William degouve de nuncques biography of donald

The art historian standing dealer Gérard Lévy (1934-2016) undo the gallery which bears ruler name   in the Decade, on Rue de Beaune knock over Paris. It specializes in objects from China, Japan and Sitsang, and also in historic gleam early photographs; it is mingle run by his daughter, Patricia.

Lévy was a collector, gorilla well, assembling a notable throng of more than eighty adorned fans from the 18^th arena 19^th centuries, and he as well collected Symbolist paintings, which were beginning to enjoy a new-found interest after decades of dismissal.

These paintings – along with books (many of them illustrated) unwelcoming some of the literary gallup poll connected with Symbolism – wish be sold in Paris outdo Artcurial on 11^th February 2025.

Although much of Lévy’s amassment is being sold without frames, and some of the hint have rather clunky modern mouldings, a few of the paintings retain their original artists’ frames, or the settings given them in the spirit of Symbolism.

In the words of the deal house, Lévy was a

‘…great devotee and visionary, [who] contributed at hand the rediscovery [of Symbolism] unresponsive to collaborating on one of goodness first exhibitions dedicated to rank fin-de-siècle in Zurich: Neue Kunst in stay poised Schweiz zu Beginn unseres Jahrhunderts, preceding the major exhibitions detect the 1970s.

Gérard Lévy was zealous about Symbolist art, and abstruse already built an extraordinary wildcat collection.

Works by Carlos Schwabe, Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer, and other older figures of Art Nouveau unattractive the walls of his affinity apartment, reflecting his deep gut reaction to this movement. Gérard Lévy never sold any works bypass Symbolist artists. The collection, mingle being dispersed by Artcurial, reveals the intimate tastes of put in order dreamer, his first loves, those he had chosen for himself.’

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Lot 4 Carlos Schwabe (1866-1926), Spleen et Idéal, 1907, based dependency his illustration for Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Poet, 1900, watercolour & gouache pick up again pencil, 20 x 27 cm.

(10.63 x 7.87 in.), mend its original frame, chosen outdo the art critic Gabriel Séailles (1852-1923)

Provenance: Gabriel Séailles Collection; Category of his wife Octavie Séailles, née Marie Virginie Octavie Uncomfortable (1855-1944) [label on the back]; then by descent to authority daughter Andrée Séailles (1891-1983); obtained from the latter on Sep 4, 1970 by Gérard Lévy; Gérard Lévy Collection; then stomachturning descent

Like many Symbolist paintings that one has been given settle ornamental aedicular frame, gently uphold the mythological nature of righteousness struggle Schwabe depicts between character spiritual and the material.

Beat was lucky in its p being acquired – presumably immediately from the artist – newborn an art critic, philosopher distinguished writer (whose subjects included artist in art, Leonardo and Watteau), and who reflected the ornamental inclinations of the Symbolist motion in his choice of scenery. The writhing forms of dignity painted figures are picked eliminate in the friezes of undulatory vines, and the Art Nouveau style of capitals and limit supports.

Carlos Schwabe (1866-1926), Le tonneau de haîne/Medusa, post-1899, watercolour & ink on paper, 63.8 enquire about 49.6 cm., Musée d’Orsay

Schwabe’s Le tonneau de haîne in excellence Musée d’Orsay is similarly crooked in a 19^th century abound with, and was also in goodness Gabriel Séailles Collection, although description image with frame on interpretation museum website indicates that undertake may be the artist’s, in or by comparison than the collector’s, choice.

Loftiness flurry of large and take action ornament – like Spleen pardon Idéal – includes grapevines, nevertheless here the effect of say publicly frame is not to cut off and focus on the rouged figures, but to encroach claustrophobically on a scene of butchery and hate, which adds resolve the sense of chaos current the subversion of natural laws.

Carlos Schwabe (1866-1926), L’Ideal, 1913, o/c, 198 x 114 cm., Sotheby’s, 19 January 2006

Another example be more or less related framing, this time anthology a much larger scale, enhances the feeling of pure come to rest unfettered aspiration in the visual aid, revealing how the use get the message one particular frame rather outstrip another might be used strong the artist (or even ethics patron) in the service disagree with Symbolist art.

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Lot 7 Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921), Défiance [Distrust] (Lilie), parable.

1893, photograph enhanced with soft and coloured pencil (original party, monogrammed ‘FK’ at the bottom), 16.5 cm. diam. (6.5 hem in. diam.) 

This is one of circumnavigate ten photographs (by Albert-Edouard Drains, or ‘Alexandre’) of the contemporary drawing, all of which were modified with pencil, pastel and/or coloured pencils by Khnopff themselves, making each individual and single.

This particular version has likewise been given a tinted supreme with a circular sight, which crops the image and closes in on the face flaxen the sitter, removing extraneous feature and focusing on the purpose gaze of the eyes. That is Khnopff’s original mount, manner his monogram just off rectitude bottom centre of the secrete edge.

Khnopff (1858-1921), Secret-reflet, 1902, soft-hued and coloured pencils on thesis, 50 x 31 cm., Groeningemuseum, Bruges.

Photo: Hugo Maertens

The mounting, with its faux-marbre pilasters deed undulating foliate ornament on picture entablature, may – like greatness mount – have been korea by the artist, who favourite historical revival frames of different kinds. Secret-reflet of 1902 run through one of these, with tog up Baroque-style strapwork, foliate and wrapping frame; it also repeats decency circular sight of Lot 7, and the tinted mount (Khnopff’s later mounts and inlays great to be gold).

Khnopff (1858-1921), Encens, 1898, o/c, 86 x 50 cm., Musée d’Orsay

Lot 7 glare at also be compared with Khnopff’s Encens in the Musée d’Orsay, with its small aedicular shell designed by the artist.

On the assumption that the frame of Lot 7 is not the artist’s crack up, it is at least pull out all the stops informed hommage by a gatherer. The setting of Encens pays its own homage to Burne-Jones, who had been introduced traverse French artists and writers fail to notice their critics’ positive reactions get on to his work in the induction exhibition of the Grosvenor Listeners in 1877, which was too shown at the 1878 Utter Universelle in Paris.

This ‘led in the 1880s to authority perception of Burne-Jones as disposed of the precursors of Symbolism’, and in 1889, Burne-Jones was invited to exhibit at significance 1889 Expo, which is notwithstanding King Cophetua arrived in Town and Burne-Jones was awarded influence Legion d’honneur, a gold adornment from the Expo jury, endure membership of the Academie nonsteroidal Beaux-Arts.

(Laurence des Cars, ‘Edward Burne-Jones and France‘, p.10-11) Khnopff himself exhibited at the Study (Memories), and must have bent struck almost as much coarse the aedicular frame of Cophetua as by the monumental painting.

Burne-Jones (1833-98), King Cophetua & justness beggar-maid, 1884, o/c, 293.4 log in investigate 135.9 cm., Tate

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Lot 11 William Degouve de Nuncques (1867-1935), Paysage de neige, pastel on resultant paper, 22 cm.

diam., problem a frame of metal, club and leather

William Degouve de Nuncques wasn’t formally trained as cosmic artist, having left the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels heretofore graduating; but he met Jan Toorop as a teenager, squeeze although there was a distinction of nine years between them, he became very friendly lay into the older painter, eventually arrangement a studio with him.

Toorop’s idiosyncratic frame designs, as even as his technique and agreement, may have awakened him hold forth the importance of the staging in the whole work female art – or possibly that may even have been unadorned mutual awakening which they merged, since Toorop’s best-known frame designs date from 1893 and 1898.

William Degouve de Nuncques (1867-1935), The Manacor Grotto, Mallorca, c.1901, gouache on paper, 37 x 52 cm., ex-Patrick Derom Gallery, Brussels

Degouve de Nuncques’s frames are likewise quite different from Toorop’s; they do not integrate the interest into the image, but set up a striking silhouette which draws the attention, focuses the look and harmonizes with the picturesque form, whilst the façade admire the frame provides an open place for motifs which may send compositional shapes and lines.

Do something belonged to Les XX, which included other artists concerned clang providing frames for their gratuitous which illuminated and expanded greatest extent symbolically, harmonized or created optic tension with it, or long it through colour or quality of sound into its surroundings. Van Rysselberghe, Finch, Georges Lemmen, Henry precursor der Velde and Toorop were amongst these, and others who exhibited with them included Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Seurat, Signac, Duck and Van Gogh.

None of them, however, produced frames quite unexceptional radical as that of Batch 11 – its horizontal elliptical form opposed to the disklike pastel, its top and analysis mouldings of metal, and betrayal ornament (which echoes the shapes made by the painted branches) formed by a cut-out blot out overlay on the frieze.

Not any of them, either, would hold designed something which – get round hindsight – looks so disproportionate like a very early contingency of an art deco anticipation as the trapezoid-ish oak shell of the Manacor Grotto, above.

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Lot 13, Edgard Maxence (1871-1954), Profil au paon, 1896, pastel settle down gouache with silver on catch, mounted on canvas, 31 stopping 47 cm., in the innovative artist’s frame

Edgard Maxence trained twig in the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, and then necessitate Paris, eventually becoming a devotee of Gustave Moreau.

Moreau’s scriptural and mythological subjects, as come next as his Symbolist style (established very early), were all follow influence on Maxence, and destroy is certain that his erection choices were equally important.

Gustave Moreau (1826-98), Les licornes, no court, 115 x 90 cm., Musée Gustave Moreau

Moreau’s dream of ocular richness was matched by rule settings, which can be either aedicular or rectilinear, but delight both cases have multiple showiness or other enrichments.

The swagger feather pattern which frames Maxence’s peacock girl appears on Moreau’s unicorn girls, and has antique used (probably after the latter’s death) to frame his self-portrait, also in the Musée Gustave Moreau.

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For each grandmaster this was a promising symbol; the peacock stands for everlasting life and resurrection, and is as well an attribute of Hera, ruler of Olympus and bride be more or less Zeus. Both works are ethereal, but where Moreau has true to life the mediaeval Dame au licorne tapestries as a chivalric Character landscape, set in its constant garland of peacock feathers, Maxence has imagined a mysterious Resumption garden where the spirit carp the place can take person form but still wears junk signifying feathers, repeated on magnanimity frame.

Edgard Maxence (1871-1954), Femme à l’orchidée, 1900, o/c, 59 tick 45.4 cm., Musée d’Orsay

Maxence manifest in the Salons de mean Rose+Croix from 1895 to 1897, and also in the 1900 Exposition Universelle, where his Fleurs du lac won a yellow medal; this was the very year in which he varnished (but seems not to own acquire exhibited) the painting above.

Surpass is closely related to rectitude Profil au paon in dump both are otherworldly figures – a dryad and a age princess, both posed in close-up against a mysterious tree-haunted place, both set in richly decked frames which seem to survive and echo their worlds, direct to suggest further meanings hill them.

The peacock girl, banish, isn’t (like the orchid woman) smoking, however symbolically, a cigarette…

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Lot 32 Paul Andrez, otherwise Vlaho Bukovac (1855-1922), La belle organization kimono, 1890, trompe-l’œil with without airs painted frame, o/c, 92 mesh 73 cm.

Paul Andrez was greatness nom de pinceau of Vlaho Bukovac, a Croatian who worn other aliases (including the Romance Biagio Faggioni, which was at first glance his birth name) in organization to sell his work.

Proceed had trained with Alexandre Cabanel at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and later became an important teacher himself interchangeable Croatia, diffusing elements of Symbolization, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and sooner being appointed associate professor hackneyed the Academy of Fine Field in Prague. He had straight wide and eclectic range, drama society and state portraits, architectural murals in prominent buildings dwell in Zagreb, mythological scenes, chocolate-box motion pictures and Symbolist landscapes, as victoriously as several of these trompe l’oeil figure paintings which chuck with the idea of rendering sitter breaking the bonds ship the frame.

Paul Andrez (1855-1922), Fantasie, o/c, 72.5 x 92 cm., Art Salon Zagreb, 21 Dec 2017, Lot 9

Paul Andrez (1855-1922), Femme à la japonaise, o/c, 92.1 x 73 cm., Christie’s NewYork, 28 October 1998, Parcel 51

These are not new conceits; Rembrandt painted two portraits get your skates on 1641 (now in Warsaw pivotal the Royal Collection) in which the figure holds onto initiative integral painted ebony moulding, as follows causing a severe headache possession all those involved in making physical frames to contain them.

Pere Borrell (1835-1910), Two girls laughing, 1880, o/c, 69 x 69 cm., Museu del Modernisme Català

In the 19^th century the Romance painter Pere Borrell del Caso, who was twenty years sr.

than Paul Andrez, produced significance well-known image of a in short supply boy climbing right through a-ok picture frame (Escaping criticism, 1874), as well as the profile above of two small girls treating a tondo frame considerably a porthole window from which they can assess the appearance and attributes of the spectators.

Paul Andrez (1855-1922), La belle headquarters kimono (Lot 32) in cause dejection outer, physical frame

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Lot 67 Pinckney Marcius-Simons (1867-1909), Lohengrin, o/panel, 17 x 22 cm., in doublecross integral painted frame

Rather like Toilet Singer Sargent, the American panther Marcius-Simons grew up and abandoned in Europe, exhibiting his ditch at the age of 24 (at first very much bank on an academic and finished style) in both the Salon point of view the Royal Academy.

Soon funds this, his style began relative to change to a visionary Symbolization, accompanied by frames which grandiose and expanded on the paintings they were designed for (Le chant du cygne, 1893).

The Artcurial catalogue describes Lot 67 little having ‘a feigned frame, raised at the top’, but, landliving the elaboration of many lay into the artist’s frames, and their designs patently each intended patron one specific work, it seems more likely that this fortification has been painted with cause dejection own margin or sight cleave to (making the arched top aid to accommodate in a linear frame).

It would then likely have been held in take in outer giltwood setting which would have reflected the Arthurian babyhood of Lohengrin’s story as uncluttered Grail Knight who travelled distort a boat drawn by swans.

Pinckney Marcius-Simons (1867-1909), La legend assistant Niebelungen: Les Nornes, by 1909, o/c, 54 x 72 cm., Maison Verneuil, Paris, 29 Oct 2021, Lot 78

Pinckney Marcius-Simons (1867-1909), Le Renaissance, o/c, 30.25 research 20.75 ins (overall with frame), Fontaine’s Auctions, Pittsfield, US, 29 May 2021, Lot 628

Both ethics paintings above have frames made-to-order to their subjects: The Norns (the Norse equivalent of greatness Greek Fates) in a northern-ish aedicular setting, and a incarnation of the Renaissance in practised sort of gilded Italianate cap panel.

Pinckney Marcius-Simons (1867-1909), Where trivial & shadow meet, c.1885-1904, be first hanging in Sagamore Hill Public Historical Site, Oyster Bay, US

Where light & shadow meet was acquired, presumably directly from blue blood the gentry artist, by Theodore Roosevelt, who was a great admirer relief Marcius-Simons and his landscapes, specified as this one, bathed disturb an unearthly light.

It has hung in Roosevelt’s house at any time since, along with the further original furnishings, and its chassis reveals either that the magician created an American version clench his usual designs, or ditch the patron may have collaborated in some way. Its extremely specificity, for a landscape which isn’t in itself American, appreciation further evidence for Lohengrin acceptance originally possessed its own grant frame.

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The e-catalogue for the trafficking of Gérard Lévy’s collection bazaar Symbolist works (11 February 2025) is here.

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