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Lot 128 PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF ERIC AND SALOME ESTORICK
Eric and Salome Estorick were among the most pioneering collectors of modern art in post-war Britain, building an outstanding collection of diverse artworks from across the spectrum of the European avant-garde. While their later collecting activities focused primarily on Italian art of the twentieth century, which now forms the core of the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in North London, the foundation of their personal collection lay in Eric’s interest in the Parisian avant-garde, fostered during his years as a student in New York.
Born in Brooklyn in 1913 to Russian parents, Eric Estorick studied sociology at New York University during the early 1930s, earning a PhD in the subject before going on to teach at NYU. It was here that Eric first encountered the Gallatin Collection at The Museum of Living Art in Washington Square. Featuring masterpieces by Picasso, Léger, Miró and Matisse, this remarkable group of artworks inspired Eric to begin his own collecting journey, and would forever shape his idea of what a collection should aspire to be. In 1941, he published the first of his extensive biographies on Sir Stafford Cripps, before serving in the US Broadcast Intelligence Service during the Second World War. In 1946, while researching his second volume of the Cripps biography, Eric found himself in Paris, where he purchased drawings and paintings by some of the leading artists of the avant-garde, including Picasso, Braque, Gris and Léger.
In 1947, he met Salome Dessau on board the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner while returning to New York, and the pair were married before the end of the year. It was during their honeymoon in Switzerland that the couple first came across the Italian Futurists, a discovery that sparked a life-long passion for Italian art that would dominate their collecting for decades to come. During the late 1950s, Eric moved into art dealing, acting as a representative for a number of important clients based in Hollywood, including Lauren Bacall, Burt Lancaster and Billy Wilder. Shortly afterwards, the Estoricks opened The Grosvenor Gallery in Mayfair, the largest private gallery in London at the time, which dedicated itself to showing ‘20th century modern masters and the developing talent of young artists, wherever they may be found.’ Through their pioneering exhibition programme the Estoricks brought a number of important artists to the attention of the British public for the first time, from El Lissitzky to Zoran Mušič and David Burliuk.
Their private collection continued to grow alongside their professional activities, with new acquisitions often purchased on their trips abroad for the Grosvenor Gallery and brought back to the Estorick family home in St. John’s Wood. Their passion for works on paper flourished during this period, and it is this aspect of the Estorick’s private collection which is clearly celebrated in the works featured in this sale. Writing about the strange alchemy that drives a person to collect, Eric wrote: ‘There is no possibility of giving a simple answer to the question of how and why one has come to collect various works of art. Basically one is searching for freedom and creative art is part of that search… A collection for me is a living thing, not a fixity.’
Eric and Salome Estorick were among the most pioneering collectors of modern art in post-war Britain, building an outstanding collection of diverse artworks from across the spectrum of the European avant-garde. While their later collecting activities focused primarily on Italian art of the twentieth century, which now forms the core of the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in North London, the foundation of their personal collection lay in Eric’s interest in the Parisian avant-garde, fostered during his years as a student in New York.
Born in Brooklyn in 1913 to Russian parents, Eric Estorick studied sociology at New York University during the early 1930s, earning a PhD in the subject before going on to teach at NYU. It was here that Eric first encountered the Gallatin Collection at The Museum of Living Art in Washington Square. Featuring masterpieces by Picasso, Léger, Miró and Matisse, this remarkable group of artworks inspired Eric to begin his own collecting journey, and would forever shape his idea of what a collection should aspire to be. In 1941, he published the first of his extensive biographies on Sir Stafford Cripps, before serving in the US Broadcast Intelligence Service during the Second World War. In 1946, while researching his second volume of the Cripps biography, Eric found himself in Paris, where he purchased drawings and paintings by some of the leading artists of the avant-garde, including Picasso, Braque, Gris and Léger.
In 1947, he met Salome Dessau on board the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner while returning to New York, and the pair were married before the end of the year. It was during their honeymoon in Switzerland that the couple first came across the Italian Futurists, a discovery that sparked a life-long passion for Italian art that would dominate their collecting for decades to come. During the late 1950s, Eric moved into art dealing, acting as a representative for a number of important clients based in Hollywood, including Lauren Bacall, Burt Lancaster and Billy Wilder. Shortly afterwards, the Estoricks opened The Grosvenor Gallery in Mayfair, the largest private gallery in London at the time, which dedicated itself to showing ‘20th century modern masters and the developing talent of young artists, wherever they may be found.’ Through their pioneering exhibition programme the Estoricks brought a number of important artists to the attention of the British public for the first time, from El Lissitzky to Zoran Mušič and David Burliuk.
Their private collection continued to grow alongside their professional activities, with new acquisitions often purchased on their trips abroad for the Grosvenor Gallery and brought back to the Estorick family home in St. John’s Wood. Their passion for works on paper flourished during this period, and it is this aspect of the Estorick’s private collection which is clearly celebrated in the works featured in this sale. Writing about the strange alchemy that drives a person to collect, Eric wrote: ‘There is no possibility of giving a simple answer to the question of how and why one has come to collect various works of art. Basically one is searching for freedom and creative art is part of that search… A collection for me is a living thing, not a fixity.’
Fernand Léger (1881-1955)
Dessin de guerre
Closed21 June 2018
Price Realised
GBP 112,500
More Information
Specialist note
'The war was a major event for me. There was a supra-poetic atmosphere at the front. It excited me to the core.'
Léger, quoted in G. Néret, F. Léger, trans. S.D. Resnick, London, 1993, p. 66.
Fernand Léger’s Dessin de guerre certainly delights in a ‘supra-poetic’ evocation of form and line. Executed circa 1915, the work serves as a memento of Léger’s experience in the First World War, which began when he was conscripted into the engineering corps in August 1914.
The work has a fascinating provenance and was a gift from Léger to the Russian avant-garde power couple Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova. Dedicated to the artists, the work shows Léger paying tribute to the artistic prowess of his friends, whom he had met around 1914 when they were visiting Paris to work with Diaghilev on ‘Le Coq d’Or’. It is also possible to see a visual synergy between the cubo-futurist forms pioneered by Goncharova, and the dynamic tessellated lines and shapes created by Léger. Léger creates a fusion of Cubism and Futurism; the analysis of form recalls Cubism, while the interspersed lines convey the intoxication with speed and energy found in Futurism.
It is likely the present work relates to the Battle of Verdun, and was sent to the Russian avant-garde artists by Léger at the front line. As a result of the war, Léger developed a heightened sensitivity towards objects, and a new appreciation of their value. This is brought to the fore in the present work: forms dominate the space creating an ‘all-over’ pictorial puzzle. Depicting a cusine roulante (field kitchen), Dessin de guerre captures the locomotive power and dynamism of the domestic accoutrements of warfare. The circular forms evoke the mechanical, while the subdued palette is indicative of the camouflaged nature of warfare. The present work is dynamic, poetical and deeply personal.
Léger, quoted in G. Néret, F. Léger, trans. S.D. Resnick, London, 1993, p. 66.
Fernand Léger’s Dessin de guerre certainly delights in a ‘supra-poetic’ evocation of form and line. Executed circa 1915, the work serves as a memento of Léger’s experience in the First World War, which began when he was conscripted into the engineering corps in August 1914.
The work has a fascinating provenance and was a gift from Léger to the Russian avant-garde power couple Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova. Dedicated to the artists, the work shows Léger paying tribute to the artistic prowess of his friends, whom he had met around 1914 when they were visiting Paris to work with Diaghilev on ‘Le Coq d’Or’. It is also possible to see a visual synergy between the cubo-futurist forms pioneered by Goncharova, and the dynamic tessellated lines and shapes created by Léger. Léger creates a fusion of Cubism and Futurism; the analysis of form recalls Cubism, while the interspersed lines convey the intoxication with speed and energy found in Futurism.
It is likely the present work relates to the Battle of Verdun, and was sent to the Russian avant-garde artists by Léger at the front line. As a result of the war, Léger developed a heightened sensitivity towards objects, and a new appreciation of their value. This is brought to the fore in the present work: forms dominate the space creating an ‘all-over’ pictorial puzzle. Depicting a cusine roulante (field kitchen), Dessin de guerre captures the locomotive power and dynamism of the domestic accoutrements of warfare. The circular forms evoke the mechanical, while the subdued palette is indicative of the camouflaged nature of warfare. The present work is dynamic, poetical and deeply personal.