Christie’s Old Master Evening Sale to be led by Landseer’s Masterpiece Monarch of the Glen

At the culmination of Christie’s 250th anniversary year and as a major highlight of Classic Week, The Monarch of the Glen (circa 1849–51, estimate on request) by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, R.A. (1802-1873) will lead the Old Master Evening Sale (8 December 2016), alongside important works by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Bernardo Bellotto and Edward Lear. The auction will mark the fourth occasion that The Monarch of the Glen has commanded Christie’s saleroom, having last been offered precisely a century ago, in 1916.

The painting is one of the most celebrated works of British art and an icon of 19th-Century European painting. The Monarch of the Glen was originally commissioned in 1849 for the Refreshment Room in the House of Lords. It presents a majestic portrait of a stag posed before a Scottish mountain landscape, monarch of all he surveys, and is realised with Landseer’s complete knowledge of anatomy and texture. The work will be exhibited at Christie’s New York (4-15 November 2016) and Hong Kong (24-28 November 2016), before being on view in London (2-8 December 2016) during Classic Week.
 
John Stainton, Deputy Chairman of Christie’s Old Master and British Paintings Department: “Following this year’s record-breaking Old Master sales which include Rubens’s ‘Lot and his Daughters’ and, via private treaty, two Rembrandt Portraits and the iconic ‘Armada Portrait’, there is perhaps no more fitting a conclusion to our 250th anniversary than the return of Sir Edwin Landseer’s ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ to Christie’s King Street. The sales in 1884 and 1892, prompted Landseer to become known as the ‘king of the salerooms’ and in 2016 Landseer’s masterpiece will lead Christie’s December Classic Week.”