sotheby's london sale of european sculpture and works of art: medieval to modern

8/3/2019 Sotheby's London Sale of European Sculpture and Works of Art: Medieval to Modern

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For Immediate ReleasePress Release London

London | +44 (0)20 7293 6000 | Matthew Floris | [email protected] Matthew Weigman | [email protected]

Medieval to Modern: Sotheby’s December 2011 Sale of European Sculpture and Works of Art Spans 800 Years,From the Romanesque Period to the Second World War

---Biannual London Sales To Take Place In This Category---

Four Putti Personifying The Senses: Smell, Taste, Sight and Touch, Attributed to Jan Pieter van Bauerscheit II,

Flemish, Antwerp, 1733, Estimate: £150,000-250,000*

SOTHEBY’S SALE of European Sculpture and Works of Art: Medieval to ModernEuropean Sculpture and Works of Art: Medieval to ModernEuropean Sculpture and Works of Art: Medieval to ModernEuropean Sculpture and Works of Art: Medieval to Modern on Tuesday, 6 DecemberTuesday, 6 DecemberTuesday, 6 DecemberTuesday, 6 December

2011201120112011 will showcase 800 extraordinary years of artworks that form a continuous history from the twelfth century through

to the mid-twentieth century. The auction comprises medieval, Old Master, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth

century sculpture and works of art.

The department is returning to presenting Sculpture as it did from 2000 to 2005 in an uninterrupted tradition from

around the tenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. Sotheby's is unique in the auction world in

offering such a rich and coherent view of sculpture as a stand-alone collecting category. Erik Bijzet has been

appointed Head of Auction Sales, European Sculpture and Works of Art, and Alexander Kader, Head of Department,

is to focus on private treaty sales and valuations. The department has four specialists who bring an unrivalled breadth



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of knowledge and experience to the selection of masterpieces for private collectors and museum curators. These sales

will take place biannually during the busy summer and winter 'Old Master Week' in July and December, when the

spotlight falls on London as the centre of the art world for collectors of important paintings, drawings and furniture.

Commenting on the strength of the market in sculpture and works of art, Erik Bijzet said: “ The three key factors of

quality, condition and provenance are of prime importance to collectors in this field and when these factors come into

alignment, the artwork becomes extremely desirable. Sotheby’s recent two-day sale in Paris of the Fabius Collection saw

an auction record established for bronzes by Barye and the record for sculptures by Carpeaux broken twice over. During

the past year in London we have seen high prices for wood sculptures and life-size marbles. The December sale includes

some exceptional pieces sourced from all over the world and the London sales platform will allow an international audience

to see and bid on these works.”

Sotheby’s sale is to present an exciting rediscovery, an Italian Romanesque stone

relief of The Presentation in the Temple that formed part of a lost doorway from

the Cathedral of San Pietro in Bologna (illustrated left). The relief comes to the

market from a private collection and was purchased in 1957 from the Dr Jacob

Hirsh sale held in Lucerne, where it was catalogued as having come from the

Church of San Stefano in Bologna. In 1999 six stone panels were discovered during

work on the campanile of San Pietro Cathedral and the most significant of these

depicts two scenes from the Life of Christ. The present relief compares exactly in

both the stylistic treatment of the figures, architecture and in the palaeography.

Originating in the workshop of Pietro di Alberico, it can be dated to around 1159. The research undertaken and

published in 2008 by Michele Vescovi has provided fresh insight into the relief’s origins. The church was remodelled

during the sixteenth-century, a catalyst for the different fortunes of the reliefs. The Presentation in the Temple was

housed in the old hospital in Bologna, before being sold by the Bargello authorities for the relief of the hospital in 1925

and passing through a number of collections during the twentieth century. It is estimated at £80,000-120,000.

A partially polychromed limewood figure of St John the Baptist , restituted to the

heirs of Jacob and Rosa Oppenheimer this year, is being offered with an estimate

of £100,000-150,000 (illustrated left). Made by the Master of the Harburger

Altar, Bayerisch-Schwaben, circa 1515, the saint is represented here with a

virtuosity and vigour that characterises only the very best limewood sculpture of

Germany. Given its quality, and because it is almost life-size, the figure must

have occupied a dominant position on a major early sixteenth-century altarpiece.

The interplay of different textures employed throughout the statue demonstrates

an outstanding feat of carving. One of the most important wood sculptures to

come on the market in a long time, the present work is comparable to a group of



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carvings that possibly formed a large altarpiece for the church at Schloss Harburg, a castle belonging to the House of

Oettingen-Wallerstein. The statue of St. Michael that remains there and a Virgin and Child now kept in a Baroque

church on the land of the owners of the Schloss certainly display the same crispness and interchange of the winding

folds and crumples of the drapery. The large animal head that rests on the base can be identified as a camel’s head and

is part of an iconographic tradition based on Matthew 3:14, where the saint is described as having worn camel skin.

A set of Flemish Baroque eighteenth-century terracotta sculptures depicting Four Putti Personifying The Senses: Smell,

Taste, Sight and Touch are a delightful addition to the sale, and the highest value lot in the auction (illustrated on page

one). Estimated at £150,000-250,000, the rare and well-preserved set of large sculptures, each measuring 93cm and

sensitively individualised and finished to the highest degree, is attributed to Jan Pieter van Baurscheit II (1699-1768)

and dated to 1733. Ensembles of putti in the guise of temporal subjects such as the senses, seasons or elements were

particularly sought after in the Netherlands, where they adorned the town houses and country seats of the wealthy

merchant population. Terracotta was highly favoured as a material due to its malleability. This quality allowed the

craftsmen to successfully render the figures’ varied characters in detail. In the present work, the coy demeanour of

Taste and the pleasure with which Sight peers through her telescope are exquisitely described and this would have

been much appreciated. Several drawn designs for allegorical putti by Jan Pieter van Baurscheit the Younger closely

resemble the quartet. One of the most successful workshops which produced this type of sculpture was that of the Van

Baurscheit family in Antwerp and Jan Pieter the Younger assumed responsibility at the time of his father’s death in

1728. He also designed mansions for prominent members of the West India Company in the major port cities of

Middleburg and Vlissingen. Assuming he provided interior decorations around the same time the houses were

finished, these putti could have come from the country house Sint Jan te Heere (1732-1736) which was demolished in

the nineteenth century.

A rock crystal Tazza, attributed to Giovanni Battista Metellino (active second half

seventeenth century), dates to a Milanese workshop circa 1700 (est. £60,000-

80,000, illustrated left). It can be closely compared with a number of pieces in the

Louvre dating between 1685 and 1700, as well as two documented vases in the

Grunes Gewolbe Dresden. These objects were highly prized by King Louis XIV.

Metellino’s distinctive style often includes a lobed gadrooned bowl, a renaissance

inspired zoomorphic handle together with the inclusion of incised insects amidst

tiered foliate branches, as in the present example. The tazza was later engraved with

the arms of Johann Friedrich Karl, Graf von Ostein, who was Archbishop of Mainz between 1743 and 1763 and at one

time on the elector’s list of the Holy Roman Emperor.



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Nineteenth-century marble sculpture at its most sublime is represented by Nu

assis de dos (Seated Nude) by Alfred Boucher (1850-1934) (illustrated right). A

very rare model within the oeuvre of the artist, the marble is one of only three

versions known. Estimated at £80,000-120,000, the sculpture passed from

Boucher’s studio at the time of his death to the collection of Monsieur Fagot-

Creuzevault, Boucher’s executor. Until very recently the model was only known

through two old photographs, one showing the present marble in the artist’s

studio (illustrated below) and the other showing another version which is

unlocated. The motif of a figure emerging from the rocks is typical of Boucher’s

work but here the emphasis on the curved back of the girl is unusual. The sensual carving of the body, with the spine,

shoulder blades and curves of flesh sensitively drawn from the stone, vividly demonstrates a celebration of the female

form. Nu assis de dos will be included in the catalogue raisonée on Boucher, due for publication next year.

Nu assis de dos in the Artist’s Paris Studio

A good selection of ‘New’ sculpture includes several works by Alfred Gilbert

(1854-1934), among them Comedy and Tragedy , a pair of bronzes estimated at

£15,000-20,000 (illustrated left). The sculpture forms one of Gilbert’s most

complex and academic compositions, and the pose requires the viewer to

continually shift perspective in order to gain a complete view. The nude young

man holds out a large comic mask in both hands. Its large laughing mouth frames

the youth's head when the sculpture is viewed from the left. However, his body

twists towards the right and the expression on his own face reveals a startling

contrast to the comic mask as he grimaces in pain, a reaction to the bee sting on

his leg. The half-mask which he wears like a head band emphasises the tragic

face. Head facing downwards, arms engaged in the opposite direction and with

one foot off the ground, the work is reminiscent of Mannerist sculpture, in

particular Giambologna’s Apollo, whilst also acknowledging Frederic Leighton’s

1886 composition Needless Alarms.



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Bringing the sale full-circle is a set of mid-twentieth century bronze

reliefs by Gilbert Bayes (1872-1953), known as The Aveling-Barford

Reliefs (est. £10,000-15,000). The set of four are each entitled: The

World’s First Steam Roller (illustrated right); Mechanization / Aveling

Steam Sapper ; The First Motor Roller ; and Mechanization / Aveling

Barford Bren Gun Carriers. These hitherto unpublished bronze reliefs

commemorate the technological innovations of Aveling-Barford, an

engineering conglomerate formed in 1934 from the merger of two firms with distinguished histories, Aveling & Porter

of Rochester and Barford & Perkins of Peterborough. The reliefs celebrate the invention of the first steam roller in

1867; the 'Steam Sapper' in 1871; the first motor roller in 1904; and the 'Bren Gun Carrier' in 1942; all of which were

developed by the company and its predecessors. Cast during the Second World War, they bear testament to the

resilience of engineering firms during wartime and to Britain's role as a manufacturing leader during the first half of the

twentieth century. Bayes was one of the leading British sculptors of the early twentieth century and is perhaps best

known for his monumental 1925 Queen of Time clock on the façade of Selfridge's department store in London.

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*Estimates do not include buyer’s premium

sotheby's london sale of european sculpture and works of art: medieval to modern

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