Lot 1283

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Lot 2021

FRANCE. Death of Sadi Carnot, Assassinated President of France, 1894.

The Most Important Art Medal

58x81mm, silver, by Roty. Maier 102, Jones 323, Baxter 35. Obverse: The slain president lies in state, attended by a mournful goddess (France); above, a landscape with basilica and date; at bottom, "The Country in Grief." Reverse: The coffin borne toward The Pantheon by females, their figures draped. Low relief, the reverse almost "misty." A masterwork of bas relief, yet Roty takes care to make an excellent, tiny portrait of Carnot.

The plaquette form had been little used since the Renaissance, when it was nearly always uniface, with mythological and religious themes predominating. Roty's two-sided rectangular medal was a great success with the public, as it should have been, simply because it was great art and captured the mood of the shocked and saddened nation. Further, the low, painterly relief, on a piece of the same canvass shape as most paintings, attracted attention from the wider arts community. Any doubt that Roty was in the first rank of French artists would not have survived the appearance of this piece; three years later his Sower design adorned French silver coins.

If any medal/plaquette can be ruled obligatory in an Art-Nouveau collection, it is this one.

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Lot 2066

FRANCE. Orpheus, (1899).

68mm silver, by Coudray. Maier 223. Laureated portrait of the god, holding his lyre. Reverse: Winged male angel, seated on a blank cartouche; musical instruments. The Paris Mint sold 4500 copies at the 1900 Universal Exposition (mostly bronze, of course). Truly one of the classics of Art-Nouveau, the obverse was used as a cover design for Mark Jones' The Art of the Medal.

The cataloger has had considerable experience with this medal. It is very occasionally met with in a uniface version of large size, four inches plus. I sold one to the actor Sylvester Stallone, who was shopping for paperweights.

About 15 years ago I purchased two examples in a medals collection from the estate of a Charles Kurtz heir. He was the art director of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, but previously was an arts official for the US exhibit at the aforementioned 1900 Paris exposition. The two pieces were likely from the 4500 sold at the Expo, but Kurtz would only have been one of many persons, immersed in the arts, who fell under the spell of the medal as art.

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Lot 2073

FRANCE. A Child's Kiss, ca. 1904.

54x39mm bronze, by Ovide Yencess. Maier 195 (25x35mm), PBE 1015 (large uniface cast). Yencesse's models were his wife and his son Hubert, who became a medalist himself. Sentimental but universal, few medals equal this in its depiction of love. This is Yencesse at his finest and most representative.

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Lot 3171

DANZIG. Bank von Danzig 20 Gulden, 1.11.1937. P-63.

An issuer which is highly popular with collectors and this example is the finest we have handled for the catalog number. The note shows with pristine original paper and color throughout and lovely centering and margins.

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