Camille Pissarro, Gelée blanche, jeune paysanne faisant du feu, 1887-88
Estimate £8,000,000–12,000,000
‘Shot with luminous beams, while the pale meadow, the bare trees, the frosty distances, the fire flaring up and smoking, the wind ruffling the girl’s rough wool skirt, the little boy’s garment, all the details of the work making up one of the most extraordinary effects of cold ever produced in painting.’
Gustave Geffroy, quoted in Pissarro's People (exhibition catalogue), Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, San Francisco & Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 2011-12, p. 217
Gelée blanche, jeune paysanne faisant du feu is one of Pissarro’s great masterpieces. Painted in 1888 at the peak of the artist’s engagement with Neo-Impressionism and conceived on a grand scale, it is a brilliant rendering of light and atmosphere.
Marc Chagall, Fleurs, circa 1929
Estimate £1,800,000–2,500,000
Painted circa 1929 whilst Chagall was living in Paris and exploring the French landscape, Fleurs is a wonderful early example of a motif that would persist throughout Chagall’s œuvre. Combining key examples from the artist’s very personal iconography such as the intertwined lovers, the composition is imbued with a tenderness and intimacy reflective of the profound contentment that Chagall experienced during this time.
David Hockney, The Splash, 1966.
Estimate £20,000,000–30,000,000
Undoubtedly one of the most iconic Pop art images of the Twentieth Century, David Hockney's The Splash from 1966 is an irrefutably famous and undeniably rare painting of masterpiece calibre and mythic proportion. Alongside its sister painting A Bigger Splash, famously housed at Tate Britain, the present work encapsulates Hockney's spellbinding explorations into the blissful idyll of Southern California in the 1960s.
Paul Signac, La Corne d’Or. Matin, 1907.
Estimate £5,000,000–7,000,000
This work was the only view of Istanbul that Signac decided to exhibit at the 1908 Salon des Indépendants and when the critic Claude Roger-Marx first saw the painting on the walls of the salon it caused him to observe:
‘It is important to recognise that no other painter has applied the new technique with more intelligence or authority than Paul Signac. His view of the Corne d’or, which is of the highest order, exemplifies the high intensity of luminous and chromatic expression that Neo-Impressionism can reach’
Claude Roger-Marx, Le Chronique des arts et de la curiosité, 28th March 1908, p. 117, translated from French
Franz Marc, Zwei blaue Esel (Two Blue Donkeys), 1912
Estimate £1,000,000–1,500,000
With its dynamic composition and its otherworldly, dream-like atmosphere, Zwei blaue Esel explores the key subject of Franz Marc’s œuvre - the animal world. Executed at a crucial moment in his career, following the formation of Der Blaue Reiter that Marc co-founded with Wassily Kandinsky in 1911, the present work emphasises the abstracted forms and bold colours that were so central to the group’s ideas and integral to Marc’s own artistic style.
For over twenty years Zwei blaue Esel was on extended loan to the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester, which was one of the first public museums in the United Kingdom and today holds the country’s largest collection of German Expressionist art.
Jean Metzinger, Le cycliste, circa 1913-14
Estimate £1,500,000–2,000,000
Encapsulating a sense of movement and the frenetic atmosphere of pre-war Europe, Le cycliste, captures the spirit of the international avant-garde. His use of strong diagonals and transparent planes finds its parallels in the Italian futurist paintings of Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla whilst concurrently alluding to French Cubism and German Expressionism.
Fernand Léger, Le buste, 1925
Estimate £1,300,000–1,600,000
Verging between figuration and abstraction, Le buste combines purely abstract forms with recognisable images of a bust seen in profile and a flower. In this composition, Léger juxtaposed two ways of painting: the figure and the plant are rendered in soft, curved shapes in a chiaroscuro technique which stands in sharp contrast to the flatly painted planes of pure, unmodulated pigment used for the abstract passages.
Fernand Léger, Nature morte, 1923
Estimate £2,200,000–2,800,000
Léger’s art of the early 1920s was characterised by a shift away from the abstract, mechanical inspirations of the preceding years, as he embraced the domestic, ‘animated’ settings and a lively bright palette. Reflecting the artist’s fascination with film and his use of the bold flat colours that foreshadow the Pop Art movement, Nature morte is an exceptional example of the way Léger’s art responded to the complexities and changing pace of modern life.
Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta, 1954
Estimate £600,000–800,000
‘It is the miracle of his genius that out of the humble boxes, tin cans, outmoded oil lamps, and dusty bottles, emerge works of art full of poetry and often most justly called “songs without words”.’
Vitale Bloch in Giorgio Morandi: Paintings and Prints (exhibition catalogue), Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1954.
Francis Picabia, Sous les oliviers (Coquetterie), circa 1925-26
Estimate £1,500,000–2,000,000
Sous les oliviers (Coquetterie) belongs to one of the most celebrated bodies of work in Picabia’s œuvre, the so-called ‘monster’ paintings dating from the mid-1920s. The figures are rendered in brilliant, strong colours applied with a great sense of energy. Picabia painted Sous les oliviers (Coquetterie) using Ripolin, an industrial enamel paint immensely popular in the early twentieth century for commercial use. Artists including Picabia, Picasso, Moholy-Nagy and Magritte began to incorporate Ripolin into their canvases, resulting with a glossy and often rippled effect. It is no surprise that Picabia, always interested in experimenting with different textures and surfaces, was drawn to the visual effects and modernist connotations of this new medium.
Marc Chagall, Bouquets d'œillets aux amoureux en vert, 1950
Estimate £350,000–550,000
Bouquets d'œillets aux amoureux en vert dates from 1950, the year in which Marc Chagall settled in the peaceful Provençal town of Vence in the south of France, having spent the war years in America. Spanning the whole height of the canvas, the floral motif afforded Chagall the welcome opportunity to masterly craft and harmonise tone and colour, producing an expressive evocation of fantasy which negotiates dream and reality and reflects Chagall's abandon to the joy of creation.
The upcoming Impressionist, Modern & Surrealist Art and Contemporary Art auctions include a superb selection of works by artists such as Camille Pissarro, David Hockney, Marc Chagall and Francis Picabia. Click through to see highlights from the sales which will be on view in Taipei on 17 & 18 January.