Christie’s Old Master & British Drawings sale features a wide selection of works from the 15th to the 19th Centuries by Italian, Northern, French and British artists. Headlining the sale is an exceptional drawing, The head of a woman in profile to the right, wearing an elaborate headdress, by Jacopo Ligozzi.
Among the Italian drawings are interesting designs by Giulio Romano, an important sheet by Guercino, an album with 95 studies of hands and feet by 17th Century Bolognese artists, and works by Federico Zuccaro, Gian Paolo Lomazzo and Carlo Maratti. One of the sale’s highlights is a rare pen and ink drawing by the Spanish artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Travelers on donkeys approaching a ruined city gate. French drawings include an Allegory of America by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, an important study of a Greek warrior by Eugène Delacroix and an iconic Parisian scene by Honoré Daumier.
Works on paper by the British School are led by two watercolours by the celebrated master of the medium J.M.W. Turner, an atmospheric watercolour The Approach to Venice, circa 1840, which is an exciting rediscovery and one of only a handful of Venetian sketches left in private hands and an earlier work depicting Binger Lorch and the Mäuseturm from 1817. Other highlights include an elegant portrait drawing by Sir Thomas Lawrence of the 18-year-old Frederic Lock of Norbury Park, two large 18th Century topographical views by Paul Sandby, the father of English watercolours, and a group of watercolours by the inveterate traveller artist David Roberts.
The sale also features a selection of rare drawings by female French and British artists with examples from the 17th to the 19th Century including figure studies, mythological compositions and botanical works.
