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Impressive Dutch Masterworks from New York's Old Masters Auctions Now on View in London

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Ahead of the upcoming Master Paintings Evening sale in New York (30 January 2019), advance highlights are on view in London through 5 December 2018. The remarkable selection on view include an impressive group of Dutch masterpieces from a distinguished private collector. Also on view are works from The Female Triumphant, a carefully curated auction event that places the spotlight on rare works by pioneering female artists from the 16th–19th centuries including Fede Galizia, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, and Angelika Kauffmann. For a first look at these works and others from the Master Paintings Evening sales, click ahead.

Past Auction
Master Paintings Evening Sale
30 January 2019 | 6:00 PM EST | New York

Impressive Dutch Masterworks from New York's Old Masters Auctions Now on View in London

  • Jan van de Cappelle, A shipping scene on a calm sea, with a number of vessels and figures, and a jetty on the left. Estimate $4,000,000–6,000,000.
    This luminous scene is a particularly evocative and successful example of the calm, expansive seascapes that distinguished Jan van de Capelle as one of the leading marine painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Bathed in a soft, warm light, this vista, which likely dates to the 1650s, radiates a mesmerizing effect that transports viewers to the peaceful waters of the Netherlandish coast.
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  • Joachim Anthonisz. Wtewael, The Banquet of the Gods. Estimate $5,000,000–7,000,000.
    Joachim Anthonisz. Wtewael’s remarkably well-preserved copper illustrating a Banquet of the Gods on a notably small scale is a paradigm of Dutch Mannerist art. Its elegant forms, classical subject, and refined technique exemplify this movement, which included the most important artists in the Netherlands from 1580 to 1620.
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  • Francesco Boneri, called Cecco del Caravaggio, The Mocking of Christ. Estimate $100,000–150,000.
    On stylistic grounds, this canvas seems to date to the early 1610s. What is already evident at this early stage of Cecco’s career is the confident execution and attention to detail so characteristic of his most recognized works. Not only does the painting constitute an important rediscovery for this rare artist, but it provides further insight into a relatively unexplored phase of his early career – one in which he focused on more tightly composed and figurative Caravaggesque subjects.
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  • Fede Galizia, A glass compote with peaches, jasmine flowers, quinces, and a grasshopper. Estimate $2,000,000–3,000,000.
    Fede Galizia’s A glass compote with peaches, jasmine flowers, quinces, and a grasshopper is a beautiful example of the pioneering female artist’s contributions to the Italian still life genre, which she helped invent in the early 17th century. Trained by her father, Galizia was noted by her contemporaries when she was as young as 12, and by age 20 received commissions for portraits and religious scenes. While her refined, naturalistic still lifes were virtually unknown to scholars until the 20th century, they inspired followers in her lifetime and are today considered her most important works.
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  • Jan Sanders Van Hemessen, Christ as Triumphant Redeemer. Estimate $400,000–600,000.
    This unpublished picture is a recent discovery. It was painted by the Flemish painter Jan Sanders van Hemessen circa 1545, and is among the artist’s most striking compositions. Though previously known through a small handful of inferior versions, the paint of this example is the best preserved, in no small part due to the later overpaint (recently removed) which covered nearly the entire surface. The rainbow coloring effect is very rare and unusual in Early Netherlandish painting, and imbues the picture with an overall sense of modernity.
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  • Bartolomeo Passerotti, Portrait of Giulio Franchini, Three-Quarter Length, Aged 38. Estimate $600,000–800,000.
    Elegant, confident and successful, the Bolognese Giulio Franchini is portrayed by Passerotti at the age of 38. Giulio's military success, alluded to by his sword, and his inviting beauty are matched by the elegance of his fashionable attire and by the exceptional quality of Passerotti's handling. The painting should be considered nothing less than a masterpiece of sixteenth-century portraiture, painted at the peak of the artist's illustrious career.
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  • Jacobus Vrel, Street scene with two figures walking away. Estimate $1,500,000–2,000,000.
    An enigmatic and mysterious master, Jacobus Vrel painted quiet street scenes that speak to us across the centuries in a way that is strangely affecting. Their narrow cobbled medieval streets with their humble shop fronts with a scattering of simple townsfolk describe a plain and unadorned everyday life. Vrel’s works are now rare – around thirty eight are now known, consisting mostly of interior scenes, street views and one church interior.
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  • Jacobus Vrel, Street scene with figures in conversation. Estimate $1,000,000–1,500,000.
    Vrel’s painting technique – a straightforward manner without glazes or other refinements – complements his unpretentious subject matter and suggests that he was quite possibly self-taught. Though many locations from Friesland to the Rhineland have been sought for his street scenes, they are, in fact, likely to be imaginary.
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  • Philips Wouwerman, A Landscape with a Hawking Party and Figures at Rest Near a Fountain. Estimate $600,000–800,000.
    Characterized by Hofstede de Groot as being "of excellent quality," this lovely painting of huntsmen resting near a fountain in a peaceful countryside is one of Philips Wouwerman's finest works. Renowned primarily as the most accomplished and successful seventeenth-century Dutch painter of equestrian subjects, Wouwerman also achieved acclaim with works like the present, in which the landscape, figures, foliage and atmosphere are rendered on a very small scale with distinct precision and an elegant character. Signed with his monogram in the lower left, this work dates to the second half of the 1650s,1 and like many of Wouwerman's most exquisite oeuvre, it descended in a long line of important French collections, eventually entering the esteemed collection of the Duc and Duchesse de Berry by 1829.
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  • Taddeo Gaddi, Saint Anthony Abbot. Estimate $800,000–1,200,000.
    This extraordinary gold ground panel of Saint Anthony Abbott is an important work by Taddeo Gaddi, Giotto’s favorite and most successful pupil. A mature work by the artist, it dates to circa 1345- 1350 and presumably once formed part of a polyptych in the Florentine Church of Santa Maria Vergine della Croce al Tempio, along with a Saint Julian today in the Metropolitan Museum in New York (inv. no. 1997.117.1) and an Annunciation in the Museo Bandini, Fiesole (inv. no. 22). In the present panel, Saint Anthony Abbot (circa 251-356), a hermit saint and founder of monasticism, is visible in three-quarter length as an aged man wearing a plain monk’s cloak and cowl with remnants of his staff with a tau-shaped handle; he faces to the viewer’s left, with a downward gaze. He is expressively rendered with exquisite detail and sophistication so as to wholly capture the noble simplicity that defines his character.
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  • Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Saint John the Baptist. Estimate $400,000–600,000.
    This exquisite roundel, depicting Saint John the Baptist, is unmistakably the work of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, one of the most influential painters of the early 14th century. While the paintings of the artist’s brother, Pietro, adhered to a more traditional style, Ambrogio continually strove for innovation, looking beyond his native Siena for inspiration. In the wake of Duccio di Buoninsegna, Ambrogio built upon the invention of the older artist, absorbing the advancements of his Florentine contemporaries in naturalism and spatial awareness and incorporated them into Sienese painting.
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  • Angelika Kauffmann, R.A., Portrait of Lady Georgiana Spencer, later Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Henrietta Spencer and George, Viscount Althorp. Estimate $600,000–800,000.
    This elegant and charming portrait depicts the three children of John Spencer, 1st Earl Spencer (1734-1783) and his wife Georgiana (d. 1814). From one of the wealthiest families in England, the young generation of Spencers in Angelika Kauffmann’s Portrait Of Lady Georgiana Spencer, Lady Henrietta Spencer And George, Viscount Althorp were prominent figures in the English aristocracy, and amongst the artist’s earliest British patrons.
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  • Jan Frans Van Dael, Still Life of Flowers in a Vase with a Pineapple, Peaches, and Grapes on a Stone Ledge. Estimate $300,000–500,000.
    Jan Frans van Dael was one of the most highly regarded painters of flowers and fruit in Paris during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He turned to still-life painting after training as an architect in his native Antwerp and moving to Paris in 1786 as a decorative painter, in which capacity he gained important commissions at the chateaux of Saint-Cloud, Bellevue and Chantilly, among others. In 1793 Van Dael acquired lodgings in the Louvre and came under the guidance of his fellow countryman, Gerard van Spaendonck (1746–1822), the leading still-life painter of the time, whose influence inspired Van Dael to specialise in the genre for the rest of his career. The popularity of his work is attested to by the commissions he secured from patrons as important and influential as the Empresses Josephine and Marie-Louise Bonaparte, and the Restoration kings Louis XVIII and Charles X. When he died in 1840, Van Dael was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery next to van Spaendonck.
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  • Luis Meléndez, Still life with a plate of azaroles, fruit, mushrooms, cheese, and receptacles. Estimate $1,500,000–2,000,000.
    This outstanding painting by Luis Meléndez is a variant of a picture, today in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, that formed part of the celebrated series of some 44 still lifes commissioned by the Prince of Asturias, the future Charles IV, for his History Cabinet in the Escorial. In the detailed rendering of the still life elements, the solidity of the objects and simplicity of the composition, the painting continues the rich still life tradition of the Spanish Golden Age.
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  • Pieter Claesz., Still life of lemons and olives, pewter plates, a roemer and a façon-de-venise wine glass on a ledge. Estimate $700,000–900,000.
    Pieter Claesz. was one of the greatest of all Dutch Golden Age still life painters. His early works of the 1620s are in the tradition of his Haarlem peers, such as Floris van Schooten, with a colorful palette and a relatively high viewpoint, comprising many objects and foodstuffs such as various kinds of fruit. By the middle of the decade, however, when his chosen viewpoint became lower, he was painting still lifes of great beauty and of a remarkably high quality that had clearly outstripped his townsmen.
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  • Orazio Gentileschi, The Fall of the Rebel Angels. Estimate $2,500,000–3,500,000.
    Painted on a large piece of alabaster, this dynamic and dramatic Fall of the Rebel Angels is a relatively early work of Orazio Gentileschi. It was unknown until its reappearance in 2009, when it was quickly recognized by scholars as an important addition to the artist’s corpus. It is dateable to circa 1601/2, at the moment when Gentileschi begins to shift away from his mannerist beginnings to a more naturalistic style, due in part to his burgeoning friendship with Caravaggio.
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  • Michele Marieschi, Venice, the Punta della Dogana from the Ca'Giustinian, Looking South Across the Bacino di San Marco Towards the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore. Estimate $400,000–600,000.
    This broad and highly animated view of the Bacino di San Marco looking south is the only example of this viewpoint in Marieschi’s oeuvre. In its splendid panorama we can observe the key elements of Marieschi’s unique style: his rapid, feathery brushwork, the richness of his palette, and shimmering effects of light. Following a successful restitution settlement, the painting comes to the market for the first time since the Second World War.
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