Walking Alongside Albert Marquet

The fairly classic furnishings in Mr. D.’s apartment contrasted with the modern art on the walls, including three paintings by Albert Marquet. The master of landscape painting was in the spring of his career when he made this atypical canvas called La Promeneuse, allée du Luxembourg (Woman Walking in the Luxembourg Gardens), which brightened up the cover of our September 30 issue with its autumnal colors. The post-Impressionist painting does not feature the flat tints that became Marquet’s signature, just a lovely wander in a garden. It fetched €99,840. The other two works looked much more "Marquet" because they show water. The sea, ports, rivers and streams were the Bordeaux painter’s favorite motifs, which he treated with fluidity, luminosity and atmospheric effects. The Druet Gallery exhibited his oil paintings La Rochelle (50 x 61 cm/19.68 x 24.01 in) and Poissy, vue de la Seine (33 x 41 cm/12.99 x 16.14 in), the first in 1920, the second in 1930. They sold for €99,840 and €71,680, respectively.

Four works on paper stood out alongside these paintings. An untitled color ink drawing (27.5 x 24.5 cm/10.82 x 9.64 in) by Zao Wou-ki (1921–2013) fetched €52,480, Pesage à Deauville (Weighing at Deauville), a gouache by Raoul Dufy (1877–1953) featuring one of his favorite themes (50 x 65 cm/19.68 x 25.59 in), €51,200 and Composition (33 x 24 cm/12.99 x 9.44 in) by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908–1992), €49,920. Serge Poliakoff (1900–1969) also represented 20th-century abstract art with Composition (24 x 32 cm/9.44 x 12.59 in), a 1964 work that fetched €48,640.