Dedham, MA – Grogan and Company Fine Art Auctioneers and Appraisers announces their upcoming September 30th Auction will include over 700 lots of Fine Art, Furniture, Decorative Works of Art, Silver, Jewelry and Oriental Rugs, and will span four centuries of artistic expression and craftsmanship from various countries across Europe. 

     The highlight of the European fine art offerings is an embroidery titled Udir e tra le parole (Read Between the Lines), by Italian conceptual artist Alighiero Boetti.  Boetti utilized unusual materials in his work and was a member of Arte Povera, a radical Modern art movement in the 1960’s until 1972.  He is best known for his embroidered maps documenting the politically changing world.  With the help of Afghani and Pakastani artisans, he also created a series of embroidered grids, “arazzi’s”, with hidden phrases in Italian.   This gem, estimated at $15,000-20,000,  was a gift from a New York collector in 1986 to a friend and has descended to the current owner.   Other contemporary works include two prints by venerated Anglo/American artist David Hockney, Flowable Table and Kyoto, estimated at $8,000-12,000 and $5,000-7,000 respectively; while Spanish artist Augustin Ubeda’s Still Life with Saint and Cup, a 26 x 21 inch oil on canvas is estimated at $800-1,200.

     A collection old master paintings from the estate of a Somerville Massachusetts Collector, who spent 40 years as a Boston art director, features a Portrait of Angela Chigi created about 1679-1680 by Jacob Ferdinand Voet.  Voet, a Dutch artist who traveled painting portraits of the noble class throughout Italy between 1679-1684, was banned from Rome for his female portraits showing too much décolletage.  Angela Chigi, one of the eleven Chigi princesses of Agostino Chigi and Maria Borghese, was sent to the Sienese nunnery of S. Girolamo in Campansi in 1680.  This portrait, depicting Angela at about 14 years of age, was created just before her investiture.  An old photograph of the portrait, illustrated on page 178 of Francesco Petrucci’s book, Ferdinand Voet, detto Ferdinando De’ Ritratti, published by Bozzi of Rome, lists the work as “a lost portrait from the Baron Messinger Collection, 1910”.  The newly discovered canvas has suffered damage and is thus estimated at $2,000-4,000.   The first lot of the auction, a pair of portraits after Peter Paul Rubens of Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia and Archduke Albrecht of Austria hail from the same estate and bear reasonable $2,000-4,000 presale estimates, while a 17th/18th century oil on copper of the Coronation of the Virgin in an elaborately carved gilt wood architectural niche is estimated at $1,000-1,500. 

The highlight of the French offerings includes Maurice de Vlaminck’s Le Paysage, an 18 x 22 inch watercolor formerly in the Collection of Mr. & Mrs. William Preston Harrison and the Los Angeles County Museum bears an estimate of $10,000-20,000.  Other French works include a 21 x 25 inch oil on canvas, Paris Street Scene, by Edward Cortes, and a Harbor View at Sunset, a 5 x 7 inch oil on silk by Eugene Boudin, both estimated at $10,000-15,000 each.  The English, not to be outdone, are represented by Cliffs of Achill, County Mayo, a 57 x 43 inch oil on canvas by Thomas Rose Miles, estimate $2,000-3,000, and a 24 x 36 inch landscape by Sidney Percy, estimated at  $4,000-6,000.  

    Dutch works include a charming Mother and Child by Hendrik Valkenburg, oil on canvas circa 1877, estimated at $1,500-2,000, a Landscape oil on panel by Jan Dirksz Both, estimated at $2,000-3,000 and an oil on panel by Johannes Rosierse titled Gentleman Reading by Candlelight, is estimated at $800-1,200.   Two sculptures by Russian artist Evgeni Alexandrovich Lanceray, Cossacks Sweetheart and Triumph of the Cossacks from a Rhode Island estate and  Lion and Serpent No. 3, a small bronze by French artist Antoine Barye will also be featured.   

 Finally, America is well represented with works by Hudson River School painter William Bradford, Impressionist painter and muralist Edward Simmons, venerated photographer Ansel Adams, Tonalist/Barbizon painter George Inness, Sr. and pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, amongst others. 

    The exhibition is open to the public and begins on Thursday, September 27th.  Hours:  Thursday, 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Sunday, 10 a.m. – 12 noon.  The auction will begin with Fine Art at 12:00 noon and will be conducted in lot number order. A fully illustrated catalogue can be found online at www.groganco.com. For more information regarding upcoming auctions, consigning or appraisal services, please call the gallery at 781-461-9500.