Enfilade

From the press release (via Art Daily) for the sale at Christie’s:

Maîtres Anciens: Dessins, Peintures, Sculptures, Sale 21059
Christie’s, Paris, 18 May 2022

Jacques Joseph André Aved (1702–1766), La dessineuse, oil on canvas, €150,000–250,000.

Ahead of the Salon du Dessin, which will be held from the 18th until the 23rd of May, Christie’s will present its sale dedicated to the Old Masters, led by an unpublished drawing by Michelangelo, one of the few still in private hands. The Old Masters sale will highlight a set of drawings, paintings, and sculptures carefully selected by our specialists. Major artists such as Théodore Gericault, Elisabeth Louise Vigée le Brun (whose painting has not been seen on the market since 1847), Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and Nicolas de Largillierre will be showcased in dialogue with the masters of drawing, such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Charles Natoire, and Jean-Antoine Watteau. The medium of sculpture will be represented including a splendid pyxis, enamelers such as Pierre Veyrier II, Jean II Pénicaud, and Léonard Limosin. The works will be exhibited alongside new creations by interior designer Hugo Toro. The sale consists of 264 lots for a global estimate of €6–9 million.

Drawings

The Old Master and 19th-Century Drawings Department will be highlighted with the drawing by Michelangelo, a nude man (after Masaccio), and two figures behind, along with a selection of about a hundred sheets under the common theme of rediscovery. They begin in the 17th century, with three unseen drawings by Martin Fréminet (1567–1619), an emblematic painter of the Fontainebleau School: Sketch for a Ceiling with an Allegorical Figure of Faith (€70,000–100,000), Study for a Biblical King (€20,000–30,000), and Medallion with Two Harpies and Garlands (€7,000–10,000). These studies, rendered in graphite and brown wash, are preparatory sketches for the painted decoration of the Trinity Chapel of the Château de Fontainebleau.

The French school will be well represented with such artists as Charles de La Fosse (1636–1716), Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), Charles Natoire, and Jean-Antoine Watteau (1732–1806)—including a red chalk representation of A Couple Walking in a Landscape (€100,000–150,000) and Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) with another beautiful ink and wash sheet representing Silenus’s March (€30,000–50,000). The latter drawing comes from the collections of Vincent Donjeux (1793), the Baron Charles de Vèze (1855), and François Walferdin (1860).

Paintings

The Old Master Paintings Department will present some beautiful rediscoveries, including a charming Portrait of a Child by Jacques Joseph André Aved (1702–1766), which illustrates perfectly the sometimes profoundly intimate art of 18th-century portraiture. The painting, called the La dessineuse, also testifies to the close artistic links between Aved and his friend Jean Siméon Chardin (1699–1779). Coming straight from the descendants of the artist, this painting will be sold for the first time since its inception. Estimated at €150,000–250,000, it will be presented with another important work from the same collection.

Another highlight from the painting section is a rare oil painting by Nicolas de Largillierre (1646–1756), whose religious subject makes it stands out within the artist’s corpus. This Saint Barthélemy (ca. 1710), with naturalistic features and bathed in divine light, was attributed to the artist only in 2003 by Dominique Brême, on the occasion of the exhibition at the musée Jacquemart-André. Brême recognized in the painting one of the apostles that decorated the painter’s elegant Parisian home on the rue Geoffroy-l’Angevin. It is estimated at €60,000–80,000.

Finally, with a distinguished provenance (which includes Delacroix’s personal collection, as well as Prince Napoléon’s and the collection of the Elie de Rothschild), a portrait of a soldier titled Lancier from the 1er Régiment de Chevau-Léger-Lanciers de la Garde, called Polonais, by Théodore Gericault (1791–1824) will number among this sale’s exceptional works (€80,000–100,000). Here, we find a few of the themes that were so dear to the artist and which herald romanticism, such as horses, battle scenes, and soldiers—themes that celebrate the artist’s ideals of liberty, heroism, and wonder.

Sculpture

Alexandre Mordret-Isambert, new specialist in sculpture in Paris, presents a selection that includes a rare liturgical object executed in Limoges during the second half of the 13th century, A Virgin and Child forming a pyxis. No equivalent is known in museums or private collections. The sculpture, in a very good state of preservation, has remained hidden from view since being exhibited at the Universal Exhibition of 1900. The pyxis comes from prestigious collections: first the Frédéric Spitzer collection (1815–1890), then the Victor Martin Le Roy collection (1842–1918), then by descent to his daughter Jeanne, wife of Jean-Joseph Marquet de Vasselot (1871–1946), curator at the Louvre and then director of the Cluny museum, an important collector of medieval and Renaissance art objects. In November 2011, Christie’s sold 24 works from the Marquet-Vassselot collection, including a carved ivory group representing The Virgin and Child Enthroned for €6,337,000. The family still kept this treasure. Many objects from the collection are now in museums, including the Louvre and Cluny.

Presepe, made in Naples, mid-18th century to early-nineteenth century, oil painted terracotta, carved wood, painted glass, shaped wire, tin, and cork, with stitched silks and linen, 113 × 173 × 108 inches (private collection).

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From the press release, via Art Daily, for the exhibition at Colnaghi, London:

Naples
Colnaghi, London, 3 December 2021 — 25 February 2022

Opening in conjunction with London Art Week (3–10 December), Colnaghi presents a special exhibition showcasing the enduring creative legacy of Old Master artists and artisans from Naples, marking the first exhibition in London devoted to the Italian city and its arts in over forty years. As the centrepiece of Naples, Colnaghi, together with Dario Porcini, present a magnificent 18th-century crèche, known in Italian as a presepe, a monumental nativity scene traditional to Baroque Naples. The exhibition also features a selection of religious, landscape, and still-life paintings by some of the greatest artists who worked in the city during the 17th and 18th centuries and served as inspiration for the craftsmen of the presepe, including Jusepe de Ribera, Luca Giordano, and Massimo Stanzione. Naples is on view at Colnaghi from 3 December 2021 through the festive season, until 25 February 2022.

“Our winter exhibition in London transports our visitors to Baroque Naples and will feature important paintings by masters of the period, as well as a monumental presepe,” says Chloe Stead, Senior Global Director of Colnaghi. “Boldly transgressing artistic hierarchies, presepi unite different media and techniques to realise extraordinarily elaborate and exuberant nativity scenes that provide incredible glimpses into life in Naples at the time. Our presepe, created during the golden age of these works, is one of the most important examples outside Italy and reflects all the vitality and craftsmanship for which the Italian city is still known.”

The recreation of nativity scenes with modelled figures and animals during Christmastime was widespread throughout Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries. By the 18th century, what originally had been a relatively simple temporary tableaux underwent a transformation in Naples into highly dramatic and theatrical creations, often monumental in scale. These crèches combined traditional sacred elements of nativity scenes—the Holy Family, wise men, angels, and shepherds—with aspects of contemporary Neapolitan life—rowdy tavern scenes, processing musicians, and bawdy market shopkeepers—in dazzling displays of artistic techniques.

The presepe at Colnaghi, dating from the 18th century, is one of the very few and finest of these masterpieces of the Italian Baroque outside Naples. Crafted from oil painted terracotta, carved wood, painted glass, shaped wire, tin, and cork, with stitched silks and linen to recreate the detailed fashions of the time, the presepe stages the sacred scene in a true-to-life Neapolitan setting and measures a remarkable 340 × 445 cm.

Carmine Romano, translated by Gordon Pole and Caroline Paganussi, The 18th-Century Neapolitan Crèche: A Masterpiece of Baroque Spectacle (Naples: Porcini, 2021), 175 pages, ISBN: 978-8894136470. Available as a PDF file here»

Other exhibition highlights include:

• Two paintings by Jusepe de Ribera, including an Ecce Homo, signed by the artist and dated to 1644 and considered a high point of Neapolitan Baroque art; and Saint John the Baptist, 1630s, which showcases the bold gesture and a melancholic landscape typical of this artist.

• The Penitent Magdalene from the early 1640s by Massimo Stanzione, considered a great rival to Ribera. Signed with an elegant monogram, this well-preserved picture with its vivid, jewel-like sky is particularly unusual example of the artist’s work on copper.

• Two large-scale canvases by the celebrated artist of the later Baroque period, Luca Giordano, who was trained by Ribera. The Triumph of Galatea from the artist’s Roman period, ca. 1675–77, and Shepherds with their Herd (The Riches of the Earth), 1684, both reflect the artist’s ability to express the drama and pathos of religious and mythological subjects.

• Still lifes of fish, crustaceans and other seafood by Giuseppe Recco and his daughter Elena Recco from the 17th century, including two loans from the collection of Lord and Lady Rosse that have never before been presented outside of the dining room of Birr Castle.

• Landscape paintings by Antonio Joli, lent by Lord Montagu from Palace House, Beaulieu, presenting views of Naples-one depicting the Palazzo Reale and Castel Nuovo, and the other a view of the Largo di Palazzo at Carnival time. The works were commissioned by an ancestor of Lord Montagu during his Grand Tour.

Antonio Joli, Naples, A Festival with a Cuccagna at the Largo di Palazzo, ca. 1756–58, oil on canvas, 19 x 30 inches (Collection of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu). More information on the painting and the cuccagna tradition of ephemeral architecture is available here.

Press release (12 November 2021) from Gov.UK’s Department for Culture, Media & Sport:

Tiger’s Head Finial from the throne of Tipu Sultan of Mysore, 1787–93, with the plinth possibly made in Madras or Calcutta, ca. 1799–1800. Gold over a lac core; set with rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. The head is mounted on a black marble pedestal with gilt metal inscription and mounts, with four gilt metal feet and four gilded balls. The head is 6.9cm high; the total height is 17.5cm.

Valued at £1.5 million, a gold jewelled tiger head, which in the late 18th century adorned the gold-covered throne of Tipu Sultan, is at risk of leaving the UK unless a UK buyer can be found. Tipu Sultan (1750–1799), the ‘Tiger of Mysore’, was regarded as the greatest threat to the British East India Company until his defeat and death in 1799. As ruler of Mysore, Tipu identified himself and his personal possessions with tiger imagery, and this finial offers scholars the opportunity to illustrate the vibrant culture of Tipu’s court and closely examine British imperial history. Three surviving contemporary images of the throne are all in the UK. The finial is one of eight gold tiger heads that adorned the throne.

The finial—made of gold and set with rubies, diamonds, and emeralds—is a rare example of fully documented 18th-century South Indian goldsmiths’ work, and its existence was unknown until 2009. Its marble pedestal is unique among the five surviving finials known, and the meaning of its gold inscription is still a mystery. Following Tipu’s defeat, many objects from his treasury arrived in Britain, where they influenced poetry (John Keats), fiction (Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins), and artists (J.M.W. Turner), and were generally met with huge public interest.

Arts Minister Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay said: “This fascinating finial illustrates the story of Tipu Sultan’s reign and leads us to examine our imperial history. I hope a UK-based buyer comes forward so that we can all continue to learn more about this important period in our shared history with India.”

The Minister’s decision follows the advice of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA). The Committee agreed that it is an important symbolic object in Anglo-Indian history in the last years of the 18th century, with Tipu’s defeat having great historical importance to Britain’s imperial past and leading to a contemporary fascination with Tipu’s story and objects.

Committee Member Christopher Rowell said: “Tipu Sultan’s golden and bejewelled throne (c.1787–93) was broken up by the British army’s Prize Agents after Tipu’s defeat and death in defence of his capital, Seringapatam, in 1799. This tiger’s head is one of the original eight which were placed on the balustrade of the octagonal throne. Each gold tiger’s head from the railing is slightly differently set with gemstones, which makes this example both part of a set and unique in its design. Its quality attests to the expertise of Tipu’s goldsmiths and jewelers, in whose productions he took a close personal interest. The head of the large gold rock crystal tiger that supported the throne and a bejewelled huma bird that perched on the pinnacle of its canopy were presented to George III and Queen Charlotte (Royal Collection Trust). The tiger and its stripes were Tipu’s personal symbols. “Better to live one day as a tiger than 1,000 years as a sheep” he famously declared. His flirtation with Napoleonic France led to his downfall at British hands. This tiger’s head, one of four throne finials to survive, including a head in the Clive Museum at Powis Castle (NT), should remain in the country together with the other fragments of the throne, and I hope that every effort will be made to achieve this.”

The Committee made its recommendation on the grounds that the finial’s departure from the UK would be a misfortune because it is so closely connected with our history and national life and is of outstanding significance for the study of royal propaganda and 18th-century Anglo-Indian history. The decision on the export licence application for the finial will be deferred until 11 February 2022. This may be extended until 11 June 2022 if a serious intention to raise funds to purchase it is made at the recommended price of £1.5 million.

Provenance: Tipu Sultan of Mysore (1787–1799); Thomas Wallace, Baron Wallace of Knarsdale (ca.1800 or later)—listed in an 1843 inventory of the contents of Featherstone Castle (Northumberland), the family seat, and thence by descent; Bonhams, London, 2 April 2009 (lot 212); private collection.

Literature: Bonhams, London: 2 April 2009, lot 212; A Jaffer, ed., Beyond Extravagance (New York, 2013), pp. 189–90, cat. 61; N. N. Haidar, ed., Treasures from India (New York, 2014), pp. 46–7; Export of Objects of Cultural Interest 2010/11 (2011): Case 1, p. 23.

Lot 7: Jean-Siméon Chardin, La Fontaine (Water Urn), detail, ca. 1730s, oil on canvas, 50 × 43 cm (estimate €5–8million).

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From the press release (via Art Daily) for the auction:

De Chardin à Prud’hon, Tableaux et Dessins Provenant des Collections Marcille, Sale 20722
Christie’s Paris, 22 November 2021

Christie’s France—in collaboration with the auction house Tajan—presents an important group of paintings and drawings from the Marcille Collection, one of the most far-sighted collections of 18-century French art assembled in the 19th century. Initiated by François Marcille (1790–1856), and continued by his two sons Camille (1816–1875) and Eudoxe (1814–1890), the collection came to include some 4,600 paintings and other works. Although the collection was dispersed by inheritance within the family, collectors will now be able to acquire 27 works, including several masterpieces from major artists of the 18th and early 19th centuries, artists such as Jean-Siméon Chardin, Maurice-Quentin de la Tour, Théodore Gericault, Charles Coypel, and Pierre-Paul Prud’hon. The sale is estimated at between €5.7 million and €9.1 million.

Pierre Etienne, Director of the Department of Old Master Paintings: “There are names of collectors that are true stamps, labels of quality. The name Marcille evokes the excellence of the French 18th century, and even more vigorously for Chardin, La Tour, and Prud’hon.”

The Goncourts said of Camille Marcille that one should “study Chardin [at his home] to do full justice to the painter.” In 1979, at the time of the monographic exhibition of Chardin at the Grand Palais, the Marcille family loaned 22 of his paintings, including a superb genre scene representing a Woman at the Water Urn (estimate €5,000,000–8,000,000)—a work that entered the Marcille collection in 1848 and contributed to the rediscovery of Chardin in the 19th century through its inclusion in the first French exhibition devoted to the artist in 1860. Théophile Gautier was impressed by this very original work and wrote that it showed “what no one had ever talked about.” Chardin, not included in the canon of his time, preferred poetic scenes of everyday life to the more frivolous portraits of the century and came to be described as the ‘French Vermeer’. Chardin’s genre scenes were the most sought after and extremely rare on the market. Fontaine is one of the very first genre scenes in which Chardin fully reveals himself. Several museums have versions of the painting, including the first one, (on panel) from the Salon of 1737, at Stockholm’s Nationalmuseum and a version at the Toledo Museum of Art. The one from the Marcille Collection is the last in private hands and has not appeared on the market since 1848.

Lot 8: Jean-Siméon Chardin, L’hiver, à l’imitation de bas-relief d’après Edmé Bouchardon, 1776, oil on canvas, 55 × 88 cm (€80,000–120,000)

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Another painting by Chardin, Winter, in Imitation of Bas-relief after Edmé Bouchardon (estimate €80,000–120,000), will also be part of the sale. It attests to the Marcille family’s passion for the painter as well as to Chardin’s mastery of trompe l’oeil. The sale also features works acquired by Camille and Eudoxe Marcille—both of whom worked as curators, of the Chartres and Orléans museums respectively—in particular, an animated landscape by Hubert Robert (Lot 4: Waterfall Landscape with a Bridge, estimate €30,000–50,000) and two portraits by Nattier’s brilliant pupil, Louis Tocqué.

A fine group of ten sheets by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon is included in the drawings section of the sale. The Marcilles had a particular passion for this neoclassical artist who gave drawing a prominent place in his work, typically combining black and white chalk on blue-grey paper. The ensemble illustrates the diversity and iconographic richness of the artist’s drawings. Among the highlights are portraits, including that of Baroness Alexandre de Talleyrand at the Age of Seven (estimate €25,000–35,000) and a Head of Napoleon in a Medallion, which was later engraved by Alexandre Tardieu (€20,000–30,000). Finally, Prud’hon’s commitment to the Empire is reflected in the collection by a Design for the Cradle of Roi de Rome (estimate €25,000–35,000), later created by Philippe Thomire and Odiot and now in the Schatzkammer in Vienna, along with a Design for a Chair for Empress Marie-Louise (estimate €12,000–18,000).

Lot 78: A unique Meissen armorial waste bowl from the service made for Clemens August, Elector of Cologne, ca. 1735, 18 cm diameter.
Estimate: $40,000–60,000.

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From the press release, via Art Daily (27 August 2021) for the Oppenheimer sale:

Sammlung Oppenheimer | Important Meissen Porcelain
Sotheby’s New York, 14 September 2021

Sotheby’s announces highlights from one of the greatest pre-war collections of Meissen porcelain to appear at auction in more than 60 years. Meticulously assembled by Dr. Franz and Margarethe Oppenheimer in the early decades of the 20th century, this exquisite group of 117 lots is among the most significant ensembles of early 18th-century Meissen porcelain from Europe’s first porcelain manufactory—many of which are distinguished by illustrious royal and noble provenance, including pieces from the collection of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and founder of the Meissen porcelain factory. Presented in a dedicated live auction on 14 September in New York, the collection is poised to achieve more than $2 million, with individual estimates ranging from $300 to $400,000 and approximately one third of the lots offered without reserve.

All of the works on offer will be on view in Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries beginning 7 September, ahead of the live auction.

The Collection

Franz and Margarethe Oppenheimer were connoisseur collectors, determined to build a magnificent Meissen collection at a time when it was still possible to acquire important pieces as they were being deaccessioned from the royal collections in Dresden. Dr. Franz Oppenheimer, a native of Hamburg, was a lawyer and became part owner and CEO of Emanuel Friedlaender und Co, a private company that dominated the Silesian coal industry before World War II. Margarethe, whom he married in 1902, was born in Vienna and was his partner in building their porcelain collection.

An Oppenheimer family portrait from the mid-1930s (Sotheby’s).

The couple lived in a grand apartment block on Regentenstrasse in Berlin, immediately next to the Tiergarten—the heart of Berlin’s collecting community in the early 20th century. In 1927, like many serious Berlin connoisseurs, the couple commissioned a private catalogue of their collection to be written by Professor Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, curator of the nearby Berliner Schlossmuseum. Professor von Carolsfeld catalogued 240 sets and individual pieces of porcelain, a number of which are featured in the September sale. The couple continued to collect after the 1927 catalogue and added at least 126 objects to their holdings, each of which were marked with red inventory numbers.

Once the Nazis came to power Franz Oppenheimer was persecuted because of his Jewish origins. As a consequence, in around December 1936, he and Margarethe fled from Berlin to the comparative safety of Vienna, having paid punitive emigration taxes to the Nazi Government. They rented an apartment close to the Belvedere in Vienna’s third district and were able to take some possessions, including part of their Meissen collection, with them.

The couple’s exile in Vienna did not last long. German troops entered Austria on 12 March 1938, and Adolf Hitler proclaimed the Anschluss of Austria into Germany the following day. The Oppenheimers escaped to Budapest the day before the Anschluss carrying only hand luggage. From Hungary they travelled via Sweden and Colombia before finally reaching their new home in New York three and a half years later—in December 1941. By 1941, their resources had been further eroded by another tranche of Flight Tax that they had to pay to emigrate from Austria. The couple chose to spend the remainder of their lives in an apartment on East 86th Street in Manhattan, just a few blocks from Sotheby’s present-day headquarters.

The Nazi authorities confiscated everything that they found in the Oppenheimers’ Vienna apartment but discovered that the collectors had succeeded in removing at least two crates of their most valuable porcelain before their flight. It is likely that some of the porcelain in this sale was smuggled out of Vienna to keep it out of Nazi hands. It is not known precisely when the objects in this sale were lost to the Oppenheimers, however they were with their next owner, another great connoisseur-collector and an active opponent of the Nazi regime, Fritz Mannheimer, before his premature death in 1939.

Mannheimer was born in Germany in 1890 and moved as a young man to Amsterdam where he established the Dutch branch of the Berlin based Mendelssohn Bank in 1920. In less than 20 years, he built both a thriving bank and an art collection of outstanding breadth and quality. Like the Oppenheimers, he commissioned a scholar, Otto von Falke, late director of the Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum, to catalogue his collection. The porcelain in this sale was all acquired after von Falke completed his work in March 1936.

After Kristallnacht, on 9 November 1938, the Mendelssohn Bank was shuttered by the Nazis and Fritz Mannheimer lost its collaboration, and its balance sheet, for his Amsterdam bank. While Mannheimer kept trading, his last major deal was the refinancing of a part of the French National debt in 1939; this failed—partly due to the deteriorating political situation in Europe—and the young banker was obliged to buy back unplaced French bonds at his own expense. This triggered a severe liquidity crisis for his bank and for himself. On 8 August 1939, in the midst of the bank’s crisis, Mannheimer left for a break in France. Upon his arrival in Vaucresson, he suffered a massive heart attack and died only a few hours later.

Mannheimer’s bank stopped its operations immediately after his death. An audit showed the bank carried a large debt of over 42 million guilders, for which the collector’s personal estate was jointly liable. Experts from the Rijksmuseum were brought in and valued the art collection at six and a half million guilders and Mannheimer’s executors decided to liquidate it as a contribution to the Bank’s losses. A member of the SS based in Holland acquired the collection for Adolf Hitler in 1941.

As Allied bombing placed the Führer’s art holdings in peril, the Meissen that had been acquired from Mannheimer’s estate was moved for safe keeping first to Vyšší Brod Monastery in Bohemia and later to the salt mines in Bad Aussee. The porcelain was eventually discovered by Allied Monuments Officers and was transferred to the Central Collecting Point in Munich in 1946. The collection was sent back to the Netherlands between 1945 and 1949. After the recovery of the Mannheimer Collection, the collector’s executors did not seek restitution, as they would have been obligated to refund the price paid by the Führer’s curators, and the collection passed into Dutch State holdings. Of the porcelain, some was held as property available for restitution and some was transferred to the Rijksmuseum.

Earlier this year the Restitution Commission of the Netherlands accepted that the porcelain in this sale that had belonged to the Oppenheimers must be restituted to their heirs.

Auction Highlights

The collection of Franz and Margarethe Oppenheimer exemplifies their penchant for chinoiserie taste, an all-encompassing term from the Victorian era that was applied to pseudo-Asian forms and decorations invented in Europe from the 17th century onward, in response to the exoticism and novelty of contemporary Asian imports. The origins of many of the pieces collected by the Oppenheimers can be associated with royal commissions for Meissen porcelain to decorate the interiors of Augustus the Strong’s colossal ‘porcelain palace’, conventionally known as the Japanese Palace, on the banks of the river Elbe in Dresden-Neustadt.

Meissen mantel clock case, 1727, the gilt-bronze mount probably German, mid-18th century, the movement signed Barrey à Paris, ca. 1700, 44 cm. high.

The September auction is led by an important Documentary and Dated Meissen Mantel Clock Case from 1727 (lot 64)—undoubtedly the rarest piece in the Oppenheimer Collection and illustrative of the Chinoiserie style they so loved (estimate $200–400,000). This magnificent Meissen clock case can be counted among the most ambitious and successful of sculptural models produced at the factory at this early date. The Oppenheimers were able acquire the clock case after it had passed through two prestigious 19th-century English collections, at some point between 1923 and 1927. The present clock was originally owned by Ralph Bernal, a politician and discerning art collector, who later became president of the British Archaeological Society in 1853 and whose collection garnered the attention of prestigious museums and connoisseurs alike, including the Rothschilds, the Marquess of Hertford, Marlborough House, the South Kensington Museum, the Tower Armory, and the British Museum. Sir Anthony de Rothschild acquired this particular clock in April 1855 for £120.

At least five varying clock case models were produced at Meissen in the late 1720s and early 1730s, and one can presume that Meissen clocks from this date were intended for the royal industry’s principal client and patron, Augustus the Strong, and were to be included in the rooms of the Japanese Palace. According to the 1733 Specification von Porcilan—a listing of the Meissen porcelain ordered for the Japanese Palace, though not necessarily produced—a total of fourteen clocks were ordered. The dating of this compilation—the year of Augustus the Strong’s death—is largely a reflection of the initial orders of the late 1720s. The fourteen clocks were allocated to four rooms in the piano nobile, and it is even known exactly where on the walls the clocks were intended to be placed. Only five clocks of this model appear to have survived by the early 20th century, each with slight variations in the modeling, rendering all of them unique. Of the five, two are in museum collections: in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Hetjens-Museum in Düsseldorf.

Lot 104: Pair of Meissen Augustus Rex yellow-ground baluster vases and covers, ca. 1735, 47 cm and 46.2 cm high.
Estimate $150–250,000.

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A Pair of Meissen Augustus Rex Yellow-Ground Baluster Vases and Covers further distinguishes the offering (estimate $150–250,000). According to the 1733 Specification, ‘Hoch-Gelb-Couleur’, or deep-yellow-color, Meissen porcelain was allocated to so-designated Room 3 of the Japanese Palace, in between rooms for seladon, a shade of green, and dark-blue-ground Meissen porcelains. This large order of yellow-ground porcelain included approximately 267 vases, bottles and beakers, including six garnitures formed of seven vases and two garnitures formed of five vases, among other pieces. A yellow-ground ogee vase decorated in the same manner and formerly in the Royal Collections of Saxony, Dresden, may once have formed a garniture with the present vases. That vase, missing since 1945, was originally installed in the tower room of the Royal Palace. In addition, the somewhat unusual leaf-form cartouches seen on the present vases are recorded on Chinese Kangxi vases, examples of which were in Augustus the Strong’s collection, now in the Porzellansammlung, Dresden.

A very rare Pair of Meissen Augustus Rex Underglaze Blue-Ground Beaker Vases are also in the sale (estimate $70,000–100,000). An unusual feature of the present pair of vases is the use of two alternating different green enamels on the cartouches, the significance of which is uncertain and invites further research. One possibility is that painters worked in their own personalized enamel palettes which could indicate two different hands painted these vases. The same feature is seen on a smaller underglaze blue-ground vase of this form, in the collection of the Porzellansammlung, Dresden.

An extremely rare and probably unique Pair of Meissen Augustus Rex Hexagonal Vases and Covers, likely to be the only pair of Meissen vases of this type recorded in literature, also highlights the September sale (estimate $80,000–120,000). While the 18th-century provenance of these vases remains unknown, the survival of at least three rare red-anchor Chelsea porcelain vases, ca. 1752–56, which appear to be direct copies, suggests a possible English ownership by the mid-18th century. Whilst it cannot be proven with certainty, it seems probable that the Chelsea porcelain factory had access to the present vases. A potential 18th-century owner of the vases is Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, who was British Envoy to the Saxon Court between 1747–49 and 1751–54.

An extremely rare Pair of Meissen Augustus Rex Underglaze-Blue-Ground Beaker Vases round out this spectacular group (estimate $80,000–120,000). After the death of Augustus the Strong, beaker vases of this type were sent to the Dresden residence to be installed in the Turmzimmer. A remarkable early series of photographs show how the Meissen porcelain was displayed in Turmzimmer and shows surviving vases of this form. A powder blue beaker vase of this form and size, which features the same painted floral band at the center, remains in the Porzellansammlung, Dresden, while another is in the Reiss-Museum, Mannheim. The Oppenheimers acquired these vases separately and only owned one by 1927.

Additional highlights from the sale include: a very rare Meissen Augustus Rex Large Seladon-Ground Vase (estimate $50,000–70,000), likely one of five large Meissen porcelain bottle vases in this color that were listed as delivered to the Japanese Palace in December 1737; a unique Meissen Armorial Waste Bowl from the Service Made for Clemens August, Elector of Cologne (estimate $40,000–60,000), a smaller version of which is now in the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Cologne, together with other pieces from the service; and an extremely rare Meissen Famille Verte Goblet (estimate $50,000–70,000), one of only five or six pieces of Meissen porcelain painted in this distinctive style that appear to be recorded.