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PRESS INFORMATION
Press Release 1 | Press Release 2
Contact:
Catherine Fenston
Tel: +44(0)20 7389 2982
EXCEPTIONAL PAINTINGS BY SPENCER STANHOPE TO LEAD WORKS FROM THE DE MORGAN FOUNDATION COLLECTION AT CHRISTIE'S
Eleven Works To be Sold to Raise Funds For New Artistic Centre in London
Important British Art including Paintings from the De Morgan Collection
Christie's London
28 November 2001
London - Christie's announces that eleven important works from The De Morgan Foundation collection will lead the sale of Important British Art on 28 November 2001. The works are expected to realize in the region of £2 million to raise funds for a new artistic centre in Wandsworth, London (see separate press release). The selection includes nine works by the famed Victorian artist, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, the largest group by the artist ever to be seen at auction.
William and Evelyn De Morgan were artistic polymaths. He was a ceramic and stained glass artist, inventor, chemist and novelist who rediscovered the lost art of lustre decoration and adapted the brilliant colours of Islamic and Iznik pottery for use in contemporary 19th century design. His wife, Evelyn, was the niece of artist, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, a painter fêted by Watts as 'the first woman artist of the day', whose style and technique owed much to the masters of the Italian Renaissance. They married in 1887 and jointly became interested in many of the social issues of the day including education, prison reform, the suffragette movement, pacifism and spiritualism.
Evelyn De Morgan's sister, Mrs. Wilhelmina Stirling assembled a superb collection of paintings and the De Morgan's joint archive in Old Battersea House, a fine 17th century building on the banks of the Thames. After Mrs. Stirling's death in 1968, the Foundation was established to preserve the collection and to further the knowledge and appreciation of art. The late Malcolm Forbes, the American publisher, and his family assumed the lease of Old Battersea House and the majority of the collection has resided there since 1983.
The long-term future of the core of the de Morgan Foundation collection has been the subject of intense discussion and Wandsworth Borough Council has now given the Foundation a permanent new home in the former West Hill Library in SW18. It is to secure the financial future of the Foundation during its move to the new site, as well as to assist in establishing the gallery and study centre envisaged, that this small group of works from Mrs. Stirling's collection are to be sold. Important works by William and Evelyn De Morgan will remain the core of the permanent collection.
The selection principally comprises nine works by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Evelyn De Morgan and Wilhelmina Stirling's uncle, spanning his career. Stanhope was a protégé of Watts and through him met Burne-Jones and Rossetti, collaborating with them in the mural decoration of the Oxford Union in 1857. His mature style can be seen as a fusion between that of Burne-Jones and the early Italian masters, particularly Botticelli, whose influence he absorbed whilst living at the Villa Nuti, in Bellosguardo, outside Florence.
Penelope, 1864 (estimate: £400,000-600,000), is a relatively early work and a superb, lyrical example of Spencer Stanhope's work, exhibiting the refined sense of colour which Burne-Jones described as 'beyond any the finest in Europe'. Penelope is seen standing at her loom dreaming of her husband Ulysses' return. During his absence she was beset by suitors and promised to choose one of them as soon as she completed her tapestry. To delay the moment of decision, she unpicked at night the work she had done each day. The text on the tapestry is taken from Book I of Homer's other great epic, the Iliad.
Further highlights of the selection of works by Spencer Stanhope include Patience smiling at Grief (estimate: £250,000-350,000) and The Shulamite (estimate: £300,000-500,000). The Shulamite was Stanhope's only contribution to the Grosvenor Gallery in 1882 and is inspired by a passage in the Song of Solomon; a source that fascinated the Pre-Raphaelites who responded to its combination of sexual yearning, physical and natural beauty and ambiguity of imagery. The painting reflects Stanhope's surroundings at his villa just outside Florence, the Villa Nuti, Bellosguardo. Burne-Jones noted when he visited Stanhope in 1873 that there was a "long wall of roses in full flower showing over the top" and "trees that you have never seen the like of."
Isabella by John Melhuish Strudwick (1849-1937) painted in 1879, oil with gold paint on canvas, is a further major highlight from the de Morgan Foundation Collection (estimate: £400,000-600,000). It is probably the artist's best known work and the finest work ever to be offered at auction. The willowy and beautiful female figure, and the device of including a window looking on to another part of the narrative beyond are also reminiscent of the artist Burne-Jones but transcends the homage to the earlier master.
The picture tells the story of Isabella, whose love for Lorenzo was forbidden by her brothers. They killed him, but Isabella kept his severed head in a pot of basil that she watered with her tears. The brothers discovered this and destroyed the pot, whereupon Isabella died of a broken heart. The artist shows Isabella bereft with her empty pot-stand. Strudwick was at one time the studio assistant to Spencer Stanhope which may be why Mrs. Stirling acquired the painting for her collection.
Lectures
6.30pm at Christie's, 8 King Street, SW1:
The Golden Age of Watercolours: The Hickman Bacon Collection
20 November 2001 by Ian Dejardin, Curator, Dulwich Picture Gallery
Spencer Stanhope & Works from the De Morgan Foundation
27 November 2001 by Dr. Elizabeth Prettejohn, Author of The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites
British Art Week Sales also include:
British Art on Paper
21 November 2001
20th Century British Art
23 November 2001
British Pictures 1500-1850 and Victorian Pictures
30 November 2001
Sporting Art
5 December 2001
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Images available on request
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