Old Masters Paintings
On Tuesday, 30 March, 2010 Sotheby’s will offer a range of Old Master, Modern and Contemporary Prints. The spring sale in London will present an exciting opportunity to acquire works by a group of important Old Master artists such as Rembrandt, Dürer and Goya. .
Printmaking was central to the oeuvre of these artists and their legacy of etchings, engravings and woodcuts is among the most important in the 500 year history of printmaking in Western Europe. An early impression of Rembrandt’s portrait of his print dealer, Clement de Jonghe (active in Amsterdam from circa 1640 until his death in 1679), in the form of an etching (est. £30,000- 50,000), will be offered alongside a richly imprinted impression on heavy fibrous oatmeal paper of Faust that is one of the artist’s most experimental plates (est. £80,000-120,000, pictured above). The iconography in Rembrandt’s treatment of this subject has inspired debate for over 300 years. Dürer’s Adam and Eve - highly regarded since its conception - ranks as his most iconic image and a print dating to 1504 is estimated at £20,000-30,000. Goya is represented by a group of etchings with aquatint from the first edition of the Tauromaquia. The sale will also boast the importance of the medium to later artists with examples by Modern and Contemporary printmakers, including Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Damien Hirst, and - following the success of a group in Sotheby’s sale of the Lord and Lady Attenborough Collection in November 2009 - a selection by Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson.
