Picasso’s Visage de Femme ceramic pitcher headlines Gray’s Summer Auction. A wide selection of decorative arts, furniture, rugs, and fine art will be sold at Gray’s July 31st, 2012 Summer Auction. The auction features an array of decorative arts including a bold and colorfu
News-Antique.com - Jul 24,2012 - July 31 at 11am, Auctioneer Deba Gray will be offering 387 lots at her eponymous auction house with live bidding provided by LiveAuctioneers.com, including a stamped, marked and numbered, partially glazed ceramic pitcher by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) entitled Visage de Femme. Conceived in July, 1953 and created at the famed Madoura Pottery in Villauris, France where he met his second wife Jacqueline Roque, this curvaceous Picasso ceramic is listed in the auction at Lot 206. Numbered 71 from an edition of 200 it is catalogued in Alain Ramié’s catalogue raisonné of Picasso’s ceramic editions. Alain Ramié is the son of Suzanne & George Ramié, the owners of the Madoura Pottery. Picasso spent more than 20 years there experimenting and perfecting his ceramic techniques. Between 1947 and 1971 Picasso produced 633 different plates, bowls, vases and pitchers, in limited editions ranging from 25 to 500. At auction these sought after Madoura Pottery ceramics have fetched up to $1M for a single piece (Christies, June 25 & 25, 2012).
Also at this auction Gray’s is delighted to present Lots 1 – 15A, a collection of 36 Nathan “Nate” Dunn (1896 – 1983) paintings. Dunn was an American modernist painter born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology with Arthur Sparks, Alfred Taylor, and George Sotter. He exhibited extensively in the tri-state area, winning many awards, and his works are in many private and museum collections, including the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio. Notable lots include Lot 11 a vibrant oil on canvas, Red, White & Blue signed and dated 1959, and Lot 9, an abstract oil on board of sailboats in a sea of colorful shapes and geometric patterns.
An oversized contemporary still life, Three Pomegranates by the Canadian modern expressionist Vicky Marshall is being offered at lot 30. Measuring 66 inches tall by 84 inches wide, Marshall’s dynamic painting is visually arresting with its bold strokes of color and deceptively simple subject matter. The auction includes many works on paper including watercolors, prints, etchings, photographs and documents. Most notable among these lots are lot 101 Armin Landeck’s (1905-1984) Window on 14th Street, a drypoint etching from 1949, and lot 153 an illuminated manuscript of vellum leaf from 13th century France, of the Biblia Sacra Latina, form the Otto F. Ege collection.
A wide ranging collection of English, French, Italian, American, Chinese and German porcelain pieces are included in the auction starting at lot 201. Lot 204 is a large 18th century Meissen figural group, The Surprise, after a model by J.J. Kandler from an engraving by Hogarth. It is signed under glaze with Meissen’s blue painted crossed swords with a scratched line underneath indicating that this piece is Defective Porcelain, incised number 382. This piece is modeled as three card playing figures with a lawyer, accompanied by a child-carrying young woman, about to serve a paternity order to the man seated at left. As the French say, “plus ça change, plus c'est la même
