Trove of Still Lifes on the Auction Block Weldon Collection of Paintings to Be Sold at Sothebys

Adriaen Coorte’s “Wild Strawberries on a Ledge,” from 1704, part of the 

Weldon collection to be auctioned at Sotheby’s. CreditSotheby’s

Until recently, Henry and June Weldon’s Park Avenue apartment reflected a kind of passionate, obsessive collecting of a bygone era. Wood-paneled rooms featured cabinets stuffed with rare English pottery and 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings hung cheek by jowl on every available wall. Asian sculptures were also scattered around the place.

“My father didn’t know when to stop,” said James Weldon, their son, shaking his head as he maneuvered through the cluttered spaces the other day. “He had an eye and understood what he was doing, for an amateur, that is.”

A prominent New York businessman who died in 2003, Henry Weldon couldn’t pass an art gallery or antique store without at least poking his head in; his wife, who died in October and was known as Jimmy, got a master’s degree in art history late in life. As a widow, she continued collecting with a vengeance — paintings, pottery and sculpture.


In 2000, the couple gave much of their pottery to Colonial Williamsburg. But the paintings — a group of about 70 works together worth more than $30 million — will be sold at Sotheby’s in New York. Breaking with the tradition of holding old master paintings sales in New York only in January and June, George Wachter, a chairman of Sotheby’s and an expert in old master paintings, said he decided instead to schedule the single-owner sale of the Weldon collection on April 22. “My idea was to hold it when New York is vibrant,” Mr. Wachter said. “It’s also at the same time as our magnificent jewelry sale.”

 

Included in the sale are tiny jewel-like still lifes by masters like Balthasar van der Ast and Adriaen Coorte; landscapes by Aelbert Cuyp and Jacob van Ruisdael; and three paintings by van Dyck that include a portrait of the artist Martin Ryckaert estimated to sell for $700,000 to $900,000. Highlights from the auction will go on view at the Sotheby’s York Avenue headquarters later this month to coincide with the old master painting sales, which start Jan. 29. They will also travel to Los Angeles, London and Amsterdam.

 MUSEUM BUYS A DELANEY 

The Brooklyn Museum has acquired its first painting by the 20th-century African-American artist Beauford Delaney. A still life that Mr. Delaney created in 1945 when he was working out of a cold-water loft in Greene Street — years before most artists settled in SoHo — the painting, 

“Untitled (Fang, Crow, and Fruit),” depicts a bowl of bright yellow fruit and next to it a Fang reliquary figure. A bird, hovering above the bowl, looks as if it were about to swoop down and devour the fruit. The painting’s original owner, Emanuel Redfield, was a celebrated civil liberties lawyer and counsel to the New York chapter of the Artists Equity Association. 

“Delaney probably gave the painting to Redfield for services rendered,” said Teresa A. Carbone, curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum. The son of a Tennessee preacher, Mr. Delaney studied art in Boston before settling in New York in 1929. He became a fixture in the downtown art world, hanging out with a bohemian circle that included the writer James Baldwin, whose portrait Mr. Delaney painted several times. In 1953, Mr. Delaney moved to Paris, where his style of painting became less figurative and more aligned with the Abstract Expressionists.

The Brooklyn Museum bought “Untitled (Fang, Crow, and Fruit)” from the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in Chelsea for an undisclosed price, with money from the museum’s five-year-old African American Purchase Fund. “I’d seen the work a few years ago, but at the time we couldn’t afford it,” Ms. Carbone said. “It’s so powerful it stayed with me.” The painting fits well in two categories in the museum’s holdings — the first, its growing collection of 20th-century African-American artists, and the second, its strong group of American Modernist works that include paintings by Stuart Davis and Marsden Hartley. “Delaney and Davis were close friends,” Ms. Carbone added. “And this painting allows us to discuss traditional African-American art alongside Black Modernists.”.

“Untitled (Fang, Crow, and Fruit)” will go on view on Feb. 24 in the museum’s fifth-floor “American Identities” galleries.

‘DESIRE LINES’ AT THE PARK

The giant colored spools on three monumental industrial shelving units might at first glance seem to have been inspired by the coiled Con Edison cables that often dot the city, but the installation, which will occupy the Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the southeast corner of Central Park, contains 212 wooden spools wound with brightly colored ropes. In addition to coincidentally being the best-known Manhattan area code, 212 is the exact number of pathways that wind through Central Park, according to research conducted by the Italian-born, Paris-based artist Tatiana Trouvé, whose installation “Desire Lines,” which begins March 3, will be her first public art project in New York. Each rope is a different length, corresponding to the lengths of each pathway.

Tatiana Trouvé’s “Untitled”(2014), which will occupy the Doris C. Freedman Plaza on Fifth Avenue and 60th Street.CreditCourtesy of the artist, Johann König Gallery, Berlin and Gagosian Gallery, New York, Laurent Edeline

Like much of Ms. Trouvé's work, the installation deals with themes like memory, time and space. “It’s a site-responsive work,” said Nicholas Baume, director of the Public Art Fund, which organized the project, which will be on view through Aug. 30. “Besides the actual pathways, the project also is about the notion of our own mental maps.”

Ms. Trouvé, who is known for her meticulous research, went to great pains to measure every pathway she could find in the park. Her thinking behind the installation will be the subject of an exhibition, also opening on March 3, at the Gagosian Gallery’s Park Avenue space at 75th Street. On view will be drawings, models and small sculptures related to the project. “Although it’s a small show, it will have a lot of information,” Louise Neri, a director at Gagosian, said. “It will give the public a chance to see the thinking and work that went into the installation.”

NEW ROLE AT SOTHEBY’S

When Joshua Holdeman left Christie’s for Sotheby’s, where he started work last year, it was unclear what his new role would be. An expert in photography, 20th-century design and contemporary art, Mr. Holdeman has been dipping his toe in various departments without a specific role. But this week, Sotheby’s announced that he had been made worldwide head of Sotheby’s 20th-century design, photographs and prints.

Correction: January 10, 2015 

A report in the Inside Art column on Friday about the Brooklyn Museum’s acquisition of its first painting by the African-American artist Beauford Delaney misstated part of a comment by Teresa A. Carbone, curator of American Art at the museum. She said she believed the museum was the first to display African traditional art as art, in the 1920s, not that it was the first museum to show African-American art as early as the 1920s.