Christie's Online Magazine No.254

From: Christie's - Saturday Feb 13, 2021 11:29 am

Christie’s

When love and art collide, A 3,000-year-old bronze wine vessel, Kossoff and Auerbach, British Pop art, Great marriage portraits, the right wine glasses, and more |

A Valentine’s Day celebration: ten artist couples for whom love and art were and are intertwined

Opening a special bottle? From bubbles to Barolo, seven tips for matching glass shape to grape

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From the archive: art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon on his favourite marriage portraits

Brothers in paint: Leon Kossoff, Frank Auerbach, and why they painted each other so often

Crouching tiger, hidden owl: a 3,000-year-old wine vessel with ‘incredibly striking’ details

And one you may have missed… why Britain was the first to go Pop — 20 years before the US

More stories

Editor’s picks

Doris Castlerosse, great-aunt of the models Cara and Poppy Delevingne, was herself a famous beauty. In this 1938 portrait, Sir John Lavery captures her much-admired legs — not once, but twice: the viscountess is pictured sitting in the chair to the left as well as on the diving board

Estimate: £400,000-600,000
1 March, London

If you have promised someone the Moon, now is your chance to deliver. Lunar rock is among the rarest substances on Earth, and this slice, discovered in the Sahara Desert, weighs in at a quarter of a pound. It was blasted off the Moon’s surface by an asteroid strike

Estimate: $12,500-17,500
until 23 February, Online

Georges Seurat was a brilliant draughtsman. This Conté crayon masterpiece from 1890, with its two mysterious figures standing by a body of water where the white sail of a boat emerges from the twilight, is an atmospheric counterpoint to his sunny paintings of bathers and Parisian park life

Estimate: $2,500,000-3,500,000
1 March, New York

This Regency library table in oak and Indian rosewood has a rotating top inlaid with a cut-brass acanthus pattern, above a bowl-shaped pedestal carved to resemble basketwork. Most striking of all are the four crouching legs and paw feet, which give it the coiled energy of a living thing

Estimate: £20,000-30,000
until 25 February, Online

Christo and Jeanne-Claude during the installation of 42,390 Cubic Feet Package, Minneapolis, 1966. Photo: Carroll T. Hartwell. © Estate of Christo V. Javacheff // Illustration by Emmanuelle Walker // Piero della Francesca, Battista Sforza, Wife of Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, circa 1465. Artworks: Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Tuscany, Italy/Bridgeman Images // Frank Auerbach in the studio with Head of Leon Kossoff (1954), circa 1955. Photo and artwork: copyright the artist, courtesy the artist and Marlborough, London // Allen Jones, R.A. (b. 1937), Painted screen, 1965-1973. Estimate: £60,000-80,000. Offered in the Modern British Art Day Sale on 2 March 2021 at Christie's in London

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Christie's Online Magazine No.254