A Powerhouse of an Art Dealer’ The Collection of Richard L Feigen Christie's

Let's begin by finding out a bit about Richard, the man, Richard Feigen. Richard Feigen. Richard was a powerhouse of an art dealer. He started, very unusually, in contemporary. And you don't have many people who genuinely look at contemporary and then go backwards in time to old masters. He had this spectacular eye, this eye for quality, and that he seemed to be able to apply to centuries of art history. This Karachi, for example, this is Annibale. A very early work for him from the 1580s. It's also his first work on panel. It's very rare to see Annibale working on panel. There are, how many? One, two, three, four, there are five figures here. Now, two of them, I immediately know who they are. Who is this lady in the foreground who's offering a plate with eyeballs on? This is Saint Lucy and she's known by her attribute of the eyes and her story is that she was martyred because she had promised her virginity to God. She had been presented as a bride to a suitor. When she denied that suitor, she was rather brutally tortured and they gouged out her eyes. You see, she's holding them on a platter and she seems to be quite literally presenting them to the Madonna and Child as a symbol of her sacrifice for them. According to the story, when she was prepared for burial by her family, her eyes miraculously had been restored. I think the thing that's lovely, standing in front of it, is that on paper, we all understand the significance of it in an art-historical perspective. Annibale Carracci, major figure of Italian Baroque art, but it's actually the sweetness of what's going on here. It's just this beautifully tender, emotionally soft, inviting picture with a slightly almost cheeky look as he's drawing us in by glancing out at us. This is the only known still life by Guercino in all of his corpus of work. This is interesting because we were looking at the Madonna and the Child in St Lucy, the Carracci, and that's one of very few paintings, as I understand it, which are on panel. Yes. So Feigen seems to be attracted to paintings that have that slightly unique quality. This is another example of that. That's right. And a work that wasn't immediately recognised as by Guercino in the beginning, that's because it's so unusual for him. You don't see still lifes of this kind in Italy at this moment. This is a really paradoxical picture because, ostensibly, it's so dark. It's forbidding, but it's actually hugely seductive and compelling. Which is extraordinary. It has that warmth to it that draws you in, and you're not put off by the fact that it's a very direct reference to death. This is by Lorenzo Monaco, who was one of the foremost painters in Renaissance Florence in the 15th century. Lorenzo Monaco, that means quite simply Lorenzo the monk. Exactly. You would quite often have these monks who dedicated their careers, and in fact their life, to painting illuminated manuscripts, painting these religious works that were intended to glorify God. Do we know who the character is? He is Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah, who foresaw the coming of Christ and foresaw the Immaculate Conception. Although it works beautifully as an object in itself like this, this is a tiny fragment of a huge altarpiece. Lorenzo's masterpiece triptych in the Accademia in Florence, and the central panel is an Annunciation. This would have been placed in one of the pointed pinnacles, right at the top of this triptych. This is the big point of this, isn't it? Is that it shouldn't be considered just an isolation. This originally was part of this much bigger enterprise. Exactly. Although today it works really well as a single object, he would in fact have been way up high as part of a whole, overlooking all of the action, as you say. This I'm very familiar with. This is John Constable, English landscape. He painted it obsessively. That sense of immediacy, this beloved part of the English countryside. You can see this is the church tower in the distance of the village of Dedham. Exactly, and it's seen from Langham here. What's interesting about this piece is it was painted in his studio, and yet it feels like it's been painted outside. Is it really? Yes. I totally imagine that he's there painting it from life. I know, because it's so rapid and so immediate. It's really nicely put in context when we look at the reverse. This is another Constable, is it, on the back? It's the same one, yes. It's the same painting, it's double-sided. This is a piece of artist's board, and you get the real sense that he had it kicking around his studio for whatever reason. Perhaps he just rather liked this cow. And then one day, when he's once again returning to this landscape that he's obsessively painted, that he wants to quickly sketch out before he loses the image, and he picks up a piece of board in his studio, turns it over, and just paints on the back. I guess it shows us just how diverse Richard Feigen's collecting was. He would hang things side by side from the late 20th century and the early 15th century.