Rembrandt, Monet, Picasso - Old Master Through Modern Prints: Swann May 6

 

 

 

New York—Old Master Through Modern Prints are at auction Thursday, May 6 at Swann Galleries. Prints feature in the sale, from Northern Renaissance and Golden Age icons Dürer and Rembrandt to Impressionist collaborations, European Modernists, and American printmakers.

            Old Master prints open the sale with engravings, woodcuts, etchings and drypoints by both well-known and lesser-known printmakers whose images have stood the test of time. Highlights include an intricate run of etchings by Rembrandt van Rijn with Joseph Telling his Dreams, 1638, leading the selection at $30,000 to $50,000. Also by Rembrandt is Landscape with an Obelisk, circa 1650, expected at $20,000 to $30,000; and The Holy Family, circa 1632, at $15,000 to $20,000. Albrecht Dürer is on offer with The Sea Monster, engraving, before 1500; and The Birth of the Virgin, woodcut, circa 1503, both available at $15,000 to $20,000, each. The selection includes engravings by Lucas Van Leyden with Susanna and the Elders, 1508, at $10,000 to $15,000, Hendrick Goltzius with Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan, 1585, at $4,000 to $6,000, as well as works Agostino Carracci, Giovanni B. Piranesi, Canaletto, and Francisco José de Goya.

            Nineteenth-century works begin with two mezzotint and engravings by Joseph M. W. Turner from a series of 81 mezzotints that have come to be known as the Liber Studiorum: Pembury Mill, Kent, circa 1817­–18, estimated at $1,000 to $1,500, and Mer de Glace, Valley of Chamonix, Savoy, circa 1817–18, at $1,500 to $2,500. The section continues on with works by William Blake, artists of the Barbizon School and a series of James A. M. Whistler etchings, concluding with Impressionist lithographs. Mary Cassatt is featured with the etchings In the Opera Box (No. 3), circa 1880, carrying an estimate of $20,000 to $30,000, and Two Ladies in a Loge, Facing Left (No. 2), circa 1882, at $10,000 to $15,000. Prominent printmaker and frequent Impressionist collaborator George W. Thornley is available with a run of collaborations including those with Claude Monet, Paysage avec une anse dans un arbre, color lithograph, 1894, at $5,000 to $8,000; Edgar Degas, L’Attente de la Chanteuse, color lithograph, circa 1888, at $6,000 to $9,000; and Camille Pissarro, Pont à Rouen, lithograph, circa 1900, at $3,000 to $5,000.

            A selection of works by Pablo Picasso includes Fumeur à la Cigatette Rouge, color aquatint, 1964, at $25,000 to $35,000; Buste de Femme, aquatint, 1955, at $20,000 to $30,000; Picador, a 1953 glazed terre-de-faïence plate painted in green, blue, yellow and white, at $20,000 to $30,000; and L’Arlequin et sa Compagne, color collotype, circa 1960, at $15,000 to $20,000. Further European stalwarts in the auction include Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, Georges Braque and more.

            American artists include exceptional color woodcuts from Gustave Baumann with Cottonwoods, circa 1931, estimated at $5,000 to $8,000; a run of circa-1930 prints by Frances Gearhart with In the Sun, The Portal, Wilderness, and Autumn Crowned, each offered at $3,000 to $5,000 apiece; and Luigi Rist with Roses #2, 1946, and Peperoni, 1951, presented together at $1,500 to $2,500.

GRAFIK! Five Centuries of German and Austrian Graphics

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 

February 11 – July 3, 2021 

Erich Heckel (1883-1970), Portrait of a Man, 1919, woodcut. In process of acquisition. © Estate of Erich Heckel / SOCAN (2021). Photo MMFA, Christine Guest

] Martin Schongauer (1440/50-1491), The Entombment, about 1480, engraving, only state. MMFA, purchase, anonymous fund

Hans Makart (1840-1884), The Abduction / Death and the Maiden, about 1863, pen and ink, ink wash, grattage, pastel (?), graphite. MMFA, purchase, Claude Dalphond Fund in memory of Gisèle Lachance

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976), Three People at a Table, 1914, woodcut, only state. MMFA, purchase, the Museum Campaign 1988-1993 Fund. © Estate of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff / SOCAN (2021)

Otto Dix (1891-1969), The Blind Man, 1923, lithograph, only state. MMFA, purchase, Wake Robin Fund in memory of Nelo St.B. Harrison. © Estate of Otto Dix / SOCAN (2021)

Georg Baselitz (born in 1938), Untitled (Tree), 1977/1980, drypoint, aquatint. MMFA, gift of Hilliard T. Goldfarb in honour of Renata and Michal Hornstein. © Georg Baselitz 2021

Carl Wilhelm Kolbe (1759-1835), A Thicket; a Gnarled Willow Tree at Left, a Thicket of Vegetation at Right, 1820/35 (probably about 1820), etching. MMFA, purchase, Wake Robin Fund in memory of Nelo St.B. Harrison

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), The Penance of Saint John Chrysostom, 1509, engraving, state II/II. MMFA, purchase, Dr. Sean B. Murphy Fund

Annie Townsend

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), The Beast with Two Horns Like a Lamb, plate XI from the series “The Apocalypse,” 1496-1497, woodcut, proof. MMFA, purchase, Claude Dalphond Fund in memory of Gisèle Lachance, Dr. Sean B. Murphy Fund and Horsley and Annie Townsend Bequest

 

 For the first time, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is focusing an exhibition  on the sweep of stylistic and cultural developments articulated in printmaking in Germany and Austria from the early  history of the medium in the mid-15th century to modern times. GRAFIK! Five Centuries of German and Austrian  Graphics presents about 90 works, including several remarkable works on paper, that embrace over 550 years of  Germanic creativity. Several of these works on paper have never previously been exhibited, while others have not  been shown for some years. Highly important recent Museum acquisitions from all periods are also included. 

Curated by Hilliard T. Goldfarb, Senior Curator – Collections, and Curator of Old Masters, MMFA, GRAFIK! is  exceptional in its chronological range as well as in the breadth, significance and quality of the print impressions and  drawings. The exhibition provides an unprecedented opportunity for Museum visitors to trace the technical and  cultural history, of the Germanic and later Austrian graphic arts. 

Creations by great masters 

GRAFIK! presents a selection of works ranging from superb 15th-century engravings by Israhel van Meckenem the  Younger and Martin Schongauer to masterpieces of woodcut and engraving by the towering early 16th-century  master Albrecht Dürer – a dozen prints encompassing the breadth of his career – and a wide variety of works by  other printmakers of that time. Also displayed are drawings by the German 18th- and 19th-century artists Jakob  Philipp Hackert, Carl Wilhelm Kolbe the Elder and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, as well as drawings associated with  later Viennese sensibilities by Hans Makart, Gustav Klimt (including studies of Adele Bloch-Bauer, his celebrated  Woman in Gold) and Egon Schiele.

Moreover, the exhibition features a broad diversity of remarkable prints, some quite rare, by German Expressionist  and Bauhaus artists, among them Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Max  Pechstein, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Otto Mueller, George Grosz, Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky. Among the works  on view from the traumatic period in German history between the two World Wars are exciting new Museum  acquisitions – a major, splendidly detailed drawing by Otto Dix for his portrait of Hugo Simons (also in the Museum’s  collection), originally presented by the artist to his friend, the sitter, and an iconic woodcut, a self-portrait, by  Erich Heckel. The exhibition concludes with a 1980 landscape print by Georg Baselitz. 

Further augmenting the presentation are rare and profoundly influential examples of early German printing and  illustrated book publishing, including a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible (1455), the first European publication created  with movable type, and the illustrious Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) with woodcut illustrations by Michael Wolgemut,  the master of the young Dürer. Also on display is a copy of the original, Frankfurt edition of Sir William Harvey’s 1628  illustrated book on the circulation of blood. 

Impressive loans 

The presented artworks were primarily selected from the Museum’s permanent holdings but also include several  highly important graphics and printed books from such other leading Canadian collections as the National Gallery of  Canada and McGill University’s Rare Books and Special Collections library as well as outstanding private collections  throughout Canada.