Old Master and 19th Century Prints

Our live auction on 24 January 2023 marks the return of our Old Master and 19^th Century Prints sales to New York and offers a large and diverse selection of works which shaped the history of Western printmaking.

The sale features many rare and important prints from European and North-American collections, tracing the evolution of the printed image over a period of centuries, from early German engravings of the 15^th century to French lithographs of the 19^th century, from Martin Schongauer to Odilon Redon.  

The core of the sale consists of numerous masterpieces by the three unrivalled masters: Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt and Francisco de Goya. Among Dürer’s works, his eternally intriguing Melencolia and a group of early woodcuts stand out. Rembrandt’s bravura, sensitivity and deep humanity is apparent in a variety of fine impressions of religious and secular subjects, culminating in The Three Crosses (fourth state), one of the most radical and dramatic printed images in the history of art. Goya’s boundless creativity and dark imagination can be experienced in three celebrated sets of prints, all in first editions: Los Caprichos, Los Desastres de la Guerra and Los Proverbios – the last two from the collection of Joseph William Drexel (1833–1888), the New York banker, philanthropist and bibliophile, and an early trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  

Rare prints of the Italian and German Renaissance are complemented by fine examples of French and Netherlandish Mannerism, the Prague School, some eccentric compositions in the manner of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel and intimate scenes of the Dutch Golden Age to capture the variety and brilliance of the graphic arts in 16^th and 17^th century Europe, exemplified by artists like Marcantonio Raimondi, Daniel Hopfer, Jacques Bellange, Hendrick Goltzius and Adriaen van Ostade.  

The largest and one of the rarest and visually stunning prints is a 16^th century Italian woodcut portraying Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent in profile, wearing an opulent headdress made for him by  Venetian craftsmen in 1532. The splendours of Venice herself are vividly rendered by Canaletto in his Vedute, offered in a rare, complete and early set of thirty etchings.

The 19th century is chiefly represented by French artist-printmakers of the Romantic, Symbolist and Impressionist eras, from Delacroix to Carrière, headed by Edgar Degas’ technically complex and highly atmospheric etching of Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery of 1879-80.   

The auction presents a major opportunity to acquire some of the most striking and celebrated images of European art, with estimates ranging from $500 to $500,000.