Salerooms
Reflections
Henry Elwell
The summer season at Christie's and_ Sotheby's is made particularly to • teresting by works from three very different kinds of collections: Gould, Clark and Chatsworth. A millionairess, an art historian and a great house. They represent three essential elements of the art market: the consumer, the adjudicator and the warehouse. The first two collections reflect personalities, the last is but a small, Yet fabulous, part of a magnificent collection• Sotheby's are selling the contents of Mrs Frank J. Gould's house 'El Patio' in Monte Carlo on 24 and 25 June. The range of course is enormous, from mediaeval works of art to 20th-century paintings. As inlet be expected, Mrs Gould's taste for big, bright jewels, which caused sorneanonyrnous free loaders overwhelming temptation at Christie's earlier this year, shows through In other areas of her possessions. Not for her the cool subtlety of Song Dynasty porcelain or early jades, she was all out for the brightest polychromes, particularly Kangxi famille yen and other export enamels. In common with many Americans she admired English silver, the most outstanding item being a beautiful Paul de Lamerie silver gilt cup, superbly chased with rococo motifs, estimated to sell for well over £100,000. It would be nice, if unlikely, if it came home. Peter Wilson in his foreword to the sale catalogue describes Mrs Gould, with affec- tion, foremostly as a hostess holding court sitting at her Louis VX bureau plat while her visitors took turns to speak to her seated on stools in front of her. One lot hid- den in the silver catalogue is rather worry- ing: '43 gold champagne stirrers'. The mind boggles at the thought of having a party of 43 people drinking flat champagne.
Lord Clark's executors have selected ob- jects and paintings from many different fields to be sold by Sotheby's between 27 June and 3 July. His eclecticism is ad- mirably demonstrated by his choice of modern painters; absent are Bacon, Burra and Matthew Smith, the sweaty luxuriance of one of the latter's nudes was not for him. Instead a restrained and taut 'Studio of Ingres' nude by Victor Pasmore typifies his very English attitude to modern painting. Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and Sidney Nolan, all of them his friends, have works in this sale.
Partly to carry out some home im- provements to the private wing of Chatsworth, the Duke of Devonshire is hoping to raise over £6 million by the sale of 70 out of the 2,000 or so Chatsworth draw- ings. The British Museum wouldn't offer enough and he might get even more than Christie's estimate. There are some ex- quisite drawings, a Raphael head, a study for the Transfiguration, a Rubens of a man threshing with an ox cart drawn at an amaz- ing angle next to him. There are also works by Da Vinci, Holbein and Rembrandt. In view of the provenance and the undoubted rarity and quality of some of the drawings, accurate predictions of value must be almost impossible. The last chance to see these cast-offs together will be the week before 3 July when the hammer falls, after which many of them will no doubt emigrate.
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