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Bruno Vinciguerra, Catherine Yaiche and Arnaud Cornette de Saint Cyr

Bruno Vinciguerra, Catherine Yaiche and Arnaud Cornette de Saint Cyr

Opening story

Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr was launched in style at the Paris headquarters in Avenue Hoche. The salerooms of the 19th-century hôtel particulier were packed with the art world who had flocked to see the preview of The Rousset Collection and the tour of the paintings from the CoBrA group. The following week, the 341-lot Rousset Collection sold in a white glove sale for €14.5m. A triumphant start – and result!

Signed, sealed, delivered

The Victorian cameo engraver Wilhelm Schmidt (1845-1938) rarely signed his work, which makes the magnificent signed Bust of Mars, offered in the London Jewel sale in New Bond Street in December, particularly special. Carved from a single piece of Australian boulder opal, it depicts Mars in an Ajax helmet surmounted by a vulture, mounted on a varicoloured gem-set pedestal, each face set with cameos in labradorite and sardonyx. In 1874, Schmidt had invented a challenging new technique of carving through the layers of precious opal to the matrix material beneath. This enabled him to create striking three-dimensional sculptures through the contrasting layers. (Opals are perilous to carve: with an unusually high water-content, they can crack if the temperature fluctuates or if handled by unskilled hands.) Schmidt’s exquisite opal cameos, unsigned and nearly always unattributed, were sold to leading retailers of the day such as John Brodgen, Tiffany & Co, Child & Child, Giuliano and Marcus & Co, who mounted them into fashionable jewels. This work, which Schmidt recalled in a letter of reminiscences in 1926 as one of his most important, can surely be considered his magnum opus.

Modern times

Mai Trung Thu (1906-1980), Vu Cao Dam (1908-2000) and Le Pho (1907-2001) – known as the ‘Vietnamese Art Trio of Paris’ – had much in common. Pioneers of the modern art movement in Vietnam, all three studied at the Indochina School of Fine Arts in colonial Hanoi in the early 20th century. There they absorbed Western techniques and theories of art, but also experimented with Vietnamese traditional media to create art closely connected to their local culture and aesthetics. All three of them began to exhibit in Paris and elsewhere from the 1930s, before eventually leaving Vietnam to build new lives overseas. Although at first their work appealed mostly to Western audiences, it has now gained global recognition, and it is strongly represented in the Southeast Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale in Hong Kong in December. Mai Trung Thu’s La Chanteuse IV from the 1940s, painted on silk, reflects his passion for music; Still Life by Le Pho uses a colourful palette, with hazy pale-yellow light rendered in soft feathered brushwork; and Untitled (Portrait) by Vu Cao Dam epitomises his strong connection with his homeland, which shaped his artistic vision despite war and geopolitical upheaval.

American power, Italian style

The late Californian car collector John White was destined for a life with automobiles. Born to a car-dealing family, John was hooked at an early age, assembling an immaculately cared-for collection of hundreds of model cars from around the world while he was still a child. He then graduated from models to the real thing as an adult. Three very rare mid-20th-century Chrysler Ghia show cars from John’s Ramshead Collection – named after a bar in Bermuda – add a distinct touch of la dolce vita to the annual Scottsdale Auction in Arizona in late January. Leading them is a unique 1957 Chrysler Ghia Super Dart 400 which was displayed at that year’s Torino and New York motor shows. Its futuristic design became the trademark style of Italian coachwork specialist Ghia. John’s 1962 Chrysler L6.4, largely hand-built in Ghia’s Carrozzeria in Turin, is one of 17 survivors of just 26 automobiles of the model, which was popular with Rat Pack stalwarts Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Finally, the 1954 Chrysler Ghia GS-1 Coupé – its sleek lines complemented by striking turquoise over tan livery – was inspired by Virgil Exner, the influential designer famous for his revolutionary, much-copied ‘Forward Look’ streamlined approach for Chrysler.

Andy and Edvard

A stone’s throw from Andy Warhol’s final Factory on Madison Avenue stood the Galleri Bellman. In 1982, an Edvard Munch retrospective there inspired one of Warhol’s most personal and moving series of works, After Munch. Warhol – who had been captivated by the Norwegian master’s work on a trip to Oslo in 1973 – visited the show several times, and the following year Galleri Bellman invited him to create paintings based on a selection of Munch’s work. Warhol chose The Scream and Eva Mudocci, along with two seminal lithographs from 1895, Madonna and Self-Portrait, which he portrayed side by side on a single canvas. Work on a subsequent series of screenprints based on the paintings – there were to have been 60 of each one – ground to a halt when the gallery ran into difficulties with only a handful completed. One of these – Madonna and Self-Portrait with Skeleton’s Arm (after Munch) – is offered in London’s Prints and Multiples Sale in December. Dating from 1984, the work is bathed in a striking red and is one of a small number – exactly how many is not known – of unique coloured variants.

Art cubed

More than 60 internationally renowned artists have come together to support the fourth edition of Cure3 – the critically acclaimed selling exhibition to raise awareness and funds for curative Parkinson’s research. For the show, original artworks are created in or on 20cm³ Perspex boxes, with highlights this year including Tracey Emin – taking part for the first time – Ron Arad, Polly Morgan and Conrad Shawcross. In a new departure, a number of artists – among them, Sir Frank Bowling – will exhibit new two-dimensional works, measuring 20cm by 20cm. Prices range from £1,000 to more than £60,000. Since its first edition in 2017, Cure³ has raised more than £1.2 million. This year’s exhibition runs 13-17 January, at Bonhams New Bond Street.

Sir Frank Bowling

Score draw

It is hard to believe, but the great cartoonist, illustrator and author Quentin Blake celebrates his 90th birthday this December. Known to generations of children (and their parents) for his illustrations for Roald Dahl, Blake has worked on more than 300 other titles – dozens of which he wrote himself. He is marking the occasion with the sale: Quentin Blake at 90: A Birthday Auction in Support of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration. The centre, part of the University of the Creative Arts, offers high-quality flexible higher education via distance learning, helping countless people who missed the chance to study to develop their talents. The sale, which runs online-only 2-16 December, will offer some 140 lots. As suggested by Quentin, it ends at midday on the day he turns 90. Among the many delights is the charmingly witty Acrobatics on a Scooter, with other subjects including dragons, ducks and performing dogs.

A good fort

Grade I-listed Ripley Castle in North Yorkshire is steeped in history. Home to the Ingleby family for centuries, it has seen its fair share of triumphs and a few disasters. Sir William Ingleby, for example, backed the wrong horse in the English Civil War. After the rout of the Royalist Army at Marston Moor, he fled to the safety of Ripley only for Oliver Cromwell to turn up and billet himself and his men at the castle. Poor Sir William, who had doubtless been looking forward to a night in his own bed, was forced to spend several uncomfortable and anxious hours hiding in the priest hole. His father – also Sir William – had found himself caught up in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when he allowed his nephew Robert Wintour and his fellow conspirators to gather at Ripley. Ingleby was exonerated; Wintour hanged, drawn and quartered. (Appropriately, the castle was used as a location for the 2017 BBC television drama Gunpowder.) An exceptional table from Ripley Castle, with a magnificent Derbyshire Blue John and specimen stone top, features in the Fine Decorative Arts sale in London at the end of November.

Shingai Shoniwa with Lorraine Chase

Shingai Shoniwa with Lorraine Chase

Pop (x Culture) star

Bonhams hosted a special event with the musician Shingai Shoniwa to celebrate the Pop x Culture sale at New Bond Street in October. Making quite the entrance, the former the Noisettes frontwoman burst into the saleroom singing some of her biggest hits – and was met with the sort of fervour more often seen at a festival. The crowd danced and drank cocktails, before exploring the preview, which included stage costumes worn by Shingai throughout her stellar career. The night ended with Shingai inviting the crowd to an afterparty at Sketch, where celebrations continued late into the night.

What happened next...

Rock star

Ernie Barnes’ Solid Rock Congregation (1993) achieved $1,620,375 at Bonhams New York in a single-lot auction in September.

Lady fortune

Foujita’s wistful portrait of Jacqueline Barsotti-Goddard, Nu assis, sold in October at the Impressionist & Modern Art auction at New Bond Street for £1,602,300.

Total Triumph

Over two days in October at Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr, all 341 lots of the Rousset Collection of Asian Art were sold for €14,500,000.