Morocco on the road to auction success

After two sales in Marrakesh this year, the CMOOA, as it is more snappily known, selected the de luxe Royal Mansour Hotel for its first outing in Casablanca, dominated by pictures but also containing an extensive collection of Arab gold and silver coins – which failed to sell – and a small array of furniture, which fared poorly, apart from a late 19th century Syrian carved walnut mirror-topped cabinet that sold on low estimate for MAD (Moroccan Dirham) 81,000 (£5275). Overall the sale was just one third sold by content, yielding MAD5.55m (£360,000) hammer.

Director Farid Ghazaoui says the firm will be concentrating on pictures from now on. The majority of those available in Casablanca were by European artists, the rest by native-born Moroccans. Ghazaoui points out that Moroccans have a fiercely patriotic taste in subject matter, and only buy works with a Moroccan theme – Orientalist works set elsewhere in North Africa hold scant interest for them.

With no auction history in the country – bar one abortive attempt in the 1980s – CMOOA, a newly formed company, have looked to France for an experienced auctioneer, hiring Limoges’s Bernard Galateau.

Despite the presence of around 200 people in the saleroom, Galateau feels it will take time to generate as much interest in Casablanca as in Marrakesh, where wealthy Europeans have already bought at auction for their palatial homes in the deluxe La Palmeraie district just outside the city. Ghazaoui admits that Moroccans are still “not used” to auctions and remain shy about taking part – preferring to bid discreetly by phone or commission.

Interest centred on three European artists, who all settled permanently in Morocco after the First World War: José Cruz-Herrera (1890-1972), Henri Pontoy (1888-1968) and Edouard Edy-Legrand (1892-1970).

After studying art in Seville, Madrid and Paris, Cruz-Herrera moved to Morocco in the 1920s, showing regularly at the Galerie Derche in Casablanca. He led the sale with two works: Femmes dans un Intérieur Marocain, 3ft 7in x 2ft 7in (1.10m x 80cm), at a mid-estimate MAD580,000 (£37,800); and a tall, narrow Nue a Rabat, 4ft 10in x 19in (1.47m x 48cm), once part of a three-fold screen, that fetched MAD375,000 (£24,400).

After studying at the Beaux-Arts academy in Paris, Henri Pontoy supplemented his income as an engraver by playing the fiddle in restaurants every evening. Small wonder he opted for a career as a teacher at the Lycée Moulay-Driss in Fez, exhibiting, like Cruz-Herrera, at Galerie Derche. Pick of no fewer than 12 Pontoy landscapes and town scenes on offer here was his undated ,i>Vue de Médina, 2ft 2in x 2ft 9in (65 x 85cm), that sold near top estimate for MAD250,000 (£16,300).

Edouard Edy-Legrand came to Morocco from France in 1932, and worked with Jacques Majorelle, whose influence was evident in the subject and perspective – if not
the rougher brushwork – of Edy-Legrand’s panelled Kasbah, 2ft 6in x 3ft 5in (75cm x 1.05m), that sold for MAD275,000 (£17,900).

Majorelle, who lived in Marrakesh from 1922 until his death in 1962, was the most famous French artist to settle in Morocco. Just one of his paintings was available here: a 1941 view of Anemiter in the High Atlas. It had been expected to lead the sale with around MAD1m (£65,000), but failed to sell. “The reserve was too high,” acknowledged Ghazaoui.

A spate of early 20th century gouache landscapes by Edmond Valés sold briskly for over MAD20,000 (£1300), while a subtle-toned Cérémonie Marocaine, panel 3ft 11in x 2ft 10in (1.2m x 86cm), by Belgian artist Jules van Biesbrock (1873-1965), a teacher at the Beaux-Arts academy in Ghent, sold just above low estimate for MAD310,000 (£20,200).

The sale included nearly 40 works by Moroccan-born artists. These met a diffident response; the most popular proved to be Jilali Gharbaoui (1930-71), who studied in Paris and Rome in the 1950s, settled in Rabat in 1960, and is considered Morocco’s first abstract painter. Two monochrome works from the 1950s, in gouache on paper 19in x 2ft (48 x 62cm), each sold for MAD60,000 (£3900); but his Flight of Storks in pencil, dating from 1963, “his most accomplished period” according to expert Abdeslam Boutaleb, went unsold against a MAD250,000-300,00 (£16,000-20,000) estimate. Two naïve figurative gouaches, 19in x 2ft 1in (49 x 64cm), by Mly Ali Alaoui (1924-2001), Promenade and Fantasia fetched MAD10,500 (£685) apiece.

CMOOA CEO Hicham Daoudi will be looking to foment greater international interest in indigenous Moroccan art if he is to fulfil his ambition “to see Morocco develop a veritable art market”. His next attempt takes place at the swanky La Moumania Hotel in Marrakesh on December 29.