From 24 to 27 September, Zurich auction house Koller is opening its doors and inviting viewers to a grand auction series of more than 1,400 exquisite lots being sold across ten sessions.
At the heart of the auction series are Old Master works: in a separate auction on 27 September, Old Master paintings, drawings and graphics will be auctioned off. The spirit of such rare and exquisite Old Master paintings can be found here, for instance the Portrait of a Fool created around 1550. It was painted by a Flemish artist, formerly known as the ‘Master of 1537’, who has since been identified as Mechelen-based Frans Verbeeck. Within Verbeeck's oeuvre are many moralising pictures.
The present work can also be considered in this way, as the sitter seems to atone his observers for his indulgence with his gesture and his apologetic smile, which he himself is only too willing to grant. The intensity of this request is underscored by the black background – a composition which was a rarity in 16th-century art.
Around the same time that the Portrait of the Fool was created, Pier Francesco di Jacopo Foschi painted a diametrically opposed work in Florence: Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist. The figures executed in delicate colours are removed from the earthly world and bear witness to the exclusively divine grace that can be given to such realms.
Another compelling lot consists of this pair of paintings whose signatures reveal that Johann Rudolf Bys painted them in 1694. Born in Switzerland, Bys lived and worked in Prague from 1689 and introduced small, decorative painting there.
An interesting piece of Viennese contemporary history is the portrait of Caroline Pichler and Her Brother, painted in the 1770s by Anton Hickel, who later made a name for himself as a portraitist and court painter of Joseph II. The depicted siblings enjoyed a comprehensive education in the artistic home, which was also linked to the imperial family, which made Caroline a well-known Viennese personality who could thence make a name for herself as a writer and salonière.
The start of the Koller’s September auctions begin on the 24th with books. Fascinating and extremely rare lots come in the way of two silk books by the Lyon silk manufacturer Joseph-Alphonse Henry. The first is Les Laboureurs by Alphonse de Lamartine. It is the only original copy in private ownership in existence.
The second silk book of the auction, Livre de Prières: Tissé d'après les Enluminures of the Manuscript of XIVeau XVIeSiècle, also comes from Henry and shows the improvements that 1886/87 found in terms of publishing technique.
In addition to books, on 24 September, decorative pieces and autographs will also be auctioned. The following day, jewellery will be sold in two sessions, before the sales continue on 26 September with rugs, furniture, porcelain and silver.
Here you can look forward to an equally beautiful and varied offer, the highlights of which include a rare pendulum skeleton clock, manufactured in Paris in the late 18th century.
The Munich physicist and watchmaker Sigmund Riefler also put his faith in pendulum clocks when, a good 100 years later, he produced this brass and glass pendulum skeleton clock.
Among the porcelain objects of the auction are a complete ensemble of the four continents, designed by JF Eberlein, P. Reinicke and JJ Kändler between 1745 and 1747. The groups of figures go back to an order of the Russian Tsarina Elisabeth Petrovna.
A touch of exoticism is found in two intriguing pieces of furniture. One is a rare walnut folding chair with stylised flowers, which comes from the environment of the Nasrid dynasty, which administered the emirate of Granada in the late period of the Moorish rule over Andalusia (al-Andalus).
The other is a rosewood table inlaid with ivory and decorated with carvings. It was made in Goa in southwestern India in the 17th or 18th century, which was the centre of the Portuguese-Indian colony.
After the Old Masters auction, paintings from the 19th century will finally close Koller’s auction series on 27 September. Here is an early work by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, which was created during his stay in Italy between 1825 and 1828. The view of Naples was created en plain air and points to a style that Corot continued as an artist later on.
All auctions take place within the Koller’s premises at Hardturmstrasse 102 & 121 in Zurich. There, all objects will be on view from 19 to 23 September.
