New York—Old Master Through Modern Prints are at auction Thursday, May 6 at Swann Galleries. Prints feature in the sale, from Northern Renaissance and Golden Age icons Dürer and Rembrandt to Impressionist collaborations, European Modernists, and American printmakers.
Old Master prints open the sale with engravings, woodcuts, etchings and drypoints by both well-known and lesser-known printmakers whose images have stood the test of time. Highlights include an intricate run of etchings by Rembrandt van Rijn with Joseph Telling his Dreams, 1638, leading the selection at $30,000 to $50,000. Also by Rembrandt is Landscape with an Obelisk, circa 1650, expected at $20,000 to $30,000; and The Holy Family, circa 1632, at $15,000 to $20,000. Albrecht Dürer is on offer with The Sea Monster, engraving, before 1500; and The Birth of the Virgin, woodcut, circa 1503, both available at $15,000 to $20,000, each. The selection includes engravings by Lucas Van Leyden with Susanna and the Elders, 1508, at $10,000 to $15,000, Hendrick Goltzius with Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan, 1585, at $4,000 to $6,000, as well as works Agostino Carracci, Giovanni B. Piranesi, Canaletto, and Francisco José de Goya.
Nineteenth-century works begin with two mezzotint and engravings by Joseph M. W. Turner from a series of 81 mezzotints that have come to be known as the Liber Studiorum: Pembury Mill, Kent, circa 1817–18, estimated at $1,000 to $1,500, and Mer de Glace, Valley of Chamonix, Savoy, circa 1817–18, at $1,500 to $2,500. The section continues on with works by William Blake, artists of the Barbizon School and a series of James A. M. Whistler etchings, concluding with Impressionist lithographs. Mary Cassatt is featured with the etchings In the Opera Box (No. 3), circa 1880, carrying an estimate of $20,000 to $30,000, and Two Ladies in a Loge, Facing Left (No. 2), circa 1882, at $10,000 to $15,000. Prominent printmaker and frequent Impressionist collaborator George W. Thornley is available with a run of collaborations including those with Claude Monet, Paysage avec une anse dans un arbre, color lithograph, 1894, at $5,000 to $8,000; Edgar Degas, L’Attente de la Chanteuse, color lithograph, circa 1888, at $6,000 to $9,000; and Camille Pissarro, Pont à Rouen, lithograph, circa 1900, at $3,000 to $5,000.
A selection of works by Pablo Picasso includes Fumeur à la Cigatette Rouge, color aquatint, 1964, at $25,000 to $35,000; Buste de Femme, aquatint, 1955, at $20,000 to $30,000; Picador, a 1953 glazed terre-de-faïence plate painted in green, blue, yellow and white, at $20,000 to $30,000; and L’Arlequin et sa Compagne, color collotype, circa 1960, at $15,000 to $20,000. Further European stalwarts in the auction include Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, Georges Braque and more.
American artists include exceptional color woodcuts from Gustave Baumann with Cottonwoods, circa 1931, estimated at $5,000 to $8,000; a run of circa-1930 prints by Frances Gearhart with In the Sun, The Portal, Wilderness, and Autumn Crowned, each offered at $3,000 to $5,000 apiece; and Luigi Rist with Roses #2, 1946, and Peperoni, 1951, presented together at $1,500 to $2,500.