1972, no. 24 Hartford, Connecticut, Wadsworth Atheneum; San Francisco, the Legion of Honor; Dijon, Muse´e des Beaux-Arts, Jean-Baptiste Greuze: 1725-1805, 1 December 1976-7 August 1977, no. 103 Durham, North Carolina, Nasher Museum of Art, 1981 LITERATURE: C. Sedelmeyer, Illustrated catalogue of 300 paintings by old masters of the Dutch, Flemish, Italian, French, and English schools, being some of the principal pictures which have at various times formed part of the Sedelmeyer Gallery, Paris, 1898, no. 269 J. Martin and C. Masson, Catalogue Raisonné de L'Oeuvre Peint et Dessiné de Jean Baptiste Greuze, 1908, p. 73, no. 1178
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Jean-Baptiste Greuze was a French portraitist who became known for staging scenes of everyday life on a dramatic and grand scale, painting them as though they were epic historical scenes. Many such works are now in prestigious collections such as the Met and the Louvre. His portraiture was notable for his direct and vivid depiction of his sitters. He often painted his friends and other artists, the present work included. Jeanne-Philiberte Ledoux came to Greuze to train as a painter. As his pupil, she gained success imitating his subject matter, exhibiting her head studies of young, beautiful women and children in the Paris Salons from 1793 to 1819. Ledoux became one of the leading female artists of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, a fact made ever more significant by the rarity of women who dared venture into a public profession during that time. In this portrait, executed circa 1790, Greuze captured Ledoux’s open expression and small, familiar smile as she gazes directly at the man who helped launch her career. She is dressed in the popular classical Greek style and holds a garland of blue flowers near her cheek. The intricate folds of her dress and the fabric of the robe draped loosely about her shoulders are detailed precisely in dry brushstrokes, a perfect characterization of his work in the genre during the last decade of the 18th century.
DEMETRE CHIPARUS (1886-1947) Civa
cold-painted, patinated and enameled bronze and chryselephantine 21 1/2 x 15 x 9 7/8 in. Executed in 1925 PROVENANCE: Heather James Fine Art, Palm Desert and Desert Projects, Palm Springs
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Civa is one of the principal deities of Hinduism. In this work, Chiparus represents the exoticism of the East, as the elegant figure meditates in the lotus position. The work recalls the dances of the Ballets Russes, one of the artist’s primary inspirations, and embodies the essence of the age — particularly the rediscovery of ancient Egyptian art. (Tutankhamun’s tomb was excavated in 1922.) Chiparus depicted most of his figures in a sensual, curvilinear fashion. His subjects always look beautiful and at ease. Civa is an excellent example of the artist’s impeccable casting, particularly the detail work in the bronze body and the expressively carved ivory face. The decorative base is also noteworthy. Chiparus made them integral to his compositions, using an assortment of materials, including onyxes, marbles, and colored stones.
CEREMONIAL MASK Olmec Culture, Rio Pesquero, Las Chiapas, Veracruz (circa B.C. 1000-500) Stone Height: 8 in. EXHIBITED: France, Angers Fair, MĂŠxique, 3000 ans de civilisation, April - May, 1995. LITERATURE: Exhibition catalogue, MĂŠxique 3000 ans de civilisation, Angers Fair, exhibition catalogue, France, 1995.
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This Olmec mask depicts a human face with subtly feline features. The oblique almond-shaped eyes are deeply hollowed out with holes to allow the wearer to see out. Slightly open, the mouth reveals the filed upper front teeth. The nostrils are pierced, and an emplacement for the nose on the reverse of the mask suggests it was used during rituals. A rounded chin and large, slightly bloated cheeks complete the face. Long, finely designed earlobes are situated at the height of the face line. The green-brown mask, essentially composed of quartz, albite and chlorite, shows the effects of the earth and water during its long burial.
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