Old Masters Evening Sale

Encompassing six Centuries of European Art, the Old Masters Evening Sale presents a rich array of paintings and sculptures covering a multitude of subjects and mediums. The sale is led by a wonderfully fluid oil sketch by John Constable depicting one of his most iconic subjects - Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds, which is the full-scale compositional sketch for a finished painting now in the Huntington, San Marion. The catalogue cover shows a detail of Pieter Brueghel’s poignant interpretation of the Massacre of the Innocents, one of his most recognisable and celebrated subjects. An early masterpiece by El Greco leads a group of three exceptional works restituted to the heirs to the collection of Julius & Camilla Priester: one of the earliest surviving portraits by the artist and one of the last to remain in private hands, the painting is charged with an uncompromising intensity that would define the artist’s revolutionary idiom. Further highlights include a ‘hauntingly poetic picture’ of the Dream of Saint Joseph by one of the most talented and original followers of Caravaggio, Valentin de Boulogne; and an eighteenth century theatrical conversation piece of the Nugent Family by the leading master of the genre in England, Johann Zoffany. Sculpture highlights include a bronze representation of The Infant Hercules with a Serpent after Alessandro Algardi formerly in the collection of Count Aleksej Semenovich Musin-Pushkin.

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