Fine Art

The impressive painting with a paradise landscape showing the animals entering Noah’s ark is considered the last masterpiece by Flemish master Jan Brueghel the Younger (estimate: €150,000–300,000). Dr. Klaus Ertz, who studied and appraised the original, believes that the freer details in the work’s execution and the more fluid style that favours colour over drawing suggest that it was created during the artist’s late period. The work should be seen as a variation of a prototype with the same motif painted by his father Jan Brueghel the Elder (today in the Szépmüveszéti Muzeum in Budapest). The reinterpretation of a successful composition such as that of Paradise is no novelty in Flemish art of this period but quite common. What makes this majestic painting so remarkable and fascinating is its unusual scale. This suggests that it was commissioned by a lord of a castle who had premises of the appropriate size.

A freshly peeled orange and a plate of juicy strawberries catch the viewer’s eye in the fantastic fruit and flower still life by Cornelis de Heem. The pyramidal composition evolves from the bottom towards the top and culminates in a blue satin ribbon that holds leaves and flowers together. In between are insects that were attracted by the scents of the flowers and fruits and that the viewer can almost grasp thanks to the precise and realistic way in which they have been rendered (estimate: €60,000–80,000). Dutch artist De Heem is a prominent name among collectors of first-rate 17th-century still lifes. Cornelis came from a well-known family of artists that had specialized in magnificent compositions of flowers, fruits and books. He worked in his father’s flourishing workshop in Antwerp, as did his younger brother, Jan Jansz de Heem.

Along with Rosalba Carriera, Jacopo Amigoni and Giambattista Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista Pittoni is considered one of the most important representatives of Venetian Rococo. Numerous museums of international renown hold works of his, which often show figures from Greek and Roman mythology or scenes with saints for devotional purposes. The present painting with Venus and Cupid fully embodies the extraordinary qualities of Pittoni’s style that made the artist famous throughout Europe during his lifetime (estimate: €20,000–30,000). What is more, it is an absolutely new discovery that was only recently included in the artist’s oeuvre and that Van Ham can now offer fresh to the market.

The spectacular view of Rome from Monte Mario, signed and dated 1846, created such a sensation among collectors that Johann Jakob Frey repeated it at least three more times (estimate: €30,000–40,000). The artist made the painting shortly after his return from a trip to Egypt in 1842. The work is considered a successful example of the bright and colourful style that he adopted after his experiences in North Africa and that enriched his palette with warm colours and light.

Russian painter Konstantin Gorbatov settled in Italy after the revolution of 1917. Before long he became a sought-after artist who was known throughout Europe. Italy turned into a sort of muse for Gorbatov. Especially Venice with its play of light and shadow that constantly takes place on the surface of the water provided the artist with fertile material for his thoughts on Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. In the present painting of the famous Canal Grande, Gorbatov depicted Venice with soft, gentle brushstrokes (estimate: €20,000–30,000).

Otto Pippel presents one of his favourite Munich subjects in his painting Easter in the English Garden. He painted the crowded beer garden of an inn in a warm light in an Impressionist manner, conveying a relaxed and spring-like atmosphere by way of a harmonious play of light and colours. Several versions of this motif are known, of which the present work is considered one of the highest quality.

From around the turn of the century until the 1920s, Ludwig von Hofmann was at the centre of the German art scene; he celebrated the greatest successes, had eminent collectors, was an influential teacher and a driving force of the avant-garde as well as art policy. He picked up many currents in his paintings and graphic work, always circling around his central theme, man’s Arcadian harmonic life in nature. At a superficial glance, the monumental painting from a German private collection presented here lets us participate in such an idyll: Five Nude Women in and in Front of a Rock Formation (estimate: €30,000–40,000).

The colours of autumn are released with great force in this landscape by Armand Guillaumin in the Creuse Valley. Guillaumin regularly visited this place in his adopted hometown of Crozant in central France to depict it again and again from different angles and at different times of day. Here Guillaumin captured noontime. The cloudless, turquoise-blue sky and the bright green tree, still full of sap, form a counterweight to the vibrating scenery – magnificent testimony to the impressive artistic passion of the eminent Impressionist, who achieved mastery here (estimate: €40,000–60,000).