PAINTINGS FROM THE CINTAS COLLECTION Lots 206-15 Oscar B. Cintas (1887-1957) was the Cuban Ambassador to the United States from 1932 to 1934 and a leading Latin American industrialist. Well-known in the international art world, he was a passionate and discriminating art collector who assembled a major collection of Old Master paintings, some of which were shown to great acclaim in the Masterpieces of Art exhibition at the New York's World's Fair in 1939-40. It was said at the time that Cintas was rivalled only by Paul Mellon in his dogged pursuit of Old Master and British paintings, and his collection included works by, or attributed to, Sir Anthony van Dyck, Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, Francesco Guardi and Antonio Canaletto. When a select group of twenty-four Old Masters were offered for sale at auction in 1963 the international art market reacted with enourmous interest. Among the paintings in the sale was The Merry Lute Player by Frans Hals, which sold for a then record price of $600,000 to the London dealer Edward Speelman, who purchased it on behalf of the collector Harold Samuel in the first ever transatlantic telephone bid. Other paintings in that sale included works by Pietro di Domenico, Cosimo Rosselli, Giovanni Battista Moroni, Ferdinand Bol, Sir Anthony van Dyck, Marie Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, and two portraits attributed to Rembrandt. The entire sale totalled $1,280,500 - a massive amount for that time, and a testament to Cintas's unerring eye and connoisseurship. His acquisitions also included the sole first edition of Cervantes's Don Quixote, and the fifth and final manuscript of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, presented to the United States and exhibited in the London Room of the White House. Shortly before his death at the age of 70, and upon his instructions, the Cintas Foundation was formed for the express purpose of fostering art and providing fellowships to qualified artists of Cuban origin. Since 1963, the Cintas Foundation has awarded over three hundred fellowships to Cuban artists of all disciplines who are exiled from Cuba. Among them are prominent contemporary painters such as Juan Gonzales, Cesar Trasobares and Pablo Cano as well as the photographer Serrano. The generosity of Oscar Cintas has ensured the professional development of those artists and a continuity of Cuban traditions in art outside Cuba. In addition to awarding prestigious Cintas Fellowships in recognition of accomplishments in the creative arts by artists of Cuban descent, the Foundation administers the Collection of Old Masters bequeathed by Mr. Cintas, which is on loan by the Foundation to various museums in America and Cuba. It also maintains a collection of works by Cintas fellows at Florida International University. While the Foundation is keeping its most important Spanish Old Masters, Christie's is here offering a number of its Italian and other Spanish paintings, the proceeds of which will be used fund future Fellowships.

School of Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828)

Portrait of a Lady, bust length, wearing a black lace veil

細節

School of Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828)
Portrait of a Lady, bust length, wearing a black lace veil
oil on unlined canvas
24 x 19½in. (61 x 49.5cm.)

展覽

Jacksonville, FL, Cummer Gallery of Art, on loan.