ANTIQUE dealers are not very good at retiring. But then, many would claim that retirement is not very good for anyone. Dealers may close their galleries after a few decades, but generally they cannot break away entirely and continue to deal from home or act as advisers for a few favourite clients. Several have done so recently, perhaps discouraged from shopkeeping by lockdowns, as well as advancing age.
When I first met him half a century ago, Martyn Gregory was already dealing in English and Dutch watercolours from a shared gallery in Lancashire Court, then a blind alley off Bond Street, W1. Later, he moved to Bury Street, St James's, SW1, and made a speciality of China Trade paintings, that is 18th- and 19th-century works produced for Europeans and sometimes by them, in the Far East. These are often in a hybrid style that is all their own. Four years ago, he had a sale of his remaining watercolour stock at Christie's and he closed the gallery last year.
Now, he has had an auction of selected China Trade works at Bonhams, with a second tranche planned for next November. Some things went for less than he had paid for them, others well over what he would have asked, but the market and total were better than expected and all lots sold.
The 30-lot selection opened with three half-length portraits convincingly attributed to Jesuit artists working at the court of the Qianlong Emperor, one of them Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766). His subject has been identified as the half-brother of the Emperor, Prince Guogong (1733-65) (Fig 1), an important cultural figure who was in charge of the Household Workshop, with the Jesuits working under his eye. European elements are evident, especially in the facial modelling, but the full-frontal format is Chinese. It measured 194in by 25in and sold for $165,500.
Esta historia es de la edición November 27, 2024 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición November 27, 2024 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
