March 18th, 2024, Auction starting at 5:30
Important 20th C. prints and a large Lautrec poster are to be sold at Winter Associates in Plainville, CT at their live auction on March 18th, along with other artwork and eclectic furnishings. From fine homes in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island items featured in the sale will include Mid-Century modern, Contemporary and 19th French furniture, paintings, and sculpture as well as an varied mix of Asian collectables.
Many of the important prints come from the estate of a Connecticut physician, who purchased the prints in the mid 1960’s from the gallery, Raymond & Raymond of Hartford, CT. They include include Pablo Picasso’s 1933 etching "Sculpteurs, modeles et sculpture" and Henri Matisse’s "Jeune femme contemplant un bocal de poissons rouges (Young woman contemplating a bowl of goldfish)". Also from the estate is a celebrated Lautrec poster “La Revue Blanche”, an 1895 two-sheet lithograph poster in four colors that depicts Misia Natanson (sister in law to editor of La Revue Blanche) who became a muse to the new generation of artists blooming in the 1890’s. She is portrayed here in a fashionable ice-skating outfit with an ostrich feather hat, fur jacket and muff[1]. Toulouse Lautrec, a bourgeois member of the upper class visited cabernets and brothels, his works portraying changes in society as a result of the industrial age. Other artists featured from the Connecticut physician’s collection include Marc Chagall, Joan Miro, Georges Rouault, Fernand Leger, Georges Bracque, Kathe Kollwitz, and Raoul Dufy.
Many modern and traditional Asian items are from a Rhode Island collector including a number of Chinese contemporary works, one a cubist oil on canvas by Zhu Wei (b. 1966), "Cubist Style Winter Home”. There are also many pieces of contemporary pottery collected during his 1970’s tour of the Far East, and some furnishings. Featured traditional items in the sale include a Chinese table-top screen with a jade disc centered in carved wood frame decorated with carved and gilded calligraphy from the Qing/ Republican era. Table screens originated in the Kangxi period (1662 -1722 C. E.) to repel evil spirits from interior spaces before becoming a coveted object for scholars.[2] Mid-Eastern items to be offered feature over 25 Mughal hand-painted miniature paintings, both architectural and portraiture, many artist signed.
The multi-faceted sale includes an Andy Warhol “Exploding Plastic Inevitable” exhibition poster c. 1967, this poster is the second of two brought to Winter Associates from the Steve Balkin Estate. The first sold at Winter Associates’ auction in June 2023 for $9,000. Balkin was a photo-journalist and artist in the 1960-70’s, lived in NYC and was part of the Warhol crowd, from his estate there are also seven art proofs for album covers and dozens of silver gelatin prints depicting candid shots of Joe Namath and other New York Jets playing on their home field.
Eight 20th C. string instruments, among them a c. 1915 Lyon Healy Style A mandolin and a 1920’s custom Stromberg Deluxe Natural Tenor banjo; collections of U.S. stamps and coins as well as a gold Byzantine coin, a Curta Type I manual calculator c. 1951, Art Deo doors and other architectural elements, as well as artist Tom Rose decorated furnishings add to the wide ranging auction.
The March 18th auction will be live at the Plainville CT gallery starting at 5:30pm on March 18th and is also available on Invaluable and LiveAuctioneers. Winter Associates’ auction catalog is available online at www.AuctionsAppraisers.com as of Friday, March 8th. Winter Associates, Inc. is located in central Connecticut at 21 Cooke Street in Plainville, CT. Previews are Friday, March 15th from 12:00 – 4:00 p.m.; Sunday, March 17th from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.; and on Monday, March 18th from 12:00 – 5:00 p.m. Previewers are welcome at other times by appointment, please call (860) 793-0288.
Absentee bids can be submitted prior to the sale and bidders are welcome to actively bid during the sale online or by phone bid. Pickup by appointment only, please call the office and we will do our best to accommodate your schedule.
[1] John, P. Walsh, “HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (1864-1901): 31 Mass-Produced Posters in Color, 1891-1900”, published (Walsh, 2018).
[2] Dr. Chih-En Chen, “Europeenerie on a Chinese Table Screen”, published (Chen, 2022)