NEW YORK, NY.- Christie's announces its spring sale of Old Master Paintings in New York on June 3, which is highlighted by 26 paintings restituted to the heir of the famous Dutch dealer and art collector Jacques Goudstikker. Christie’s is honored to present this selection, which exemplifies Goudstikker’s sensitive appreciation of art from across the Netherlands, France, and Italy, and showcases his wide-ranging and sophisticated taste. The sale will also offer a major rediscovery, Noli me tangere, by Francesco Solimena, as well as a fragment of the second version of El Greco’s famous composition of the Martyrdom of St. Maurice.
PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF JACQUES GOUDSTIKKER
A renowned tastemaker of astounding range and accomplishments, Jacques Goudstikker was the preeminent dealer and art collector in the Netherlands before the Second World War. Today, paintings that passed through his gallery hang on the walls of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, to name a few. He was known as an extraordinarily vital and generous person, an entrepreneur, and a deeply thoughtful intellectual, whose lavish catalogues and sumptuous exhibitions were essential in shaping the Dutch experience of European paintings in the first decades after the turn of the 20th century. After fleeing the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, Goudstikker tragically perished during the passage to Dover. In 2006, in a landmark decision, over 200 of Goudstikker’s paintings which had been looted by Nazi officials were returned to Goudstikker’s heir, Marei von Saher. Not long after, a celebratory exhibition was mounted in Greenwich, New York, Texas, Florida and California to pay tribute to both this decision and Goudstikker’s legacy.
THE CUNNINGHAM COLLECTION
After a brilliant career in the Navy, where he spent two decades and served as Commander, Philip Tracy Cunningham retired from the military and turned to business. Together with his wife, the Cunninghams managed to amass in less than a decade a collection of pictures – from the 17th century and beyond – which exemplify Mr. Cunningham’s keen appreciation for condition and quality, as evident in the works offered. The June sale will offer three lots from the collection, and nine lots that will be offered in Christie’s Old Masters Paintings sale in July in London have been on view at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. for the past fifteen years.
ADDITIONAL SALE HIGHLIGHTS
This exquisite masterpiece is a major rediscovery and an important addition to the large corpus of works by Francesco Solimena, the leading Neapolitan painter of the first half of the 18th century. A prolific artist who was esteemed throughout Europe, Solimena created hundreds of altarpieces, large-scale fresco decorations, mythological paintings and portraits, but also executed a few small, highly refined mythological and allegorical paintings on copper. Noli me tangere comes from a private collection and has never been offered at auction before.
This small yet powerful painting offers a moving portrayal of Saint Maurice, the legendary commander of the Theban legion who was martyred for his Christian beliefs in the 3rd century. In an unpublished study of this painting written for the owner in 1993, the scholar William B. Jordan identified it as the only surviving fragment of a lost but documented second version of El Greco’s famous composition of the Martyrdom of St. Maurice that was recorded in El Greco’s inventory at the time of his death in 1614, and which was subsequently installed by his son, Jorge Manuel, above the artist’s tomb in the Theotokópoulos family chapel in the church of San Torcuato, Toledo. The artist’s bold, expressive handling of paint combined with his choice of color, characterized by a marriage of intense, dissonant hues, all contribute to the image’s strikingly modern aesthetic.
