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an oil painting of columns and trees on a white backgroundan image of a piece of luggage sitting on top of a white surface
Wannenes Art Auctions

29 - 20TH-CENTURY PAINTER
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Estimate €50 - €70
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Description
20TH-CENTURY PAINTER Villa Sylvia, Cap Ferrat Signed and dated 1955 in the lower left-hand corner Mixed media on paper, 37 × 49.5 cm The work depicts Villa Sylvia in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, the residence designed in the early 20th century by the renowned English landscape architect Harold Peto (1854–1933) for Ralph Wormeley Curtis and his wife Lisa. The villa was built after the couple moved from the neighbouring Villa Amicitia (now Villa Nellcôte) and was named after their eldest daughter Sylvia, born in Paris in 1899, whose godmother was Isabella Stewart Gardner. Ralph Curtis followed the construction of the property with particular enthusiasm and, in a letter dated 1902, described the extraordinary growth of the garden’s vegetation, calling it ‘incredible, tropical, jungle-like’, so much so that it impressed Peto himself. The villa soon became one of the favourite haunts of the international circle of artists and intellectuals associated with the Curtis family: it was at Villa Sylvia that John Singer Sargent stayed following his time at Palazzo Barbaro, where he had produced numerous watercolours with the intention – which remained unfulfilled – of decorating the villa’s grand salon in the style of eighteenth-century Venetian painting. The work presented here bears witness to the enduring memory of Villa Sylvia within the Curtis family history. Like Palazzo Barbaro in Venice, the residence at Cap Ferrat was, in fact, one of the centres of the family’s cosmopolitan life, a meeting place for art, architecture and international culture bridging Europe and the United States. Bibliography: R. Mamoli Zorzi, *An American Painter in Venice: Ralph W. Curtis and the Palazzo Barbaro*, 2024, pp. 143–145
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About the sale FROM THE CURTIS COLLECTIONS AT PALAZZO BARBARO: PAINTINGS, FURNITURE AND WORKS OF ART
Auction location
Auction time 09/29/2026 at 2:45 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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