Topline
A portray by Pablo Picasso that was beforehand owned by Sean Connery—the late Scottish actor who was the primary to play James Bond within the eponymous hit franchise—offered for $22 million Thursday throughout an public sale in Hong Kong.
Sir Sean and Girl Connery attend the “Dressed To Kilt” charity vogue present benefiting Mates of … [+]
Getty Pictures
Key Information
Picasso’s 1969 portray “Buste d’homme dans un cadre” is an summary portrait of a mosquetero, or musketeer, a topic the artist typically went again to depicting over the last decade of his life.
Musketeers had been swashbuckling troopers who carried muskets and served as a preferred topic for previous masters like Rembrandt and Diego Velázquez, artists with whom specialists consider Picasso was consciously aligning himself together with his personal collection of musketeer work.
The portray was “one of many Picassos” Connery owned, based on public sale home Christie’s, which famous the actor normally most popular works from earlier in Picasso’s profession.
Nevertheless, Connery was drawn to the portray’s “expressive power and freedom,” Connery’s son Stephane stated in a press release, including that his father liked the thick, impasto floor and the way Picasso painted a gold body into the portrait.
The successful bid exceeded preliminary estimates from the public sale home, which anticipated “Buste d’homme” to fetch round $19 million Thursday.
A portion of proceeds shall be donated to a fund arrange by household in Connery’s title to assist philanthropy in Connery’s native Scotland and the Bahamas, the place he lived for greater than three many years and the place he died final yr.
Pablo Picasso’s 1969 portray “Buste d’homme dans un cadre.”
Christie’s
Key Background
Connery died final yr at residence within the Bahamas. The actor was 90 years previous and had “been unwell for a while,” his household informed the BBC. Connery was most well-known for being the primary actor to play the British spy James Bond, first in Dr. No in 1962, earlier than occurring to star in a complete of seven Bond movies. Connery was knighted by Queen Elizabeth at Holyrood Palace in his native Edinburgh in 2000. Final week, Connery’s household introduced they had been additionally auctioning the late actor’s 1964 Aston Martin DB5. The mannequin is called “the Bond automobile” that Connery drove within the 1964 movie Goldfinger, and in 2018 Connery bought one for himself. It’s anticipated to promote for as a lot as $1.8 million in August, and a portion of these proceeds may also go to the Connery Household Philanthropy Fund.
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