A Surprise from Joan Rivers

On June 22, Christie's in New York will hold an auction of items from the private collection of Joan Rivers. Many pieces of jewelry will be up for bid, as well as formal evening gowns, 18th-century European furniture and modern facsimiles thereof, porcelain vases, glass stemware, and many other items that filled her home.

Any artwork accompanying these lots, I assumed, would be equally overwrought in style--a late Renoir nude, perhaps. But to my surprise, the painting above, Édouard Vuillard's Dans l'atelier from 1915, is part of the sale at Christie's. Vuillard's loose, casual brushstrokes and muted palette, along with the modestly-attired woman, seem the antithesis of the loud, sometimes crass, and overly-groomed Rivers. And the shabbiness of the studio depicted in the painting must have seemed a bit out of place hanging in her gilded home.

Dans l'atelier retains much of the style of Vuillard's work from the late 1800s and the first years of the 20th century–he has not yet arrived at the more tightly rendered paintings that characterize Vuillard's output in his later years. And although the deep, rich earth tones and simplified figures from that earlier time are absent, I find Dans l'atelier and other Vuillard works from its period equally engaging and satisfying as his paintings from the turn of the 20th century.

Collectors apparently do not. Similarly sized and even much smaller earlier pieces by Vuillard have sold in the high-six and low-seven figures, significantly more than the $120,000-180,000 estimate for Dans l'atelier; a disparity that I doubt can be explained solely by a difference in physical condition.

Courbet's Snow at Sotheby's-Updated

Apparently at least two bidders agreed with my assessment of Courbet's Neige (see post below). The painting sold at Sotheby's for $506,500, well over its $200,000 to 300,000 estimate.

Courbet and Snow at Sotheby's

One of my favorite art-viewing activities when I lived in New York City was to visit the public exhibitions of works soon to be auctioned at Christie's and Sotheby's. These shows offered the rare opportunity to see paintings held in private collections, many of which had long been out of public view.

Thanks to the internet I can continue this activity online, 200 hundred miles away from Manhattan. And although a virtual viewing can never sufficiently substitute for seeing a work in person, the websites of Christie's, Sotheby's, and other auction houses offer great tools that allow one to examine closely the lots for sale.

The purpose of this blog is to highlight paintings up for auction that are of particular interest to me, paintings like Gustave Courbet's Neige, seen above. Neige will be sold on November 4, 2011, as part of the 19th Century European Art auction at Sotheby's.

There will be 109 lots auctioned, which means a lot of thumbnail images to look through on Sotheby's website. This can be an especially daunting task when many of the works are portraits of women in fancy 19th-century clothing. That fashion seems stuffy and stifling to me. It's also tough to get through 109 paintings when many others are equestrian or naval scenes.

Among this dull crowd, Courbet's winter scene stands out like a brisk, visual breath of fresh air and grabs my attention. The painting's composition also intrigues me. Courbet has arranged the trees so that they act like a window, framing the mountain peaks in the upper left, a clever allusion to an interior scene in a landscape painting.

This "window" also mimics the shape of the painting, so that the composition consists of a square within a square and creates a sense of recession away from the foreground toward the mountains in the distance.

That receding sensation is underscored by the characteristics of the paint in the foreground. Thanks to the zoom tool on Sotheby's site, we can see that Courbet has applied the white paint with a knife, giving it a tactility that makes the snow feel immediate. The mountains are a long way away from this substance that seems almost a part of the viewers' realm rather than the space of the painting.

Neige also caught my eye because its dull hues contrast strongly with the bright colors used in many of the other paintings in the auction. Such a color scheme in the hands of many other painters might produce a profoundly grim work. But in Courbet's clever and deft hands these hues result in a remarkable painting that may be quiet but is hardly dull.

Sotheby's has set the pre-auction estimate at $200,000 to 300,000. If I had that kind of money, I'd buy it.