This December, Christie’s is delighted to present the second edition of the newly formed Old Masters to Modern sale, with paintings, drawings, watercolours and sculpture from seven centuries. Crossing traditional collecting categories, the sale presents a curated selection of works hailing from every major Western School and at a broad range of price points. A wide selection of lots will be sold without reserve, as indicated on our sale page, with estimates starting at around £1,000.
The Old Master paintings group is distinguished by a number of high-quality northern paintings of all genres, including an early landscape by the young Jan van Goyen, a lively farmyard scene by Melchior d'Hondecoeter and a seascape by Willem van de Velde II. They are complemented by several Italian highlights, including a pair of fourteenth-century altarpiece fragments by Florentine artist Giovanni Bonsi, a rediscovered portrait by Fra Galgario and four northern Italian paintings on alabaster from the seventeenth century. The early British school is represented by works by Marcus Gheeraerts and his studio, followed up by portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.
An exceptionally rare impression of The Tyger leads a group of eight relief etchings from the first issue of William Blake’s celebrated poems Songs of Experience (1794), from the collection of Sir Geoffrey Keynes (1887-1982). Executed in ‘illuminated printing’, a method of his invention which combines text and image on a single copper plate, and hand printed by Blake himself, they exemplify his genius as an artist, printer and poet.
The sculpture group offers a number of early pieces including medieval enamels and a gargoyle formerly in the Rockefeller collection, said to have come from the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Bronze is also well-represented with a rare figure of an acrobat doing a handstand after Barthelemy Prieur.
Highlighting the nineteenth‑century European and Victorian paintings on offer are works by Sir Alfred Munnings, Frederic, Lord Leighton, Edward Seago and Jean Béraud. Finally, a diverse offering of British drawings and watercolours includes works by Dame Laura Knight, Edward Lear, Francis Towne and not least J.M.W. Turner, on the 250th anniversary of his birth.
