San Francisco − Bonhams Asian Art sales realized $4,222,364, across three auctions that took place on June 27-28, 2017. The top lot of the three sales was a Celestial Landscape in the manner of Guo Zhongshu, attributed to Yuan Jiang (circa 1671- circa 1746), which realized $211,500 from the Fine Asian Works of Artsale.
Art News
An Egyptian granite head of a priest was the top lot at Bonhams Antiquities Sale, selling on the phone for £137,000 against an estimate of £60,000-80,000. The sale made a total of £1,284,000.
The Egyptian head belongs to a well-known category of sculptures, often referred to as the 'egg-head' type, named for their depiction of priests of religious cults, instantly recognizable by their shaven heads.
William Larkin's Portrait of Thomas Pope, later 3rd Earl of Downe, sold in the room for a remarkable £449,000, ten times its estimate of £40,000-60,000, at Bonhams Old Master Paintings sale today, 5 July 2017.
Los Angeles− On August 1, Bonhams California and Western Paintings and Sculpture sale will offer a selection of over 150 works spanning the late 19th through mid-20th century by noted artists such as E. Charlton Fortune, William Wendt, Elmer Wachtel, and John Marshall Gamble, among others. Works by the California Impressionist Edgar Payne will be well-represented in the sale, including sweeping views from mountaineering trips in the European Swiss Alps as well as the Eastern Sierras.
This fall, The Frick Collection will present Veronese in Murano: Two Venetian Renaissance Masterpieces Restored, a focused exhibition on two recently conserved and rarely seen paintings by the celebrated artist Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), Saint Jerome in the Wilderness and Saint Peter Visiting Saint Agatha in Prison. While the paintings are known to scholars, their remote location in a church in Murano, an island in the lagoon of Venice, has made them difficult to study.
Join us in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the award of The Temple of Dendur to The Met in a day filled with special offerings and activities. One of the Museum's most iconic and best-loved works of art, the temple was built of sandstone in around 15 B.C. and rescued during the 1960–80 UNESCO Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia. A gift of Egypt to the United States, it was awarded to The Met by President Lyndon B. Johnson in April 1967. It is now located in The Sackler Wing at The Met.
LOS ANGELES – The J. Paul Getty Museum announced today the voluntary return of a marble statuette representing the god Zeus which dates to about 100 B.C. The Museum acquired the sculpture in 1992.
The Museum made its decision to return the Statue of Zeus Enthroned, a 29-inch high marble statuette, following thorough consideration of information provided by Italian officials, including a recently discovered fragment of the statue.
Christie’s France is pleased to announce that it will offer “Stripped Bare: Photographs from the Thomas Koerfer Collection,” comprising 74 lots and led by the emblematic Man Ray masterpiece, Noire et Blanche, formerly in the collection of Jacques Doucet, on November 9, while collectors are gathered for the Paris Photo Fair.
This fall, the Morgan Library will be exhibiting some of its most bejeweled medieval books in the show Magnificent Gems: Medieval Treasure Bindings. The exhibition, which is running September 2017 through January 2018, will include a dazzling collection of treasure bindings adorned with sapphires, diamonds, emeralds, pearls, and garnets and other precious stones.
John Tenniel judged the images produced from electrotype printing plates of his illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to be so poorly rendered that he convinced the book’s author, Lewis Carroll, to recall entire first edition. Carroll’s diary entry for July 20, 1865 states as much: “Called on [publisher] Macmillan, and showed him Tenniel’s letter about the fairy-tale -- he is entirely dissatisfied with the printing of the pictures, and I suppose we shall have to do it all again.” (R.L. Green, ed., The Diaries (London: 1953), p.234).
