Venetian Old Master painting estimated at $600-$900, commands $96K at Clarke

Venetian Old Master painting of Saint Roch attributed to the circle of Tiepolo, which sold for $75,000 ($96,000 with buyer's premium) at Clarke Auction Gallery.

LARCHMONT, N.Y. – A Venetian Old Master painting of Saint Roch attributed to the circle of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) awoke from the slumber of a $600-$900 estimate to hammer for $75,000 ($96,000 with buyer’s premium) in Westchester County. The 18 by 13in oil on paper laid on canvas was the surprise top-selling lot at Clarke Auction Gallery on January 14.

Tiepolo did paint many small-scale pictures of Saint Roch, or Rocco, for private devotion in his native Venice. A port city that often fell victim to disease, Saint Roch was venerated there as a protector against the plague, with the Scuola di San Rocco, a Venetian confraternity, dedicated to the saint.

According to hagiography, the medieval French nobleman had miraculously healed plague victims while a pilgrim in Italy. After sacrificing his own health in the service of others, he is shown in this painting lifting his robe to reveal a plague sore on his thigh. Beside him is the dog that would aid his recovery after a selfless retreat to the wilderness.

Some clues to the earlier provenance of this painting, which was consigned from a Ridgefield, Connecticut estate, may be provided by the old inscription on the verso reading Brauer Tiepolo. It may be a reference to Godefroy Brauer (1857-1923), the influential Paris dealer whose many wealthy American clients in the early 20th century included the financier John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913). The successful purchaser of the lot tendered their bid online via LiveAuctioneers.

This was one of several ‘attributed to’ Old Master paintings that performed well in the Clarke sale. A small Dutch Golden Age winter landscape on panel carried an estimate of $800-$1,200 and hammered for $26,000 ($33,280 with buyer’s premium). Measuring 9 by 12in, it depicts skaters and kolf players on a frozen lake and is signed at the lower right with the monogram of Pieter Wouwerman (1623-1682). Labels on the verso included one for a loan exhibition of Old Masters held at the Municipal Art Gallery, Leeds, England in 1889-90. It was consigned from a collection in the Bronx in grimy condition with several surface scratches and traces of old restoration under the varnish.

From the same source was an Orthodox icon depicting the curious Old Testament story of Tobias and the Angel. It was cataloged as 19th-century Russian, but was possibly an earlier work from Greece or the Balkans. The Archangel Raphael is shown guiding the boy to the water where he will catch the fish that can drive out demons and heal his father’s blindness. Measuring 8 by 9in and housed in a period carved giltwood frame, it sold for $22,000 ($28,160 with buyer’s premium) against an estimate of $600-$900.

Among the most contested objects in the sale was a 13in-high 32oz Chinese Export silver cup and cover. Typical of the pieces admired by Westerners resident in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Canton in the late 19th century, it has dragon-form handles, a base of leafy bamboo stalks, and marine motifs of fish, shells, and crabs. Stamped to the underside with Chinese characters signifying silver and an unidentified maker’s mark of ‘CC,’ it was consigned from a Larchmont, N.Y. estate. Modestly estimated at $1,000-$1,500, it took $15,000 ($19,200 with buyer’s premium).

Venetian Old Master painting of Saint Roch attributed to the circle of Tiepolo, which sold for $75,000 ($96,000 with buyer's premium) at Clarke Auction Gallery.

Venetian Old Master painting of Saint Roch attributed to the circle of Tiepolo, which sold for $75,000 ($96,000 with buyer's premium) at Clarke Auction Gallery.

Dutch Golden Age winter landscape attributed to Pieter Wouwerman, which sold for $26,000 ($33,280 with buyer’s premium) at Clarke Auction Gallery.

Dutch Golden Age winter landscape attributed to Pieter Wouwerman, which sold for $26,000 ($33,280 with buyer’s premium) at Clarke Auction Gallery.

Orthodox icon depicting the Old Testament story of Tobias and the Angel, which sold for $22,000 ($28,160 with buyer’s premium) at Clarke Auction Gallery.

Orthodox icon depicting the Old Testament story of Tobias and the Angel, which sold for $22,000 ($28,160 with buyer’s premium) at Clarke Auction Gallery.

Late 19th-century Chinese export silver trophy and cover, which sold for $15,000 ($19,200 with buyer’s premium) at Clarke Auction Gallery.

Late 19th-century Chinese export silver trophy and cover, which sold for $15,000 ($19,200 with buyer’s premium) at Clarke Auction Gallery.

Roland Arkell

Roland Arkell

Roland Arkell is editor of Auction Central News and deputy editor at Antiques Trade Gazette. He has been writing about all aspects of the art and antiques market for more than 25 years.

George III brass mortar leads our five auction highlights

George III brass mortar with cast armorial bearings and molded girdles signed by Jan Verbruggen, which hammered for £49,000 and sold for £61,250 ($77,975) with buyer’s premium at Sworders.

George III Brass Mortar by Jan Verbruggen, $77,975

STANSTED MOUNTFITCHET, U.K. – Sending the old year out with a bang, a George III brass mortar by Jan Verbruggen hammered for £49,000 and sold for £61,250 ($77,975) with buyer’s premium at Sworders on December 13. The rare example of British military ordnance from the time of the American Revolutionary War was estimated at £2,000-£4,000.

Dutchmen Jan (1712-1781) and Peter Verbruggen (1735-1786) played an important role in the story of the British army and the industrial revolution. Gun founders in The Hague, father and son were headhunted by the British Board of Ordnance in 1770 to modernize production at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, London. Appointed joint master founders at the Royal Brass Foundry, they undertook a full refurbishment of the factory, installing new furnaces, casting pits and a horse-drawn barrel-boring machine considered the U.K.’s first industrial lathe. It proved a more reliable production method. Cannons, mortars and howitzers were made at the foundry from 1774 with the proof record much higher than in earlier years.

Relatively few pieces of bronze ordnance from the 18th century have survived; most were recycled, while others were sent to the bottom of the sea. It is thought that fewer than 30 pieces by Verbruggen exist, most in museum collections or still in situ in colonial outposts. Among the treasures of the Rijksmuseum is a set of six miniature scale models of bronze guns signed by Jan Verbruggen. The models – two mortars, a howitzer and three cannon – are bisected longitudinally to show the inside of the bore. Verbruggen’s House, the home built in 1772 for father and son, still stands at Woolwich, England.

Sworders’ mortar was consigned as part of the contents of Middleton Hall in Mendham, Suffolk, England, with an earlier provenance to the dealer Suffolk House Antiques. It is signed ‘I&P Verbruggen Fecerunt’ and inscribed ‘No. 6’ and ‘AD 1779.’ The cast-iron base measuring 17 by 15in (44 by 37cm) is the original, with the bronze cannonball a welcome later addition.

Victorian Artist’s Box by Maison Giroux, $6,400

Rosewood and brass Victorian artist’s box by the Parisian luxury goods firm Maison Giroux, which hammered for $5,000 and sold for $6,400 with buyer’s premium at Briggs Auction Co.
Rosewood and brass Victorian artist’s box by the Parisian luxury goods firm Maison Giroux, which hammered for $5,000 and sold for $6,400 with buyer’s premium at Briggs Auction Co.

GARNET VALLEY, Penn. – The Victorian artist’s box, an essential accessory for any 19th-century amateur, doesn’t get much better than an example that hammered for $5,000 and sold for $6,400 with buyer’s premium at Briggs Auction Co. on December 8.

Made by Parisian luxury goods firm Maison Giroux, the rosewood and brass case (with locks marked Alph. Giroux et Cie. a Paris) opens to reveal a series of silver-plated wells, pigment bottles and mixing bowls plus a full complement of gold-inlaid drawing aids, knives and brushes.

Inlaid to the lids with the imperial crown of Russia, the box is understood to have been a gift in 1875 from Polish-Lithuanian nobleman Duke Radziwell to the Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna (1822-1892), the daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Charlotte of Prussia. It was more recently owned by Tammis Day, the granddaughter of oil magnate William Myron Keck, and had sold as part of her estate by John Moran in Monrovia, California in 2017 for $4,750.

Maison Giroux, founded in Paris by the art restorer and ebeniste François-Simon-Alphonse Giroux at the end of the 18th century, was based first at Rue du Coq-Saint-Honoré and, after 1857, at Boulevard des Capucines. The firm is best known as the maker of the first commercially manufactured photographic camera: Giroux was the brother-in-law of Louis Daguerre and agreed to manufacture and retail his curious new device in 1839.

Hugo Rodolfo Demarco, ‘Relief Dinamic,’ $22,500

‘Relief Dinamic’ by Hugo Rodolfo Demarco, which hammered for $18,000 and sold for $22,500 with buyer’s premium at Leonard Auction Inc.
‘Relief Dinamic’ by Hugo Rodolfo Demarco, which hammered for $18,000 and sold for $22,500 with buyer’s premium at Leonard Auction Inc.

ADDISON, Ill., – The top lot at Leonard Auction Inc.’s December 10 sale was a work by the Argentinian Op artist Hugo Rodolfo Demarco (1932-1995). His 14-by-14in wall-mounted sculpture titled Relief Dinamic had an estimate of $1,000-$1,500 but hammered for $18,000 and sold for $22,500 with buyer’s premium.

Key to its appeal was the date – it was signed and dated 1962/65, shortly after Demarco had left his native Buenos Aires to join the French art scene. Arriving in Paris in 1960, he had become a founding member of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV), the collaborative artists’ group in Paris that consisted of 11 opto-kinetic artists.

Relief Dinamic also carried labels for Galerie Denise Rene, the Parisian gallery that is considered the home of constructive and kinetic art. It held the seminal exhibition Tendencies of Abstract Art in 1948.

The wood and mixed media work, which would originally have been illuminated and set in motion by electricity, came for sale from a Chicago estate.

Still Life Attributed to Dutch Golden Age Artist Rachel Ruysch, $200,175

17th-century Dutch still life cataloged as ‘attributed to Rachel Ruysch’, which hammered for £120,000 and sold for £157,200 ($200,175) with buyer’s premium at Lyon & Turnbull.
17th-century Dutch still life cataloged as ‘attributed to Rachel Ruysch’, which hammered for £120,000 and sold for £157,200 ($200,175) with buyer’s premium at Lyon & Turnbull.

EDINBURGH, U.K. – An Old Master still life attracted huge interest at Lyon & Turnbull’s Five Centuries sale on November 15. Estimated cautiously at £5,000-£8,000, the late 17th-century oil on canvas of cherries, grapes and pears ‘attributed to Rachel Ruysch’ flew to a hammer price of £120,000 and sold for £157,200 ($200,175) with buyer’s premium. It was consigned from a private Scottish collection, having been acquired from the London dealer Leonard Koetser in the early 1960s.

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) was among the most successful still-life painters of the Dutch Golden Age. An early starter, she was introduced to the secrets of botany and the art of painting at a very young age by her father, an anatomy professor and botanist in Amsterdam, and began her formal training with the still-life painter Willem van Aelst at the age of 15. The first woman member of the artist’s society in The Hague, Confrerie Pictura, her floral still-lifes became highly sought after and could cost as much as 500 guilders, a remarkable sum at the time.

This 13 by 12in (35 by 31cm) painting bore an indistinct signature plus a plaque on the frame and a label from the London dealer Leonard Koetser that carried the attribution. As the simple composition with a dark background was reminiscent of van Aelst’s own work, it may be that this was a relatively early painting by Ruysch. She would later produce more elaborate flower paintings such as the painting of roses, tulips, a sunflower and other flowers that made a record £1.4 million (roughly $1.8 million) at Sotheby’s in July 2013.

Circa-1830 Staffordshire Pearlware Polito’s Menagerie Group, $33,730

Circa-1830 Staffordshire pearlware Polito’s Menagerie figure group, which hammered for £22,000 and sold for £26,480 ($33,730) with buyer’s premium at Bonhams.
Circa-1830 Staffordshire pearlware Polito’s Menagerie figure group, which hammered for £22,000 and sold for £26,480 ($33,730) with buyer’s premium at Bonhams.

LONDON – The Fine Glass and British Ceramics sale at Bonhams on December 13-14 included one of the most ambitious and most desirable of all early 19th-century Staffordshire pearlware figure groups: the ‘Polito’s Menagerie of the wonderful burds [sic] and beasts from most parts of the world’. It hammered for £22,000 and sold for £26,480 ($33,730) with buyer’s premium against an estimate of £6,000-£8,000.

This 13in (34cm) wide by 15in (40cm) high figure group dates from circa 1830, a time when menageries, popular in England from the late 18th century, had begun to evolve into what we now know as a circus.

Italian-born Stephano Polito owned a celebrated traveling show, described in newspaper advertisements of the period as a ‘… grand and pleasing assemblage of most rare and beautiful living beasts, from the remotest parts of the known world’. His family continued to tour animals throughout the 1820s and 1830s, although tragically the exhibit was lost at sea en route to Ireland in 1835.

A number of different versions of Polito’s Menagerie exist, of which this one – sometimes associated with the Burslem potter Obadiah Sherratt – is among the most elaborate. The elephant may be Chunee, a star attraction, and the female figure at the door could represent Mrs. Polito.

A version of the same group sold for £18,000 (around $22,925) at Bonhams in December 2020 as part of the collection of Chicago pottery enthusiasts James and Ruth ‘Timmey’ Challenger. Another recent benchmark for this figure was the example sold by Sotheby’s as part of the Stanley Seeger collection in 2018 at £20,000 (roughly $25,475).