Toovey’s Antique and Fine Art Auction Blog

Henri Matisse - 'Tristesse du Roi (Sorrow of the King)', 1952 Gouache découpée, 292 x 386cm Copyright: DACS

Thanks to sponsorship by Toovey’s auction house and the Hayward Gallery, Horsham Museum and Art Gallery is able to host an exhibition of Matisse’s later work. Opened just two years ago the Art Gallery was a new venture for the Museum, with the hope that it would be able to offer visitors and the community of the district the opportunity to see, admire and become inspired by art. ‘MATISSE: Drawing with Scissors, Late Works 1950-1954 – A Hayward Touring Exhibition from Southbank Centre, London’  is an amazingly colourful exhibition that reveals how Matisse was one of the twentieth century’s leading artists and designers – even while bedridden he was able to create iconic work with his ‘drawing with scissors’ series. It will inspire those who find the brush and pencil a barrier to art.

As the Hayward Gallery notes, “The French painter, sculptor and designer, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was one of the twentieth century’s most influential artists. His vibrant works are celebrated for their extraordinary richness and luminosity of colour. Matisse: Drawing with Scissors, a Hayward Touring exhibition from the Southbank Centre, London, features 35 lithographic prints of the famous cut-outs, produced in the last four years of his life, when the artist was confined to his bed. It includes many of his iconic images, such as The Snail and the Blue Nudes.”  Matisse continued creating highly original works into his eighties. For his cut-outs he used paper hand-painted with gouache, laid down in abstract or figurative patterns: “the paper cut-out allows me to draw in the colour… Instead of drawing the outline and putting the colour inside it… I draw straight into the colour.”  The colours he used were so strong that he was advised by his doctor to wear dark glasses.

The lithographic reproductions in this exhibition are taken from a special double issue of Verve, a review of art and literature, published by Tériade, a major publisher of fine art books in 1958.

Matisse began his working life as a lawyer, before going to Paris to study art in 1890. At first strongly influenced by the Impressionists, he soon created his own style, using brilliant, pure colours, and started making sculptures as well as paintings. In 1905 he and his colleagues were branded the Fauves (wild beasts) because of their unconventional use of colour, and it was during this time that he painted his celebrated Luxe, Calme et Volupté (Luxury, Tranquillity and Delight). “There is no gap between my earlier pictures and my cut-outs,” Matisse wrote “I have only reached a form reduced to the essential through greater absoluteness and greater abstraction.”

‘Matisse: Drawing with Scissors’ opens on 28 April and closes 26 May 2012. For further information contact Horsham Museum.

Lot 3050: Brighton & Hove Albion Football Postcards

Lot 3205: Brighton & Hove Albion Football Programmes

Other than antiques, fine art and collectors’ items, one of the main topics of discussion in Toovey’s Sussex saleroom is football. With the performances, refereeing decisions, goals, managers, saves, fouls, form and transfers often debated, the saleroom has on occasions transformed into an arena of football punditry. Who will be managing England at the 2012 European Championships seems to be a current hot topic of conversation. It would appear that the forthcoming summer of football and the millions wasted on strikers who can’t find the net in the Premiership seem to be overshadowing the mighty performances of one of our local teams, Brighton & Hove Albion. The Seagulls were newly promoted into the Championship this season and appear to have settled into their much-awaited new home at the AMEX stadium.

The East Sussex team were founded in 1901 and originally played in the Southern League, before being elected to the Football League in 1920. Arguably their greatest spell was in the 1980′s, whilst playing in the top division they had a cup-run that took them to Wembley in the F.A. Cup where they played Manchester United, losing after a replay. The forthcoming sale of Paper Collectables on Tuesday 17th April includes Lot 3205, a large collection of football programmes mostly relating to Brighton and Hove Albion. Included in the lot is a series of programmes that follow the cup run of the 1982/83 season, including the semi-final, final and replay, these three all have the original ticket stubs for the matches included (see illustration, click for an enlarged image and again for further magnification), the lot carries a presale estimate of £100-150.

In the Postcard section of the same specialist sale is Lot 3050 (see illustration, click for an enlarged image and again for further magnification). This lot comprises a group of 10 photographic postcards of crowd scenes at the football matches of Brighton and Hove Albion. Dating from 1910 to circa 1929, the majority of the cards were published by the Hove-based photographer Thomas Walter Stephen Wiles, later Deane, Wiles & Millar, or the Brighton Camera Exchange. The postcards show a different era of football, the anonymous faces looking out are dressed in their Sunday best at a time when financial investment in the sport was considerably different.   It was also a different era for the Seagulls as these were taken at their former home, the Goldstone Ground. Amongst the supporters and collectors these postcards are always sought after, particularly those featuring cup-runs (as some of these do) or those against rival clubs. This lot carries the presale estimate of £50-80 and is offered alongside Stamps, other Postcards, Cigarette Cards, Autographs, Photographs and Printed and Manuscript Ephemera in Toovey’s Sale of Paper Collectables on the 17th April 2012. For viewing times for the auction please click here.

Under manager Gus Poyet, Brighton and Hove Albion are currently competing for a Play-off place in the Championship, and in the absence of any Crystal Palace supporters at Toovey’s, we wish them the very best of luck!

Lot 235: Engraving by Cornelis Massijs, Portrait of King Henry VIII

The Sale of Selected Fine Oil Paintings, Watercolours and Prints on the 21st March 2012 includes a Single-owner Collection of Portrait Prints.  The collection offers works printed in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and relates chiefly to the royalty, nobility and notable figures of the eras.

The 75-lot collection includes an engraving by Cornelis Massijs of King Henry VIII (Lot 235).  Massijs (or Massys, as his surname is sometimes spelt) was born in Antwerp but was banished from the city later in life.  While living in exile in England he produced this print in 1544, which was reprinted in the year of the King’s death.  It is a contemporary image of the Tudor King late in life, portraying Henry VIII with emphasis on his authority.  Massijs shows his imposing figure and carefully designed clothes, wearing an elegantly embroidered doublet and a sumptuous fur collar. The full-frontal pose is probably loosely based on Hans Holbein’s portrait of the sitter a decade earlier.

Another impressive engraving in the sale (Lot 240) depicts Queen Elizabeth I standing full length, holding an orb and sceptre.  Anthony Griffiths in The Print in Stuart Britain states: “This is the finest of the engraved portraits of Queen Elizabeth.  It was published soon after her death in 1603, as is shown by the chronogram in the upper left.”  The engraving is after Isaac Oliver, a miniaturist born in Rouen and brought to England as a child (for a portrait of the artist, see Lot 232).  This print is the culmination of the partnership between Hans Woutneel in London and Crispijn van de Passe I, then in Cologne.

Lot 240: Engraving by Crispijn van de Passe after Isaac Oliver, Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I

Crispijn van de Passe the Elder was a Dutch printmaker and founder of a dynasty of engravers.  The second generation of van de Passe engravers – Simon, Crispijn II, Willem and Magdalena – are all also represented in the private collection, including famous images of Princess Pocahontas (Lot 251) and the Gunpowder Plot Conspirators (Lot 259).  The Single-owner Collection of Portrait Prints serves almost as a Who’s Who of the 1500s onwards.  The majority of the collection centres around kings, queens and their families, represented from Henry VIII to Queen Victoria.  Other notable figures are also depicted in the portrait engravings, such as Richard [Dick] Whitington and his cat (Lot 233), the Elizabethan explorer Francis Drake (Lots 248, 249 & 250), Robert Dudley (Lot 246), Francis Bacon (Lot 260) and depictions of the curious character of Old Tom Parr (Lot 269), who reputedly lived to the age of 153!

This immensely interesting collection will be offered at Toovey’s Spring Gardens salerooms, just off the A24 between Worthing and Horsham, on 21st March. To view the online catalogue for the sale, or to find out viewing times, visit www.tooveys.com

The Sale of Selected Fine Oil Paintings, Watercolours and Prints on the 21st March 2012 includes a single-owner collection of works by William Lionel Wyllie, offered for sale by auction in 28 lots at Toovey’s Spring Gardens salerooms.

Wyllie was born in 1851 into an artistic family, studying art at Heatherley’s in 1865 and at the RA Schools 1866-1869, winning the Turner medal in 1869.  He worked as an illustrator for The Graphic and exhibited extensively.  He was elected R.I., A.R.A., A.R.E., R.E. and R.A.  In 1906, Wyllie moved to Portsmouth, where he lived for many years.  His panorama of the Battle of Trafalgar hangs in the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard.  Wyllie died in London in 1931.

He is best remembered for his maritime works and the W.L. Wyllie signature is almost synonymous with etchings of the River Thames and the Solent.  The fashion-led world of art, however, has a habit of changing and Wyllie was not always as collected as he is today.  In 1929, during the period of etching revival, James Laver in A History of British and American Etching described his prints as “a wealth of detail seen through a haze of romance.”  In 1981, Kenneth Guichard in British Etchers 1850-1950 states rather critically: “Only a few years ago print dealers shamefacedly produced them [Wyllie etchings] from bottom drawers at a pound a time, together with [other] near throw-outs.”  Today, he is a highly collected name and the prices achieved for his etchings regularly outshine those achieved for the works of many of his contemporaries, including some of the founders of the etching revival in Britain, such as Francis Seymour Haden.

Lot 6, 'The City of London', trial proof etching by William Lionel Wyllie

In the selection of prints, Lot 6 is a true rarity for the William Lionel Wyllie collector.  ‘The City of London’ is an etching in trial state with only partially etched details, the rest of the image composed with pencil and watercolour in a much freer stylistic way.  This trial proof would have been used to map out the finished print and, as such, is a unique version of this image and carries a presale estimate of £400-600.  The collection also includes prints of the Solent, prints of military interest and prints of picturesque views along the Thames, many featuring London landmarks, such as Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.  There is also one original watercolour in the collection (Lot 13).  Somewhat unusually, though, Wyllie’s watercolours tend to achieve the same price levels as his etchings at auction.

To view the William Lionel Wyllie collection (Lots 1-28) in our auction of Selected Fine Oil Paintings, Watercolours and Prints, click here.