Featuring composite graphics, a recent Sotheby’s sale, NY Times on the Forbes acquisition in 1981, and an art dealer friend.
Composite graphics of all the panels together
From the website The Gilded Juggernaut, shared to me by Anna McD.
Drawings for Etched Glass Murals by Jean Dupas.
Commissioned for the SS Normandie.
The Rape of Europa
The Birth of Aphrodite
The Chariot of Poseidon
The Chariot of Thetis
Recent Sotheby’s sale: Feb 2016
A damaged panel sold recent at Sotheby’s for approx $25,000. I hope to post pictures and a video soon.
New York Times: Forbes purchase in 1981
Mr. Forbes was whisked in his 1972 brown Mercedes to Christie’s, the auction house at 59th Street and Park Avenue. There, in a standing-room-only gallery, he vied with Steven Greenberg of the Roxy Roller Palace on West 18th Street for a set of eight glass panels that had once decorated the 30-foot-high Grand Salon of the Normandie, the legendary pre-World War II ship that is often called the world’s most magnificent. The panels are similar to another set from the salon in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Christie’s had expected that the panels, which were lacquered by the French artist Jean Dupas, would sell for at most $60,000. But Mr. Forbes and Mr. Greenberg had other ideas. They kept nodding and waving as the room grew hushed and the bidding soared past the estimate, until the gavel fell to Mr. Forbes’s bid of $90,000.
”I would have liked to have won them for less,” said the publisher, beaming. ”But I am delighted.” A Surprise Wedding Gift
He said he had purchased the panels as a surprise wedding present for his son and bride-to-be. The panels, he added, will decorate a wall in the gallery at the offices of Forbes Magazine, where his son’s collection of 400 toy ships will be on view to the public next year.
Art Dealer Friend
I have met an art dealer (Anna McD) who is very familiar with Jean Dupas panels and heard of a restorer who specializes in Dupas panel restoration work. Email me for an intro to Anna.