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Marianne's Picks
Marianne Berardi, PhD | Co-Director, European Art
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At the end of the main street in the village of Barbizon, about 37 miles southeast of Paris, you quickly find yourself standing within a large cluster of huge sandstone boulders weathered and eroded into the most fantastic shapes, just at the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau. It’s so bizarre and wonderful that it’s easy to start imagining wood nymphs and fairies scampering on and over and around them. Imagine the shock my friend Janell and I had in September 2017 when we found ourselves in the middle of an haute-couture photo shoot when we wandered into this rocky glen! Creatures dressed in a new line of fall "forest inspired" fashion were suddenly everywhere having their ears, tails and talons adjusted!
The gigantic rocks we encountered close to the village are found throughout the vast forest which thirty-five million years ago had been a sea that deposited sediments of fine, white sand some fifty meters thick. (The sand is one of the purest in the world and used for glassware (including Venetian Murano glass) and optical fiber.) As the sea levels dropped and the soft uppermost limestone layers eroded away, the more resistant, silicified sandstone banks remained. These eventually broke up through erosion into the enormous magical rocks that entranced the 19th-century Barbizon school painters such as Narcisse Díaz de la Peña, author of this view of the Gorges d'Apremont,
a spot about two hours’ walk into the forest from Barbizon village. Dotting the undergrowth in this dense patch of forest are the bright boulders. They nestle into the grass like large dozing animals.
What I love most about this painting is the way Díaz took a very dark subject and brought it to life through touches of light filtering through the canopy of leaves, by punching a hole in the treetops (like an oculus) to reveal a brilliant blue patch of sky with clouds, and by directing that light to bounce off the yellow grass below it, the boulders, and the margins of tree trunks at various intervals. Díaz recorded the forest after your eye adjusts to the half-light—something that would have been next to impossible if he hadn’t painted it on the spot, outside.
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This etching of an old man in a fur cap is a perfect illustration of why Rembrandt is so revered as a draftsman and printmaker. In fact, if a drawing by Rembrandt is out of your reach, buy this print because it is truly an incredible drawing. Rembrandt scratched his etching needle through the ground with the same directness he used when working with a pen or brush and ink—scribbling in one direction and then another to build up form or tone, or both. He modulated his line for greater delicacy in areas like the tendrils of the man’s beard or thickened it up with a lot more repetition to achieve the dark outline of his cloak, its clasp, and the hollows of the man’s expressive face. In some prints Rembrandt engaged in a lot more manipulation, burnishing things
out, putting new things in, reworking, redrawing. This print by contrast is extremely direct, and that’s what I love about it. The immediacy of the linework results in a fresh, spontaneous type of character study for which the artist was justly celebrated. It’s not overwrought. It’s not overthought.
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Paul Huet’s large, lush landscape featuring a view of goatherds resting with their flock against a backdrop of haunting caves found in the Ardèche and Auvergne regions of southern France is the most powerful work in the auction for me. In its emotional quality, theatricality and wall power, Huet’s picture is perhaps something of a French Caspar David Friedrich? Painted in 1825 when the artist was just 22, the landscape is enormously ambitious in practically every way. Nearly mural size, it is painted with an audaciously thick impasto that seems to simulate (metaphorically) the rockface in the distance so that the painting’s message reads as solid and full of serious intention. And perhaps most of all, the effect of the work is operatic owing to the way
Huet framed nature with darkened "stage wings" in the foreground, affording a dramatic view of the distant hillside in bright sunlight. Vivid green vegetation, lavender rocks, orange earth and cerulean blue sky showcase the caves carved into the distant cliff face, which were inhabited in prehistoric times, and form an important part of France’s deepest history. As Alexandra Murphy points out in her beautiful catalogue note, this painting was very possibly the work Paul Huet "had hoped to submit to the Salon in 1825, but one which family history suggests he was unable to complete in time because of ill-health." She also noted it was a celebration of an undeniably French theme, something the aspiring artist had quite consciously chosen.
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Seth's Picks
Seth Armitage | Co-Director, Senior Specialist, European Art
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One of the things I love most about working at an auction house is that there’s always the chance to discover something new. Even after more than twenty years as a European art specialist, I still come across artists I’ve never encountered before—and those discoveries often lead to deep research and, I’ll admit, a bit of obsession.
Earlier this summer, a colleague sent me an image of a striking landscape by the early 20th-century French painter Tobeen (the pseudonym of Félix Bonnet) and I was instantly captivated. His work has appeared in auctions in Amsterdam, Paris, and London, but this is the first time one has surfaced in the United States. In studying the painting, I became not only fascinated with it as a bold composition but by the complex artist who created it.
Painted around 1916–1920, Paysage de Ciboure avec le chemin du vieux cimetière et le clocher marks a turning point in Tobeen’s career. Here, he combines the structure of Cubism with the gentle lyricism of the Basque landscape he knew so well. The church tower of Ciboure stands as a quiet landmark amid the faceted hills and luminous colors, a reflection of both place and spirit. You can feel Cézanne’s influence, but the mood is entirely Tobeen’s—personal, balanced, and deeply serene. It’s a rare and beautiful example of how early modern artists found harmony between geometry and emotion.
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With his evocative There sleeps Titania, John Simmons invites the viewer into a dreamworld. Throughout his late 19th-century career, the artist devoted himself to the fairy world, particularly inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, translating the text’s enchanted forest into paintings of luminous detail and delicate sensuality.
Here, the Fairy Queen Titania lies asleep beneath a canopy of moonlit flowers, unaware that Oberon, her watchful husband, is about to cast his love spell. The scene glows with a miniature painter’s precision: every petal, wing, and wisp of mist is rendered with studied, almost scientific, care. Yet the result is pure magic—an atmosphere that hovers between reality and reverie.
Simmons’s fairies, with their iridescent wings and shimmering skin, reflect both the Victorian fascination with the supernatural and the era’s curiosity about the natural world. Simmons’ painting invites us, even now, to linger in that spellbound space between reason and wonder.
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A leading light of the celebrated Williams family of painters, Sidney Richard Percy distinguished himself as one of Victorian England’s most accomplished landscape artists. By the late 1860s, his work had evolved into paintings of remarkable mood and sophistication.
In this atmospheric view, A Woodland Clearing, North Wales (1868), Percy masterfully balances precision and poetry: shepherds and sheep rest in a pool of golden light, surrounded by sweeping hills that dissolve into cloud and shadow. The result is both intimate and majestic—a hallmark of his mature style.
Looking closely, the scene evokes a range of emotions. While the pastoral subject feels peaceful, the felled trees and stumps—overlooked by two slender birches—suggest both the enduring strength of nature and the impact of human progress, themes especially resonant in the ever-industrializing Victorian era. Percy does not prescribe an interpretation, allowing each viewer to find their own meaning. That openness is what, to me, makes this such a powerful example of British landscape painting.
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I find something irresistibly charming about Joseph Bail’s The apprentice—a painting that celebrates everyday life while offering the artist a chance to display his remarkable skill. Known for his depictions of cooks and kitchens, Bail builds on the traditions of Jean Siméon Chardin and Johannes Vermeer yet infuses his scenes with the details of daily life, a hallmark of late 19th-century realism.
The kitchen setting affords Bail an opportunity to paint, often with illusionistic precision, a rich array of objects, surfaces, and textures. Sunlight streams through an unseen window, glinting off a polished copper cauldron and catching the curve of a glass bottle in the shadows beyond. The stillness of the room is broken only by a playful cat—its focused pose and outstretched paw suggesting it has just captured its prey.
In this intimate composition, where life seems momentarily suspended, Bail reveals his mastery of detail and atmosphere—inviting the viewer to return again and again in delight.
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Though best known for his dynamic equestrian scenes, Sir Alfred Munnings was also a deeply gifted portraitist, able to capture not just the likeness but the personality of his sitters. In The Poacher, he turns his sharp observational eye from the racecourse to rural Norfolk, portraying a man whose weathered face and roughened hands speak to a life lived close to the land.
Munnings’ vigorous brushwork and rich, earthen palette animate the figure with warmth and dignity. The tawny tones of the coat, the glint of light, and the sitter’s grounded presence together evoke the country life that Munnings so admired.
This painting also inspired a fascinating research journey. I discovered that The Poacher carries a personal history—it once hung in the Magpie Hotel in Harleston, a favorite haunt of Munnings and his friend, innkeeper Arthur Bush. In a remarkable 1961 film interview, Bush recalls their friendship and reveals that The Poacher is more than a portrait: it is a tribute—to Munnings’ Norfolk roots, his love of the countryside, and his fond memories of the warm welcome, inspiration, and lifelong memories provided by the Magpie.
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Peyton's Pick
Peyton Lambert | Consignment Director, European Art
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This is such a delightful watercolor by one of the few American artists in this sale, Henry Bacon. The artist studied briefly in the United States with Walter Gay (see lot 69028), on whose suggestion Bacon moved to Paris to attend formal study under one of my favorite French academic painters, Alexandre Cabanel. In 1897, Bacon traveled to Egypt for the first time, and fell in love with the region, regularly spending his winters there. The present work dates after this first, transformative trip, which prompted him to abandon oil paints for watercolors, the latter providing a hazy, flexible medium necessary to capture the transparent, almost fluid light of the Middle East. A wonderful, atmospheric example, The Egyptian water carrier
exemplifies Bacon’s ability to produce depth and activity with remarkably few colors and brushstrokes. This economy of gesture likely originated during his service as a Union soldier and war artist in the American Civil War—an active battlefield is no place to dawdle—and continued to provide his peacetime works with a soft, spontaneous quality.
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Seth Armitage
Co-Director,
Senior Specialist,
European Art
SethA@HA.com
(214) 409-3054
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Peyton Lambert
Consignment Director,
European Art
PeytonL@HA.com
(214) 409-1877
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