Tuesday 12 Apr 2016 - 12:27 Makkah mean time-5-7-1437
London, (IINA) - Next week is Islamic Week in London’s auction market as Bonhams, Christie’s and Sotheby’s take on a very different look from that which viewers experience in most other sales, The Telegraph Newspaper reported.
At once exotic and esoteric, the sales, which are expected to bring some £25 million, encompass a huge variety of paintings, works of art and artifacts from all the different cultures embraced by Islam - from Spain to China - over the last 1,400 years.
The core of these sales is historic craftsmanship. Illuminated manuscripts, if small, can be spectacular and Christie’s has the pick in a rare gold and colored pigment painting, made in about 1600 in Isfahan at the court of Shah Abass I, which recounts how a dervish crossed a river on his prayer rug to the astonishment of onlookers who had made the journey by boat. Relating to a manuscript that is the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, it is estimated at £150,000 to £200,000.
Christie’s also has the rarest and most visually stunning carpets of the week with three late 17th century Kirman “vase” Persian carpets, once owned by Alice de Rothschild and housed at Waddesdon Manor, which have been sent for sale by an anonymous descendant. One is priced at £1 million, and is similar to a slightly larger version that sold for £6.2 million in 2010 that is now in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha.
In the portrait field, surrounded by Iznik pottery, jeweled caskets and engraved metalwork, is an elegant mid-19th century portrait of a bearded gentleman which would be valuable on purely decorative grounds. But identified as a portrait of the Qajar writer, Jalal al-Din Mirza, and convincingly attributed to the court caricaturist, Abdul Hassan, expectations are raised to £70,000 or more.
Last year it was Iraq, and this month is the first ever devoted to Lebanese art, with a painting of the iconic war-damaged city centre “Egg Building” in Beirut by Lebanon’s most expensive contemporary artist, Ayman Baalbaki, priced at £60,000.
Since the first sale, launched in Islamic Week in October 2007 in London, it has been held in London but in a different week; in Doha, Qatar, mixed with western contemporary art; in London again where it was tagged on to the Frieze week contemporary art sales; and then back to Doha for the last three years, where sales totals have been falling. Now relaunching in London, Sotheby’s sale is smaller than Bonhams’ and is led by Egyptian artist Mahmoud Mokhtar’s 1920s sculpture On the Banks of the Nile, estimated at £120,000. But it is bolstered by a private collection in which contemporary Arab and Iranian art is mixed with the likes of Cy Twombly and other western artists, setting off some interesting resonances.
Sotheby’s Islamic sales are the widest ranging of the week. Its main sale includes a collection of early chess pieces, exotically decorated boxes with inlaid ivory, tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl, and an extremely rare decorated Qur'an leaf in eastern Kufic script. These will sit side by side with a scholar’s architectural library and a select group of Orientalist paintings, such as Ludwig Deutsch’s Morning Prayers (estimate £500,000 to £800,000) that demonstrate the fascination, which the Middle East held for western artists in the 19th century. Often sold with 19th century European art, the inclusion of Orientalist paintings in Islamic Week is recognition that that the biggest collectors are now from that region.
Sotheby’s is celebrating its 40th year of holding specialized Islamic art sales with a message of hope for the wider world. In the introduction to its catalogue, department head Edward Gibbs reminds us that 1976 was also the year in which Queen Elizabeth II opened Britain’s World of Islam Festival, stressing the unifying aspects of Islamic culture throughout its history and geography. The same artistic threads, he says, bind the auctions together with the museums, connoisseurs and collectors who shape the market.
SM/IINA
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