our pick of the highlights from April’s sales

Attributed to Claudio Francesco Beaumont, Chryseis returned to her father and Quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon, (round 1740s)

Lodge Bauer Palazzo, Artcurial, Venice, 24 April

Estimate: €40,000 to €80,000

It’s not precisely identified how this pair of huge portraits by the Turinese painter Claudio Francesco Beaumont ended up within the Lodge Bauer in Venice, an 18th-century palazzo close to St Mark’s Sq. that has, for the previous 140 years, served as a excessive society hang-out. The constructing is now closed for 3 years to bear a serious refurbishment, funded partly by the sale of round 10,000 objects in its assortment. There isn’t any file of the Beaumont work getting into the resort they usually had been probably acquired after the Fifties, as they don’t seem to be current in archival pictures of the resort from the Forties and 50s, in accordance with Elisabeth Bastier, an Outdated Grasp specialist at Artcurial. Nonetheless, regardless of this spotty provenance historical past, they’re estimated on the very higher finish of Beaumont’s market, the place costs have eclipsed €30,000 on simply two events. “Beaumont used to work on the courtroom of Charles Emmanuel III, Duke of Savoy in Turin, who despatched him to Venice in 1737 to accumulate work,” Bastier says of the artist’s connection to La Serenissima. “This allowed him to get nearer to the painters in Venice and the native artwork scene.” The works depict a scene from Homer’s Iliad. On the left, Achilles attracts a sword towards Agamemnon for taking his concubine, Chryseis, from him. The goddess Athena is seen trying to carry Achilles again by his hair. In the proper panel, Chryseis is returned to her father, Chryses of Troy.

Marsden Hartley, On the Seashore, 1940-41

Trendy American Masterworks from the Ted Shen Assortment, Christie’s New York, 21 April

Estimate: $1.5m to $2.5m

The American Modernist Marsden Hartley was, till the final 5 years of his life, finest generally known as a panorama painter, however a late-career flip in direction of figuration noticed him realise a few of his most critically celebrated works. This current lot is certainly one of three identified work by him to depict figures at Outdated Orchard Seashore in southern Maine—as soon as generally known as the “Coney Island of New England” for its liberal environment. Like a lot of Hartley’s figurative work, males are depicted in a hypermasculine style with blocky our bodies—“a fraternity of stoic, usually solitary, rural hunks: lobster fishermen, lumberjacks, and athletes,” writes the curator Randall R. Griffey in a listing essay for a 2017 solo present of Hartley’s work on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in New York. These depictions are interpreted by most students as regarding the artist’s unconfirmed homosexuality. Maybe in an try to stick to the social mores of the time, a feminine determine is included on this work to pare down its homoeroticism, Griffey argues. The work is being supplied in a single-owner sale of works from the gathering of the musical theatre composer Ted Shen and his spouse Mary Jo, to profit their philanthropic organisations.

Amedeo Modigliani, Head of a Woman (1917)

Avant Garde: Artwork from 1900 to Now, Lyon & Turnbull, London, 27 April

Estimate: £40,000 to £60,000

The artist John Christopher “Equipment” Wooden purchased this sparse line drawing by Modigliani just some years earlier than the latter died, aged 35. The 2 blended in comparable bohemian Parisian circles, which Wooden was launched to by his patron and one-time lover, the Chilean lawyer José Antonio Gandarillas. Whereas the phrases of the work’s sale to Wooden are unrecorded, it’s identified that he later bought it to his London seller, Alex Reid at Lefevre Gallery, in March 1930, lower than six months earlier than his personal loss of life by suicide, aged 28. The work is obtainable within the inaugural Avant Garde: Artwork from 1900 to Now sale by Lyon & Turnbull, held on the Mall Galleries in London. It is a class that the Lyon & Turnbull specialist Simon Hucker says will assist to develop the class of Trendy British Artwork to incorporate, amongst others, immigrant artists who discovered their houses in London earlier than and after the wars. 

Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar, Untitled, 1960

The Al Zayani assortment, Sotheby’s London, 25 April

Estimate: £40,000-£60,000

This portray comes from a short transition interval for the influential Egyptian Modernist artist Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar, when he stepped again from the spiritual Sufism that outlined his early profession and which preceded his later exploration of themes of industrialisation and spatial conquest. Throughout this interim interval, the artist travelled to Rome and produced a sequence of portraits. The bulk adorn their sitters with flamboyant folkloric motifs, making this specific work uncommon for its sparing particulars and muted palette. It was beforehand owned by the outstanding collector Mohammed Mentioned Farsi, who served as Lord Mayor of Jeddah within the Nineteen Seventies and 80s. It now involves the block as a part of a single proprietor sale from the gathering of Abdulrahman Al Zayani.

Yoshitomo Nara, Acid MJ, 2009

Poly Public sale Night Sale, Hong Kong, 29 April

Estimate: HKD 34m to 44m ($4.3m to $5.6m)

The Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara is collected by celebrities the world over, from the BTS rapper RM to the style designer Stella McCartney, with whom Nara collaborated for a group final 12 months. However few depictions of celebrities exist in Nara’s oeuvre, and this portray of pop star Michael Jackson is the one identified depiction of a musician by him. Nonetheless, Western well-liked tradition is undoubtedly current in his work, the place it’s merged with Japanese iconography to type his profitable signature model. The artist has beforehand spoken about how his first publicity to Western tradition was by music within the Nineteen Seventies and 80s performed on the radio in Japan. On the time Michael Jackson was on the peak of his profession and would little doubt have been acquainted to Nara.