NEW YORK CITY – A portrait of renowned Nineteenth Century French dressmaker Charles Frederick Worth sold for $53,125, the top lot at Doyle’s Old Master & Nineteenth Century Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture sale June 3. The full-length oil on canvas work, 89¼ by 48¾ inches, featured the maker when he was 67 years old. The auction house provided that an oral history of the work said it once belonged to Coco Chanel who had it hanging in her Paris apartment.
The firm wrote, “Referred to as the father of haute couture, Worth dominated French dressmaking in the late Nineteenth Century and dressed the era’s most fashionable women on both sides of the Atlantic. The portrait was painted only two years before his death and was consigned to auction by one of his descendants.”
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