Ladies of the Club: GUCCI

VANESSA

VIRGINIA

VITA

VIOLET

OTTOLINE

 DORELIA

EDITH

MASTERWORKS: Mrs. Paul Mellon

Rarely does an auction attract the attention of so many as does the upcoming Sotheby's sale of the late Bunny Mellon's collections. It's an unprecedented sale where her exquisite taste, and her unerring eye is evident in every object.

She saw what is beautiful-not most costly, but what is pleasing & fine regardless of price.

 The Mellon Living Room at Oak Spring

Her ability to place those objects and works of art together is recounted in the three voluminous catalogs for the sale-the first on November 10th. Mrs. Mellon's collection of Masterworks includes Diebenkorns, Rothkos, alongside works of Dutch masters, and Camille Pissaro.

To imagine eying just one of these paintings each day is impossible, but all? An intensely private person, the world Bunny Mellon created at Oak Spring Farm, and her other homes,included intimates the likes of Joseph Cornell, Gwen John and Georgia O'Keefe. It must have been company enough, and why not?

A painting of Dorelia McNeill, "Dorelia by Lamplight, at Toulouse" painted by Gwen John hangs alongside a hurricane globe & smoke bell in Mrs. Mellon's Oak Spring Farm dining room. It's enough that the provenance of this painting would lure me, once owned by painter Augustus John, a gift from his sister Gwen, it depicts Dorelia, his common law wife reading. Dorelia is best known in Augustus John's own paintings-part gypsy-part domestic, she was his great muse and responsible for his best works devoted to bohemianism. Cecil Beaton lauds Dorelia in his book The Glass of Fashion as having been unequaled in "developing a more perfect visual expression of the art of living." The same can be said of Bunny Mellon.

 Lot 40

In Mellon's painting by Gwen John, Dorelia perhaps revealed more of her true self-as she is said to have been a quiet, esoteric. Gwen and Dorelia traveled together on foot through France in 1903, stopping in Toulouse, where she painted Dorelia.
 

Two works that seem to have been separated at birth-but born of two quite different mothers are by Georgia O'Keeffe and Nicolas de Stael.  They are representative, too, of Mrs. Mellon's impeccable eye-one that could roam from an O'Keeffe to de Stael and rest on the beauty of both.

Georgia O'Keeffe's White Barn

Lot 16

Nicolas de Stael

Mediterranee

Lot 21

Another de Stael painting in the collection:

Cap Blanc Nez

Lot 17

The Mellons commissioned three works from Diego Giacometti in the early 1970's. All three support Mrs. Mellon's devotion to nature & purity. My favorite is a pair of chenets in painted bronze, "Chenets Aux Oiseaux."

Lot 22

"Table Au Dragon A L'Oiseau"

Diego Giacometti

Lot 5

There are 43 Masterworks in this, one of the three sales Sotheby's is conducting in November with over 2500 lots included from Mrs Mellon's collections. 

Pieces from her Collection of Interiors will be sold commencing November 21st, more from Me on that just before the sale.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Sotheby's, online catalog here

The catalogs are available from the Sotheby's website and highly desirable to any student of design

A discussion of the Masterworks here
On the Sotheby's site, Charlotte Moss talks about Bunny Mellon, a must see, here

 more about Augustus John, and Dorelia here , and here

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I'm a little teapot

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coffee? tea? both?

ebay? etsy? both?
I always loved to pick things from catalogs and the pages of my mother's and grandmother's fashion and house magazines when I was growing up-Always! even Now.
recent looks through etsy  for teapots and a bit of ebay-though navigating through all the clutter there I saw-



Edith.

Her best friend as a child was a peacock.

Could Virginia be there too?
She loved china & porcelain. That's something that made me happy to know.
And to know her friends saw her as a happy person. Things are not always what they seem to be-for better or worse-No?
Surprised about Virginia's love of  fine porcelain?
Pretty things for a Pretty Virginia, something dainty I think.

Sipping & Smoking at Monk's House-

or gathered around Vanessa Bell's table at Charleston.

& at Garsington, there are oh so many choices for Ottoline.

Ottoline at home, Garsington

 while Vita  found her choice Quite simple.

something she found at Knole and brought home.

 Dorelia ?
whatever was at hand.

 No I couldn't decide on one and these are still to be had at etsy.


Links to their drinks below:\

Burslem, England by R Sudlow & Sons Peacock pot

Transferware Teapot in Plymouth

Enamelware Painted pot

Sterling mounted pot

Eighteenth century Silver teapot

 A Chinese earthenware pot




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against type, the JOHN effect

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I couldn't help but notice an air about Marc Jacobs most recent collection-Resort 2013. While it's hard to imagine what one might want to wear in January next year-fashion is less and less seasonal. Fabrics seem to be seasonless-times have changed, and yet-don't they stay the same?
We all know if we wait long enough fashion will re-cycle-
time and time again.

A favorite LOOK is from Marc Jacobs-Cecil Beaton would have referred to it as the "John" type. Mrs. Augustus John, Dorelia, wore long gypsy skirts and prints, bold colors and aprons. Beaton writes in his Glass of Fashion, "for the last forty years she has dressed in the same manner: outside fashion, her clothes and hear appearance are never dated."

Dorelia photographed by Cecil Beaton

the "John" effect, a glorious floral mash up from Marc Jacobs

Dorelia below as a young woman, muse to her Master, Augustus John.

at right, Dorelia, later in life with Ottoline Morrell and the Master-Augustus John

I love these patchwork dresses from Marc Jacobs,the long one with an apron effect, and the shorter with a pinafore front.

Dorelia as John saw her- Beaton refers to the Dorelia paintings as some of John's best work.

If only we could all follow Dorelia in sticking with what works-and not following fashion so much-

though I must say Marc Jacobs makes it mighty tempting.

see the entire collection from Marc Jacobs at VOGUE.com here.

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That's LIFE: the women He loved, Augustus John

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the handsome John in 1899, painting by Sir William Orfen

Ida Nettleship with Gwen John, an artist in her own right, Augustus' sister.

at far left of drawing is a friend- drawing by Augustus John 1897.

1st wife Ida, with the couple's  baby (they had five sons)

Ida with sister Gwen, Augustus, & their 1st child (at the time Ida & John were married)

Dorelia  at r. painted by John

after Ida died  giving birth- Dorelia & John married

Dorelia (at right) painted by Gwen John-(Gwen-Self Portrait, at left ) 

it is rumored the pair had an affair in defiance of Augustus, & Ida

 Lyric Fantasy

a gathering of John's women, 1909 here, even the late, Ida, at far right

Dorelia & John had two daughters-  

Vivien & Poppet

 artist Vivien alongside a John painting of her mother Dorelia, at left & Poppet painted by her father

Gwyneth Johnstone, daughter of  John & Nora Brownsword,

painted by John, she became a painter like her father

John's daughter, Amaryllis Fleming- from John's liaison with Evelyn St. Croix Fleming, 

Eve- a painting by Augustus John here

& the many Women he painted and loved-likely too numerous to name, or to know-

Luisa Casati 

Elizabeth Bibesco, nee Asquith

Princess Bibesco

Tallulah Bankhead

Lady Cynthia Asquith

Lady Ottoline Morrell, & at right with Dorelia

the menage years later-

Iris Tree

&  standing in for all the others- 

John's The Sphinx

more?

the Augustus John Sphinx is owned by singer Bryan Ferry, at 66, llike the Sphinx-ageless, timeless & like John- a Slave to Love.

for more John paintings see artvalue here

more about John here

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