FROM A STUNNING VIEW OF THE SOUTH OF FRANCE TO VENETIAN SCENES AND OLD MASTER DRAWINGS, THESE ARE THE WORKS TO WATCH
By Dr. Marianne Berardi
Heritage’s European Art Signature® Auction on June 5, 2025 – the most expansive in 15 years – features an exceptionally rich selection of paintings and drawings spanning six centuries of art historical periods, styles and countries of origin. Below are some of the standout works and collections that populate the 182-lot sale, as chosen by Heritage’s Co-Director of European Art, Dr. Marianne Berardi.
Francesco Fontebasso, ‘Fall of the Rebel Angels,’ circa 1736. Ink, wash and gouache on tan laid paper. 19-3/4 x 14-1/2 inches (50.2 x 36.8 cm) (sight). Available in Heritage’s European Art Signature® Auction on June 5, 2025.
Drawings from the Expansive Collection of William A. Glaser
For more than 60 years, New York native and sociologist William A. Glaser (1925-2023) assembled a connoisseur’s collection of 97 finished drawings, studies, sketches and watercolors by some of history’s greatest draftsmen, as well as gifted, lesser known figures, including the Carracci, Francesco Fontebasso, Pietro Faccini, Jacques de Gheyn III, Jan van Goyen, Stradanus, Edward Lear, Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier, James Jacques Tissot, Max Beckmann and many more. Glaser’s passion for art was ignited by visiting museums while he was on research assignments in various countries pursuing his scholarly interest in international health care. Drawings appealed to him above all else.
Edward Lear, ‘View of Nice.’ Ink and wash on paper. 6-3/4 x 10-1/8 inches (17.1 x 25.7 cm) (sight). Available in Heritage’s European Art Signature® Auction on June 5, 2025.
Beginning around 1960 Glaser started frequenting auction houses and eventually began bidding for drawings in earnest. His zeal for art was matched by his love for researching it, a carryover from his training as a sociologist. Often within mere days of buying a drawing, the collector was writing to the foremost expert or experts on the artist to whom his sheet was attributed. His tenaciousness to pin down attributions often resulted in spirited and extensive correspondence with scholars, gallerists, auction house specialists and museum professionals. His copious letters, all filed neatly and chronologically in curatorial files he kept for decades, usually start with his trademark line, “I collect Old Master drawings.” The “Glaser files” were a cataloger’s dream and provided invaluable documentation for each work on offer.
Lucien Pissarro, ‘Le grand chêne,’ 1940. Oil on canvas. 21-1/4 x 18 inches (54.0 x 45.7 cm). Available in Heritage’s European Art Signature® Auction on June 5, 2025.
Paintings by the Gifted Pissarro Family
This season’s auction has an exceptional range of painting highlights. Among these is the extraordinary opportunity to acquire works by five members of the enormously talented Pissarro family of painters. Represented are landscapes of France, England and Ireland; still lifes; and a figure painting by direct descendants of the patriarch of the clan, Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), who achieved fame as a prominent member of the French Impressionists. Six of his seven children became artists. The seven oils and a pastel on offer include works by his first child, Lucien Pissarro (1863-1944); his third, Georges Manzana Pissarro (1871-1961); his fifth, Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro (1878-1952); his seventh, Paulémile Pissarro (1884-1972); and his grandson and son of Paulémile, Hughes Claude Pissarro (born 1935).
Félix Edouard Vallotton, ‘Platanes ébranchés, Cagnes,’ 1921. Oil on canvas. 25-5/8 x 21-3/8 inches (65.1 x 54.3 cm). Available in Heritage’s European Art Signature® Auction on June 5, 2025.
A Vibrant Vallotton Landscape
A stunning 1921 view of Cagnes by the Nabi artist Félix Vallotton is a standout example of early 20th-century European painting in the sale. In this vivid landscape, Vallotton evoked the warm, distinctive atmosphere of the south of France, adopting an inland vantagepoint on the city, looking over its rooftops from the rise of a hill. The view is slightly screened on the right by a trio of pollarded – and quite anthropomorphized – plane trees and a weeping willow to the left. The palette is astonishingly vibrant and sophisticated, a complex harmony of richly saturated greens, golds, pinks, lavenders, oranges and browns that only a daring artist could calibrate into such a successful chromatic balance.
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, ‘Gardienne et ses deux vaches au marais,’ circa 1860-1865. Oil on canvas. 13 x 18-1/4 inches (33.0 x 46.4 cm). Available in Heritage’s European Art Signature® Auction on June 5, 2025.
Exceptional 19th-Century Landscapes
Landscapes from the previous century include two serene and intimate works by the masterful French Realist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – one a view along a marsh and the second a somewhat more atypical scene of peasants collecting hay onto a wagon on a warm day. The latter once belonged to the Houston hoteliers Mr. and Mrs. James Oliver Ross, who owned the Rossonian, the city’s most exclusive, state-of-the-art apartment-hotel of the Edwardian period. Additionally, an attractive group of Venetian scenes by Antonio María de Reyna Manescau, Martín Rico y Ortega and Ludwig Mecklenburg, who captured the many faces of La Serenissima, are included in the auction and come from the collection of celebrated Napa Valley winemaker Frederick Schrader.
Jean-Etienne Liotard, ‘Ahimelek presenting David the sword of Goliath,’ 1732. Oil on canvas. 37 x 41-1/2 inches (94.0 x 105.4 cm). Available in Heritage’s European Art Signature® Auction on June 5, 2025.
Noteworthy Old Master Works
Within the realm of Old Master painting, the sale features several noteworthy works: an early 15th-century panel painting depicting Saint Peter and Saint Louis by Spanish artist Pere Vall, which formed part of his predella for a retablo likely produced for the Church of San Miguel in Cardona; an exceedingly tender Madonna and Child with Saint Elizabeth and the Infant Saint John the Baptist from circa late 1660s by a gifted artist in the orbit of Antonio Carneo; a handsome three-quarter-length portrait of a gentleman by Dutch portraitist Nicolaes Maes, which surprisingly came to auction as the result of a storage unit purchase in Scranton, Pennsylvania; and a rare, early history painting by Jean-Etienne Liotard, who later achieved great celebrity for his work as a pastelist in the 18th century.
Other highlights in the sale include an exquisite oil study by Edmund Blair Leighton, a proponent of the last and most fantastical phase of Pre-Raphaelitism, and a large selection of work by Parisian painters. Go here to see all the works featured in the June 5 auction.
MARIANNE BERARDI is Co-Director of European Art at Heritage Auctions. She can be reached at MarianneB@HA.com or 214.409.1506.