For Immediate Release
Press Release New York
New York | +1 212 606 7176 | Lauren Gioia | [email protected] | Darrell Rocha | [email protected]
Sotheby’s to Offer 13 Works from
The Forbes Collection
Depicting the Franco-Prussian War
HIGHLIGHTING THE AUCTION OF
OLD MASTER & 19TH CENTURY EUROPEAN ART
ON 27 JANUARY 2012
18 January 2012 – Sotheby’s 27 January
2012 sale of Old Master & 19th Century
European Art will feature a group of 13 works
from The Forbes Collection that depict the
Battle of Champigny, one of the final
engagements of the Franco-Prussian War in
1870.
The
group
comprises
Édouard
Detaille’s celebrated composition Champigny;
décembre 1870 (pictured right, est. $70/100,00*); a total of four preparatory works – two each by Detaille
and Alphonse de Neuville – for the popular Panorama de Champigny that opened Paris’s Panorama National in
November, 1882; and eight fragments cut from the impressive panorama itself. The sale will be on exhibition in
Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries beginning 21 January, alongside additional Old Masters Week auctions
including Important Old Master Paintings & Sculpture and Old Master Drawings.
The effects of the Franco-Prussian War and its military engagements had a profound impact on the French
national psyche, and in the years following the end of German occupation in 1873 many artists turned toward
the war as an evocative subject for painting, often focusing on heroic battles in which the French faced
overwhelming odds – such as the Battle of Champigny in December of 1870. Édouard Detaille exhibited the
primary version of his work Champigny; décembre 1870 in the Salon of 1879. Detaille’s first version of this
composition is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Sotheby’s January
auction will include another version from The Forbes Collection.
Detaille expanded Champigny; décembre 1870 in scale for the
first exhibition at the new Panorama National in Paris, a building
expressly designed to house enormous paintings in the round. To
construct this monumental design and to capture its evocative
details, the artist worked with Alphonse de Neuville to study the
battle and develop the overall composition. Together they
decided to capture the exact moment of 11:00am on 2
December 1870; Detaille was to paint the action from
Champigny to Villiers, and de Neuville from Bry to Paris.
The two artists made sketches on the sites where fighting first
took place, later finishing them in the studio. Four of these
sketches from The Forbes Collection will be offered in January,
including de Neuville’s Le Four à Chaux (pictured right, est.
$18/25,000). The final preparatory works were squared,
photographed and projected by use of a special lantern onto the
canvas, itself ten times larger than the studies. The projection
was traced with charcoal and then completed in oils, with the landscape and sky rendered by five assistants, and
the figures done by Detaille and de Neuville. Weighing over three tons, the massive, finished work was nearly
50 feet high and 400 feet long.
Visitors to the Panorama National viewed the work
from a raised platform in the center of the building,
which was meant to be Signal Hill where the
morning’s battle commenced. The artists designed
the expansive format of their composition to
surround and to visually and psychologically involve
A cross section of a Panorama similar to that of the
Panorama National
the viewer. A diorama by de Neuville of the inside
of a house in Champigny was placed between the
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viewers and the panorama as an additional special effect. An intaglio print from the exhibition pamphlet, sold to
viewers of the original Panorama de Champigny that identifies 40 points of interest, will be sold with Detaille’s
preparatory sketch, La Bataille de Champigny (est. $20/30,000),
The Panorama de Champigny was a tremendous success and was
soon followed by Detaille and de Neuville’s Panorama de
Rezonville, featuring another military campaign in the FrancoPrussian War. The public entertainment provided by panoramas
proved hugely popular for the remainder of the 1880s, but the
fad began to fade during the following decade, as visitor
numbers decreased and the expense and logistics of such huge
displays became less financially viable. As such, the Panorama de Champigny was cut up into pieces for auction
in 1892 and 1896, where they were widely dispersed in private collections. Eight of these fragments entered
The Forbes Collection over several decades. The January exhibition and sale of the fragments will be a rare
opportunity to experience the powerful effect of the Panorama de Champigny, a testament to Detaille and de
Neuville’s popular and historical achievements.
*Estimates do not include buyer’s premium
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