This February, Freeman’s presents European Art Week, providing collectors of European material two excellent back-to-back opportunities: European Art and Old Masters on February 22, and The Gilded Age on February 24. Auguste Rodin’s portrait in bronze of mother and child, never before offered at auction, leads the week’s first sale; an impressive silver-gilt plique-à-jour and cloisonné tankard, a diplomatic gift to Dr. Alexander W. Biddle for his services during the 1891 Russian famine, is the second sale’s highlight.
European Art Week offers a fine selection that spans centuries, from 16th and 17th century works by Albrecht Dürer and Jacopo Palma il Giovane to paintings, furniture, and objects that reflect the eclectic sensibilities of the newly affluent Gilded Age collecting class. With a large selection of sporting art from the likes of John Nost Sartorius and Samuel Henry Alken, rediscovered military canvases, and rugs and Chinese Export material that reflect the Orientalism of the day, The Gilded Age offers insight into the opulent European interiors of American homes at the turn of the 20th century. In European Art and Old Masters, paintings by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Eugène Boudin, and Hugues Merle present the occasion to collect fine offerings from 19th-century European artistic production.
With objects hailing from private and institutional collections along the East Coast, European Week offers an eclectic range of fine and decorative works of art spanning continents and centuries.
The diverse offerings cover numerous collecting areas, including:
19th century French Painting
Aesthetic/Arts and Crafts Furniture
British Portraiture
Chinese Export Porcelain
French, Italian and English Furniture
and Decorative Arts
Old Masters
Rugs and Carpets
Russian Art
Sculpture
Silver and Objects de Vertu
Sporting Art
Mère et sa Fille Mourante (Mrs. Merrill and her Daughter Sally)
$250,000-400,000
A Russian Silver-Gilt Plique-à-Jour and Cloisonné Imperial Presentation Tankard
$30,000-50,000
