Christie's Online Magazine No.245

From: Christie's - Saturday Nov 28, 2020 11:34 am

Christie’s

Art stories to feed the mind and soul

Why Helena Rubinstein placed the art of Africa alongside works by her friends, Picasso and Dalí

From serpents to salamanders, Piaf to Russian princes — the story of Boucheron jewellery

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‘Possibilities for a new world were endless’: émigrés, dreams, and the New School of Paris

Was sculptor-designer Isamu Noguchi ‘an artist more for our times than he was his own’?

The tycoon who retired at 35, then built one of the great collections of Chinese art

Artist Sarah Sze on the power of images to influence ‘how we fall in love, how we spend our time’

Editor’s picks

A statement piece celebrating the revolutionary values of liberty, equality and fraternity, this patriotic brooch uses sapphires, diamonds and rubies to form the blue, white and red vertical bands of the French tricolour, an emblem of the Republic since 1790

Estimate: €1,500-2,500
until 9 December, Online

John Frederick Herring painted the MP, High Sheriff of Yorkshire and noted sportsman George Osbaldeston with Tranby, the recent winner of the Oatlands handicap at Newmarket Craven, in 1832. Tranby was sent to stud in America, while Osbaldeston went on to ruin, accruing gambling debts of £200,000

Estimate: £60,000-80,000
until 17 December, Online

This polychrome enamelled work from the Qing dynasty is finely modelled and meticulously detailed, for instance in the use of black flecks beneath the green enamel to show the animals’ fur. But its chief charm lies in the depiction of the adoring relationship between the lion and its cub

Estimate: HKD 120,000-180,000
30 November, Hong Kong

The first British edition of Agatha Christie’s earliest novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1921. This is the book that introduced the world to Hercule Poirot, a character based in part on Belgian refugees the author had met in her home town of Torquay

Estimate: £1,000-1,500
9 December, London

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Helena Rubinstein with African art, including a Kota-Obamba reliquary figure, Gabon, in the drawing room of her Paris residence, Boulevard Raspail, early 1930s. Photo: Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet / Topfoto // Zao Wou-Ki (Zhao Wuji, 1920-2013), 15.01.82 - Triptyque (detail), 1982. Estimate: HK$70,000,000-120,000,000. Offered in Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on 2 December 2020 at Christie’s in Hong Kong. Artwork: © DACS 2020 // George Walter Vincent Smith and his wife Belle Townsley Smith in their home