Lyon, France, Jan. 29, 2025 (Lusa) - The painting by Portuguese atrist Domingos Sequeira "Descansando durante a fuga para o Egito" was sold on Wednesday for €95,000 in France to Portuguese collectors Maria and João Cortez de Lobão, who intend to exhibit it in New York.
The sale took place during an auction in Lyon, where the estimated bidding figures were between €3,000 and €5,000, and ended up at €95,000, according to the final results published by the Drouot auction platform.
A source connected to the sale confirmed to Lusa that the painting by Domingos Sequeira, depicting a biblical scene, was bought by the Cortez de Lobão couple, with the intention of exhibiting it at the Hispanic Society's headquarters in New York. The couple established the Gaudium Magnum Foundation in 2018, which is part of the International Advisory Board of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library (HSML), a museum institution for Ibero-American art and culture in the United States.
‘Descansando durante a fuga para o Egito’ is a painting made in 1824 by Domingos Sequeira, whose whereabouts were unknown and was recently discovered in France.
The French auction house Artèncheres, which brought the painting to the market, said that this canvas was part of an exhibition in Paris in 1824, but that it was ‘out of the catalogue’. At this exhibition, the canvas ‘The Death of Camões’ won Domingos Sequeira (1768-1837) the Gold Medal.
Artèncheres states that the canvas ‘Resting while fleeing to Egypt’ ‘is an important rediscovery because, as the date attests, it is the second known canvas from the time of [the painter's] stay in Paris’ and was cited in a catalogue of the exhibition ‘Sequeira Um Português na Mudança dos Tempos’ (Sequeira - A Portuguese in Changing Times), which was on show in Lisbon at the National Museum of Ancient Art (MNAA) in 1987.
In 1824, Domingos Sequeira, a defender of the liberal ideal, settled in Paris after the "vilafrancada" attempt led by Prince Michael in 1823.
This is not the first canvas by Domingos Sequeira to go on sale abroad in recent times. In 2023-2024, another work by the painter was involved in controversy. It was ‘Descida da Cruz’ (Descent from the Cross) (1827), which was authorised by the then Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage to leave the country, contrary to expert opinion.
The painting was on sale at the European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) Art and Antiques Fair in Maastricht, the Netherlands, and in March last year it was acquired by the Livraria Lello Foundation, which decided to exhibit it at the Soares dos Reis National Museum in Porto, where it is still on display.
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