Freeman’s Auction – European Art and Old Masters Sale
February 14
2400 Market St Philadelphia PA
www.freemansauction.com
euroart@freemansauction.com
267-414-1253

PHILADELPHIA — Freeman’s biannual European art and Old Masters auction brings the best of the Continent, England and Scotland to market, and this February 14 sale will be led by “La Fleur Préférée,” a striking life-size outdoor portrait of a farm girl by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Offered with an estimate of $400/600,000, the painting was executed in 1895, at the height of Bouguereau’s career, and boasts an extensive provenance, having originally been bought directly from the artist. The work comes to Freeman’s directly from a private collection in North Carolina and has been in US collections for more than a century, underscoring the artist’s longstanding popularity among Americans.

Also on offer in the sale is “Deux Mères de Famille,” a mother and child scene by Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau, an important Nineteenth Century French painter. This fresh-to-market work was exhibited at the Salon in 1888. Gardner Bouguereau was an early and influential Parisian expatriate, one of the first American women to exhibit at the Salon, and the wife of William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

The sale brings to market a range of distinguished paintings, including “Pont-Aven,” a lively cityscape by the noted French Post-Impressionist Gustave Loiseau. Also on offer is “Canal in Spring” by Frits Thaulow, who combined Impressionism with naturalism to execute landscapes with an aesthetic all his own — initially in his native Norway, then primarily in France.

Daniel Ridgway Knight’s romantic riverside scene “The Signal,” an additional highlight, foregrounds the artist’s traditional, academic attention to detail and his focus on perhaps his most popular subject matter: peasant women. James Tissot’s “Sur la Plage,” an enigmatic seaside scene, highlights the lush theatrical dress in which the artist often costumed his models.

Freeman’s auction features several centuries of artistic production, with some works — like an elegant chalk-on-paper portrait of a woman by the studio of Paolo Veronese — dating back as early as the Sixteenth Century. Other esteemed works by Old Masters in the sale include the oil on copper “Crying Madonna” attributed to Carlo Dolci and a selection of portraits of the Campbell family by William Aikman.

Freeman’s is at 2400 Market Street. For additional information, www.freemansauction.com or 215-563-9275.

CONTACT:
Raphaël Chatroux
267-414-1253
euroart@freemansauction.com
LEFT
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) La Fleur Préférée (detail) $400,000-600,000