Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming Camoin catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Archives Camoin.
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PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF WILLIAM KELLY SIMPSON“Hardly a member of the lay public interested in Egypt has not read and enjoyed [William Kelly Simpson’s] Literature of Ancient Egypt, An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, and Poetry or learned from his Ancient Near East: A History” writes Boston Museum of Fine Arts curator Rita Freed of the late Egyptologist, William Kelly Simpson (1928-2017).William Kelly Simpson was born in Manhattan in 1928. He attended Manhattan’s Buckley School, Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts and Yale University from where he graduated in 1947 with a degree in English, and obtained his Master’s degree in Philosophy in 1948. That same year, he made his initial foray into Egyptology, when curators W.C. Hayes and Ambrose Lansing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art hired the graduate as a Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Egyptian Art. Imbued with an insatiable curiosity and precocious mind, Professor Simpson penned his first Egyptological article—an exploration of a Fourth Dynasty portrait head—at just twenty-one years old. That piece, published in the Bulletin of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, heralded a remarkable scholarly output, with more than 130 articles and twenty books written throughout his lifetime.Professor Simpson’s position within The Met’s Department of Egyptian Art forever changed the trajectory of his life, and, indeed, the wider field of Egyptology. It was during his time at The Met that Professor Simpson participated in his first archaeological expedition—an excavation in Iraq sponsored by the British School of Archaeology—and decided to pursue graduate work in Egyptology. In the early 1950s, the young scholar commuted between his work in New York and his studies at Yale, all while serving in the 101st Armed Calvary of the New York National Guard. In June 1953, Professor Simpson married a granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Professor Simpson studied for his doctorate under noted Egyptologist Ludlow Bull, and wrote his dissertation on the excavation of the pyramid of Amenemhat I. It was not until obtaining his Ph.D. from Yale in 1954, however, that Professor Simpson made his first trek to Egypt, after being awarded a prestigious Fulbright research fellowship. Professor Simpson led excavation teams at the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur and at Mitrahineh for two years. Upon returning to the United States, he was immediately offered a fellowship at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and in 1958 was appointed Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Literature at Yale.During Professor Simpson’s forty-six years in academia, he rose to Associate Professor, Professor, and Chair of Yale’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literature; was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Humanities; and positioned Yale as one of the foremost centers for Egyptology. Among his many archaeological projects in Egypt were the famed Pennsylvania-Yale Expeditions recording New Kingdom tombs and Meroitic cemeteries, the 1960s UNESCO campaign to rescue Nubian monuments threatened by the construction of the Aswan Dam, and excavations at the Giza Pyramids and sites in Nubia. “[Professor Simpson] served the monuments of Egypt… with unstinting passion,” noted fellow scholar Hussein Bassir. “He served as a major channel between Egypt and the US,” Bassir added, “to the benefit of the two nations and the archaeological and cultural ties between the two countries.”The earliest acquisitions in Professor Simpson’s collection were made by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, the co-founder of The Museum of Modern Art, from whom many works passed by descent. Mrs. Rockefeller acquired Henri Matisse’s radiant 1928 still life, Plâtre, bouquet de fleurs, in 1930, three years before founding MoMA. Beginning in the 1970s, Professor Simpson put together one of the greatest collections of Nabi paintings ever assembled, led by three 1890s masterworks by Édouard Vuillard: Les Lilas (circa 1890), Autoportrait à la canne et de canotier (circa 1891-1892) and the extraordinary interior Misia et Vallotton à Villeneuve (1899). Christie’s is proud and deeply honored to present these highlights of the Nabi movement along with other exceptional modern European paintings, drawings and sculpture from the Estate of William Kelly Simpson in our Impressionist & Modern Art Evening, Day and Works on Paper Sales this fall.PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF WILLIAM KELLY SIMPSON
Charles Camoin (1879-1965)
Autoportrait
Details
Charles Camoin (1879-1965)
Autoportrait
signed and dedicated 'à André Bacqué son ami Ch. Camoin' (upper left)
oil on board
12 7/8 x 9 3/8 in. (32.7 x 23.8 cm.)
Painted circa 1905
Autoportrait
signed and dedicated 'à André Bacqué son ami Ch. Camoin' (upper left)
oil on board
12 7/8 x 9 3/8 in. (32.7 x 23.8 cm.)
Painted circa 1905
Provenance
André Bacqué, Paris (gift from the artist).
Jean Bacqué, Paris (by descent from the above).
Private collection, Surrey; sale, Christie's, London, 26 March 1999, lot 7.
Acquired at the above sale by the late owner.
Jean Bacqué, Paris (by descent from the above).
Private collection, Surrey; sale, Christie's, London, 26 March 1999, lot 7.
Acquired at the above sale by the late owner.
Brought to you by
Vanessa Fusco