More pictures from 19th Century European Art - New York 4 Nov 2010 Sotheby's

Not really British but who cares ... I love them

ÉMILE MUNIER
FRENCH 1840-1895
HER BEST FRIEND

signed E. MUNIER and dated 1882 (upper right)
oil on canvas
27 by 20 in.
68.6 by 50.8 cm
ESTIMATE 150,000 - 200,000 USD

Howard L. Rehs has authenticated this work from a photograph and will include it in his forthcoming catalogue
raisonné to be published by Rehs Galleries, Inc. (www.emilemunier.org)

LOUIS MARIE DE SCHRYVER
FRENCH 1862 - 1942
BATH DAY

signed LOUIS DE SCHRYVER (lower right)
oil on canvas
26 by 21 1/2 in.
67.3 by 54.6 cm

ESTIMATE 30,000 - 40,000 USD

HERMEN ANGLADA-CAMARASA
SPANISH 1871 - 1959
GRUPAS VALENCIANAS (VALENCIAN GIRLS)

signed H. Anglada-Camarasa and dated 1909 (lower right)
oil on canvas
31 1/2 by 42 1/2 in.
80 by 108 cm

ESTIMATE 500,000 - 700,000 USD

Anglada-Camarasa was one of the most influential and innovative Spanish artists of the early twentieth century, his name often included among contemporary French vanguards like Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and Edouard Vuillard. His complex chromatic schemes and bold use of decorative patterns influenced a generation of modern artists such as Wassily Kandinksy and fellow Spaniard Pablo Picasso. After his first local exhibition of realist landscapes in 1894, the artist left Spain for study in Paris' Académie Julian and Académie Colarossi. Ten years later, Anglada-Camarasa departed "highly-civilized" Paris for a life-changing visit to Valencia -- an ancient yet rapidly modernizing city, its culture influenced both by its people's European and Middle Eastern heritage (the city was once an important port of Arab trade routes). As S. Hutchinson Harris explains in his early monograph, the artist arrived in time to see the city's festivals, "the last natural survival of the gorgeous pageantry of the medieval past. For them were brought out the carefully preserved rich floral dresses, and the gay caparisons of the horses...

All these Anglada wove into decorative pictures" (S. Hutchinson Harris, The Art of H. Anglada-Camarasa: A Study in Modern Art , London, 1929, p. 12). Grupas Valencianas is one of approximately fifteen masterworks of this era, painted not necessarily to record fading local rituals but to capture the brilliant colors of the elaborate costumes and poses of the participants. According to Hutchinson Harris, "In Valencia [the artist] found his readiest subjects: Valencia still tinged by the effects of Moorish occupation, and affording traces of the quality of Orientalist art, gay with the prosperity derived from the richness of its soil, fertilized by its bountiful sunshine, and bathed in the vivid colours of the Mediterranean seaboard" (Hutchinson Harris, p. 12). As suggested by Grupas Valencianas' impressive size, the artist did not work en plein air but rather in his studio, where he could experiment with and observe his attempts to capture the visual and emotional vibrancy of the festivals. His technique is highly complicated: layers of glazes are applied onto the canvas, weaving color and line into the geometric patterns of costumes' embroideries, the figures overlapping in a frieze-like procession, conveying the celebratory movement of a fan or skirt raised in mid-step. As Anglada-Camarasa's critics described the overall effect is one of a "tapestry" or a "mosaic," where a scene of daily life is transformed to an ornamental abstraction of visual splendor.