Page 127 - September 21 2021 Important Japanese Art Christie's NYC

to concentrate on fineness of impression, color and rarity,
aspects of superior ukiyo-e that were lost on many of his
contemporaries who admired the softness and quaintness they
saw in faded and worn prints. After Vever died in 1943, his
collection went dormant until 1972, when his heirs surprised
Sotheby’s, London with the dispersal of the Vever Collection.
The first of the four landmark print auctions came in 1974;
the second in 1975; the third in 1977; and the final in 1997.
H. George Mann in his memoir Sixty Years with Japanese Prints
(privately published, 2021) describes the frisson that went
through the Japanese print world when the Vever Collection
reached the market. He recalls the buzz of anticipation and
the dejection of the under-bidder as lot after desired lot went
to someone else:
It took a while for me to recover from the Vever sale. The week or so
in London went from high to low and back again. The first viewing
of the prints at Sotheby’s was exhilarating...But entering the famed
auction room with the venerable green felt-covered table where the
leading dealers and collectors sat during the auction and where, for
many years, objects were passed from person to person during the sale
was a new high. I believe there is still a plaque on the wall dedicated
to the “underbidder,” the unsung hero of every auction of every object
who drives the price up to its winning bid. (p. 59)
In 1979, however, Mann was gratified to add to his collection
Morning Glories and Tree Frog, another of the designs in the
Hokusai “Large Flowers” set that also had belonged to Henri
Vever (Vever II, lot 287).

For an insider account of the Vever auctions, one now can
hear from the auctioneer in Neil Davey’s “Behind the Gavel:
The Auctioneer’s Personal Viewpoint,” Impressions, The
Journal of the Japanese Art Society of America, 42 (2021):
123–29. “We were thrilled,” he writes, “by the quantity
and range of objects. Here was a collection of classic early-
twentieth-century French taste. . . . My own excitement
was nothing compared to the delight that was gripping Jack
Hillier [specialist who catalogued the Vever prints], as we
unpacked supreme after supreme print, great rarities and some
unrecorded images.”