Bronzes dominated Horta’s (20% buyer’s premium) February 16-17 sale. Rodin’s famous Kiss, in a 16in (40cm), undated Barbedienne casting, tripled hopes with €96,000 (£66,200). A patinated bronze Marchand Tunisien by Emile Peynot, 22in (56cm) high, showing a seated Arab holding a gilded bronze rifle, sold on estimate at €12,000 (£8275), and a patinated bronze nude by Georges Morren, 10in (26cm) high, dated 1899, doubled estimate at €6500 (£4480).
A carved and patinated 18th century Italian console table, with a (later) green marble top, led the furniture on €14,000 (£9650), with an “English-influenced” mahogany cylinder-top bureau bookcase, c.1800, at an expected €6000 (£4140).
Several items of English furniture were to be found at the Galerie Moderne (20% buyer’s premium) on February 17-18, ranging from a late 17th century oak dresser at €1600 (£1100), to an oak tallboy, c.1800, at €1400 (£970), and a 19th century mahogany cylinder-top bureau at €1800 (£1240). A large, late Victorian, neo-Gothic three-doored display cabinet sold short of hopes for €3000 (£2070). Top lot was Antoine Bouvard’s early 20th century Canal à Venise, 20in x 2ft 2in (50 x 65cm, at a mid-estimate €12,500 (£8620).
Horta were back in action on February 18 with their annual Comic Strip sale. Top price of €9500 (£6550), double estimate, went to a single-sheet Indian ink Boule & Bill strip in Indian ink, signed Roba, advertising Kodak cameras. Local hero Tintin was the subject of a plaster bust by Pigeon, 20in (50cm) high, showing the intrepid reporter in a knotted handkerchief. “One of barely a few dozen in existence”, it sold short of hopes for €3200 (£2200). But a school text book (Paul-Leroy Beaulieu’s 1920 Précis d’Economie Politique) with ink and pencil notes and doodlings by George Rémi (Hergé), Tintin’s creator, soared to €7000 (£4830).
Figurative scenes by Franz Gaillard (1861-1932) attracted attention at the 546-lot Vanderkindere (20% buyer’s premium) sale on February 17-18 – notably two large, undated works, each 5ft 7in x 4ft 1in (1.70 x 1.25m), one showing Ladies Feeding Pigeons on St Mark’s Square in Venice, at €20,500 (£14,140), the other the Acropolis in Athens, at €19,000 (£13,100). His smaller Paysage Animé à Delphi, 3ft 3in x 2ft 6in (99 x 77cm), took €10,000 (£6900).
Top price at the sale, which was 80 per cent sold by lot, was the €45,000 (£31,000) paid for a painting of an unidentified saint by a 17th century follower of Ribera, 4ft 2in x 3ft 1in (1.27m x 94cm) in its original carved giltwood frame. A chiming longcase clock signed Paulus Bramer Amsterdam, 8ft 4in (2.53m) high, showing days of the week and moon phases, took €17,000 (£11,700).
Exchange rate: £1 = €1.45.
Bronzes steal the show at Horta
NONE of the February auctions in Brussels were timed to coincide with the Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique (Belgian Antique Dealers’ Fair), staged from February 6-15, perhaps because this was the first year that the new-look fair had attracted such international attention.
