New discoveries in Madrid

Encouraged by dint of the recent strong growth of international interest in Spanish art and a number of important private sales, Christie's is reviving its Madrid auctions, last held in the early 1970 one time again they are to be staged at the Palace inn (6 October). The 3 million [euro] sale combines of advanced age Masters and nineteenth-century painting with recent and contemporary art, aimed to appeal to one as well as the other the local and the international markets. Star of the of advanced age Masters is a pair of previously unknown still lifes by means of the court painter Juan van der Hamer y Leon (1596-1631) arguably the greatest in quantity influential painter of still-lifes in seventeenth-century Spain, who helped establish this of recent origin genre in Madrid from the 1620 onwards. the two canvases are baskets of fruit grapes, pears and fruit of the plum-trees and lemons and cherries--painted with various utensils and vegetables on a stone shelf Given their importance, the pictures, which have been in the same collection since the nineteenth hundred cannot be exported, so tend hitherward with expectations of a relatively unobtrusive 800,000 [euro]-1.2m [euro] apiece. What can leave the geographical division is a still life by the agency of Luis Melendez, featuring grapes, apples, pears and a cream ewer That has also been in a private collection since the nineteenth hundred (estimate 200,000-300,000 [euro]). On tender too, is a Zurbaran Annunciation (400000 [euro]-600000 [euro])

Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida has advance to be recognised as single of the great artists of the nineteenth hundred his work until fairly lately hugely undervalued in relation to French Impressionist painting. Here, his La lechera is the highlight of this clump (estimate 300,000 [euro]-500,000 [euro]). This same estimate is also given Jose Gutierrez Solana's The Chinese table, and a rare stark naked by the contemporary realist Antonio Lopez Garcia.

Back in London upon 27 October, Christie's offer the Leo Mildenberg collection of ancient animals--a veritable zoo comprising a certain number of 1,200 beasties in a variety of media and drawn from a range of civilisations. From his Swiss base, Mildenberg began to form his collection during the 1950 and presently ark turned into menagerie and the pieces began a tour of public collections that took in fourteen cities across three continents, inspiring en course four publications and a children's story. similar was the late collector's passion for his creatures that he gave his greatest in quantity prized pieces their own names. in like manner during the days running up to the sale, more of us can have the opportunity of making the acquaintance of say, Hubert, possibly the finest Middle Kingdom faience hippopotamus in private hands. In bounds of both modelling and the decoration applied to his surface--a cross-ey butterfly caught in the gaze of a insatiable frog--he is a tour-de-force. (Estimate 150000 [pound sterling]-250,000 [pound sterling]). His chamber-fellow room-mates include Julius the Roman alloy of copper duck lamp, Ferdinand the Apis male and Omar the Sumerian leopard. Estimates begin at 500 [pound sterling].

COPYRIGHT 2004 Apollo Magazine Ltd

COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group