Swann Galleries News

Fall seems the appropriate time to examine James Jacques Tissot's luminous 1878 etching and drypoint titled Octobre.

Tissot (1836-1902) was a successful French society artist who built his career on portraying fashionable women and the Victorian and Belle Époque aesthetics of his time. The child of Catholic textile merchants, he moved to Paris from his native Nantes to study art in 1856 and trained with protégés of Ingres: Louis Lamothe and Hippolyte Flandrin. He also met Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas and James A.M. Whistler, with whom he maintained ties throughout his life. Tissot was exiled to London in 1871 after his involvement with the Paris Commune in the Franco-Prussian War. In London, his portraits of woman and 19th-century life quickly gained popularity and he became one of the most successful, renowned artists of his day. Tissot took inspiration from many of Whistler's etchings and paintings, and often borrowed from the same bank of subjects (like views of the Thames).

Tissot made his first etchings while studying in Paris in the 1860s and revisited the medium again in 1875-1885. As a printmaker, Tissot primarily reproduced his own paintings (rather than sell the reproductive rights to his work to publishers and printers). The market for reproductive prints in England was exceedingly strong during this time and Tissot found the sale of his etchings a highly lucrative segment of his artistic output. Throughout the production of his prints he maintained a consistent approach to etching that employed meticulous detail and rich tonality resulting in a cohesive, focused oeuvre.

The etching Octobre is based on the same-title painting from 1877, now in the Montreal Museum of Art, and follows many of the standard influences in Tissot's work from the 1870s--including Japanese prints and photography. More specifically, the composition with a single full figure is reminiscent of Japanese Ukiyo-e paintings of the Kaigetsudo School of the early 18th century. Tissot frequently used photography to provide details that lent an immediacy to some of his compositions.

The woman depicted is young Irish divorcée Mrs. Kathleen Newton, Tissot's frequent model and companion. The two met in 1875 and from 1876 until her death from consumption in 1882 they lived together in Tissot's home in St. John's Wood. Tissot would describe these years as the happiest of his life. After Newton's death, Tissot moved back to Paris and began producing artwork focused on religious subjects and spent the last two years of his life in an abbey in Bouillon, France.

For many years we have been gratified to hear from our clients and friends how easy to use and logically designed the Swann website is. But as technology changed it became clear that we would have to update its functionality and design. In building the new site, we made ease of use and simplicity our goal.

All information can be now accessed using the top navigation menu, and links to the same content are available at the bottom of every page.

We've also added some new features. By creating an account, you can set keyword alerts that will search upcoming catalogues for artist names or book titles, and send you an email with a link to matching lots. You can also opt to receive email blasts from our departments, so you never miss a sale or preview event.

Use the Search field at the top of any page to find lots in our catalogues, and then sort results by upcoming or past sales. You can also sort by sale date, estimate, price realized or department.

Getting in touch with our specialists is now easier than ever. You will find headshots and bios for each of them on our Department pages and within our online catalogues, and phone numbers and email addresses are also right there.

If you're interested in purchasing catalogues for our upcoming sales, you'll find a simple, secure ordering interface.

And, following a sale, prices realized are available with buyer's premium or without, aka the hammer price.

We hope you find these additions to be an improvement and as always we welcome your feedback.

Murder and mayhem have long fascinated photographers and film aficionados, and are also inextricably linked with collectors of vernacular photography. But, how did the mugshot become a fine-art collectible? For New York-based collector and curator Mark Michaelson the answer is personal. In an interview with a New York Daily News reporter he noted, “I’m looking for photos that move me for whatever reason. From things that are terribly funny to things that are terribly tragic.”

Spread from a Sacramento mugshot album related to the International Workers of the World, 1918-19.
Estimate $4,000 to $6,000. At auction October 17.

Over the past 20 years, Michaelson has assembled an amazing archive of more than 10,000 mugshots and crime photographs. Trained as a graphic designer, he views these images with a sensibility that draws on both aesthetic and historical influences. The Michaelson lots in Swann’s October 17th Photographs & Photobooks auction feature images of American men and women whose crimes include running numbers to larceny to homicide to “incendiary” labor organizers. The portraits depict a range of socioeconomic types spanning the 1900s-1920s, from the bruised and handsome con man to the dapper, but scary hardened criminal. Interestingly, women figure prominently, as do a host of ethnic figures. While some face the camera with aplomb and guile, the posture of those arrested for petty crimes conveys shame and fear.

Two pages from a mugshot album containing nearly 1500 entries from across the United States, 1905-20.
Estimate $10,000 to $20,000. At auction October 17.

Images of criminals are undoubtedly titillating, but the backstories also reflect documentary truths that will give the viewer pause. For example, Michaelson collected with an awareness of the gray line between purported criminal activity and social activism. The albums include pictures of “wobblies,” members of the International Workers of the World – union organizers – who were confronted and battered by local thugs hired by anti-union businessmen in the northwest. Interestingly, the labor protestors were the ones arrested!

Michaelson is the subject of the forthcoming documentary film, "American Mugshot," which will be released this fall. He co-authored the now out-of-print book, Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots (Stedl, 2009), in conjunction with an exhibition of select pictures from his collection at the Steven Kasher Gallery. Mark's epic archive, which is accessible on his Flickr stream, has connected him with artists and aficionados around the globe.

For more information, check out the article about Mark, written by Christine Roberts, which appeared in The New York Daily News in June 2012:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/american-mugshot-crime-photos-art-form-article-1.1098029

Daile Kaplan, Swann Vice President and Director of Photographs, shares her thoughts on the cover image for the October 17 auction of Fine Photographs & Photobooks.

When Aaron Siskind transitioned from social documentary to abstract photography, he did so with the full recognition that his friend, the New York painter Franz Kline, had inspired him. Although non-objective photography had been introduced decades earlier, Siskind’s remarkable study Jerome, Arizona (1949) reflects a new visual language associated with the then emerging idiom of Abstract Expressionism. Siskind elevates a quotidian scene of peeling paint into an artistic study of harmonious tonality.

In this particular instance, a painter influenced an artist-photographer, but the reverse also held true. For example, Willem de Kooning’s “Woman” paintings, which were made from 1948 through the early 1950s, actually incorporated details of Siskind’s photographs. A decade later, Kline created an artwork in honor of his friend, which he titled Siskind (1958). Shortly after, Siskind produced a series of images that he titled Homage to Franz Kline.

It’s easy to fall in love with a photograph without knowing the backstory. But, having that information may result in a greater appreciation of the picture. Jerome, Arizona reinforces the link between photography and painting, realism and personal expression while also demonstrating the importance of community and friendship.

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Nigel Freeman and Otto Neals, ValleyArts Photo by Dawan Alford

Anyone interested in contemporary African-American art will want to check out the growing artist community of Orange, NJ, where, on October 12, Swann's own Nigel Freeman will join Brooklyn artist Otto Neals for a gallery talk at the ValleyArts Firehouse Gallery. The public is invited to what promises to be a lively discussion of Neals's work, and no RSVP is required.

Neals's show, Otto Neals: An American Artist, opened the second season of the ValleyArts Firehouse Gallery on Sept. 19 and will continue through Sunday, Oct. 20. Neals is a New York native acclaimed for his paintings, prints and sculpture that capture life in America across several generations.

Firehouse Gallery is located at 580 Forest Street, Orange NJ 07050. For more information please visit their website.

We are very pleased to post this write-up by Francesca Altamura, who started an internship with the Photographs department this summer. Francesca has spent time curating and contributing to the department's Tumblr, Photophilia, and wrote this nod to Weegee in tandem with several other photographs of women we've seen on Tumblr recently:

Weegee, Untitled (Bettie Page being photographed), silver print, circa 1955.
Sold in an October 18, 2011 auction of Fine Photographs.

This is not the typical celebrity portrait known to the everyday magazine reader. Instead, this image presents the subjective portrait style of American photographer Weegee, also known as Arthur Fellig (1899-1968), the "satirical snapshot" photographer. In Untitled (Bettie Page being photographed), 1955, Weegee ironically captures the faces of the paparazzi themselves, turning them into the objectified focus of his image, rather than fixating on Bettie Page as she is captured by their numerous camera lenses.

This photograph is not in any way conventionally framed, as Page, the American model best known for her 1950s pinup photographs, is seen modeling as a slew of onlookers photograph her scantily clad self. Page, with strictly her backside showing, takes up only half of the photographic frame, while the other half intimately captures the ogling eyes and hungry camera lenses of the male paparazzi.

Who is Weegee's camera lens really directed at? The numerous photographers gawking at Page, or the faceless Page herself? Weegee's image encapsulates a vernacular playfulness through his atypical compositional framing, turning the viewer's attention to the usually unphotographed paparazzo instead of the usually photographed celebrity.

The image chosen for the cover of Swann's upcoming sale Point of Departure: Postwar African-American Fine Art is a circa 1957 Untitled oil on canvas by Norman Lewis. The previously unrecorded painting was acquired directly from the artist by a young woman who took private art lessons from Lewis in Harlem. The two remained life-long friends, even after she moved to Chicago, and upon visiting Lewis in New York in the late 1950s, she acquired this large painting from his studio.

It is not only an exceptional example of Norman Lewis's work, but an exciting discovery, as it is one of the most significant 1950s calligraphic figure paintings by Norman Lewis that we have seen, and it has never been publicly exhibited.

Norman Lewis gained national recognition by the mid 1950s, having had a series of well-received solo exhibitions at the Marian Willard Gallery in New York. His famous Migrating Birds, 1953, won the Carnegie International Award in Painting in 1955, making him the first African-American artist to receive this prestigious prize. In 1956, Lewis was selected to represent the United States in American Artists Paint the City, an exhibition of 46 works by 36 artists in the American pavilion during the 28th Venice Biennale. Lewis joined fellow Willard Gallery artists Lyonel Feininger and Mark Tobey; he and Jacob Lawrence were the only African-American artists included. He showed at the Willard Galley again in February of 1957, his sixth solo exhibition there since 1949, then spent several months traveling to France, Italy, Spain and North Africa.

In this painting, the artist continues his investigation of the "ritual" calligraphic figures that he began as early as 1950, while simultaneously shifting toward color field painting. The intense blue canvas reveals both fiery and cool undertones, while simultaneously obscuring and revealing a large, dense composition of figures. The owner's family recalls Lewis's inspiration was from a Moroccan experience; Lewis described the scene of a city after sunset, when little charcoal fires were lit and everyone prepared the evening meal. This work is similar in its multitude of figures to other large promenade paintings like Carnival, circa 1957, collection of the late Albert Murray, and Untitled (Tournament), late 1950s, Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Nebraska. However, this work's bright palette, detail and clarity distinguishe it from other paintings of the period. Through the 1950s, Lewis navigated between Abstract Expressionism and elements of figuration in his studio. This canvas reveals his continued attention to the figure in his painting--with wonderfully expressive characterizations, and suggests a greater involvement of the artist in the balancing act between his painting dualities. The artist wrote about the diverse forces that shaped his work in a forward to his 1954 exhibition:

"Art is to me the expression of unconscious experiences common to all men, which have been strained through the artist's own peculiar associations and use of his medium. In this sense, it becomes an activity of discovery, emotional, intellectual and technical, not only for the artist, but for those who view his work."

Deborah Rogal, Senior Specialist in Swann's Photographs Department, contributed this post.

Recently I was lucky enough to visit New York City’s Center for Alternative Photography to have my tintype portrait made. The days leading up to the sitting felt a little bit like the days leading up to picture day in elementary school. I wondered what I would wear (the answer to that turned out to be a coral dress), how I would style my hair (straight with a little wave), even how I would choose to smile (just a little), knowing that I only had one opportunity to create a picture that would last forever. I thought a lot about the men and women who have stared back at me from tintypes taken well over 100 years ago and wondered what went through their minds before sitting down to pose for a camera. My own nervousness must have paled in comparison to theirs as they composed what might have been the only picture of themselves they would ever own.

The photographer at CAP, Bonnie, was generous and allowed me to watch the process, which differs very little from the original 19th-century one. She coated and prepared the plate for exposure, and then took it from the darkroom to the studio, where she posed me on a small stool. The camera sat very close to my face (I had asked for a close, tight shot), and I rested the back of my head against a metal bar to keep it still. The exposure time is longer than what we’re used to (about three seconds), but still relatively short compared to the exposure originally made (the benefit of modern studio lights). After she took the picture, Bonnie and I went back into the darkroom to process the plate. We both leaned over a small tray and watched, breathlessly, as my face appeared on the plate. Even with the benefit of my own photographic expertise, watching the image emerge felt like watching real-life magic. Finally, Bonnie washed and varnished the plate. I carried it out of the studio with me.

In just 175 years our relationship with the way we look has completely changed. We have grown used to promoting ourselves on Facebook, on Instagram, with filters, cropping and editing. But in the intimate, sun-filled studio at CAP, I had very few opportunities to produce the edited version of myself. For a moment, I felt the thrill of staring into a camera’s lens, and knowing that the light on me was being imprinted onto a slim piece of metal sitting just a couple of feet away. What I now own is a precious object. It represents me in a new and unexpected way. And I watched it come to be.

On Saturday, October 19, Daile Kaplan, Director of Swann's Photographs & Photobooks Department, will serve as auctioneer for the 2013 Benefit Gala at the Center for Photography at Woodstock.

The Gala will honor Sandra S. Phillips of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for her outstanding dedication and service to the field of photography.

Among the featured items in the auction is Bruce Davidson's Wales, 1967, silver print.

The benefit auction--now in its 35th year--offers a selection of contemporary and classic images by photographers who have received artist residencies with CPW, exhibited in their galleries, benefitted from their Photographer's Fellowship Fund or taught workshops there.

Proceeds will help support the Center for Photography at Woodstock's 2013-2014 programs and services.

To view the items up for auction, click here. To purchase tickets to attend the Gala or order a copy of the 2013 catalog, click here.

Opening this weekend at The Hampton University Museum is TheDianne Whitfield-Locke & Carnell Locke Collection: Building on Tradition. The exhibition, featuring more than 60 works of art collected by the couple, is on view through May 10, 2014.

The works in the exhibition represent only a small portion of the Lockes' collection, which exceeds 1100 pieces, and reflects the couple's desire to collect the best and most promising artists.

Curated by Vanessa Thaxton-Ward, Ph.D. and Shirley Woodson-Reid, the show features works by 19th-century artists including Henry Ossawa Tanner, Robert S. Duncanson and Grafton Tyler Brown. Master artists from the Harlem Renaissance include Aaron Douglas, Palmer Hayden, William H. Johnson and Jacob Lawrence.

Building on that tradition are works from artists such as Benny Andrews, Gwendolyn Knight, Faith Ringgold, and Richard Hunt. And, reflecting the Lockes' move toward collecting contemporary are, are pieces by Betye Saar, Hughie Lee-Smith and James Phillips.

Swann's Director of African-American Fine Art, Nigel Freeman, sits on the advisory board of The Hampton University Museum--the oldest African American museum in the United States.

This is the first in a series of posts about Swann's upcoming November 5 auction titled The Armory Show at 100: America's Introduction to Modern Art.

The following essay by Todd Weyman, Swann's Director of Prints & Drawings, comes from the catalogue, which is filled with fascinating write-ups on the historic show exhibited at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, across 25th Street from Swann Galleries. To read all of the catalogue notes, you may view the 3D catalogue.

Few New Yorkers today, let alone the throngs of tourists who visit the Madison Square Park area daily, are likely aware of the momentous exhibition that took place 100 years ago just blocks away at the nondescript 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue and 25th Street. This show, known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, or colloquially as the Armory Show, ran in New York from February 15 to March 15, 1913 (and then went on to Chicago and Boston). I am reminded of the Armory Show nearly every workday, as I look out my office window across 25th Street at the Armory that held the exhibition. Save for a small plaque signaling the historical significance of the exhibition at the Lexington Avenue entrance, there is no other indication of the watershed moment in 1913 that changed the way Americans--and the world--viewed what came to be known as the first modern art of the era.

Those who are familiar with the Armory Show, perhaps through college art history courses or various museum exhibitions, are probably aware of the controversy played up by the press at the time, which was focused primarily on a handful of works by then "subversive" (and now significantly accepted, if not revered) artists Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne, and the artistic movements they belonged to: Cubism, Fauvism and Post Impressionism. These artists represented a major shift in style from the academic, Victorian-tinged art that most Americans were used to seeing, and the press's hostility toward these modern art movements stirred up controversy with sensational effect. Had it not been for the widespread distaste for the Armory Show trumpeted by the press, it might not have made the impact that it did on many viewers--80,000 of whom visited the show during its month-long run in New York alone (supporting the dictum that there is no such thing as bad publicity).

Echoing the sentiment of the time, artist and outspoken critic Kenyon Cox contributed a major article on the Armory Show to Harper's Weekly (the USA Today of the era) in which he advised the public against finding any value in the modern art at the show. "If your stomach revolts against the rubbish it is because it is not fit for human food" he wrote. "Let no man persuade you to stuff yourself with it." What gets lost in the often remembered controversy surrounding the show, however, is the herculean task accomplished by its organizers to bring together more than 1300 works of art from across Europe and the United States in a year. They mounted the exhibition in just months and then packed it all up and relaunched the show in two subsequent cities—all of this in an age before computers and with only the most basic means of electronic communication.

Swann has been planning the auction to celebrate the centennial of the Armory Show for well over a year, and in the shadow of the Armory building, where Swann has been located for decades, we are well aware of the hallowed street we share with this once prominent artistic space in New York. While it might have often felt like a massive task, we benefited from all the technological advantages of our day and, of course, the gift of hindsight.

As the auction and accompanying catalogue have come together over the year, I am thankful to the public institutions in and around New York that have mounted centennial exhibitions themselves in honor of the Armory Show, in particular (and chronological order) the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York (Modernizing America: Artists of the Armory Show, December 8, 2012-April 14, 2013); the Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey (The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory Show, 1913, February 17, 2013-June 16, 2013); the International Print Center New York (1913 Armory Show Revisited: The Artists and their Prints, March 23, 2013-May 23, 2013); and the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library (The Armory Show at 100: Modern Art and Revolution, October 11, 2013-February 23, 2014). These exhibitions were the models and foundations upon which we built our centennial tribute to the original exhibition, a first for any auction house.


	Francisco Goya Y Lucientes, Pintor, aquatint		and etching, 1799, from Los Caprichos

Francisco José de Goya (1746-1828) was included in the Armory Show as the first artist in the organizers' timeline of modern art. The chronology of modern art devised by Arthur B. Davies--president of the Armory Show exhibition committee, aka the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS)--grouped Goya with Ingres, Delacroix and Courbet as a forerunner of modern art.

Goya's inventive, visceral and dark compositions captured the social and political strife of contemporary Spanish life in the wake of the Age of Enlightenment and offered a glimpse into future artistic trends. His subject matter--including the carnage of war, witchcraft and superstition, troubadours and candid scenes of daily life--deeply influenced the Romantic and Realist schools that emerged in France and created an artistic tradition in Spain that would later be revisited by Manet, Picasso and Dalí, among others.

The only work by Goya in the Armory Show was a miniature painting on ivory of a Monk Talking to an Old Woman, a rather grotesque pair, which is now at the Princeton University Art Museum. Goya painted this work at the end of his career in 1824-25, after he left Spain to spend his final years in Bordeaux.

From a group of six etchings with aquatint and drypoint executed in
Bordeaux between 1824 and 1828

The inclusion of a miniature painting by Goya may seem a bit contrived, but even more surprising was the fact that this very small work was installed in the main entry gallery along with a hodgepodge of American and European decorative arts, paintings and sculpture. Goya’s name was rarely cited in the literature accompanying the Armory Show and, unlike Ingres, Delacroix and Courbet, he was not installed at the "beginning" of any particular movement, but stood alone, separate from a specific line of progeny. It seems that Goya was a necessary component in the canon of modern art, however the AAPS failed to procure a noteworthy example of his work. The Goya miniature was lent to the exhibition by AAPS member and collector John Quinn, a New York lawyer who also purchased between $5,000 and $6,000 worth of art in the Armory Show (approximately $118,000 to $141,000 today).

Édouard Manet's 1863-67 aquatint Au Prado II shows Goya's influence on the artist.

In the 19th century, Goya’s inventive genius was disseminated mostly through series of his etchings and lithographs, published both during his lifetime (e.g. Los Caprichos and La Tauromaquia) and posthumously (Los Desastres de la Guerra in 1863 and Los Proverbios in 1864). The Goya prints in Swann's sale arguably represent the aspect of the artist's oeuvre that was most influential to later French Realists and Impressionists as they were far more accessible than his paintings. While Eugène Delacroix was an avid collector of Goya’s prints, for example, his style and technique were also emulated by equally influential French artists such as Édouard Manet.

Among the visually appealing works in tomorrow's auction of Art, Press & Illustrated Books is a fascinating pedagogical workbook in the manner of Kindergarten founder Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel's early education classroom exercises.

Kindergarten Work is an accordion-folded book with 55 pages of paper shape, color and formation exercises comprising 16 string-sewn shapes, 14 woven paper designs and 25 origami folds and cut pattern designs. Each of these is mounted to stiff board and most are signed by the owner/creator/teacher Betsy Ranken Doane.

Books such as this--and similarly designed educational blocks created Fröbel--were studied in early childhood by architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies Van Der Rohe.

Lot 20 in Swann's Armory Show at 100 auction is Whistler's
1889-90 lithograph, The Little Nude Model, Reading.

There were four paintings by James A.M. Whistler (1834-1903) in the Armory Show; all of which were figural works exhibited in Gallery P among significant French 19th century paintings. The Armory Show organizers considered Whistler an Old Master of American art whose work was noteworthy in the chronology of Modern Art. His works were exhibited alongside Americans artists Albert Pinkham Ryder, Theodore Robinson and John H. Twachtman. According to an interview with Marcel Duchamp in 1963, expats Whistler and John Singer Sargent (who was not included in the Armory Show) were the only American artists well known in Paris in 1913.

In his article on the American section of the Armory Show, William Glackens, Ashcan artist and AAPS chairman of the Committee on Domestic Exhibits, wrote, "The Impressionists introduced the light of life into our art. The influence of Whistler was a reaction against that light. His color had proved particularly attractive to students, to the young painters, perhaps because it is a veil behind which to hide inefficient drawing or because it makes good drawing easier. A knowledge of color is far more difficult to acquire than a knowledge of drawing, though either of these may be acquired by practice." One could argue that Whistler’s paintings do not exhibit his draughtsmanship skills, but his prints certainly reveal his aptitude for drawing coupled with his masterful application of tonality, which together create an atmospheric quality not altogether different from the distant stillness of his paintings.

Whistler was a prolific and acclaimed printmaker widely recognized throughout his lifetime for the more than 490 etchings and nearly 180 lithographs he created and published. While his lithographs were generally issued in smaller editions and became more desirable after his death, his contribution to the medium is considered incredibly significant to the history of printmaking.

Lot 14 is an example of Whistler's early etchings, Street at Saverne, 1858.

Whistler’s first etchings date from late-1850s Paris, where he was determined to pursue an artistic career after his unsuccessful collegiate years at West Point, the United States Military Academy. These early works, including lot 14 in our November 5 Armory Show at 100 auction, reveal a direct appreciation of old master etchings, notably the prints of Rembrandt, which Whistler was familiar with via the renowned collection of his brother-in-law and fellow printmaker Francis Seymour Haden. After a flurry of etchings in the 1860s and 1870s that focused primarily on views of London's Thames River, Whistler embarked on what is arguably his best known series of etchings: views of Venice from around 1879-80.

Lot 17, The Fishing Boat, etching and drypoint, 1879-80,
is an example from Whistler's Twenty-Six Etchings

In July 1879, the Fine Art Society of London commissioned Whistler to go to Venice and return by year's end with a set of 12 etched plates. Whistler eagerly accepted the commission, which gave him an opportunity to recoup losses from his libel suit against art critic John Ruskin, and his overspending on the design of his "White House" in Chelsea, London (the house and contents had to be auctioned after he declared bankruptcy in 1879). Whistler and his then model and mistress, Maud Franklin, arrived in Venice in September 1879 and remained there until November 1880. During this incredibly productive time he created far more than the dozen etchings stipulated by the commission, returning from Venice with more than 50 etchings, several nocturne paintings and approximately 100 pastels.

Also from A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings is Lot 16, Upright Venice, circa 1879-80

His A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings, also known as the "Second Venice Set," from an edition of approximately only 30, were selected from the surplus of images Whistler brought back with him. Examples in our auction include lots 16 and 17. The spontaneity and delicate draughtsmanship in these Venice etchings deeply influenced the next generation of American artists, notably Childe Hassam and John Marin, who were among the most important Americans in the 1913 Armory Show.

Edgar Degas's etching and drypoint depicting Mary Cassatt at the Louvre;
Lot 29 in Swann's Armory Show at 100 auction

Born in Philadelphia into a well-to-do family, Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) spent most of her adult life in Europe and, along with Berthe Morisot, went on to become one of the most celebrated female Impressionists. In the 1860s, she initially trained as an academic painter with masters Jeon-Léon Gérôme and Thomas Couture, submitting works to the Paris Salon and studying from old master paintings in the Louvre. In 1876, Edgar Degas invited her to show in the next Impressionists Exhibition, insisting that, "Most women paint like they are trimming hats, (but) not you."

She enthusiastically accepted the offer to exhibit and went on to show works in four of the eight subsequent Impressionist Exhibitions. Cassatt and Degas had a close relationship and it was under Degas's guidance that she developed her techniques in pastels and etching/aquatint. Degas also depicted Cassatt in a series of etchings that recorded their visits to the Louvre. After 1886, Cassatt no longer considered herself part of any artistic group, and while she remained friends with the founding Impressionists, she distanced herself stylistically. Over the course of her career she also served as an art adviser to many American collectors, including Louisine and Harry Havemeyer, helping them to build an impressive collection of Impressionist art that is now among the centerpieces of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Lot 30: Cassatt's circa 1904 drypoint Margot Wearing a Large Bonnet

Cassatt was very opinionated and did not appreciate many of the works by the Post-Impressionists, Fauves and Cubists. It has been suggested that she was unaware there were any works representing her in the Armory Show, as she was at the time nearing 70 years old and going blind. Had she known, she would not likely have been pleased. Two works, an oil and a watercolor, were displayed in Gallery O of the Armory Show along with her contemporaries, Degas and Monet, as well as the Post-Impressionists Seurat and Toulouse-Lautrec—neither of whose work she appreciated. Cassatt's distaste of Paul Cézanne's mid- to late-career paintings (she approved of his earlier work), echoed by the Armory Show press that so vehemently criticized his early modernist style, led Cassett to sell off most of her Cézanne paintings.

From the artist's celebrated series of color aquatints, Lot 31: Feeding the Ducks

Cassatt made 220 etchings, drypoints and aquatints between the mid-1870s and early 1900s, among the most famous of which are a set of ten color aquatints, each made in an edition of approximately 25. She was deeply influenced by traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e color woodcuts when she began to work on this set of color prints. As she wrote to American collector Samuel P. Avery, "The set was done with the intention of attempting an imitation of the Japanese methods." While she focused on producing these as color aquatints with etching (with technical assistance from Degas), rather than woodcuts in the Japanese style, the results remain a highpoint in Impressionist printmaking.

Promotional photograph for the theatrical production of Dracula

Swann has seen some incredible auction results for rare and collectible works by the merrily macabre writer and artist Edward Gorey. But the cult of Gorey goes beyond books, illustrations and that wonderful animated intro for PBS's Mystery series. And, it's exciting to note that a younger generation is embracing the aesthetic of this singular artist.

Young and famous: Gorey finds a new audience

Back in 2010, an American Idol contestant--Siobhan Magnus--proudly sported a Gorey tattoo on her right shoulder.

And tomorrow New York's Dances of Vice hosts a PhantasmaGOREY Victorian Halloween Ball at One Hanover Square. The venue is transformed into a Victorian haunted mansion in what they describe as "an elegantly deranged celebration of all things whimsical, dark and Edward Gorey."

Fans get the full Gorey experience at the PhantasmaGOREY Victorian Halloween Ball

You don't need a tattoo to get in, but dress code is listed as: Neglected Murderesses, Doubtful Guests, Gashlycrumb Tinies, Hapless Children, Gilded Bats, Anguishing Artists, Restless Widows, Lonesome Mourners and the like.

Tickets will run you $30 in advance or $40 at the door.
For more information, go to: http://phantasmagorey2013.eventbee.com/

Ready made for your next tattoo!

And, mark your calendars. This spring Swann will offer an excellent assortment of items from the important Sam Speigel Gorey collection!

Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) was a major dealer and publisher in Paris from the 1890s until his death in a car accident in 1939. Initially trained as a lawyer, he is now generally remembered as a shrewd businessman and one of the first "modern" art dealers. He was involved in many of the major art movements at the turn of the century, including Impressionism, Post Impressionism, the Nabis and Fauvism. In many cases, he even cornered and manipulated the art market of some living artists by having them sign exclusive agency agreements.

Soon after he opened his gallery in 1893, Vollard made history as the first dealer to organize a solo exhibition for Cézanne, followed by solo shows for Van Gogh in 1895, Picasso in 1901 and Matisse in 1904. He often purchased works directly from the artists he represented, occasionally buying out their entire studios for then bargain prices. This approach enabled him to rapidly amass a sizable and significant collection of works by Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists. He cleverly held many of the artworks in his possession for years in order to take advantage of their ever increasing value. He took risks to exhibit emerging artists, such as the Nabis in the late 1890s, while also acquiring works by established artists, like Degas and Renoir, through trade.

His Cézanne retrospective proved to be exceptionally successful. With the proceeds, Vollard opened a new gallery and printing house where he established himself as an important publisher of lithographs and livres d'artiste in the 1890s, becoming a leader in the revival of fine art printmaking. His first publication, in 1896, L'Album des Peintres-Graveurs, contained color lithographs by the Nabis artists (including lot 59 in our Armory Show at 100 auction), many of which he exhibited in an accompanying group exhibition. He went on to publish prints and artist books by Vuillard, Bonnard, Denis, Picasso, Cézanne, Matisse, Rouault, Roussel and Cross.

The 1913 Armory Show occurred at the end of Vollard’s most productive period; during the 1920s/1930s he organized exhibitions less frequently and with less vigor. By this time he had built his formidable collection, he lent numerous blue-chip original works and lithographs by Cézanne, Gauguin, Redon, Renior, Vollard, Bonnard and Denis to the show. He fared extremely well in the Armory Show; among the multitude of sales his Cézanne, Colline des Pauvres (The Poorhouse on the Hill), sold for $6,700 (roughly $160,000 today) to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. This was a landmark acquisition, representing the first work of modern art to be purchased by a major American museum.

The color lithographs he published and sent to the Armory Show (evidently as an afterthought) also sold very well and were, in fact, among the best-selling items in the exhibition (approximately two thirds of all recorded sales at the Armory Show were of Vollard's lithographs)—he offered both individual lithographs for $20 to $30 (roughly $500 today) and portfolios of 12 lithographs for $120 a piece (roughly $2,800). The paintings lent by Vollard elevated the quality of Impressionist works in the Armory Show overall, while the presence of his more affordable, original lithographs allowed the widespread dissemination of images by the Impressionist masters across the American art world.

Following the Armory Show, and with the onset of World War I, Vollard closed his Parisian gallery, but continued to work with artists, still producing individual prints and livres d’artiste. Among the most notable of his later publications is the massive Vollard Suite by Picasso, published in 1939 and consisting of 100 etchings in a total edition of 310. In 1939, at the age of 73, Vollard died in an automobile crash. It is rumored that on impact, his neck was broken when he was struck by a copperplate or bronze sculpture made by the artist Aristide Maillol that he had been storing on the ledge above the rear seat of his car.

Back in January, Swann Galleries auctioned what might have been an original watercolor by J.M.W. Turner. Originally catalogued in our Old Master Drawings auction as a Circle of Turner view From Ehrenbreitstein, a scholar came forward to say that the style, size and quality of detail seemed to indicate the work was an untraced original and, therefore, a significant discovery.

Now, the most recent edition of Turner Studies includes an article by Turner scholar and curator Cecelia Powell that connects the watercolor to a preparatory sketch by the artist from his Waterloo and Rhine sketchbook (above). Powell's article is titled From Ehrenbreitstein returns from Obscurity.

Amid all of the shock, sensationalism and bewilderment surrounding many of the works in the 1913 Armory Show, much of the harshest criticism was levied at the paintings of Paul Cézanne, though these were also among the most influential works in the show.

There are two after prints of Cézanne's Les Joueur des Cartes in our Armory Show sale.
One is black and white, the other color.

Cézanne’s role as a lynchpin in the revolution of modern art is widely recognized among art historians and critics, and is supported by his posthumous success in the art market. His painting View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph, oil, late 1880s, was the most expensive work sold at the Armory Show, fetching $6,700 (approximately $160,000 today) when it was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York at the urging of prominent collectors Lillie P. Bliss, Louisine Havemeyer and John Quinn. And, the value of Cézanne’s paintings has endured--in 2011 a version of his Card Player, 1894-1895 sold for $268 million dollars, making it the most expensive painting ever sold. After prints of this image are included in our Armory Show at 100 auction--see lots 41 and 42.

Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence to a wealthy banking family and was expected to attend law school, despite the artistic talent he exhibited from an early age. Encouraged by his childhood friend, the writer Émile Zola, Cézanne abandoned law to study painting. Initially influenced by Delacroix and Manet, he began to develop his Impressionist style in the early 1860s while studying with his mentor and friend Camille Pissarro, whom Cézanne credited as the true father of Impressionism. Contemporaries like Pissarro and Cassatt were early enthusiasts of Cézanne’s Impressionist paintings and influenced dealers and collectors to purchase his work--though Cassatt developed a distaste for his later work. He had strong admiration for fellow Impressionist painters, but was not satisfied with the tenets of Impressionism and instead sought to unite color and form in his work, emphasizing structure and solidity, and thereby shifting from Impressionism to Post Impressionism.

Near the end of his career, Cézanne’s work profoundly influenced Matisse and the Fauves, who would shock the art world with their first exhibition in 1905. The year after Cézanne’s death, the Salon d’Automne in Paris mounted a memorial exhibition of his work. The artists who developed Cubism were very moved by Cézanne’s use of color and planar forms. In 1908, with Cubism still in its infancy, both Picasso and Matisse referred to Cézanne as "The father of us all."

While the Cubists and Fauves glorified Cézanne, Armory Show critics decried Post Impressionism as a "harbinger of universal anarchy." The Armory Show represented the first major American exhibition of the great Post Impressionist triumvirate: Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin. Many American critics had heard of these artists but few had seen their works and those more familiar with the artists felt they were not well represented qualitatively. Some critics were especially severe in their treatment of Cézanne, characterizing him as a "misanthropic banker-recluse," claiming he was a "sincere amateur," who was "absolutely without talent and absolutely cut off from tradition."

Les Baigneurs was among the Cézanne lithographs sold at the 1913 Armory Show

Despite the criticism, Cézanne’s work fared well in the Armory Show, not only in terms of sales but also his influence on American artists and collectors. There were 14 Cézanne works altogether in the Armory Show, including numerous impressions of Les Baigneurs (lot 38) listed for sale at $21 (around $500 today) and these were purchased by all of the major buyers at the show, including Bliss, Quinn, Walter C. Arensberg, Alfred Stieglitz and show organizers Walt Kuhn and Arthur B. Davies.

Swann's November 12 auction of Early Printed, Medical & Scientific Books features religious texts, early manuscripts and illuminated works, incunabula, scientific treatises, philosophical classics and more. Among these is Edward Topsell's The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes, bound with The Historie of Serpents, pictured below, profusely illustrated with woodcuts of animals. Other items in the sale reflect nearly 1000 years of human scholarship on wide-ranging topics: from astronomy and mathematics to boa constrictors and corsetry. Read more about highlights from this sale.

Edward Topsell, The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes, with The Historie of Serpents, London, 1607 & 1608.
Estimate $3,000 to $5,000. At auction November 12, 2013.

Tissot's October

A New Website for Swann Galleries

Mark Michaelson: Crime Becomes Collectible

The Cover Image: Fine Photographs & Photobooks

Contemporary African-American Art in Orange, NJ

Weegee's Unique Angle on Pinup Photography

African-American Fine Art Cover Lot: A Previously Unknown Norman Lewis Painting

A 21st Century Tintype

Daile Kaplan to Conduct Auction at CPW Benefit Gala Oct. 19

The Locke Collection Comes to The Hampton University Museum

The Armory Show at 100: An Introduction to the Catalogue

Francisco José de Goya and Modern Art

Kindergarten and the Building Blocks of Design

James A.M. Whistler in the 1913 Armory Show

Mary Cassatt: Celebrated Female Impressionist

The Cult of Edward Gorey

Ambroise Vollard: The Art of the Deal

Update From Ehrenbreitstein

Paul Cézanne: A Lightning Rod for Criticism at the Armory Show

Upcoming Highlights: Early Printed, Medical & Scientific Books