British classic and rare Swiss artists in major sales

COLLECTOR: Turner tried to buy back one of his own masterpieces at Christie's in 1842 but failed. The painting has returned to the dealer and is the highlight in an upcoming auction.

A Turner masterpiece last publicly auctioned in 1890, which the artist once tried unsuccessfully to buy back, goes under the hammer in New York next week.

Master drawings spanning five centuries by Urs Graf, Poussin, Watteau, Rubens, Turner and Cézanne are highlights of a separate auction that also takes place next week in New York.

The James Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) master-work Sheerness as seen from the Nore is expected to fetch $6 million to $8 million (€6.7 million to €9 million) at the Christie's auction next Friday, January 25th.

Described in 1808 with other Turner paintings as "the finest sea-pieces ever painted by a British artist", the sometimes enfant terrible of the British artistic establishment, tried to buy back the masterpiece at a Christie's auction in 1842. He failed. Turner's bid of 80 to 100 guineas was no match for its purchase at 170 guineas.

The same auction house sold Sheerness as seen from the Nore in 1848 to Sir Thomas Baring (1772-1848), elder son of the banker Sir Francis Baring, for 550 guineas. In 1890, Robert Loyd Lindsay acquired it for 7,100 guineas. It stayed in the Loyd Collection until 1991, when it was sold privately to the current vendor.

Mr Nicholas White, a specialist in the British and Irish art department at Christie's, London, told The Irish Times that the painting was "a masterpiece of Turner's early maturity. It is one of the most important pictures by Turner and the most important picture by Turner to appear at auction in the last 10 years".

The record price at auction for a Turner was set at Sotheby's in 1984, when a seascape fetched £6.7 million (€8.5 million).

In 1805, Turner began what was then regarded as the unconventional method of taking a boat out on the Thames to paint in oils on canvas. Experts suspect that Sheerness as seen from the Nore, although large at some 41 inches by 59 inches, might have originally been mounted on a three foot by four foot stretcher.

If so, it may have been sketched in the open air from a small boat off Sheerness. Subsequently, the spare canvas was unfurled, allowing the picture to be expanded. Moreover, Turner painted in series of sizes and formats and it is suspected he wanted a larger picture to match his Sheerness and the Isle of Sheppey, with the Junction of the Thames and the Medway from the Nore, which he exhibited the previous year (1807).

Master drawings from the Martin Bodmer Foundation will be auctioned by Christie's next Wednesday, January 23rd. Born into a prominent Zurich family in 1899, Bodmer collected all kinds of writing, including books, tablets, scrolls, coins, manuscripts and printing. He also collected drawings. The greater part of the drawings collection is being sold to create a new acquisition fund for the core books and manuscript collection.

Mr Will O'Reilly, a specialist in the old master drawings department at Christie's, London, says that in addition to Bodmer's encyclopaedic range of old master drawings, he collected Swiss artists "who are fabulously rare".

"In the last 70 years, only three major 16th century Swiss drawings have appeared on the auction market. And we've got two in the sale, one by Urs Graf and the other by Niklaus Manuel Deutsch."

Bodmer purchased A woman wearing a plumed hat, a landscape beyond by Graf (1485-1527) in the 1930s. Estimated at $300,000 to $500,000, only two other drawings by Graf have appeared on the market since the second World War.

A dramatic nude in the Bodmer sale by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), An écorché nude reaching up to the left, estimated at $150,000 to $250,000, was executed as one of 15 known pen and ink studies drawn as a series of anatomical studies.

jmarmstrong@irish-times.ie