Echoes of the Past: Property from an Important Private Collection

The authenticity of this lot has previously been confirmed by the Boldini- De Nittis- Zandomeneghi Archives, which is referenced under Archiving Certificate n. 418675, issued on December 18, 2017. This certificate is now lost.

Francesca Dini has also previously authenticated this lot, which will be included in the appendix to the Boldini catalogue raisonné currently in preparation.

Provenance:

Sold: Sotheby's, New York, January 31, 2018, Lot 215

Lot Essay:

In addition to his celebrated portraits of famous sitters such as Giuseppe Verdi, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Consuelo Vanderbilt, the Duchess of Marlborough, and Count Robert de Montesquiou, in the mid-1880s Giovanni Boldini, began to turn to daily objects for inspiration. In these watercolors, scattered paint brushes, plaster busts, vases of flowers and pieces of furniture from his studio repeatedly appear, with the artist exploring their aesthetic possibilities.

In the present work, the arrangement is casual and artful, dominated by the overturned sugar bowl (which also appears in his The Corner of the Painter’s Table, c. 1897, Museo Boldini, Ferrara) and porcelain basket filled with shiny cherries. The repeated, curvilinear forms enhance the tactility of the subject, with movement given by the single spilled cherry cropped at the center right edge. The artist captures the precise details of the still life with broad strokes of watercolor and leaves areas of the white paper exposed to create the gleam of the silver sugar bowl and slatted design of the basket. Every element demonstrates the artist's brilliant confidence with the medium.