JOHN MORAN AUCTIONEERS ANNOUNCES October 16, 2012 FINE ART SALE Early consignments to John Moran Auctioneers’ October 16, 2012 sale promise an exciting second installment of the house’s new two-session format for their semi-annual Fine Art Auctions. Beginning with
museum collections, including the Whitney, the Smithsonian, and the Art Institute of Chicago. The black and white lithograph depicts a pattern of ocean waves, focusing on structure and shape to demonstrate the process of observation and recording, and a conscious rejection of the search for meaning in a subject. Hailing from a private Beverly Hills, CA collection, it carries an estimate of $10,000 – 15,000. Other modern and contemporary artists in the sale include Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987 New York, NY), whose color screen print of a liquor store sales receipt, ‘’Paris Review’’, is offered for $2000 – 3000, and Jerzy Mierzejewski (b.1917), whose cubist oil landscape of a lush, green forest, titled in Polish ‘’Zielona Bulcowina’’, is estimated at $6000 - 8000.
Academic and Impressionist works from the 19th century are plentiful, led by a charming portrait of a young girl by the Russian painter Alexei Harlamoff (1842 – 1922 Russian / French). ‘’Old Lace and Young Dreams’’ arrives at auction from a Southern California estate with an estimate of $200,000 – 300,000. Harlamoff studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, under the great portrait painter Leon Bonnat, who fostered Harlamoff’s own prodigious talent for portraiture. Harlamoff achieved much success in his lifetime, numbering among his sitters several members of the Russian aristocracy. He developed a specialization in idealized portraits of children and young peasant girls from different regions of Russia, often using his own daughter as a model.
Also offered are works by the Orientalists Frederic Arthur Bridgman (1847 – 1928 American / French) and Gustave Achille Guillaumet (1840 – 1887 French). Bridgman, though born in Alabama, spent most of his career as an expatriate, moving to France at a young age. Inspired by his teacher Jean-Leon Gérome, Bridgman spent long periods at the height of his career in Algeria, portraying the exotic scenery, people, costumes, and activities of daily life. Products of hours spent painting in the open air, reveling in the region’s intense white light and picturesque street life, these works are endlessly fascinating records of a vanished era. ‘’An Afternoon Haircut’’ and ‘’Entrance to the Mosque’’ are each estimated at $20,000 – 30,000. In April Moran’s sold a magnificent example of Bridgman’s work, realizing $270,000 for ‘Street Scene in Algiers.’ The Guillaumet, consigned from a private collection in Santa Barbara, CA, depicts a wooded encampment with Arabian horsemen under an atmospheric sky ($20,000 – 30,000). Guillaumet studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and, like Bridgman, made numerous trips to Algeria. He was awarded the Legion d’honneur.
Moran’s two-session October 16th Fine Art Auction will be held at the Pasadena, CA Convention Center. Full sale catalogues will be posted at www.johnmoran.com 2 -3 weeks prior to the sale. Bidding is available from the floor and via absentee, telephone or online through Artfact.com. Registration is free and all are welcome.
Moran’s is currently accepting consignments for this and other upcoming auctions, including their December
