News
Carving his name in history
It is 300 years since the death of Grinling Gibbons. The tercentenary commemorations got off to a flying start with a reception at New Bond Street, launching an exhibition dedicated to the great carver’s life and work. More than 250 guests gathered to marvel at treasures generously loaned by major public and private collections. Among them were Tim Knox, Director of the Royal Collection, Lady McAlpine, and Lord and Lady Sassoon. Grinling Gibbons Society President and V&A director Tristram Hunt spoke eloquently about what Gibbons and his work means to us today. During the evening, Loyd Grossman announced the winners of the Grinling Gibbons Tercentenary awards for young sculptors in stone and wood, an important initiative to secure the legacy of Gibbons for the future.
Bonhams rolls into Newport
The Audrain Newport Concours & Motor Week may not be the motoring world’s oldest event, but it is fast becoming one of its most prestigious. Since its debut in 2019, this celebration of the history of sportsmanship and motoring has gained worldwide acclaim. Held in Newport, Rhode Island, which hosted the Vanderbilt Cup – the earliest concours and motor race in the US – the event was universally lauded for its fresh approach, the quality of the cars on show and, of course, the exquisite setting. Motor Week 2021 runs from 30 September to 3 October in Newport, and on Friday 1 October Bonhams will stage the Audrain Newport Auction. One of the stars of the show – which neatly reflects the week’s theme of History, Luxury & Sport – will be a concoursrestored 1914 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost London-to-Edinburgh Torpedo. It is one of the 188 that the company built as successors to the original that completed the legendary 800-mile drive in top gear from London to Edinburgh.
Enquiries: Rupert Banner +1 (212) 461 654 rupert.banner@bonhams.com
Asia Week at Bonhams New York
September’s Asia Week in New York begins in style with a late masterpiece, from 1952, by Huang Bonhong, which is in the sale of the Collection of Reverend Richard Fabian on 20 September. The artist – one of the most highly regarded Chinese painters of the 20th century – was already losing his sight to cataracts when he executed Abstract Landscape, yet the work is suffused with astonishing energy and passion. On the same day, the Chinese Paintings and Works of Art sale features a magnificent and rare robin’s-egg glazed hu-shaped two-handled vase from the period of the Qianlong Emperor (1736-1795). September’s Asia Week also has a sale dedicated to Chinese snuff bottles, featuring two important single-owner collections. One of the highlights is a Beijing enamel snuff bottle from the Qianlong imperial studios adorned by a fabulous long-tailed, green-feathered, white-breasted bird standing on a blue rock. The world’s first-known novel was written in 11th-century Japan by a lady of the court, Murasaki Shikibu. Not surprisingly Genji monogatari – ‘The Tale of Genji’ – has over the centuries occupied a central position in Japanese culture. The Japanese and Korean Art sale on 22 September offers an unbroken sequence of illustrations by artists of the Tosa School for chapters 11-22 of Genji monogatari. The illustrations were executed on the cusp of the 16th and 17th centuries, when admiration for the novel was at its height. These smallscale illustrations – a speciality of Tosa School painters – use mineral pigments and gold from the Japanese tradition in combination with ink-line details derived from Chinese painting. NEWS The Indian, Himalayan and South-east Asia Art sale offers a wonderful gilt bronze figure from the mid-15th century, during the Ming dynasty. This important and unusually large example of mid-15th-century Chinese metalwork is focused on Yamantaka Vajrabhairava, who was one of the most powerful tantric deities in Tibetan Buddhism. Early Ming courts were known for their patronage of Tibetan Buddhism and largescale gilt bronze sculptures like this one were most likely created for Tibetan Buddhist temples within China. Chinese emperors had long promoted themselves as the earthly manifestations of Manjushri – the Great Bodhisattva of Wisdom – and these sculptural representations of Vajrabhairava, Manjushri’s wrathful form, enforced that imperial mandate.
Enquiries: asian.us@bonhams.com
+1 415 503 3358
The rite stuff
The Swahili dance lelemana is a form of ngoma – a performance of music, poetry and dancing that is used to mark important life events. Performed by women, usually at rites of passage such as weddings, the dance can take several hours to complete. On her first visit to Zanzibar in 1939, the South African painter Irma Stern witnessed a lelemana and recorded her impression of it in an article she illustrated with a handful of sketches. When she returned to the island in 1945, the artist revisited the subject. The result was Lelemana Dance, which is offered with an estimate of £700,000- 1,000,000 in the Modern and Contemporary African Art sale in London this October. This unconventional painting conveys the swirling, graceful, apparently ceaseless motion of the women, clothed in the distinctive costumes that the dance required, their heads decorated with golden rings and bunches of flowers. In the faces of the dancers, Stern captures the look of rapture she once described as “an entranced expression, as if they were deep in religious thought”. The painting is framed in wood from antique Zanzibar doors which Stern used as a perfect complement to her work.
Enquiries: Giles Peppiatt +44 (0) 20 7468 8355 giles.peppiatt@bonhams.com
Art with a punch
The word ‘iconic’ is much overused, but when it comes to Muhammed Ali it is the perfect fit. Olympic Gold medallist, three times heavyweight boxing champion of the world and outspoken champion of civil rights, Ali was a hero and role model to millions of people across the globe. It is less well known, perhaps, that from childhood he loved to paint and draw. In 1968, Ali produced a series of works for Avant Garde magazine and, in 1977, he was persuaded by gallerist Rodney Hilton Brown to pick up his brushes again. The subjects of his paintings were the issues that concerned him most – among them boxing, his Muslim faith and the plight of T the underprivileged. The Sports Memorabilia sale in Los Angeles in October will offer the largest collection of his original work ever to come to auction. They pictures are from Rodney Hilton Brown’s personal collection and include the original of Let My People Go – a version of which is on permanent display in the UN headquarters in New York – and the original of Sting Like a Bee – a reference to one of Ali’s most-quoted sayings. He drew the work on the set of the TV mini-series Freedom Road, in which Ali played an ex-slave who overcomes all the odds to become a US senator.
Enquiries: Helen Hall +1 323 436 5460 helen.hall@bonhams.com
Pride of lions
The shocking statistic that African lions in the wild have declined by 50 per cent over the past 25 years is the catalyst for a new initiative to draw attention to their plight. The Tusk Lion Trail, organised by the British conservation charity Tusk (its patron is Prince William), hit the streets of London and other major world cities on World Lion Day, 10 August, and runs until the end of September. Internationally famous figures such as Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood; wildlife photographer David Yarrow; artists Ian Davenport, Gavin Turk and David Mach, and American fashion designer Donna Karan have crafted more than 45 life sized lion sculptures. These will be installed around London, Edinburgh and Bristol, as well as in the US (the Hamptons and New York), Sydney, Wellington and Nairobi. When the trail comes to an end, the UK lions will be sold at a charity auction at Bonhams on 9 November to raise funds for Tusk’s vital and inspiring work.
Enquiries: Robin Hereford +44 (0) 20 7468 8229 robin.hereford@bonhams.com
Finest China
This autumn, the famous Museum Prinsenhof in Delft is staging an exhibition examining, with more than 120 objects, the influence of the Chinese city Jingdezhen as the ceramics capital of the world. It will take the visitor on a journey from the earliest days of production in the 10th century, through the fabled Ming dynasty and the imperial court of the 19th century, right up to the present day. To coincide with the exhibition, Bonhams Global Head of Asian Art, Asaph Hyman, and Chinese Art departmental director, Benedetta Mottino, will offer free valuations on Chinese porcelain and other objects of Chinese art at the museum on Sunday 19 September.
Enquiries: Koen Samson +31 20 670 9701 koen.samson@bonhams.com
It’s a wrap
In 1962, when the Bulgarian artist Christo and his French wife Jeanne-Claude were living in a small room near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, they had an impossible dream – to wrap the French monument in fabric. In 2017, authorisation was finally granted, and now their vision will become a reality, even though neither Christo nor Jeanne-Claude are alive to see it. For many years, Calixte Stamp assisted them on their projects, and she filled her home in the Hamptons with beautiful objects and artworks, many of them treasured memories of her time with Christo. On 30 September, these are to be offered in New York in the sale Wrap It Up: The Legacy of Christo and JeanneClaude. Included are many detailed images of the projects they worked on, together with the signed Wrapped Bouquet of Roses from 1993
Enquiries: Deborah Ripley +1 917 618 3985 deborah.ripley@bonhams.com
Life in the country
The British landscape from Land’s End to John O’Groats has inspired generations of artists – writers, poets, composers and, perhaps above all, painters and sculptors. Constable, Gainsborough and Hockney, among many others, have each defined the countryside for their own age. A new sale in Knightsbridge in November – British Country Life – will explore all that’s wonderful about the British countryside. Many of the works are being sourced by Bonhams’ regional offices – demonstrating the company’s national reach – and will include not just paintings and works of art, but also photography, prints, books, ceramics, silver and jewellery. This means a charming brooch celebrating that much-loved Beatrix Potter creation, Jemima Puddleduck, can rub shoulders with Elizabeth Frink’s Bird and the Paul Nash landscape Wood on the Downs.
Enquiries: Charles Lanning +44 (0) 1392 425 264 charles.lanning@bonhams.com
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