J.E. Safra’s encyclopedic collection continues to showcase eye-catching paintings from the Dutch Golden Age through the 19th century

Defined by fantastic range, J.E. Safra’s collection spans the Dutch Golden Age to the height of 19th-century European art, with images of music makers by Eglon Hendrick van der Neer and Pieter de Hooch, landscapes by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Hubert Robert and Adrien Manglard, and Realist paintings by Gustave Courbet and Gaston La Touche. Although encyclopaedic, the paintings in the financier and investor’s collection are united by their lavish elegance. Safra’s eye, spanning centuries, is consistently astute. 

On 20 May, Christie’s is pleased to present Remastered: Old Masters from the Collection of J.E. Safra — Selling Without Reserve. This sale will be offered entirely without reserve, presenting a rare opportunity to acquire exquisite Old Master paintings at more accessible price points. It marks the second chapter of Safra’s collection, following the first auction during Classics Week in January.

‘This is a really unique and wide-ranging collection’, says Laura Mathis, head of 19th Century European Art at Christie’s. ‘Featuring a variety of periods and styles, there’s something for everyone.’ 

High life in the Dutch Golden Age 

During the 17th century, the Dutch Republic emerged as a naval superpower and one of the wealthiest nations in the world. As a result of this newfound prosperity, a demand emerged for art that celebrated Dutch achievements, culture, and high life. 

Since music instruction was a standard feature of upper-class education in the 17th century, images of musicians were popular with artists of these high-life genre paintings. This selection includes images of music-makers by Eglon Hendrick van der Neer and Pieter de Hooch. In An interior scene with a woman playing a lute and a man playing a violin, de Hooch emphasizes the luxury of the scene with details like the player’s costly white satin dress and the expensive Ottoman carpet draping over the table.

De Hooch was one of the most accomplished painters of domestic genre scenes during the Dutch Golden Age, producing works that subtly respond to the expressive effects of light and convey complex spatial arrangements, often including, as in this case, views through a doorway or window. The writer Peter Sutton classes this painting as ‘one of the artist’s most fanciful compositions’, noting how the architecture opens abruptly, and improbably, onto a river. 

A significant Rococo landscape 

This masterful play with spatial arrangements, and luxuriant use of light and colour, both characteristic of the Dutch Golden Age, are also on display in Jean-Baptiste Oudry’s A landscape with a shepherd driving animals to pasture, a castle beyond.

The work is one of six landscapes that Henri-Camille, Marquis de Beringhen, commissioned from Oudry. For this series, Oudry portrayed daily episodes of French country life in the genre pittoresque — or, Rococo — style. Grounded in the observation of nature but relying on the artist’s inventive powers, they were executed in a brilliant palette that takes advantage of contrasting passages of light and shade. The art dealer Jean Cailleux counted this landscape series as among ‘the very first “true” landscapes of the eighteenth century’. 

An album of 138 illustrations by Oudry was the top lot of the first instalment of Remastered: Old Masters in the Collection of J.E. Safra in January. It exceeded estimates, achieving $2,700,000. 

Neoclassical ideals 

Neoclassical art arose in the late 18th century in opposition to the perceived frivolity of the Rococo style that had come to dominate European art. The Age of Enlightenment promoted the idea that art should mirror the idealized forms of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, illustrating key virtues and imparting a moral lesson upon the viewer.

Penelope awakened by Euryclea with the news of Ulysses’ return, by Angelica Kauffman and Studio, epitomises the height of Neoclassical style. We see Penelope as she is woken with the news of the return of her husband, Ulysses, after many years fighting in the Trojan War. Penelope, who rejected over a hundred suitors and remained loyal to her husband in his absence, recurs throughout Kauffman’s oeuvre as a symbol of the ideal wife and mother. 

Realists looking to the past 

Mathis says, ‘If you want to represent the most important eras of art history, 19th-century paintings are integral to forming a complete collection.’ J.E. Safra’s collection proves her point: his 19th-century paintings both pay homage to the Old Masters and look forward to future movements like Impressionism and Modernism. 

Upon moving to Paris in 1839 Gustave Courbet spent his time studying Titian, Zurbarán, Rembrandt, and Rubens at the Louvre: a founding father of the Realism movement, his style is redolent of these and other Old Masters. Courbet’s practice of painting on a dark ground — laying down the darkest colour first and building up from there — is an example of something he picked up from the Old Masters, and we can recognise this in Château de Chillon.

This painting comes from a particularly interesting point in Courbet’s career, when he was exiled in Switzerland. Throughout his life, his landscapes favoured the topography of his native Ornans in France, and the surrounding Jura Mountains. Here, he reflects his earlier paintings of the Jura through his depiction of the rocky and overgrown Swiss landscape, whilst the reflections in the lake hark back to his paysages de mer — or, sea landscapes — another important aspect of his career. 

Gaston La Touche, who also started as a realist, similarly draws on past eras with fresh eyes in his painting La Démangeaison. This work, from his later Impressionist-inspired period, offers a 19th-century reimagining of the Rococo period: the 18th-century interior furniture depicted are reminiscent of Watteau. The figure’s twisting pose, however, is inspired by Degas’ bathers. 

In 1877, La Touche asked Manet to take him on as his student to which the older artist replied that he had nothing to teach him, telling him only that he should paint what he saw and that there was no black and white, only colour. 

Bold use of colour 

Mastery of colour is a focus throughout the Safra collection. It was also a dominating preoccupation for the Neo-Romantic artist Harald Oscar Sohlberg. He insisted that each painting should have a ‘dominant’ colour — as demonstrated in Båten (Viksfjord) (1918).

Here, blue unifies the sweeping sky with the clouds, distant hills and calm waters of the harbour. Although the blue harmonies give way to the green of the shoreline, the composition’s dominant colour reasserts itself in the boat and shadows of the foreground. 

Traversing centuries of artistic excellence, Safra’s collection is consistently resplendent in luxuriant brushwork and colour — from the refined contrasting use of light and shade in Dutch Golden Age landscapes to the vivid hues of the Neo-Romantic Sohlberg.