The Collector’s Auction

Leonard Joel Sydney is pleased to present The Collector’s Auction on Tuesday the 30th of June 2020 at 6pm at our Woollahra location. This multi-vendor auction is comprised of a unique selection of fine art, decorative art, furniture and porcelain from notable private Australian collections.
The Collector’s Auction includes an impressive selection of fine art, notably the only oil painting by Marc Chagall to be sold in Australia, Bouquet au coq jaune, ca 1960; a work on paper by Lee Krasner, the wife of Jackson Pollock, whose critically acclaimed retrospective at the Barbican, London, was held last year; an expansive canvas by the esteemed Australian artist Wendy Sharpe, winner of both the Archibald and Sulman Prizes; a dynamic composition by British-born Australian artist Alun Leach-Jones, featuring his signature approach to abstraction; four paintings from the Thomas Keneally Collection including iconic Australian artists Garry Shead and David Boyd; and a fascinating collection of paintings, drawings and personal letters by Frank Hinder, a pioneer of Australian abstract art.

Following the success of The Hyde Collection Auction at Leonard Joel Sydney in December we are proud to present part two of the collection including an impressive collection of rare pocket watches and scent bottles, clocks by respected English horologists, and fine early English walnut and mahogany furniture.

In the porcelain section of the auction Leonard Joel presents the Hailey Collection of Worcester which includes works by Davis, Baldwin and Stinton; a fine collection of 18th Century Meissen; and several rare examples of Wegely porcelain, Berlin, 1751-1773.

The furniture in the auction includes three rare early to mid-16th Century Italian walnut coffers, acquired from Di Clemente, Florence, and a rare 17th Century walnut prie-dieu purchased in 1987 from Csaky’s Antiques, London.

Bouquet au coq jaune, ca 1960, the only Marc Chagall oil painting to be sold at auction in Australia, returns to market with Leonard Joel, Sydney on 30th June.
The joyous painting Bouquet au coq jaune, ca 1960 is definitively Marc Chagall. It reflects the personal fantasy Chagall created on his canvases. Leitmotifs of entwined lovers, floral bouquet and rooster float within a deliberately ambiguous spatial plane. The vibrant palette and expressive handling of paint demonstrate why Chagall is regarded as a master colourist.

Bouquet au coq jaune, ca 1960 was likely painted towards the end of Chagall’s career, around the time he and his second wife Valentina (Vava) moved to the outskirts of Saint-Paul de Vance in 1966. Flowers filled his paintings of this period and his compositions included reference to the village and its ramparts as viewed from his home. It was during this time he painted two large murals for the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Centre in New York.

Chagall cherished what he called the lumière-liberté, the light of freedom, in the French Riviera. It inspired a joyous renewal of creative possibility which Chagall expressed through a series of sumptuous floral paintings. His paintings, as in the example of Bouquet au coq jaune, ca 1960, were a celebration of life through colour and references to love. As Chagall wrote: “in our life there is a single colour, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the colour of love”.

The rooster had long been a symbol in Chagall’s paintings, in part referencing his personal identity and nostalgia for his peasant origins. Chagall was born in Vitebsk, Russia, of a large and poor Jewish family. From his background he acquired a repertoire of Russian-Jewish folktales and sentimental attachment to the Jewish religion and traditions. From these elements emerged his profoundly personal and poetic compositions, which were distinct in their lyricism and sentimentality from the avant-garde developments of his peers.   

Chagall’s artistic development was also informed by the early years he spent in Paris, where he first arrived in 1910 from St. Petersburg. He absorbed the influences of Fauvism and Cubism.  Although he departed from the analytical and fragmented representation of form, the fauvist passion for colour remained with him. Chagall also synthesised Surrealism within his practice, with paintings such as Bouquet au coq jaune, ca 1960 appearing as through from a dream, a visualisation of the subconscious.

As Pablo Picasso stated: “I don’t know where he gets those images from; he must have an angel in his head”.

The Hailey Collection of Royal Worcester
This extraordinary collection was acquired both locally and internationally during the 1970s, purchased locally from David Jones and Prouds, and overseas from Sotheby’s Belgravia and specialist antique and porcelain dealers. The Hailey family were meticulous in their pursuit of acquiring high quality pieces in pristine condition.

The golden period for decorative Royal Worcester ranges from the 1890s through to the 1950s. Royal Worcester had some of the greatest artists ever to put brush to porcelain working at its factory. In 1889 Worcester acquired the Grainger factory whose chief painters were the Stintons – John senior and junior and brother James. John junior and his son Harry specialized in painting Highland Cattle. Neither of them had ever been to Scotland and so painted all their work from imagination and postcards. It is said that John couldn’t paint cattle’s hooves hence he always painted them in long grass, this can be seen in the examples held in this collection. John painted for almost 40 years until 1938 and is renowned as one of the greatest landscape painters on porcelain of all time. This collection includes pieces by John, Harry and James Stinton. Other highlights include pieces by Harry Davis, another celebrated painter whose most well-known subject was highland sheep and whose 70+ year career ended in 1969; Charles Balwin’s classic Swan’s pot pourri vase and cover; and a fine pair of vases and covers of fruit in a woodland landscape by Freeman, dated 1956.

Paintings from the collection of Thomas Keneally
Thomas Keneally (born 1935) is a prolific Australian novelist, playwright and essayist. His first novel was published in 1964 and he has won numerous awards including the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Prize, the Mondello International Prize, and has been made a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library. He is perhaps best known for his non-fiction novel Schindler’s Ark, the story of Oskar Schindler’s rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, which won the Booker Prize in 1982. The book was later adapted into the 1993 film Schindler’s List, directed by Steven Spielberg which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Keneally has a passion for Australian history, sometimes featuring iconic Australian artists on the covers of his books. For example, the painting by Garry Shead in the upcoming auction was the cover artwork for Bettany’s Book, an epic Australian novel inspired by a diary Keneally discovered while carrying out research.

Watches from the Hyde Collection
A collection of approximately 50 rare pocket watches dating from the late 17th Century through to the early 20th Century. There are many fine examples of the watchmaker’s craft, both technically and aesthetically, with movements such as quarter repeating musical, striking, quarter repeating cylinder and classical cylinder, and decorative elements of fine enameled dials, gold repoussé work, red tortoiseshell pique, and pictorial enamels. The watches are by world renowned makers, many considered the finest in their craft, including George Ritherdon (circa 1760), Francis Perigal (circa 1771), Cornelius Herbert (circa 1720), Edward Tomlin (circa 1795), Henry James (circa 1690), JNO Jackson (circa 1820), Thomas Uttering (circa 1830), Thomas Windills (circa 1690), Eardley Norton (circa 1770), Julien LeRoy (Paris, circa 1750), Gerrit Braemer of Amsterdam and Breguet, Paris.

Scent and snuff bottles & watch keys from the Hyde Collection
A collection of approximately 60 snuff and scent bottles, each a fine example of the opulence of their time, finely crafted in silver, gold, agate, coral, porcelain, enamel, jade, crystal, and Venetian glass.

A rare offering of over 100 English and European fine gold watch keys, some in steel or silver, with Georgian examples set with micro mosaic, paste, and cameo. There are many of novelty form such as horses, foxes, boar heads, cannons, wrench, scissors, polo mallets, compass, and guns. Also found in this collection of watch keys are several in gold by Breguet.

Clocks from the Hyde Collection
There are several fine English bracket clocks by Paul Barraud, Thomas Grigon, and Johnson of Greys Inn Passage, as well as a rare 18th Century ebonized bracket clock with carillon and bird automaton by John Henry Borrell (1757-1840). Also included in the auction is a rare James II walnut marquetry long-case clock by Morgan Herbert, London circa 1690.

JANE MESSENGER / Independent Writer