OVA - FINE ARTS • WORKS AND CORRESPONDANCES OF PAINTERS

The Fine Arts sale includes 300 lots mainly to do with painters, with a mix of writings, correspondence and manuscripts, set off by some of their drawings, paintings and books. Celebrated artists include Boucher, Delacroix, Ingres, Sisley, Gauguin, Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, Giacometti, Miró and a host of others. Artists and various other figures are drawn and described in their daily or private lives. Writings are often enriched with personal or exchanged preparatory drawings and sketches, all vibrantly imbued with life, casting a fresh, original light on the people concerned, and on their doubts, daily thoughts and work.

There is a moving letter by Paul GAUGUIN (1848-1903), complaining that “his head is as empty as his stomach,” asking for his “annual swill” in the form of payment for his paintings, or writing in the depths of despair, “I see nothing but Death, who delivers us from everything.” This is estimated at €2,000-3,000. In this letter dated 10 September 1897 sent from Tahiti, Gauguin confides his financial straits to his friend Daniel de MONFREID (1848-1903): “This month I have debts of over 1,800 francs in credit.”

A rare photograph of Gauguin is also featured in the sale. Estimated at €3,000-3,500, this portrait was taken by Louis-Maurice BOUTET DE MONVEL (1850-1913) in his studio in Rue Vandamme in February 1891.

A correspondence between Paul DURAND-RUEL (1831-1922) and Claude MONET (1840-1926) reveals the famous dealer speaking his mind, saying how he has become “the bête noire of dealers, who are either stupid or evil, and most of the time both at once.” Ten signed autograph letters, dated between January and September 1887, describe to Monet the progress of the dealers’ exhibition in New York, and the problems he is facing. He endeavours to show Monet how hard he is working for him, despite the criticism of his American colleagues. He finally achieves his goal: “My pictures fill all the rooms in the academy, and never has such a magnificent gathering of fine works been seen in this country. In one of the galleries, I have exclusively placed your works with those of Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley and Puvis de Chavanne, of whom I have ten paintings. The effect is delightful. It is the first time people have seen the Chavannes, and they understand them far better here than in France.”

A letter from Édouard MANET (1832-1883), accompanied by a watercolour drawing, is as beautiful as the message is simple (estimate: €100,000-120,000). Depicting a snail on a vine leaf, the painter writes, “Dear Madam, don’t forget the ream of English paper. Regards, E. Manet.”
 

 The diary of Auguste RODIN (1840-1917) shows us his thoughts, written as they came to him (estimate: €10,000-15,000): a moving experience. The sculptor does not use the booklet (dated 1904) as a diary so much as a pocket book, lingering particularly on a trip (or trips) he made to Blois and the Touraine region. “You are of the Loire region where refined love lives on, and give your approval as in the past” (12 February), “Glorious days with the whole breadth of the Loire in its shimmering steel; the clouds seem to leap and jump everywhere, light as air […]; only the wind buffets tyrannically” (10-11 March), “Is it Chambord is it the Loire this Romanesque church has the same soft, graduated light the light is caught in a circle and spreads out towards the nave where it whitens right up to the open door” (16 December)..

 

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