The prize Nabi work on his stand is a singular interior with the artist's sister and Misia Sert. In addition, Neffe-Degandt sold a Raoul Dufy scene of the Deauville resort, reflecting that certain Palm Beach taste. The sales also tell how far-ranging collectors' taste is right now. Dating from 1940, The Painter's Daughter is a Surrealist nightmare that features a wild takeoff on 18th-century dress, the precise image of how you don't want your daughters to be portrayed. It's a real Manhattan dinner-party conversation piece.
Fairy paintings are on a high, too.
It is John Anster Fitzgerald's Fairies in a Bird's Nest, complete with the intricate gilded twig frame that seems to be de rigeuer for such works. Only several years ago, this fanciful genre was banished to the attic. Then Richard Greene is boasting three oils in Grimshaw's signature foggy golden green haze. His early brand of emotional neorealism was just too poignant. Now he's being revived.