Issuu

RANDOM GIRLS + FLOWERS

MAY 5 – 30

TUESDAY – FRIDAY 10AM TO 5PM

UPPER EAST SIDE ART WALK WEDNESDAY MAY 7 5-8PM

Jan van Kessel the Elder (1626 - 1679)

Bouquets of roses, tulips, carnation, anemone, and other flowers, a pair

Oils on copper

4¼ x 3⅛ inches (10.8 x 8 cm.)

4¼ x 3⅛ inches (10.9 x 7.8 cm.)

Provenance

Private collection, The Netherlands

Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1985-1989

Sale, Christie ’s, Amsterdam, 25 November 2014, lot 112

Private collection, The Netherlands

Exhibited

Delft, Prinsenhof, 37e Oude Kunst - en Antiekbeurs, 10 -27 October 1985, p. 96

Jan van Kessel was born in Antwerp into a renowned family of Flemish painters. His father, Hieronymus van Kessel (1578-1636), was a successful portrait painter, and his mother, Paschasia Brueghel, was the daughter of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625), further cementing the fame of this dynasty descended from Pieter Bruegel the Elder. In 1634, Van Kessel registered with the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as a pupil of the history painter Simon de Vos (1603-1676), becoming a full master a decade later. He also trained under his uncle Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601-1678), who tasked him with replicating his compositions.

On 11 June 1647, Van Kessel married Maria van Apshoven, witnessed by his uncle the prominent painter David Teniers the Younger serving. The couple had thirteen children, two of whom became painters: Ferdinand van Kessel (1648-1696), who continued in his father's style, and Jan van Kessel the Younger (1654-1708), portrait painter at the court of King Charles II of Spain. Despite his prolific output and popularity throughout Europe, he died with substantial debts.

Van Kessel specialized in exquisitely detailed small -scale flo ral still lifes, meticulous studies of insects, and allegorical series representing the four elements, the senses, or the continents. Executed on copper or panel in vibrant colors and meticulous detail, many of these miniature paintings served to decorate fine art cabinets or Wunderkammern cabinets of curiosities that blended art (artificalia) and natural specimens (naturalia), fashionable in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Karen Kilimnik

the floral Kingdom of the Renaissance , 2016

Water soluble oil color and glitter on canvas 24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm.)

Provenance

Sprüth Magers, New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin

Philadelphia-born and based Karen Kilimnik doesn’t just borrow from the past: she raids it, remixing fragments of old master splendor into her own richly imagined universe. In Kilimnik’s world, periods collapse, narratives snap, and centuries collide, adrift in a floating fantasy. Kilimnik paints as if she were a contemporary of Joris Hoefnagel or Roelant Savery at Rudol f II ’s court in Prague, wander ing the emperor’s enchanted menageri e with a brush in one hand and a pocket full of glitter

In the floral Kingdom of the Renaissance , Kilimnik cojoins flora and fauna in a deconstructed constellation. Her title whispers a little spell, layering meaning onto the Renaissance’s already magical world. Instead of her predecessor’s use of copper painting, Kilimnik dusts hers with glittera sparkling wink bridging four centuries. Flanked by Jan van Kessel’s paintings, the floral Kingdom of the Renaissance revisits and reenchants the Wunderkammer tradition, blurring past curiosity and present imagination.

Nicolaas Struyck (1686-1769)

A rose with garden whites

With partial Fleur -de-lis watermark

Bodycolor and watercolor on paper with period black and gold ruled beige card mount

9⅜ x 7½ inches (23.8 x 19.2 cm.)

Provenance

Berlin, Galerie Bassenge, 9 June 2023, lot 6707

Nicolaas Struyck was born on 21 May 1686 in Amsterdam as the son of a goldsmith and faithful member of the Lutheran church. As a little boy he went out with his father catching butterflies. Soon Struyck was in contact with collectors of natural history specimens and assembled himself a modest collection. By 1718, Struyck had produced six substantial folios with insect drawings. Later in life he was to write that “formerly, insects were my favorite pastime”. At some point, Struyck’s love of natural history morphed into a passion for mathematics. In the field of mathematic he remained a collector: instead of chasing butterflies, he collected empirical data with the aim to discover lawlike patterns. The curiosities and natural history specimens in Dutch collector’s cabinets of the late seventeenth century were after all perceived as a small-scale reflection of the world. Struyck never married and died in Amsterdam in 1769.

One title page, dated 1719, notes that the drawings were made after specimens from the cabinets of Albertus Seba, and others. Around 1700, Seba, a pharmacist in Amsterdam, supplied drugs to the V.O.C. and built an extraordinary collection of exotic plants and animals. In 1716, Tsar Peter the Great purchased Seba’s first cabinet for 15,000 guilders, shipping it to Saint Petersburg to display in his Kunstkammer. After the sale, Seba immediately began assembling a second, even larger cabinet, sourcing specimens globally and documented in the Thesaurus. However, no pictorial record exists of the first cabinet, and it is possible Struyck recorded the specimens before they were shipped. Struyck’s drawings likely part of six folios containing 271 mounted works may thus preserve the only visual record of Seba’s lost first collection, a major scientific endeavor likely commissioned by a wealthy patron

Nicolaas Struyck Insects

Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810)

Rose, c. 1800

Silhouette cut from off-white laid paper mounted on blue-grey paper

9⅞ x 4 inches (25 x 10 cm.)

15 x 9¾ inches (38 x 24.8 cm. primary support)

Proveannce

Otto Speckter (1807 –1871), Hamburg, thence by decent

Private sale, Karl & Faber, Munich, May 2015

Private collection, United States

Literature

Cornelia Richter, Philipp Otto Runge. Ich weiß eine schöne Blume. Werkverzeichnis der Scherenschnitte, Munich 1981, no. 176

Natalja Mischenin, “Pflanzenscherenschnitte”, in: Markus Bertsch et al. (eds.), Kosmos Runge. Der Morgen der Romantik , Hamburger Kunsthalle, Munich 2010, pp. 360–362

Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge are regarded as the leading painters of German Romanticism. Born in Wolgast near the Baltic Sea, Runge struggled with frail health throughout his life, having contracted tuberculosis at a young age. Nevertheless, he studied painting at the Copenhagen Academy, following closely in the footsteps of Friedrich. Runge died of tuberculosis at the age of thirtythree. After his death, his wife donated much of his oeuvre to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, making his work rare on the art market.

As a sickly child, often confined to home, Runge learned the art of silhouette cutting from his mother. During his brief career, his practice evolved from standard portrait profiles and multifigured vignettes to intricate botanical studies. In nature, the mystical minded Runge found religious revelation. His paper cut-outs abstract and idealize the particularities of each species, expressing the unity of the cosmos.

Runge’s cutouts, or Scherenschnitte, are remarkable for their freehand execution. Without preliminary sketches, he claimed his scissors had become an extension of his fingers, allowing him to capture the essence of plants with extraordinary precision. Working in simple white paper often set against a blue background he associated with divinity and the night Runge synthesized form and meaning, inspiring Matisse, who similarly explored the expressive potential of cut paper.

Created in the early 1800s, Runge’s cutouts predate the invention of photography by several decades. These delicate silhouettes capture the essence of nature in ways that foreshadow the visual precision of photographic imagery. At a time when photography was still a distant innovation, Runge’s cutouts served as one of the most immediate and intimate ways of preserving fleeting natural forms.

Paul Rink (1862-1903)

Iris, 1892

Signed & dated ‘Paul Rink. 1892’ recto; signed & titled verso

Oil on canvas, in original frame

59¼ x 42½ inches (150.5 x 108.1 cm.)

Provenance

Pulchri Studio, The Hague, 1893, sold for ƒ400 to Mrs. Van Biema, The Netherlands, by descent

Eduard van Biema (1858-1942), Amsterdam, by inheritance

Maria Saxel (1908-1995), Amsterdam, given to Frans Duwaer (1911-1944), Amsterdam, by whom given in protective custody to Gemeente musea, Amsterdam, March 1943, according to label verso, returned to

Maria Saxel, 10 April 1945, The Hague

Collection Van Genderen, The Netherlands

Christie’s, Amsterdam, 25 April 1996, lot 46, sold for ƒ41,400

Private collection, The Netherlands

AAG, Amsterdam, 16 November 2020, lot 170

Private collection, The Netherlands

Exhibited

The Hague, Pulchri Studio, Winter 1892-1893

Arnhem, Musis Sacrum, Tweede Internationale Tentoonstelling van Kunstwerken van Levende Meesters, 8 Augustus-9 September 1893, no. 336, list price ƒ500

The Hague, Pulchri Studio, Tentoonstelling van werken van wijlen Paul Rink, 3-19 March 1904, no. 53 (lent by Mrs. Van Biema)

‘s-Hertogenbosch, Noordbrabants Museum, Bloeiende symbolen. Bloemen in de kunst van het fin de siècle, 6 February-9 May 1999

Chichester, Pallant House Gallery, Innocence and Decadence: Flowers in Northern European Art 1880-1914, 4 June – 5 September 1999

Paris, Institut Néerlandais, Symboles en fleurs: les fleurs dans l'art autour de 1900, 30 September-28

November 1999

Literature

“In Pulrchi I”, Arnhemsche Courant, 9 March 1893

“In Pulrchi III”, Arnhemsche Courant, 18 March 1893

“Kunst en Wetenschap”, Arnhemsche Courant, 13 September 1893

Haagse Courant, 14 September 1893

P.A. Haaxman jr., “Rink in Pulchri”, Elsevier Tijdschrift, XIV, no. 5, May 1904, pp. 295-305, p 295

“Kunstberichten van onze eigen correspondenten uit Den Haag – Pulchri Studio – Tentoonstelling Paul Rink”, Uit Onze Kunst, III, 1904, pp. 159-160

Willemijn van de Walle-van Hulsen, unpublished doctoral thesis

Willemijn van de Walle-van Hulsen, Paul Rink: Veghel 1861-1903 Edam: een bevlogen Brabantse Tachtiger, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Noordbrabants Museum, 1999

Marty Bax a.o., Bloeiende symbolen. Bloemen in de kunst van het fin de siècle, ’s-Hertogenbosch exh.cat. 1999, no. 69, p. 92 & 122

Marty Bax, a.o., Innocence and Decadence: Flowers in Northern European Art 1880-1914, exh.cat. Chishester 1999, no. 69, p. 98

Marty Bax a.o., Symboles en fleurs: les fleurs dans l'art autour de 1900, exh.cat. Paris 1999

J.A. Schröeder, Paul Rink 1861-1903, Amsterdam 2000, unpublished thesis, p. 85, appendixes E5, F3, F5, G1

Paulus Philippus Rink attended Antwerp’s Royal Academy alongside Vincent van Gogh between 1885 and 1886. Like Van Gogh, Rink sought to immortalize the hardship of ordinary people, deeply moved by their struggles. Both artists also shared a fascination with irises. Van Gogh’s celebrated Irises, painted during his stay at the asylum in Saint-Rémy, was first exhibited at the Paris Salon des Indépendants in September 1889. Rink, who lived in Paris from 1888 to 1890, likely attended the Salon. While Van Gogh’s Irises drew inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints, Rink’s Iris is rooted in Greek mythology: the mesmerizing maiden ἶρις, messenger of the gods and personification of the rainbow, is surrounded by the flower that bears her name.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Irises, 1889

Oil on canvas, 74.3 × 94.3 cm

Signed ‘Vincent’, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, no. 90.PA.20

Rink’s monumental symbolist interpretation of Iris received critical acclaim when it debuted in 1893. The painting was immediately acquired by Mrs. Van Biema, a bold female patron at a time when women’s roles in the art world were still emerging. However, the Jewish Van Biema family’s story would take a tragic turn during World War II, facing deportation and dispossession. After the painting’s then-owner, Eduard van Biema, died on December 16, 1942, his housekeeper and sole heir, the Catholic Czech-born Maria Saxel entrusted Iris to her fellow resistance fighter Frans Duwaer for safekeeping.

Duwaer, encouraged by his friend Willem Sandberg, director of the Stedelijk Museum, turned his Amsterdam printshop into a clandestine hub of resistance, producing some 70,000 false identity cards. On June 8, 1944, Duwaer was arrested and was executed two days later. Saxel, too, was arrested earlier that year, on April 21, 1944, for her involvement in falsifying documents. Saxel survived Dutch prisoner’s camp Vught, Ravensbrück, a Nazi concentration camp exclusively for women, and a grueling march to the Agfa-Commando satellite camp at Dachau.

After the war, Saxel undertook the arduous process of reclaiming Iris, deposited by Duwaer for safekeeping at the Stedelijk Museum in March 1943. It was a burdensome task for Saxel to claim ownership: while Duwaer had not survived the war, ownership records were purposedly absent in the museum Finally, on April 10, 1946, Saxel was reunited with Iris

The intertwined stories of Iris and its courageous custodian embody resilience and hope. As Iris, Olympian messenger, bridged the heavens and the earth, Saxel, serving as a courier for the resistance, carried coded communications through clandestine routes to sustain the fight against oppression. Just as the rainbow signifies hope after the storm, Saxel’s unwavering courage illuminated a path through humanity’s darkest hours. For her, Iris likely remained a potent symbol of solace and survival. Today, Rink’s Iris stands not only as a masterpiece of Dutch symbolism but also as a lasting testament to the indomitable spirit of those who resist tyranny.

Sigisbert Chrétien Bosch Reitz (1860-1938)

Morning Glory, c. 1900

Colored chalk on paper

21 5/8 by 7 1/2 inches (55 by 19 cm.)

Signed with Japanese Hanko monogram

Provenance

Private collection, The Netherlands

Sigisbert Chrétien Bosch Reitz, known as Gijs, was born into a wealthy Amsterdam family. He began his career as a merchant but, at twenty-three, decided to pursue life as an artist. After a brief period at the Rijksmuseum’s art school, he continued his training in Munich and completed his studies at the Académie Julian in Paris under Bouguereau. Returning to the Netherlands, he initially settled in Katwijk aan Zee, only soon to depart again for Paris to participate in the 1889 Exposition Universelle, followed by an extended stay in England before his eventual return to The Netherlands.

Throughout his life, Bosch Reitz travelled extensively to France, the United States, and Japan in 1900 becoming a world-renowned connoisseur of Asian art In 1914, he was invited to curate the Asian collection at the Louvre. At the outbreak of war, he left for New York, where he was appointed the first curator of the newly created Department of Far Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he remained until 1927, when he returned to Amsterdam.

Bosch Reitz’s artistic output remains limited due to his meticulous process and attention to detail. Around 1890, like other Dutch Symbolists, he moved beyond naturalistic representation to express highly stylized representation. Vegetation and floral motifs, seemingly decorative, evolved into stylized symbols of life and death set against start, empty backgrounds.

Unlike his contemporary Vincent van Gogh who never traveled to Japan Bosch-Reitz’s engagement with Japanese culture was both direct and profound. His drawings were not merely inspired by Japonism, the fashionable fin de siècle movement, but reflected a deep knowledge and scholarly understanding of Edo period artists. In Morning Glory, Bosch Reitz drew upon the lyrical inventiveness of Utagawa Hiroshige, whose woodblock prints, likely acquired for The Metropolitan Museum’s collection by Bosch Reitz himself, provided enduring inspiration.

Photo of Bosch Reitz in Japan, 1900

George Lawrence Bulleid (1858 - 1933)

In the Theatre , 1908

Signed & dated ‘G.LAWRENCE.BVLLEID.MCMIII’

Watercolor with graphite underdrawing on watercolor paper in original frame 14 x 10½ inches (35.4 x 26.6 cm.)

Provenance

Private collection, United Kingdom

Woolley & Wallis, Salisbury Wiltshire, 8 March 2023, lot 123

George Lawrence Bulleid was born in Glastonbury, Somerset, where his father worked as a solicitor. First following in his father’s footsteps, Bulleid studied art in the evenings while pursuing a legal career. He started at the West London School of Art and continued at the Heatherley School of Fine Art in Chelsea. In 1889, Bulleid became an Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS). That same year, he returned to his native West Country, settling in Bradford on Avon near Bath. Attracted to the Graeco-Roman style, established by his predecessors Frederick Leighton and Lawrence AlmaTadema, Bulleid’s later work reflects the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites. Their compositional style and use of strong, direct colors resonated with Bulleid’s favored Neo-classical themes. Bulleid primarily worked in watercolor, exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy between 1888 and 1913. However, he mostly showed with the RWS; by the end of his career, he had exhibited a remarkable total of 113 works there.

Bulleid’s watercolors are characterized by a refined aesthetic, drawing inspiration from the PreRaphaelite tradition, often featuring contemplative or melancholic heroines set against stylized, abstruse backdrops. As a true Victorian artist, his compositions show a strong affinity for classicism and antiquity, skillfully balancing mood and style. The interplay between the richly hued figure and esoteric, white background, heightens the emotional impact of his imagery. In the Theatre reveals Bulleid’s ability to distill a moment of introversion. Bathed in soft candy colors, the mysterious inamorata inhabits a composition that demands attention on her presence. The period frame suggests that this fragment was deliberately reduced to emphasize the female protagonist, aligning with Victorian aesthetic trends of isolating beauty within a harmonious classical narrative.

George Lawrence Bulleid Iris , c. 1895

Watercolor, present whereabouts unknown

Antoon van Welie (1866-1956)

Echo, 1908

Charcoal, black chalk and gouache on paper

29 x 19 ⅞ inches (73.5 x 50.5 cm.)

Signed & dated ‘Antoon van Welie ft 1908-’

Provenance

Studio 2000, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1992

Private collection, The Netherlands

Christie’s, Amsterdam, 13-14 May 2014, lot 230

Mathieu Néouze, Paris

Exhibited

The Hague, Boussod Valadon & Cie, Tentoonstelling van schilderijen en tekeningen door Antoon van Welie, April 19081

Johannes Antonius (Antoon) van Welie was born in the small town of Afferden, Gelderland. After studying art in Belgium, he quickly gained critical acclaim in Paris. Dividing his time between Paris, London and Rome, Van Welie maintained a studio in Vatican City, receiving Papal commissions. A protagonist of the international Symbolist movement in his early career, Van Welie became the most celebrated Dutch portraitist of his generation, attracting commission from European high society and celebrities, including Sarah Bernhardt and Isadora Duncan and exhibited at the Paris galleries of Bernheim Jeune and George Petit.

Van Welie’s Symbolist style was highly unusual at a time when Dutch taste remained largely traditional. His fascination mythology and fairy tales, however, aligned him more closely with international contemporaries such as Fernand Khnopff, Franz von Stuck, and Jan Toorop. Love and ill-fated yearning were Van Welie’s dominant themes, drawing inspiration from sources as varied as Wagner’s tragic opera Tristan and Isolde and Shakespeare’s doomed heroine Ophelia. The present Echo is based on the story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

The talkative nymph Echo, much admired by Venus for her magnificent voice, incurs the wrath of Juno after misleading her about her husband Jupiter’s whereabouts. As punishment, Juno curses Echo, allowing her only to repeat the words of others, unable to speak independently. The moment depicted is after Echo falls hopelessly in love with Narcissus, who cruelly rejects her. Silently, Echo prays to Venus, who grants her release from her suffering by disembodying her, leaving only her voice a phenomenon we know today as an echo. Narcissus, doomed by his own vanity, wastes away infatuated with his own reflection. After his body has fully disappeared, the flower bearing his name emerges in his place.

1 Boussod, Valadon & Cie was a branch of the French gallery Goupil & Co., with offices in Paris, London, Berlin, New York and The Hague.

Mies Elout- Drabbe (1875 - 1956)

Domburg Child (Kindje) , 1909

Signed, inscribed & dated ‘M. Elout -Drabbe Domburg December 1909’.

Pencil on paper in original frame

30⅛ x 25 inches (76.5 x 63.5 cm.)

Provenance

Private collection, The Netherlands Vendu, Rotterdam, 11 November 2024, lot 334

Exhibited

Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, 19de Jaarlijksche Tentoonstelling van Kunstwerken der Vereeniging St. Lucas, 11 April – 16 May 1909, no. 146

Literature

Francisca van Vloten, Moen. Tussen Toorop en Mondriaan. De kunstenares Mies Elout- Drabbe 1875 - 1956 , Vlissingen 2004, p p. 40-41, ill. , fn. 102, p. 145

Marie Jeanette Sophie Drabbe, known as Mies (or Moen) Drabbe, born in Utrecht in 1875, lived and worked mostly in Domburg. Encouraged by Toorop to pursue formal training, Drabbe studied at the Drawing Academy in The Hague from 1899 to 1901. In 1902, she married Paulus Johannes Elout van Soeterwoude and they had two children. It was in this artists’ colony in Zeeland where she organized summer exhibitions together with Jan Toorop between 1911 and 1921. Although she lived a relatively secluded life in Domburg, Drabbe became an important muse for visiting artists such as Toorop, Mondriaan, and Richard Roland Holst.

Like many artists of the fin de siècle, Drabbe was searching for a higher spiritual reality and immersed herself in Eastern and Western philosophies, particularly theosophy and the teachings of the Neugeist movement. Her quest for a synthesis of pure representation of nature and the expression of the unseen forces behind visible reality shows her kinship with Toorop. Initially, Drabbe’s drawings closely followed Toorop’s examples of delicate portraits and paintings in luminist, pointillist, and symbolist styles. Until she met Mondrian. Briefly she explored more abstract and monumental concepts, but sensitive to the criticism of the time, retreated from this experimental course.

Jan Toorop (1858-1928)

Portraits of Johan Drabbe and his daughter Mies, 1898

Signed & dated ‘J.Th.Toorop 1898’

Pastel and pencil on paper, 24 x 31 cm.

Private collection, The Netherlands

Charley Toorop (1891 - 1955)

Self portrait , 1917

Signed & dated 'C. Toorop 1917'

Black ink and washes on paper

25¼ x 19½ inches (64.2 x 49.5 cm.)

Provenance

Willem Wolff Beffie (1880-1950), Amsterdam & New York

Herman and Eva Reens, Amsterdam

Christie’s, Amsterdam, 10 December 1992, lot 15, where acquired by Private collection, The Netherlands AAG Auctioneers, Amsterdam, 12 December 2022, lot 89

Annie Caroline Pontifex Toorop, known as Charley, was born in Katwijk as the only child of DutchIndonesian Jan Toorop and the British Annie Hall. In 1912, upon coming of age, she married the philosopher Henk Fernhout against her parents’ wishes. The couple had two sons before divorcing five years later. Charley was deeply influenced by her father, but she also formed friendships with Mondriaan and Bart van der Leck Charley’s own style ultimately established her as a leading Dutch figure of the New Objectivity movement, often referred to as Magic Realism.

Charley was drawn to theosophy and Eastern mysticism, particularly the belief that spirituality could be understood in psychical terms and that the body served as the incarnation of the spirit. Before her separation, Charley had already moved to Amsterdam in 1916 with her children, where she lived in an artists’ community with Peter Alma, and others. After a few years she settled in Schoorl, a Dutch coastal town outside of Amsterdam, while continuing to spend time in Paris and summers in Domburg.

Early in her career, Charley was championed by art advisor H.P. Bremmer, who introduced her work to the important collector Helene Kröller-Müller, who purchased her first work by Charley in 1916 and continued to acquire many more, now in the museum in Otterlo. The present early drawing belonged to another great collector: Willem Wolff Beffie A friend of Mondriaan, Kandinsky, Jawlensky, and Le Fauconnier, Beffie was a passionate collector with an international eye His collection included works by Paul Klee, Chagall, and many Dutch artists, with hundreds of works often gifted to friends and family soon after acquisition. In 1938, facing persecution under anti-Jewish racial laws, Beffie emigrated to the United States, bringing part of his collection with him. He died on the dance floor in New York in 1950, leaving behind a legacy now represented in major museums around the world.

Charley Toorop (1891-1955)

Group portrait of H.P. Bremmer and his wife with contemporary artists, 1938-39 Oil on canvas, 130 x 1508 cm.

Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, inv.no. KM 110.348

Käthe Franck (1879 - 1941)

Weiβer Ginster (White Gorse)

Signed ‘K. Franck.’

Gouache on vellum

19 x 23 ¾ inches (48 x 60 cm)

Provenance

Private collection, Germany

Bassenge, Berlin, 3 December 2021, lot 6799

Katharina (Käthe) Franck was born on 22 October 1879 in Breslau, the daughter of antiquarian Eugen Franck and Agnes Berthold. After a period in Dresden, she settled in Stade, near Hamburg, in 1910. There, she pursued her artistic training and began exhibiting her work. In December of that year, she participated in a group exhibition at the Hamburg Kunstverein, followed by an international exhibition at the Deutscher Künstlerbund in Leipzig in 1914, and a 1924 exhibition at Munich’s Glaspalast.

On 4 February 1918, Franck married the university professor Ernst Richard Wagner in Munich. Although she had converted to Protestantism, the rise of National Socialism made her Jewish heritage a fatal designation. In 1939, she was forced to adopt the name “Sara,” as required by Nazi racial laws. Fearful of deportation, Käthe Franck took her own life on 22 September 1939, just weeks before her sixtieth birthday. Her tragic escape from the doomsday scenario of Nazi persecution marked the erasure of her visibility from the art world. It was not until 2004 that her work resurfaced when the City Hall in Stade organized an exhibition devoted to this long-forgotten female artist.

Käthe Wagner - Franck, Apfelbaum (Apple Tree), c. 1910

Present whereabouts unknown

Carl Fischer - K ö ystrand (1861 - 1918)

Der goldene Pfau (The G olden P eacock) , c. 1912

Signed & inscribed ‘C. Fischer -Kö ystrand. Wien’

Inscribed verso ‘Zu Die sechs Lieder des Ibn Saidun von C. Fischer -Kö ystrand’ Pencil & watercolor and gold ink on paper in original frame 12¾ x 13 inches (32.4 x 33 cm.)

Provenance

Christie ’s, London, 16 July 1999, lot 27

Bonhams, London, 29 November 2011, lot 205

The Maas Gallery, London Abbott and Holder Ltd, London, 2012, where acquired by Private collection, New York

Exhibited 1912, no. 1040 (label verso )

Carl Fischer-Köystrand, born in Vienna in 1861, trained first at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts under Friedrich Sturm and Ferdinand Laufberger, and then at the Academy of Fine Arts with Christian Griepenkerl. Beginning in 1882 he worked as a draughtsman for illustrated magazines, most notably Wiener Caricaturen, and in 1886-1887 spent a brief period in Berlin drawing for Lustige Blätter. Upon his return to Vienna, he contributed regularly to Die Bombe and the Meggendorfer Blätter. In 1906 FischerKöystrand was elected to the Vienna Künstlerhaus. He also contributed illustrations for Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild.

An inscription on the verso identifies The Golden Peacock is an illustration for six songs by Ibn Saidun. It is unclear whether this refers to Abū al-Walīd Ahmad ibn Zaydūn al-Makhzūmī (1003–1071), better known as Ibn Zaydūn (

), an Arab Andalusian poet of Cordoba and Seville, since no cycle of six songs or a golden peacock theme are known in his work.

Whatever the literary source, The Golden Peacock’s lyrical orientalism its exotic ornament and the mystical portrayal of a woman and a peacock as lovers is entirely characteristic of Viennese taste at the turn of the century.

Carl Fischer-Köystrand

Servir le roi – server les dames, 1906 Watercolor, pastel, and pen on paper, 43.4 x 30.5 cm. Signed ‘C. Fischer-Köystrand. Wien 06.’ Belvedere, Vienna, inv.no. 771

Elisabeth Stoffers (1881 - 1971)

Untitled , 1916

Signed, monogrammed & dated verso ‘E.Stoffers. 9 Sept. 1916 BS ’ Pastel on paper

10½ x 7¼ inches (26.8 x 18.4 cm.)

Provenance

Private collection, Leiden, 1980

Kunsthandel Wending, Amsterdam, 1980s

Private collection, Amsterdam

Exhibited

Deurne, De Wieger, Vrouwenpalet 1900-1950, 9 July-20 November 2022; Rotterdam, Kunsthal, 24 December 2022-10 April 2023

Literature

Frédèrique van Duppen, Vrouwenpalet 1900-1950, haar kunst, haar verhaal, Zwolle 2022, p. 52

Elisabeth (Betsy) Stoffers was born on June 28, 1881 in Haarlem, the daughter of tobacco merchant Hendrik Stoffers and Jacomina Maria Hendriks. From a young age, she showed talent as a draftswoman. At just seventeen, she was admitted to Amsterdam’s Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, where she studied under August Allebé.

Stoffers entered the academy in 1898 at a pivotal moment, just as women were beginning to gain access to the same educational opportunities as men. Although drawing was long considered a suitable pastime for women of the upper classes, formal art education was seen as unnecessary and unfeminine. Women had been admitted to the Rijksakademie since 1871, but they were not granted equal instruction. Excluded from advanced classes such as anatomy, essential for mastering genres like history painting or mythological scenes, relegating women to less ambitious subjects like portraits and still lifes. These restrictions also prevented female participation in competitions such as the Prix de Rome, which required submissions based on the male nude model.

Stoffers’ artistic career was brief, and she participated in only a few exhibitions. She was a member of the Amsterdam artists’ society Arti et Amicitiae, and her early work aligns stylistically with the Amsterdamse Joffers (‘Amsterdam Misses’), a group of female painters who had also studied at the Rijksakademie. Yet Stoffers remained something of an outsider. In 1905, she married Louis van Vreumingen and moved to Gouda, where she established a studio and was promising productive during the early years of her marriage. After the birth of her second child in 1910, her artistic career appeared to abruptly come to an end as her husband no longer allowed her to have a studio. The arrival of twins in 1914 seemed to solidify the perception that her professional career had ceased.

Elisabeth Stoffers (1881 - 1971)

Untitled , 1916

Signed & dated verso ‘E.Stoffers. Geteekend zondagavond 30 Sept. 1916 ’ Pastel on paper

10¾ x 7¼ inches (27.4 x 18.3 cm.)

Provenance

Private collection, Leiden, 1980

Kunsthandel Wending, Amsterdam, 1980s

Private collection, Amsterdam

A surprising discovery in 1980 challenged that narrative. Thirty-two abstract pastels signed ‘E.Stoffer’ and monogrammed ‘BS’ discovered in a Leiden estate, revealed that Stoffers had secretly continued to create art between 1915 and 1918. With no access to a proper studio, she turned to pastel, a portable and private medium. These drawings, filled with vibrant colors and abstracted forms, mark a striking departure from her academic training and suggest a bold, spiritual exploration of form and emotion.

Elisabeth Stoffers

Her friend and neighbor, Dutch potter and designer Chris Lanooy (1881-1948), may have influenced this unrevealed body of work. As a ceramicist, Lanooy produced expressive pastels, featuring organic shapes and contrasting hues for his designs. Stoffer’s pastels, characterized by flowing, feminine lines and a delicate, ethereal quality, evoke the visionary abstraction of Hilma af Klint’s and Georgia O’Keeffe.

A Father Should Surround His Child with Love and to Protect and Eclipse Him with His Devotion and Righteousness, 1917 Pastel on paper, 31.5 × 24.7 cm, Rijksmuseum, object no. RP-T-2019-94

In her compositions, Stoffers expressed complex feelings anguish, joy, tenderness through a uniquely modern visual language. Whatever her inspiration, Elisabeth Stoffers’ rediscovered pastels stand as a profound and pioneering contribution to early abstraction in the Netherlands.

Jan Toorop (1858-1928)

The Dream of the Seven Hills (De Droom der Zeven Heuvelen), c. 1914

Signed & inscribed ‘JthToorop No.3’

Pencil, black chalk and wax crayon on paper

5¾ x 9¾ inches (14.7 x 24.8 cm.)

Provenance

H. P. Bremmer (1871-1956), The Hague

By descent to a private collection, The Netherlands

Sale, Amsterdam, Christie’s, 1 December 1998, lot 211

Kunsthandel Studio 2000, Blaricum

Triton Collection Foundation, The Netherlands, 2004

Their sale, Christie’s, Paris, 25 March 2015, lot 22

Exhibited

The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, Têtes Fleuries: 19e en 20e-eeuwse portretkunst uit de Triton Foundation / 19th and 20th Century Portraiture from the Triton Foundation, 2007

Rotterdam, Kunsthal, 15 jaar Marlies Dekkers /15 Years Marlies Dekkers, 2008

Literature

Cornelis Easton, J.E. Heeres & Anton van der Valk, Het boek der Koningin, Amsterdam 1919, p. 8, ill. Hans Janssen, Têtes Fleuries: 19th and 20th Century Portraiture from the Triton Foundation, The Hague 2007, p. 17, ill.

Sjraar van Heugten, Avant-gardes 1870 to the present: The Collection of the Triton Foundation, Brussels 2012, p. 127, p. 132 ill.

Jan Theodoor Toorop, born on 20 December 1858 in Purworejo on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), moved to the Netherlands at age eleven. In 1880, Toorop enrolled at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. From 1882 to 1886, he lived in Brussels, where he was part of Les XX (Les Vingts), a group of progressive artists centered around James Ensor. In 1886, Toorop married the British Annie Hall, alternating his time between The Netherlands, Belgium, and England. When Toorop settled in The Netherlands in 1890, he was regarded as the leading Dutch avant-garde artist of his time, with international connections and aspirations.

Toorop cofounded the Haagse Kunstkring and organized the first retrospective exhibition of Vincent van Gogh, followed by a group show of Les XX in 1892. That same year, Sar Péladan visited The Netherlands and persuaded Toorop to join his Salon de la Rose+Croix, marking Toorop’s transition into Symbolism. Aiming to create spiritual art, Toorop was soon attracted to Catholicism, culminating in his baptism in 1905.

The sleeping subject of The Dream of the Seven Hills is the young poetess Miek Janssen (1890-1953), Toorop’s muse and mistress from 1912 on Possibly the title refers to Rome, the city built on seven hills and capital of the Catholic faith. A sketch from the same period with eyes piercing over a landscape, adorned with their interlaced monogram OM (for Miek and Olaf, his nickname) suggests a religious connotation: its title Witte Donderdag - Goede Vrijdag (Maundy Thursday - Good Friday) refers to the Holy Week, commemorating Jesus’s Last Supper and the Eucharist. The Dream of the Seven Hills’s first owner was H.P. Bremmer, the influential Dutch art critic and early champion of so many artists, who may have been gifted this intimate sketchbook page in appreciation of his unfaltering support.

Jan Toorop

Witte Donderdag-Goede Vrijdag, 1914 Signed & dated ‘JThT 1914’ Pencil on paper, 13.5 x 13.5 cm. Present location unknown

Rita Ackermann

Washing Dishes Helps in the Metabolism , 1995

Signed & dated 'Rita Ackermann 1995' on stretcher Ink, crayon, acrylic on linen 52¾ x 63¾ inches (134 x 162 cm.)

Provenance

Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich, 1995, where acquired by Private collection, The Netherlands

Exhibited

Zürich, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Rita Ackermann. The Birth of Tragedy , 1 - 30 September 1995 Budapest, Ludwig Múzeum, BAKOS. Rita Ackermann, 18 November 2011 – 18 March 2012

Literature

Rita Ackermann, Keep my mouth shut and no headaches... Works 1996- 1993 , Rockin’on, Tokyo, 1997 Fire By Days. Rita Ackermann , Zürich, Nieves, 2011

Bonnie Clearwater, a.o., Rita Ackermann , New York 2011, p. 157 “Conversations. THE BODY GETS LOST IN THE GESTURES. Rita Ackermann in conversation with András Szántó”, Inside Burger Collection , Hong Kong, August-October 2021; Ursula , Hauser & Wirth, 24 February 2022

Rita Ackermann was born in Budapest in 1968. She studied at the University of Fine Arts Budapest from 1989 to 1992, where she trained under painter Károly Klimó. In 1992, she moved to New York and continued her studies at The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. Upon her arrival, she changed her surname from Bakos to Ackermann, her grandmother’s maiden name.

Ackermann is known for her expressive abstract paintings that often incorporate fragmented human forms. Her work navigates themes of anthropomorphism and femininity, frequently depicting women in dreamlike scenarios that reference fairy tales and adolescent disaffection. Her signature style, marked by loose, gestural brushwork and layered imagery, combines emotional immediacy with cultural critique.

Washing Dishes Helps in the Metabolism is an early and vivid example of Ackermann ’ s ability to riff on both art histor y and pop -culture In this painting, she appears to quote Manet’s A Bar at the FoliesBergère from 1880 with a familiar aesthetic of a 1980s Dawn dish detergent commercial. The result is a visual fusion of canonical art and quotidian kitsch emblematic of the kind of cultural sampling typical for the time. Yet Ackermann’s approach remains distinct: her merging of Eastern European sensibility with the visual language of the Western iconic canon gives her work a singular voice that continues to resonate three decades later.

The painting was featured in BAKOS, Ackermann’s first major survey exhibition held at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest in 2011.

Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882

Édouard Manet (1832-1883)

Oil on canvas, 96 x 130 cm. The Courtauld, London

Rita Ackermann

Birth of a Unicorn, 2000

Signed on gallery label on verso

Pencil on paper

9½ x 6¾ inches (24 x 17 cm.)

Provenance

a nnet gelink gallery, Amsterdam, 2000

Private collection, Amsterdam

Exhibited

Amsterdam, annet gelink gallery, Lost & Found Notes, 2 September – 15 October 2000

Rita Ackermann’s drawings and paintings are marked by a conspicuous fusion of childlike innocence and a fascination with the forbidden and occult. This interplay of extremes gives rise to a dreamlike world where beauty and desire are intertwined with aggression and fear: images that read like entries in a deeply introspective diary.

During a visit to Vienna, Ackermann encountered Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, the 1902 masterpiece at the Secession. Celebrating Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the frieze explores the pursuit of happiness and salvation through the arts. Moved by this monumental fresco, Ackermann responded with a series of nineteen pencil drawings created as a tribute to the Viennese Secessionist.

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)

Beethoven Frieze, 1902

Mixed media on mortar, 215 x 3414 cm.

Secession, Vienna

Zipora Fried

R.H. #2 , 2007

C -print

39⅞ x 26 ⅝ inches (101.3 x 67.6 cm.)

Edition of 1

Zipora Fried works fluidly across drawing, sculpture, and photography . B orn in Haifa, Israel, she studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna and now lives and works in New York. Known for b ring ing together dis tinc t bodies of work in unexpected contiguity , Fri e d creates new vi s ual and conceptual dialogues. In typical Viennese tradition, h er p r ac t ice pr ob es the t e ns ion between surface and subconscious, using gesture and repetition to both construct and erode from.

E ndurance and process are central to Fried’s ap pr o ac h . Her meticulously crafted sculptures and drawings eme r g e from time - intensive , often meditative labor Sizeable c olored pencil drawings, built up over months, are dense ly layered , radiating contemplative stillness and quiet introspection

In addition to her work on paper, Fried has explored photography in a series of early, enigmatic portraits. The group includes four photographs three in black and white, one in color featuring friends of the artist Each portraits examines themes of concealment, presence, and perception. R.H., the only color image in the series, shows a woman whose face is hidden behind an oversized pink chrysanthemum. Vivid inked tattoos ornament her shoulders, suggesting a winged protagonist shielded from view.

The chrysanthemum, from the Greek χρυσός (chrysos or gold) and ἄνθεμον (anthemon or flower), holds a range of symbolic meaning across cultures. Like the tattoos that echo its form, chrysanthemums often signify longevity, joy, and good fortune: emblems of strength and endurance that mirror the spirit of Fried’s work.

Fumie Sasabuchi

Untitled , 2007

Colored pencil and ballpoint pen on Japanese magazine page

11⅝ x 8 ⅛ inches (29.4 x 20.7 cm.)

Provenance

Galerie Zink, Munich, 2009

Fumie Sasabuchi was born in 1975 in Tokyo, where she studied art at Tama Art University from 1995 to 1999, before continuing her education at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. She currently lives and works in Berlin.

In one of Sasabuchi’s signature works, a retouched fashion magazine page transforms a model into a figure enmeshed in a cosmic vanitas tableau. Surrounded by domestic symbols traditionally associated with femininity kitchen utensils and cabinets she hovers between roles of innocent beauty or complicit co-conspirator. Whether Father Time looms as a harbinger of decay or appears as her accomplice in a romantic masquerade, the image underscores the ephemerality of beauty and fashion.

A winged serpent emblem of eternity and cyclical renewal hovers above her jewelry-adorned hand, perhaps hinting at a more hopeful reflection on impermanence. Is the fashion model a symbol of resilience or repression, empowerment or commodification? Sasabuchi’s deliberate ambiguity invites us to question whether our protagonist embodies female victory or vanquishment.

Sophie Crumb

Sophie Manson (self portrait) , 2010

Signed & dated ‘SOPHIE CRUMB MAY 2010’

Ink and watercolor on paper

10¼ x 7¾ inches (26 x 19.7 cm.)

Provenance

DCKT Contemporary, New York, 2010

Engraved

Sophie Crumb: Evolution of a Crazy Artist , New York 2010, edition of 250

Sophia Violet (Sophie) Crumb, born in 1981 in Woodland, California, began drawing at the age of two. An avid reader of comics as a child, Crumb contributed early illustrations to her parents’ underground series Weirdo and Dirty Laundry Comics In 1991, her parents comix legends Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb relocated the family to a village in the south of France in 1991, seeking distance from American political conservatism and Christian fundamentalism, and as they put it, to keep Sophie from becoming a “Vallery girl” Crumb later studied acrobatics and clowning at a French circus school, before moving to Brooklyn in the mid-2000s to apprentice as a tattoo artist. She currently lives and works in the south of France.

Crumb is known for her distinct graphic style, which offers sharp, often wry reflections on personal experience, her family, and broader cultural phenomena, filtered through her unique generational lens. Her portraits and illustrations span a range of modes, from surreal, naturalistic drawings that reveal her technical virtuosity and chiaroscuro skills to exaggerated, comical caricatures. Many of her anonymous figures are drawn from old photography books, though the subject of the present ink and watercolor drawing is the artist herself, immersed in tattoo ornamentation.

Karen Kilimnik

guarding the flowers and lunch, 2017

Water soluble oil color on canvas

16 inches (40.6 cm.)

Provenance

Sprüth Magers, Berlin, New York, London, Los Angeles

Exhibited

New York, 303 Gallery, Karen Kilimnik , 1 November – 20 December 2019

New York, Karma, (Nothing but) Flowers , 30 July – 13 September 2020

Engraved

Archival pigment print on cotton rag paper, edition of 100

Karen Kilimnik blends elements of fairy tales, history, myths, and reality to create whimsical scenarios often infused with references to popular culture or the painterly traditions of Dutch still life. Kilimnik’s view of the natural world is deeply romanticized, with birds playing a recurring and prominent part These feathered friends animate Kilimnik’s universe like performers on a dreamlike stage, as if a concert were unfolding within her studio.

Whether through painting or delicate bird nests, Kilimnik procures components from a wide array of sources: magazines, museum postcards, and inner imagery, filtering them through the lens of her imagination. Animals in her work seem to act as surrogates for society’s beau monde: they stand in for princesses and movie stars, enacting scenes of benign drama or pastoral reverie.

While Kilimnik often appropriates the compositional structure of Old Master paintings, her titles and painterly touch transport these references into a fantastical world of her own making, far from mere homage to her predecessors. In guarding the flowers and lunch, birds inhabit a riveting reverie of heightened stillness and charm. Rendered in a circular format reminiscent of Renaissance tondi, the painting suggests a fairytale unfolding in a miniature. These songbirds are surrogates who share the enchanted world Kilimnik so masterfully conjures

Index

Ackermann, Rita 16-17

Bosch Reitz, Gijs 6

Bulleid , George Lawrence 7

Crumb, Sophie 20

Elout-Drabbe, Mies 9

Fischer-Kö ystrand, Carl 12

Franck, Käthe 11

Fried, Zipora 18

Kessel the Elder, Jan van 1

Kilimnik, Karen 2, 21

Rink, Paul 5

Runge, Philipp Otto 4

Sasabuchi, Fumie 19

Stoffers, Elisabeth 13-14

Struyck, Nicolaas 3

Toorop, Charley 10

Toorop, Jan 15

Welie, Antoon van 8