Descubra la tasación y los precios de esta y más obras de arte africano en Africartmarket. @@5%%Henry Gurdon Marquand; (+) American Art Association, 31 January, 1903, lot 1363 ($8,000 to William Barbour). (The stools, lot 1365, price unrecorded).

Descripción : William Barbour, New York. Mr and Mrs Martin Beck, New York, by the early 1920s. The Martin Beck Theatre, New York; Sothebys, New York, 26 March 1980, lot 535 (to the present owners). New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Collectors at Home, 1957-8. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, on loan 1986-1995. Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1997 (not in catalogue). Art Journal, 1885, p. 290. The Furniture Gazette, xxiv, 1887, p. 190. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, XVI, 1957-8, p. 110. Elizabeth Aslin, Nineteenth Century English Furniture, 1962, pp. 82 and 86. Michael I. Wilson, The Case of the Victorian Piano, Victoria and Albert Museum Yearbook, London, 1972, pp.133-153. Vern G. Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonn‚ of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1990, p. 65, illustrated. Dani‰lle O. Kisluk-Grosheide, 'The Marquand Mansion', Metropolitan Museum Journal, no. 29, 1994, pp. 151-181, illustrated. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, exh. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1997, cat. pp.49-51, illustrated pl. 33. Elizabeth Wise (ed.), Guinness Book of Records, 1997, p. 125. The magnificent Steinway piano, decorated under the direction of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, R.A., (1836-1912), formed the centrepiece of an extraordinary commission which the Dutch-born artist received in 1884 from the American connoisseur Henry G. Marquand (1819-1902). Marquand, a creator and Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, granted Alma-Tadema a limitless budget to embellish the Music Salon of his new Madison Avenue mansion in his antique style, and in a sumptuous manner which would serve as a worthy focal point of New York Society during the City's late 19th Century Golden Age. Since his arrival in London in 1870, Alma-Tadema had established himself as one of its most fashionable artists; but he was additionally recognised for his exceptional knowledge of ancient architecture and his ability to design its ornament, which could be emulated by few Victorians. It contributed to the exquisite authenticity of his art, his theatrical work and historical reconstructions and even the decoration of his own home, which came to be nicknamed 'Casa Tadema'. The artist had made a particular study of the archaeology of Pompeii, and the romantic style that he introduced in the decoration and furnishing of the Marquand Salon, which fused both Grecian and Roman elements, can really be called 'Pompeian'. When part of the Marquand furniture, which eventually comprised twenty-nine items including the piano, was displayed in London in 1885, it received great acclaim for 'the delicacy and good taste of the design'. In reference to the artist's acceptance of the exceptional commission, mention was also made that 'It is very pleasant to find that he is not above benefitting the world by turning his knowledge to practical account'. Another commentator wrote about this 'wonderful furniture' that it had been made for a New York millionaire, 'who has given no limit as far as price is concerned, so that the very finest materials and most skilled work has been secured'. Indeed in his opinion 'if money is the root of all evil, it is also the root of all art'. Marquand sent the Steinway frame for his concert piano from New York, to have its case manufactured en suite with the other furnishings of his great room-of-entertainment, whose antique theme was established by Alma-Tadema's own painting entitled A Reading from Homer. The room was the focal point of the mansion designed on Madison Avenue and East 68th Street by Marquand's old friend, the architect Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895), from whom Marquand had commissioned his summer residence, Linden Gate on Newport, Rhode Island in 1872. Built in brick and sandstone in the French transitional style, but incorporating Gothic and Renaissance elements, it was completed in 1884 and was favourably compared by critics to Hunt's other notable mansion built for William Kissam Vanderbilt. In addition to the Music Room, it boasted an English Renaissance dining room hung with late 16th Century Flemish tapestries, a Japanese room to house Marquand's collection of Asian art, and a Moorish smoking room, embellished with Iznik wares. Throughout the house, Marquand's collection of fine and decorative art constituted an integral part of the interior decoration, forming picturesque arrangements in the Aesthetic taste. The Music Room, for instance, was scattered with Greek vases, Greek and Roman Marble busts, and copies of antique bronzes, obtained with the help of Frederic, Lord Leighton, P.R.A.. Marble reliefs of ancient scenes executed in Rome by the Spanish artist Mariano Benlliure y Gill (1862-1947) adorned the walls, as did paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, John Crome, Constant Tryon and Edward Austin Abbey. The classical theme of the room was further maintained by the prominent display of two oils by Alma-Tadema. A Reading from Homer, which was commissioned by Marquand and executed in 1885, depicted four men and women in classical dress listening to a recitation of the poet's work. The painting has been described by Vern Swanson, a leading authority on Alma-Tadema and author of the catalogue raisonn‚ of his work, as 'probably the artist's most famous painting' and it was undoubtedly one on which he expended much effort. After successive revisions of the composition Alma-Tadema wrote to Marquand in April of 1885: 'I have been especially kept by my painting since several months & was in great distress owing to my losing more & more ground with the picture I painted for you & which I hoped to make as succesful as was in my power. Perhaps overanxiety perhaps missing the point the thing would not do. It did not please me & I put it on one side in order to begin afresh. Profiting by all the experience & study spent on the canvas & by secluding myself thoroughly & by not receiving & by hard work I have succeeded in finishing for you what I believe to be & what all my friends say is by far the best big picture I ever painted'. In deference to the site for which the painting was intended, Alma-Tadema thoughtfully included a lyre and tambourine as part of the composition. Amo te, ama me which Alma-Tadema executed in 1881 also hung in the room. It depicted two lovers, similarly seated to the audience in A Reading from Homer on a marble bench, with the blue Aegean beyond. A prominent part of the composition is the bench's lion monopodia which is similar to that found on the piano. The piano, like these pictures, is a masterpiece of 19th Century neoclassicism; and with its elegance of form, beauty of material and quality of workmanship can be reckoned the most 'artistic' piano ever produced. Its execution was entrusted, under Alma-Tadema's very close supervision, to the 'Artistic Furniture Manufacturers', Messrs. Johnstone, Norman & Co. of New Bond Street. They held the post of cabinet-makers and upholsterers to Queen Victoria and Edward, Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. Indeed, the Prince and Princess of Wales were first to inspect the furniture, when it was displayed in Bond Street in 1885. Johnstone, Norman & Co. were also particularly celebrated for their inlaid furniture, which was compared favourably with some of the 'finest examples of the Italian Renaissance'. According to J. Moyr Smith writing in Ornamental Interiors, 1887, 'The designs for these veritable works of art in furniture have been done by Mr. Alma Tadema and have been admirably worked out under his superintendence by Mr. W.C. Coleman. To find furniture of equal beauty and intelligence of design and equal choiceness of material and workmanship, we should have to combine the palmy days of Greek art with the luxury of the Roman Empire at its best period of taste'. The piano, which was the 'Chief' of Marquand's commission, was still in course of construction when some of the furnishings were first put on display in London. Indeed it did not make its appearance in its final form until two years later, when the key-board had been completed with its signed painting by Sir Edward Poynter (1836-1919). The piano case is executed with ebony and cedar veneer, and is embellished with carving and inlay of ebony, sandalwood, ivory, boxwood and mother-of-pearl. Its lid, which is framed by an inlay of flowered Grecian-fretted ribbon, recalls Mount Parnassus, as it is strewn with ribbon-tied wreaths bearing the Grecian names of Apollo and the Muses of artistic inspiration. Apollo's laurel-wreathed name, which appears over the key-board, is followed by the flower-wreathed names of the nine Muses, who were his companions on Mount Parnassus. First there is the wreath of Euterpe (music and lyric poetry), flanked by Thalia (comedy and pastoral poetry), and Melpomene (sacred poetry). These are followed by Polyhymnia (heroic hymns); and Terpsichore (dancing and song); then Calliope (epic poetry); then Erato (lyric and love poetry); with Clio (muse of history), and finally Urania (astronomy). The piano cornice is carved in with Echinous egg-and-dart and beaded mouldings, while its base is inlaid with a flowered ribbon of doubled Grecian meander fret. Its key-board brackets terminate in palm-flowered stele ends, whose sides are flowered and inlaid with Roman acanthus tendrils. Similar tendrils and palm-flowers frame a golden bas-relief medallion of a Grecian lyre at the end of the piano. The sides are inlaid with more laurel-wreathed medallions which celebrate a musical triumph with laurel branches and altar-tripods. The latter recall the prizes of musical festivals in antiquity, such as that awarded to Lysicrates and placed on his Choragic monument which stands near the Parthenon. Another striking feature of the piano is its trestled legs, which are entwined with flowered tendrils of Roman acanthus and fronted by acanthus-wrapped Griffin monopodiae. The form of these chimaerical eagle-winged lions, sacred to Apollo, derives in part from a celebrated Pompeian marble table. A third support, capped by a golden libation patera, comprises a stepped pedestal with carved palm-leaf bands. It is also inlaid with poetic laurel sprigs, whose berries are of coral, and festive sacrificial ewers in ivory. Even the piano's foot-pedals are incorporated in a triumphal Grecian arch, whose Doric columns are fluted and whose metopes are inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Inside, the ivory and ebony key-board acts like a mosaic pavement for the colourful vignette by Sir Edward Poynter. It depicts an ancient entertainment or vintage festival at a coastal villa with a landscape evoking the Bay of Naples beyond, and is framed between poetic trophies of musical instruments and pilasters of ribbon-guilloche, inlaid with iridescent mother-of-pearl. Poynter's perspectival vignette illustrates a garden peristyle in which a vine-wreathed maiden twirls a bacchic thyrsus and leads her companions in a dance. While a seated courtier and attendants watch from a pavement colonnade to the left, a youth surveys the musicians who are playing under an identical pergola on the the opposite side. Such a perspectival setting was to become almost obligatory for Roman genre pictures of the later Victorian period, while Poynter had often favoured long, horizontal compositions with dispersed figure groups for his paintings. The central group in this composition carries various references: to an expanded group of Graces, to the figures that float in the centres of panels of Pompeiian mural decoration, and perhaps most tellingly to Poussin's Dance to the Music of Time. The subject was discussed in a letter to Marquand in February 1886, when Alma-Tadema informed him, 'I took the liberty of ordering Poynter, as you know one of our very best artists to paint the inside lid of the piano. He is a classic artist, who will I am sure make something beautiful of it'. Poynter must have been pleased with the result for in 1894 he painted a larger version of the composition which he submitted to the Royal Academy of that year (no. 163). 1894 was a year of critical importance for Poynter, as he had just been appointed Director of the National Gallery. His name was thus 'prominently before the public' as the critic of The Times noted when reviewing the exhibition. ( The Times, 5 May 1894, p. 16). Two years later Poynter was elected President of the Royal Academy in succession to Frederic, Lord Leighton, a post he was to fill for twenty-two years. The painting, then entitled Horae Serenae came to be regarded as one of Poynter's finest, with the critic of the Athenaeum finding it 'a charming picture, full of light, action and colour'. ( Athenaeum, no. 3471, 5 May 1894, p. 584). In Greek mythology Horae were personifications of the seasons whose name only in a later generation came to denote the hours; in keeping with the decoration of the piano, and indeed the rest of the room, Poynter has cleverly managed to infuse a scene whose setting is clearly Roman with the poetic or 'aesthetizing' qualities more often associated with Ancient Greece. Alma-Tadema was also responsible for persuading Sir Frederic Leighton, then President of the Royal Academy, to execute a painting to be incorporated in the Salon ceiling above the piano. In a letter of 17 January, 1886, Leighton reported to Marquand 'I have thought that in a room dedicated to the perfomance of music the muses will [be] the proper presiding spirits in as much as with the Greeks music & poetry always went hand in hand. In the central compartment therefore I have introduced two of them: Melpomene, & Thalia, the muses of sacred and of epic poetry - seated between them is Mnemosyne, the mother of the muses, above whom hover two winged genii wandering voices of melody & song; on each side of her are the Delphic emblems the tripod, the python, the laurel, and at her feet the dolphin - in this compartment then we have the grave aspects of song - in the side compartments a contrast is offered - in one I represent the poetry of love by a fair maiden crowning her head with roses while a winged boy tunes the lyre by her side - in the other I show a Bacchante and a little faun dancing to pipe and tambourine - representing the Bacchic element, the element of revelry in one thing'. Two of the muses whose names were recorded on the lid of the piano were hence personified on the ceiling above. With the altar tripods and laurel brances visible on the piano being echoed in Leighton's painting aloft, the piano was firmly anchored as the centrepiece of the room. In a letter of 23 May 1886 Leighton informed Marquand that the figures were to be 'more or less isolated and very firm in outline and should have no pictorial backround... they should be of full rich tone on a gold ground - the effect would be rather lighter than old mosaics and I think very telling.' Alma-Tadema was delighted with the result, suggesting to Marquand that the murals were 'one of the happiest things Leighton has ever put together.' The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy of that year (no. 164), and at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition (no. 1049), before being installed in New York. However, following the dispersal of Marquand's property in 1903, their present location is unknown. When the piano lid is opened, with the aid of Ionic-pillared supports, its interior reveals a pair of sliding candle-stands, which are of patera-medallion form and inlaid with laurel-wreaths. They flank the hinged music-rest, whose arched frame of golden brass is inlaid with a Grecian band of palm-flowers and buds in silvery pewter and bronzed copper, while the sides are further enriched with fretted palm-flowers and foliage. The piano's two accompanying 'Pompeian' music-stools are similarly decorated. They are carved with palm-leaf mouldings to the rail, while palm-flowers and tendrils are inlaid at their rounded corners. Their columnar legs, capped by ivory pateraed finials, derive from a Pompeian couch discovered in 1868. In addition, they are inlaid with a Grecian lambrequined ribbon-guilloche of palm-buds, corresponding to the inlay on a pair of Marquand's Pompeian tripod-tables. The stools were originally upholstered in silk together with the other seat furniture, which included the pair of griffin-footed 'currule' bergŠre chairs now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. In 1885, the author of an article in Cabinet Making and Upholstery described this upholstery as being 'of a beautiful shade of pure gray, traversed by bands of exquisite embroidery in colours which are rich, but carefully subdued, as one sees them in Mr. Tadema's pictures. The ground of the embroidery is also silk, the colour being precisely that of the bloom of a ripe plum. Upon this, the tints of gold and orange, blue, red and brown, with slender curved lines of pure white, giving a peculiar delicacy to the whole, form a beautiful scroll pattern'. Their frames roused the author to equal rapture:- 'The woodwork of all this is simply incomparable, being a mixture of cedar wood, ebony, ivory and boxwood, inlaid with the finest mother-o-pearl to be had'. The cedar was admired for 'its delicious red-brown' tone; the ivory for its 'mellow tint of warm cream colour'; while the mother-of-pearl was considered to glitter 'like jewels'. The history of Alma-Tadema's exotic colour scheme of black enriched with red-brown and white appears to derive from Grecian or so-called 'Etruscan' vases, and can be traced back to 18th Century publications such as d'Hancarville's Catalogue of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities, 1766-7, G.B. Piranesi's Diverse Maniere d'Adornare i Cammini, 1769, and The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1772. However the robust quality of the furniture's carved and encrusted bas-reliefs, which recall Florentine pietra-dura inlay, also reflects the bold antique style promoted by later publications such as the architect Lewis Vulliamy's Examples of Ornamental Sculpture in Architecture, drawn from the originals in Greece, Asia Minor and Italy, 1823. The 'beautiful' Marquand furniture was noted in its day as 'a project on which great wealth of material and labour had been lavished'. One commentator also considered it 'only fair to add that the finish of the work, much of which is of a very difficult character, leaves nothing to be desired'. When finally displayed at Johnstone and Norman's premises in 1887, The Furniture Gazette wrote enthusiastically about the pianoforte as, 'one of the most superb specimens of elaborately artistic workmanship it has ever been our good fortune to see'. Sir Edward Poynter, in a letter to Marquand concluded 'I have no hesitation in saying that it is the most beautiful piece of work, both for the design and the workmanship, that I ever saw. In fact, I do not believe that anything has ever been done to equal it.' Marquand's piano encapsulates the incredible flowering of the arts in late 19th Century New York, which witnessed the opening of two of the city's most celebrated centres of artistic excellence, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (with which Marquand was so closely associated), and the Metropolitan Opera House. The latter opened on Boradway in 1883, and its artistic importance was immediately established by Leopold Damrosch's 1884 season of German opera. In 1885 when the furnishing of the Marquand Music Salon and this richly inlaid piano was discussed in The Art Journal, attention was drawn to the fact that the interior was fitted with parchment panels 'in order to record the autographs of musical celebrities who will perform in the room'. The piano is inscribed with the names of notable composers associated with its history, such as Victor Herbert, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Walter Damrosch and Richard Rodgers. Walter Damrosch (d. 1950), the son of Leopold Damrosch, who had founded the New York Symphony orchestra in 1878. Following his father's death in 1885, Walter became the orchestra's conductor and it is as a conductor that he is chiefly remembered. Among other achievements, he was the first to conduct an orchestral concert relayed by radio across the USA and in 1927 he was appointed musical adviser to the NBC. Damrosch was also renowned as an educationalist. He never abandoned composition and was responsible for four operas, the first being a setting of Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter', which was given its premier in 1891. Another American composer and conductor who inscribed the Marquand piano was Victor Herbert (d. 1924). Like Damrosch, Herbert was trained in Germany and moved with his wife, the soprano Therese Foerster, to New York in 1886. They were both immediately engaged by the Metropolitan Opera Company, she as a soloist and he as a cellist. Herbert's second cello concerto of 1894 influenced Dvorak to compose his masterpiece in the same form. Although now lost, Herbert composed a full symphonic score for the first showing in New York of the historic film 'The Fall of a Nation', arguably one of the earliest compositions written solely for the cinema. Now, however, Herbert is primarily remembered as a composer of graceful and beautiful operettas. Like Herbert perhaps, Sir Arthur Sullivan (d. 1900) would have preferred to be remembered for his serious works rather than for his comic operas, in particular those written to librettos by W.S. Gilbert. Nonetheless, he is celebrated as a composer of comic genius and it is perhaps in this role that he inscribed the Marquand piano. Richard Rodgers (d. 1979) is without doubt one of the greatest composers writing in a popular, particularly American idiom. Largely self taught, he was attracted at an early age to the operas of Victor Herbert, and had his first published hit in 1919. Rodgers' association first with Lorena Hart and even more remarkably with Oscar Hammerstein II, produced a string of masterpieces for the American musical stage, culminating in such hits as 'Oklahoma', 'Carousel' and 'The Sound of Music'. Henry Gurdon Marquand (1819-1902) Henry Gurdon Marquand was not only one of the shrewdest businessmen of the late 19th Century, but was also one of its greatest philanthropists and collectors. He was born and died in New York, and departing from the family trade of silversmithing worked first in real estate before founding his fortune in banking and investment. The bulk of his fortune resulted from the purchase, with his brother William, and other investors, of the St. Louis Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad. Between 1875 and 1881 he served as the company's Vice President, assuming the presidency in 1881. He continued to serve as Director of the railroad, and its later parent company, the Missouri Pacific, until his death. Amongst many other acts of charity, Marquand's principal philanthropic activity was connected with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was one of the original group of 50 prominent New Yorkers who met in 1869 to plan the museum's organization, and to raise an endowment, and after his retirement he devoted most of his energies to the Museum's development. From 1882-89 he served as the Museum's Treasurer, and from 1889 as its President. According to the contemporary observer Russell Sturgis who wrote the introduction to the Illustrated Catalogue of the Art & Literary Property collected by the late Henry G. Marquand (New York, 1903), Marquand bought items of fine & decorative art 'like a Prince of the Italian Renaissance'. He showered these purchases on the museum, donating antiquities, Asian ceramics, near Eastern carpets, Limoges enamels, Italian maiolica, European porcelain & silver, and intricate medieval carvings and Renaissance ironworks. With a gift of $15,000 he secured the Jules Charvet collection of antique glass, while an important collection of sculptural casts was purchased with a grant of $10,000. $30,000 endowed the establishment of a museum art school. But it was the gift of 50 paintings by English and European Old Masters between 1888 and Marquand's death that enabled the Metropolitan to be established as one of the most important museums in the world. His benefaction included four paintings by Rembrandt, two by van Dyck (of which the celebrated portrait of James Stuart, Duke of Richmond & Lennox was one), three by Rubens, and two by Jan van Eyck, as well as Vermeer's Woman with a Water Jug. Paintings by Diego Velasquez, Gabriel Metsu, Gerhard ter Boch, Francisco de Zuberan, Gainsborough and Hogarth were also donated. Remarkably, these pictures were never hung in Marquand's homes, which were mainly decorated with French contemporary works, but were acquired specifically with a view to help the Metropolitan create a historically representative collection. Calvin Tomkins, whose 'Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art' documented the museum's early history, thought Marquand's eye for quality 'may even have influenced the future trend of collecting in America'. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, O.M., R.A. (1836-1912) Lawrence Alma-Tadema was born in Friesland, a province of Holland, the son of a notary. Having shown artistic promise from an early age he entered the Antwerp Academy in 1852 to study under Gustave, Baron Wappers and Nicaise de Keyser. There he also met Louis de Taye, Professor of Archeaology at the Academy and himself a practising artist. De Taye kindled in Alma-Tadema a passion for the depiction of historical scenes and a keen interest in the ancient world. He was to spend the formative years of 1857-9 working in de Taye's studio. Having initially depicted scenes from Merovingian history, Alma-Tadema broadened his subject matter to include Ancient Egyptian subjects as his friendship with the the Egyptologist Georg Ebers (1837-1898) developed. After an extended honeymoon in Italy in 1863 his interest in the classical world quickened, and having met Jean Leon Gerome, leader of the so called Neo-Grec School in Paris, and being directed by his dealer Ernest Gambart, the subsequent course of his art was set. Fuelled by a keen demand from his international patrons, Alma-Tadema was to reproduce a prodigious number of scenes of classical genre in which in contrast to his contemporaries, Leighton and Watts, he sought to depict the everyday lives of Romans and Greeks. His paintings were remarkable for their archeological accuracy, and for the skill with which silver and silks, and especially marble, was depicted. Following the death of his first wife in 1865, Alma-Tadema moved from Brussels to London where he became a naturalized British citizen in 1875. A successive rise in social and professional standing throughout the 1860s and 1870s culminated in a major exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1882 and the furnishing of 'Casa Tadema' on Grove End Road in 1883. Alma-Tadema's lavishly decorated house was, along with Leighton House, one of the most notable studio houses of its day and the artist's entertainments there became legendary. News of the creation of its unique interior undoubtedly influenced Henry Marquand to commission Alma-Tadema to decorate his Madison Avenue mansion in what was to become, for that date, a remarkable act of transatlantic cooperation. In addition to exhibiting at the Royal Academy, the New Gallery, the Old Watercolour Society and the Grosvenor Gallery, Alma-Tadema also produced designs for Sir Henry Irving's Coriolanus of 1901, and Cymbeline of 1896, and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's Julius Ceasar and Hypatia. He was knighted in 1899 and awarded the gold medal for the promotion of architecture in painting by the RIBA in 1896.
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