Twelve works by the sculptor Rembrandt Bugatti drawn from the collection of the French film star Alain Delon will go under the hammer at Christie’s Paris on 22 November.
The dedicated 17-lot sale marks the 100th anniversary of the death of the Italian artist known for his bronze sculptures of wildlife. Bugatti spent hours at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris studying animal behavior.
Delon has consigned a 1913 bronze piece Deux grands léopards (est €500,000-€700,000) as well as Eléphant d’Afrique et trois gazelles (around 1904, est €350,000-€400,000). The original plaster for the latter work is housed at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
Véronique Fromanger, the author of a monograph on Bugatti, says in a statement: “The subjects [of the Christie’s sale], in bronze and in marble, include several big cats, birds, a group of yaks, an elephant and three gazelles, a gasping deer, a resting dog, and three female figures, all cast by one of the greatest founders of all time, Adrien Aurélien Hébrard.”
A rare piece in marble owned by Delon, Femme à Genoux, has an estimate of €80,000-€120,000. The work was shown at the ninth Venice Biennale in 1910. Delon also consigned more than 30 works by Bugatti to a Sotheby’s sale in London in 1990.
Meanwhile, a 77-lot sale of postwar and contemporary works drawn from the collection of the late French collector and film director Claude Berri made a total of €8.3m at Christie’s Paris on 22 October ($9.1m, with buyer’s premium). The top lot, Jannis Kounellis’s paper collage Untitled (1960), fetched €1.6m ($1.7m, with buyer’s premium; est €800,000-€1.2m).