This year’s first major Auction Week at Vienna’s Dorotheum, scheduled from 24 to 26 April 2018, will offer outstanding Old Master and 19th-Century paintings, as well as furniture, sculptures, glass, and porcelain.
 
Old Master Paintings: The King Drinks!
Pieter Brueghel the Younger is the artist of a remarkable painting featuring the feast of the Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day. The congregation traditionally met after church for a huge banquet, and one person amongst them was chosen by random to act as king. He who found a bean in his piece of cake was entitled to wear a paper crown and appoint his own royal household: queen, jester, master of the ceremonies, food taster, gatekeeper, and so on. As soon as the king raised his glass to his lips, the crowd exclaimed ‘The king drinks!’, and the festivities could begin. This depiction probably harks back to a lost model by Martin van Cleve, the artist’s contemporary. With an estimate of 700,000–900,000 euros, this painting will be the top lot of Dorotheum’s Old Master Paintings sale on 24 April 2018.
 
Kermis and Carnival
Specialist Klaus Ertz dated an oil painting by David Vinckboons, populated by a multitude of figures, to the year 1604. It depicts the Kermis of Saint George, an annual feast celebrated in the Low Countries’ rural regions. The scene is viewed from a bird’s eye perspective, which is entirely typical of the artist’s early period. He has impressively captured the liveliness of the feast with carefully observed details, including a religious procession, carousers, and dancers (€170,000–€200,000).
 
An oil painting by Sebastian Vrancx (1573–1647) represents one of the most superb and earliest carnival motifs from Venice. The picture shows a sophisticated combination of Commedia dell’ arte episodes: the bullfight held on giovedi grasso (Fat Thursday), matachins with their huge drums, acrobats, buffoni, a street theatre scene featuring a quack advertising his goods, and the couple, Pantalone and Zanni. In the left foreground a group of elegantly dressed bystanders is watching the bullfight. They might be Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol and his nephew, Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria, with their entourage, as their journey to the Venice carnival is documented for 1579. The artwork, which dates from the period around 1605, has an estimated value of between 180,000 and 220,000 euros.
 
Marriage
In April 2017, Dorotheum caused a sensation when it sold a panel from a cassone marriage chest. This time, another such item will be offered for sale: The Story of Lucretia. It is a work in tempera with gold and silver on wood, by the Master of Charles III of Durazzo (active in Florence circa 1380–1420). Its estimate ranges from 180,000 to 200,000 euros.
 
Giuseppe Maria Crespi’s Singer at a Spinet with Admirers is related to a variant of the composition kept in the Uffizi in Florence. Merriman, the author of a monograph on Crespi, describes the work offered for sale by Dorotheum as “a better version than that in the Uffizi” (€100,000–€150,000).
 
A work by artist Antonio Joli, depicts an important view of Venice, with San Marco, San Giorgio Maggiore, and the Giudecca presenting themselves in Joli’s typical photographic manner (€200,000–€300,000).
 
Sebastián Herrera Barnuevo immortalised the very last member of the Spanish Habsburg line in the monumental equestrian portrait Charles II of Spain at a Juvenile Age. As scholars recently found out, the painting served Spanish court painters as a model for similar compositions. It is one of the artist’s most important paintings and one of the master’s rare fully autograph works (€60,000–€80,000).
 
19th-Century Paintings: Destination Italy
Oswald Achenbach was one of the leading landscapists of his time. Many of his journeys took him to Italy. His oil painting Eruption of Mount Vesuvius will be one of the most highly priced works in the 19th-Century Paintings sale on 25 April 2018, with an estimate of between 150,000 and 200,000 euros. A motif by the same artist, this time from Florence, has an estimated value of around 18,000 to 25,000 euros. Italian motifs also take centre stage in works by Giovanni Grubas, Guglielmo and Beppe Ciardi, Anton Romako, and Rudolf von Alt. Compositions by famous Biedermeier painters, like Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller will also be up for sale.  
 
White Gold
The highlights in Dorotheum’s Works of Art sale on 26 April 2018 come from Meissen and the Royal Porcelain Factory in Berlin. Ernst Heinecke created the impressive soft-paste painted floral decoration on a lidded vase crafted in the Rococo style at Berlin’s Royal Porcelain Factory. The flowers were not arranged in the form of bouquets, as had been common in the 18th century, but were represented in their entirety, similar to the way they are viewed in nature. Our specialist dates this magnificent piece, which is 87 centimetres tall, to 1890/1891 (€80,000–€140,000).
 
Good luck and peace are always very welcome, no matter their guise! The two figurines to be offered for sale originate from the Meissen porcelain factory and date to 1883. Personifications of Fortune and Peace, they were cast from a model by Heinrich Schwabe (heights 60 cm and 62 cm, €50,000–€70,000).

AUCTION WEEK 24 - 26 APRIL 2018 
Old Master Paintings 24 april 2018 
19th Century Paintings 25 april 2018 
Works of Art: furniture, sculpture, glass and porcelain 26 april 2018 
Viewing from 14 april 2018 Palais Dorotheum, Vienna 1, Dorotheergasse 17 on 28 march 2018 
selected works at Dorotheum Brussels, 13, rue aux Laines 1000 Brussels, Tel.: +32-2-514 00 34 bruessel@dorotheum.be