REFLECTING THE LIGHT: REDISCOVERED MASTERPIECE LEADS BONHAMS 19TH CENTURY & ORIENTALIST PAINTINGS SALE IN LONDON
Osman Hamdi Bey (Turkish, 1842-1910), Kahve Ocağı (The Hearth). Estimate: £1,500,000-2,000,000
London – A rediscovered masterpiece in watercolour, A Reception in the Harem by John Frederick Lewis (1804-1876), unseen in public for over 60 years, leads Bonhams 19th Century & Orientalist Paintings sale on 26 March at Bonhams New Bond Street, London. The work, which has been in the same private collection since 1961, has an estimate of £650,000-850,000.
Charles O’Brien, Head of 19th Century Paintings at Bonhams, commented: “A Reception in the Harem is an extraordinary watercolour by John Frederick Lewis, rich in the jewel-like colours and in the intricate detail which made his reputation. Not exhibited publicly for over 60 years, the work is a larger version of the celebrated oil painting by Lewis at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. Watercolour was Lewis’s true passion and the additional details in this work offer rare insights into Lewis's practice and ambitions, while their shared subject matter reveals tantalizing information about his life in Egypt, and why he was considered a cultural insider. This is an exciting discovery and offers the collector a rare opportunity to acquire a work by an artist generally regarded as the greatest British Orientalist painter.”
John Frederick Lewis (1804-1876) was one of England's most prominent 19th-century painters. He excelled in both oil and watercolour, he was elected President of London's Old Watercolour Society in 1855 and, upon his resignation three years later, was made an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1859 and a full member in 1865. The paintings exhibited at both venues earned him effusive praise from contemporary art critics. Lewis's ten-year period of residency in Egypt in the 1840s led to the widespread belief that his incredibly popular scenes of the Middle East and North Africa, which he produced after 1850, were the work of a cultural insider. This sentiment was supported by a rare, first-hand account of Lewis in Cairo, written by the author William Makepeace Thackeray in 1846.
John Frederick Lewis, RA, POWS (British, 1804-1876), A Reception in the Harem. Estimate: £650,000 - 850,000
Years before the completion of the watercolour A Reception in the Harem in 1873, Lewis had taken great pains to perfect an idiosyncratic approach to the medium in order to improve audiences’ perceptions of its worth. By mixing watercolour pigments with Chinese white he discovered they could rival the look of oils. This, in addition to his precise and laborious brushstrokes, might persuade potential patrons that a watercolour was far more than an informal study or quick preliminary sketch. By the early 1860s, Lewis began to systematically produce two nearly identical versions of a work, one in oil, destined for exhibition at the Royal Academy, and one more elaborate version in watercolour for collectors, which he advertised for a comparable price.
A Reception in the Harem, when sold in 1908 by its second owner, the well-known philanthropist Stephen George Holland (1817–1908), achieved the remarkable price of £630. The value of A Reception in the Harem had been recognized well before Holland's ownership. After its initial purchase by the prominent Manchester collector and industrialist Abel Buckley (1835–1908) sometime before 1878, it was widely publicised through exhibitions and reviews.
The Bonhams sale will also feature Kahve Ocağı (The Hearth) by Osman Hamdi Bey (Turkish, 1842-1910), which has an estimate of £1,500,000 - 2,000,000. In 2019, Bonhams sold Osman Hamdi Bey’s Young Woman Reading for £6.6 million, a world record price for a work by the artist at auction.
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In 2023, Bonhams achieved 14% growth with $1.14 billion in turnover. Recent important auctions and landmark single-owner collections, include the white glove sales of Sir Michael Caine: The Personal Collection, Alain Delon: Sixty Years of Passion; Sir Roger Moore: The Personal Collection; Personal Property of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and The Robert & Jean-Pierre Rousset Collection of Asian Art: A Century of Collecting. Other notable single-owner sales included The Estate of Barbara Walters: American Icon; The Alan and Simone Hartman Collection; The Crown Auction: Props and Costumes and The Claude de Marteau Collection.
Top lots for 2023 include 1967 Ferrari 412P Berlinetta, Sold at Quail Lodge, US for US$30,255,000. Tipu Sultan’s Bedchamber Sword (sold in London for £14m – a world record for both an Islamic and an Indian object); Paul Signac (1863-1935), Sisteron, 1902. Sold for US$8,580,000 (estimate US$4-6 million), and Claude Monet (1840-1926), La Seine près de Giverny, 1888. Sold for US$6,352,500 (estimate US$4-6m), both from the Alan and Simone Hartman Collection; A Gilt Copper Alloy figure of Virupaksha, Central Tibet, Densatil Monastery, Early 15th century. Sold for HK$37.9m (£4,060,326) in Hong Kong. Yoshitomo Nara (born 1959) Three Stars. Sold for HK$36,754,000 (£3,930,914, also in Hong Kong
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