La Gazette Drouot, Philippe Dufour
Raoul Dufy (1877-1953), Enceinte des propriétaires (The Owner's Enclosure), 1930-1935, oil on original canvas, signed, 37.5 x 46 cm/14.76 x 18.11 in.
Result: €210,800
The event in Artigny fulfilled the expectations of old and modern art lovers with works by Dufy, Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir while opening up to more distant perspectives.
The Rouillac Auction House’s two-day sale spanned several domains and posted a total result of €2.8 M. On Sunday, June 19, the focus was on 20th-century masters. Raoul Dufy’s Enceinte des propriétaires (The Owner's Enclosure), painted about 1930-1935, fetched €210,800 (37.5 x 46 cm/14.76 x 18.11 in, see photo). A pure demonstration of his "light-color" theory, it will be included in the supplement of the catalogue raisonné being prepared by Fanny Guillon-Laffaille. For €99,200, bidders could choose between two heavyweights: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The former’s Miss Loïe Fuller is an oil on paper mounted on cardboard from about 1893 (49 x 56 cm/19.29 x 22.04 in). Renoir painted Aline et Pierre Renoir dans un jardin (Aline and Pierre Renoir in a Garden) on canvas about 1885 (43 x 43.7 cm/16.92 x 17.20 in). The sale also included Old Masters, such as the beautiful Portrait of an Artilleryman by Anthony Van Dyck’s entourage, c. 1630. The oil on canvas, from the Ogilvy Collection, has a label, "Thos, Agnew & Sons B 7931" (116 x 93 cm/45.66 x 36.61 in) and fetched €86,800. The next day, June 20, the sale turned to ethnology and archaeology. The star was a late 18th or early 19th-century ceremonial sea bear bowl made of polychrome wood inlaid with mother of pearl by the Tsimshian or Haida people in British Columbia, Canada. Collected by Counts Abel and Georges de Massol de Rebetz in the summer of 1889 (22 x 55 x 41 cm/8.66 x 21.65 x 16.14 in), it was acquired by an American buyer for €64,480. The ancient Middle East was present through the collection of Paul Gaudin, a Parisian archaeologist and engineer. Eight photographic plates from 1907, the first-ever made of the Al Ula and Hegra-Mada'in Saleh sites in Saudi Arabia, fetched €68,200.