Claude Monet’s ‘Charing Cross Bridge’ could fetch P1.5 billion at New York auction

“Charing Cross Bridge” is one of the seminal London canvases Monet created during multiple trips to London that he undertook in the early 1900s. The canvas will be offered on Nov. 12 as part of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale in New York City.

This series was painted from the vantage point of Monet’s room at the Savoy Hotel, which the French artist found particularly advantageous to capture the city’s fog. “Charing Cross Bridge” which is characterized by its evanescent mix of color, light and shadow, is expected to fetch between $20 million (around P1.03 billion) and $30 million (at least P1.5 billion) at Sotheby’s.


London’s Charing Cross Bridge remains one of Monet’s most emblematic subjects, as he revisited it in 37 canvases completed between 1899 and 1905. Several of them belong in the collections of international institutions, such as the Art Institute of Chicago, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

This pre-sale high estimate is well below the French Impressionist’s auction record of $110.7 million (P5.7 billion), which was set last May at Sotheby’s New York for “Meules”.

As Sotheby’s pointed out, Monet’s paintings of the Charing Cross Bridge are still in private hands and rarely appeared at auctions.

The one offered for sale at Sotheby’s was purchased in 1977 by the late Andrea Klepetar-Fallek and Fred Fallek, hanging over their living room couch for more than 40 years.

The couple established a tradition of giving each other a piece of art for each birthday and anniversary, quickly assembling an impressive collection of paintings, drawings and sculptures. Among them are works by Pierre Bonnard, Edgar Degas, Lyonel Feininger, Jacques Lipchitz, Emil Nolde and more.

The highlights from the collection include Pierre Bonnard’s “Femme se déshabillant”, estimated between $1.5 million (P77.4 million) and $2.5 million (P129 million); Lyonel Feininger’s “Hästende Leute (Hurried People)”, estimated between $100,000 (P5.1 million) and $150,000 (P7.7 million); as well as Emile Nolde’s “Rote Dahlien (Red Dahlias)”, estimated between $60,000 (almost P3.1 million) and $80,000 (P4.1 million).

The Klepetar-Fallek Collection will be offered across both Sotheby’s evening and day sales of Impressionist & Modern Art, which are set respectively on Nov. 12 and 13.

Ahead of the auctions, all pieces from the collection will be on public view at Sotheby’s New York galleries from Nov. 1 through 12. CL/NVG

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Missing masterpiece found in ‘Stuart Little’ fetches $286k

BUDAPEST, Hungary – An avant-garde painting lost for nine decades until a Hungarian researcher spotted it being used as a prop in the Hollywood film “Stuart Little” was sold for over 200,000 euros Saturday at an auction in Budapest.

The painting “Sleeping Lady with Black Vase”, by Robert Bereny (1887-1953), fetched a price of 229,500 euros ($285,700), more than doubling its reserve price of around 110,000 euros.

Staff at the Virag Judit auction house told AFP that the buyer was an unnamed private Hungarian collector, and that the sale price exceeded expectations.

“I always knew it was a masterpiece, now it seems the market agrees,” said Gergely Barki, 43, the Hungarian National Gallery researcher who noticed the painting in the 1999 kids’ movie about a mouse as he watched TV with his daughter Lola on Christmas Eve six years ago.

The work disappeared in the late-1920s but Barki recognized it immediately even though he had only ever seen a faded black-and-white photo dating from a 1928 exhibition catalogue archived in the National Gallery.

Its unorthodox discovery even caught the attention of English actor Hugh Laurie, who co-starred in “Stuart Little” along with US actress Geena Davis, and, of course, the eponymous mouse.

“Little hurt to discover the foreground performances couldn’t hold the attention, but still, what an honor,” he tweeted last week about his role in the painting’s find.

Barki opted not to go to the auction. “It was an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience to discover the painting, that was the exciting part,” he told AFP.

“After finally returning to Hungary in the last few weeks for the exhibition, now I don’t know when I will see my ‘dear’ again,” he added.

The reemergence of the painting also stirred mixed feelings for a relative of Bereny contacted by AFP.

San Francisco-based filmmaker Lidia Szajko, grandchild of Bereny and his second wife Eta who features in the painting, said she wished her grandfather were alive to enjoy the attention.

“His life would have been easier with the recognition and valuations of his work,” Szajko said. “It’s a fantastic painting, I hope the new owner will lend it for exhibition so many more of us can enjoy it,” she added.

A former owner contacted by AFP, Californian art dealer Michael Hempstead, said he recalled buying the painting for around $40 (32 euros) at a Catholic Church charity auction in San Diego in the late 1990s.

He sold it soon after for around $400 to an antiques shop in Pasadena where it was picked up by a Hollywood studio set designer to use as a prop on soap operas and movies.

“It doesn’t bother me that it is worth a huge amount now,” Hempstead told AFP by telephone.

“I am happy to have been a part of the painting’s voyage to the big screen and back to Hungary,” he said.

The owner of the painting during the decades before Hempstead bought it remains a mystery.

According to Barki, the buyer in the late-1920s was probably Jewish and left Hungary in the run-up to, or during, World War II.

“After the wars, revolutions, and tumult of the 20th century many Hungarian masterpieces are lost, scattered around the world,” he told AFP.

The newfound fame of the painting attracted a huge crowd to the auction on Saturday.

Bereny, a leading figure in a pre-World War I avant-garde movement called the “Group of Eight”, was a friend of Austrian pyschoanalyst Sigmund Freud and held exhibitions in Paris with French painter Henri Matisse.

After designing recruitment posters for Hungary’s short-lived communist revolution in 1919, he fled to Berlin, where he had a romance with actress Marlene Dietrich.

He painted the now-famous work on his return to Budapest after being granted an amnesty by the government in 1926.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net