Andy Warhol - Evening & Day Editions London Wednesday, January 18, 2023 | Phillips

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  • In 1985, the American Pop artist Andy Warhol embarked on his largest portfolio of screenprints. Titled Reigning Queens, Warhol chose to focus his creative attention on the four female monarchs who were ruling in the world at the time, having assumed their respective thrones through birth right alone rather than marriage. These four figures included Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and Queen Ntfombi Tfwala of Swaziland. Based on official or media photographs of these monarchs, the screenprint portfolio consists of four colour variants of each queen, amounting to sixteen images in total. The screenprints were created using a photographic silkscreen technique central to Warhol’s practice, employed profusely in both his prints and paintings. Warhol produced two editions of the Reigning Queens portfolio: forty ‘Standard Edition’ prints and thirty ‘Royal Edition’ prints. Screenprints from the ‘Royal Edition’ were adorned with ‘diamond dust’ - fine particles of ground up glass that sparkle in the light like diamonds – adding a glamour and extravagance to these images and further emphasising the regal allure of Warhol’s iconic subjects. The Reigning Queens series brings together many themes central to Warhol’s oeuvre, such as portraiture, celebrity, and consumerism.

     

    Margrethe II, Queen of Denmark, 1972. Image: INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo

     

    For his screenprints of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Warhol selected an image taken to commemorate the monarch’s accession to the throne in 1972. On her accession, which followed the changing of the Danish constitution in 1953 to permit women to take the throne, she became the first female monarch of Denmark since Margrethe I, ruler of the Scandinavian kingdoms in the 14th century. In her 1972 portrait, Queen Margrethe was captured in profile and immediately presented as a regal figure, destined to adorn a coin. The monarch wore the Pearl Poire Tiara and matching jewels – the same set she donned recently in her official Golden Jubilee portrait taken in 2022. Lastly, the new Queen sported the royal orders, which included a portrait image of her father, King Frederik IX, who she succeeded to the throne. Interestingly, Warhol depicts all other symbols of Margrethe’s heritage, but barely details the miniature portrait of her father, pointedly distancing this screeprint from the patriarchal structures which made the four monarchs he chose to depict in the Reigning Queens portfolio such a rarity. Instead, Warhol solely focuses on Queen Margrethe’s likeness and celebrates her almost unique positioning as a reigning woman through his depiction of her strong profile conveyed in overtly feminine pastel colours.

     

    • Provenance

      Holland Art Gallery, Eindhoven
      Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2003

    • Literature

      Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann 342A

    • Artist Biography

      Andy Warhol

      American • 1928 - 1987

      Andy Warhol was the leading exponent of the Pop Art movement in the U.S. in the 1960s. Following an early career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol achieved fame with his revolutionary series of silkscreened prints and paintings of familiar objects, such as Campbell's soup tins, and celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe. Obsessed with popular culture, celebrity and advertising, Warhol created his slick, seemingly mass-produced images of everyday subject matter from his famed Factory studio in New York City. His use of mechanical methods of reproduction, notably the commercial technique of silk screening, wholly revolutionized art-making.

      Working as an artist, but also director and producer, Warhol produced a number of avant-garde films in addition to managing the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground and founding Interview magazine. A central figure in the New York art scene until his untimely death in 1987, Warhol was notably also a mentor to such artists as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

       

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Property from a Private Dutch Collection

44

Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, from Reigning Queens (Royal Edition) (F. & S. 342A)

1985
Screenprint in colours with diamond dust, on Lenox Museum Board, the full sheet.
S. 100 x 79.8 cm (39 3/8 x 31 3/8 in.)
Signed and numbered 'R 7/30' in pencil (there were also 5 artist's proofs), with the artist's copyright ink stamp on the reverse, published by George C. P. Mulder, Amsterdam, framed.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£30,000 - 50,000 

Sold for £90,720

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Anne Schneider-Wilson
Senior International Specialist, Editions
T +44 207 318 4042
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Evening & Day Editions

London Auction 18 - 19 January 2023