It might not be for everyone's wallet, but if you have a few quid to spare you could secure yourself a piece of Norwegian art history at this year's Scandinavian Sale at the London auction house Sotheby's.
Sotheby’s eighth annual Scandinavian Sale takes place on Tuesday, 13 June, at New Bond Street in London. A travelling exhibition of sale highlights will have been shown in Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki prior to pre-sale viewing in London which begins on June 8.
Following on from last year’s successful sale which established four new world record prices in this category (for the work of Paul Fischer, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Henrik Lund and Erik Werenskiold), this year’s offering promises to be every bit as strong. The sale includes works by many of the leading Nordic artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, the vast majority of which have not been seen on the market for many years.
Following on from the enormous success in Sotheby’s February sale of Impressionist & Modern Art of the Olsen Collection of works by Edvard Munch (1863-1944), where 'Summer Day' achieved a world record price of £5,160,000, the Scandinavian Sale also features three works by Munch, all of exceptional provenance.
Two of the works have come directly from the collection of Sten Stenersen whose financier father Rolf met the artist at his studio in 1921 aged 22. From then until Munch’s death in 1944 Rolf Stenersen became one of the artist’s most important patrons, and the closest the painter ever had to a professional adviser. Acquiring one of the largest collection of Munch’s work after the artist’s own holdings, in 1936 Stenersen presented the majority of his collection to the municipality of Aker (now housed at the Stenersen Museum, Oslo). Both works in this sale are family portraits, one of Rolf Stenersen himself, estimated at £140,000-180,000 and the other one of his children, Johan Martin and Sten Stenersen, estimated at £100,000-150,000. All related works to these paintings are in the Munch-museet, Oslo.
The third, and much earlier, work by the Norwegian master of psychologically probing portraiture is from the collection of the artist’s family. 'Andreas Leser' (Andreas Reading) was painted circa 1882-83, and depicts Munch’s younger brother. This portrait depicts him as a studious young man, and is one of four or five portraits of him from the same period, when Munch was studying at the Royal School of Art & Design, and often used members of his family to model for him. On the sudden death of Andreas aged only 30, Munch gave this portrait of his brother to his sister-in-law as a keepsake, and continued to provide for his niece, born just after her father’s death, throughout his life. The work is estimated at £80,000-120,000.
The father of Norwegian Romantic painting Johan Christian Dahl (1788-1857) is represented by a monumental work entitled 'Fjell Landskap med Slott' (Mountain Landscape with a Castle), which was painted in 1816 while Dahl was studying at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. It is an example of the different influences that formed Dahl’s style in his early years as a painter and which would continue to guide him for the rest of his life. During his time in Copenhagen, his principal preoccupations were with making copies from old masters, his imaginary landscapes in southern or northern character and his prospects of the Danish countryside. This particular example from the period is an especially impressive summation of these preoccupations, combining the grandiosity of a breathtaking classically inspired vista with the local interest of a Norwegian wood-cutter’s cottage. The work is estimated at £150,000-250,000.
Thomas Fearnley (1802-1842) was Dahl’s most able pupil and a constant traveller. The sale includes three poetic but very different landscapes from the times he spent seeking out the majesty of the Norwegian landscape as well as on painting trips across Continental Europe. Consigned for sale by a British private collector, the views depict Mount Vesuvius, painted during his tour of Italy between 1832 and 1835 (estimate: £6,000-8,000), the Wetterhorn Mountain painted whilst crossing Switzerland in 1835 (estimate £8,000-12,000), and Labrofossen (The Labro Falls) in Norway, an exceptionally rare work on paper that is a study for his first major oil of the Labro Falls of 1831 (estimate £15,000-20,000).
Johan Christian Dahl, 'Fjell landskap med slott' (Mountain landscape with a castle), estimate: £150,000-250,000
Photo: Sotheby's