John Craxton (1922-2009)
English painter
Drawing; pencil and feltpen on paper
20.2 cm x 32.7 cm
initialled: J. C.
Lobster and Sea Urchins
John Craxton drew the impromptu sketch on his personal note paper. It was inspired by the menu of “The Hole in the Wall”, a famous restaurant in Bath, where he and Barry Kay were once dining together. Craxton’s initialled dedication reads: «for Barry Kay – J. C.». The drawing dates from 1964, when the two of them befriended each other during Kay’s assignment of designing the ballet Divertimento at the Bath Festival of the Arts.
Not for sale
Ernst Schneider
German photographer
(active 1903-1935)
Gelatin silver baryta print
22.4 x 28.9 cm; 8.8 x 11.4 in
mounted on cardboard
imprinted verso with author’s name & address
Anna Pavlova
A photograph of Anna Pavlova showing her as the leading sylph in Les Sylphides, taken in 1909 at Atelier Ernst Schneider, Unter den Linden in Berlin. Palova dedicated, autographed and dated the print on 9 March 1912 while on a performance tour in Leeds, England. The dedicatee is a certain Alfredo, whose family name is unfortunately indecipherable, as is a short line of accompanying text.
Price on application
Homme assis
Theatrical costume design
Christian Bérard (1902-1949)
French painter, illustrator, designer
Drawing; brush, ink and
gouache on paper
30.5 x 37.5 cm; 12 x 14.75 in
believed to date from 1940s
unsigned
Price on application
Deborah MacMillan (born 1944)
Australian painter
3-D collage mounted in a shoe box with a concealed miniature musical device
14 cm (w), 23 cm (h), 12.5 cm (d)
Music Box
Conceived in 1979, this unique music box is a satiric portrayal of a British art and ballet critic and his wife, a former ballerina, depicting what some thought to be their overzealous and ambiguous interest in Rudolf Nureyev – to the accompaniment of the Swan Lake theme tune.
Not for sale
African carving
light-weight wood, clay or lime
pigments and charcoal
32 cm (w), 41 cm (h), 18 cm (d)
Ceremonial Mask
Possibly an ancestral spirit mask, as implied by the white face, portraying a human female with animal attributes, probably those of a gorilla; Africa, 2nd half 20th century, believed to be from Cameroon or Gabon.
Price on application
Antoni Clavé (1913-2005)
Spanish painter, sculptor,
printmaker, stage and
costume designer
India ink, pen and brush,
whitened with white tempera
or gouache – on paper
27 x 29 cm; 10.6 x 11.4 in
signed: Clavé
Carmen Ballet
costume designs for Renée (Zizi) Jeanmaire as Carmen and Roland Petit as Don Jose; designed for Les Ballets de Paris de Roland Petit, 1949.
Price on application
Ian Spurling (1936-1996)
Australian stage and costume designer
Tempera and gouache on paper
27 x 38.5 cm; 10.6 x 15.15 in
unsigned
The Seven Deadly Sins
Coiffure and make-up design for Vanity, depicting the characters Anna 1 and Anna 2, featuring in Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet The Seven Deadly Sins, choreographed to the score by Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill; Western Theatre Ballet, Edinburgh International Festival 1961.
Price on application
Peter Farmer (1941-2017)
English stage and costume designer
Tempera and pencil on cardboard, varnished, cut-out and mounted on cardboard
26.4 x 39 cm; 10.25 x 15.35 in
unsigned, inscribed
Baron Tuzenbach
An unsigned costume design believed to be by Peter Farmer and inscribed «Baron Toozenbach, Act 3, in a civilian suit» – a character in Anton Čechov’s play Three Sisters (sometimes spelt Tuzenbach). The drawing’s date of creation is unknown but likely to have been executed in the late 1960s or early 1970s.
Price on application
Arthur Boyd (1920-1999)
Australian painter and sculptor
Tempera or acryl [?]
on enamelled cardboard
backed by plywood
15 x 15 cm; 6 x 6 in
unsigned
Painting for a Ceramic Tile
In 1944, Arthur Boyd, together with John Perceval, set up a pottery workshop in Australia, where he turned to making terracotta sculptures. He first designed ceramic tiles in 1949. The above tile painting presumably dates from his London days when he started work on a new series of ceramic paintings at his studio in Highgate in 1961.
Price on application
Portrait of a Bijin-ga
Chōbunsai Eishi (1756–1829)
Japanese painter and printmaker
Ink brush drawing on silk mounted on paper
20.5 x 38.3 cm, 8 x 15 in
signed and sealed
Price on application
A drawing of a Bijin-ga, a ‘beautiful woman portrait’ [lit], signed by Chōbunsai Eishi, who was known primarily for his depictions of tall, thin, graceful beauties. Paintings featuring beautiful women fall under the genre of ukiyo-e (‘pictures of the floating world’) that flourished in Japan from the 17th through 19th centuries. As only the right character of the two contained in the red seal below the signature points to Eishi, the drawing could have been executed by an artist of the Eishi school, or a painter conceived it in the Eishi style. The drawing may originally have been mounted as a scroll painting.