Olympia Auctions announces highlights included in the British and Continental Pictures and Prints Auction

LONDON.- The British and Continental Pictures and Prints Auction of 227 lots taking place on 22nd September commences the Autumn auction season at Olympia Auctions and boasts a roster of distinguished British and Continental artists from Hercules Brabazon Brabazon to Jean Cocteau, Sir Stanley Spencer to Emmanuel-Charles-Louis Bénézit, (son of the famous editor of the Dictionnaire des Peintres). Graham Sutherland to Serge Ivanoff, John Piper to Michel Dureuil, Augustus John to Jacques Francois Carabain, and Albert Goodwin to Grigory Leontievich Chainikov.

The sale also includes a group of skilled sketches of costume designs for ballet and theatre (1920s – 1960s) including works by Hein Heckroth (1901 – 1970) who designed costumes for ‘The Big City’, (1935) set to music by Alexandre Tansman, written by Kurt Joos and performed by the Ballet Joos. It had its English premiere at Dartington Hall in 1935. This production was one of the first that the costume designer Hein Heckroth worked on in Britain, having moved from France that year. Heckroth taught art at Dartington Hall in Devon and went on to a win an Oscar for his work on ‘The Red Shoes’ in 1948. Also the sale includes a costume design for Dinsdale Landen in ‘Troilus and Cressida’, 1962, by Leslie George Hurry (1909-1978). This production of Shakespeare’s ‘Troilus and Cressida’ was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It opened in 1960 at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Straford-upon-Avon. The play was directed by John Barton and Peter Hall, costumes and set were designed by Leslie Hurry and the music was set by Humphrey Searle.

A charming drawing in pen and ink and heightened with coloured washes by Alexandre Nikolayevich Benois (1870 – 1960) is extensively inscribed in pencil with notes such as where the lace for the collar should be sourced. It is most likely for one of the performances given by Les Ballet Ida Rubinstein in 1928. The performances during that season included Les Noces de Psyche et de l’Amour, La Bien-Aimée, David, La Princesse Cygne, Nocturne, Bolero, La Baiser de la Fée and L’Oiseau de Feu.