Claude Monet
Nymphéas, 1907
Estimate: $25,000,000 – 35,000,000
John Singer Sargent
Girl Fishing at San Vigilio, 1907
Estimate: $3,000,000 – 5,000,000
Clark Family Collection to be sold at Christie’s In spring 2014, Christie’s will auction important paintings from the Clark Family Collection, including Claude Monet’s ‘Nymphéas’ and Renoir ‘Jeunes filles jouant au volant’.]]>
April 4th, 2014, source: Christie’s
As one of the nation’s wealthiest men at the turn of the 20th century, William Andrews (W.A.) Clark’s (1839-1925) name is synonymous with American aspiration, having built a successful personal empire in multiple industries, most notably copper mining. In total, over 400 items, including fine art, musical instruments, Gilded Age furnishings, decorative arts, and rare books collected by two generations of the Clark family will be offered for sale at Christie’s this spring, opening a new chapter in the story of one of the cornerstone dynasties of the Industrial Age in America.
Claude Monet: Nymphéas
Estimate: $25,000,000-35,000,000
Huguette Clark purchased Claude Monet’s “Nymphéas” in 1930 in New York from the Durand-Ruel Galleries, whose Paris branch had jointly acquired the work with the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune directly from the artist ten years earlier. A splendid example of the artist’s pre-eminent theme – his beloved lily pond at Giverny – Clark’s Nymphéas was painted in 1907, during an intense creative period in Monet’s career. The artist had enjoyed a celebrated career in Paris as the leading artist of the Impressionist movement when he moved with his family to the small farming community of Giverny in 1883 and began working on the elaborate gardens that would inspire him for the last two decades of his life. The painting is distinguished by its strong color contrasts, aggressive brushwork, and novel vertical format.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Jeunes filles jouant au volant
Estimate: $10,000,000-15,000,000
Renoir painted “Jeunes filles jouant au volant” circa 1887, after a three-year period of intense questioning of Impressionist methods and experimentation with his own techniques. Renoir reintroduced traditional notions of draftsmanship into his art. Seeking to give the human form a more monumental presence, he focused increasingly on contour, which he used to silhouette his figures sharply against the background. “Jeunes filles jouant au volant” is among the most complex compositions from this period of Renoir’s work, depicting five contemporary female figures playing a racquet sport in a rural landscape. The result is an intentional hybrid of timelessness and modernity, the idyllic and the everyday, which gives the painting its particular power.
American Art
Leading the group of American Art is John Singer Sargent’s “Girl Fishing at San Vigilio” (estimate : $3-5 million). In this work, painted in 1913, Sargent painted one of his companions fishing along the shore, draped in a cashmere shawl, which appears in many of Sargent’s compositions from the period. This lively, impressionistic composition shows the artist’s sheer delight in exploring the effects of the sunlight on the rippling cerulean water.
Related content
Monet’s ‘Nymphéas’ to lead Christie’s sale (news, 2012)
Follow us on:
