Dr Eldon Tyrell’s
Art Collection
selected works 1450 to 2180
Lot 72
Confessional booth
Late 18th century France. Solid Oak.Collection of Eldon Tyrell
A finely crafted 18th century wooden confessional booth constructed in solid oak, featuring a molded cornice with carved foliate detailing, fluted pilasters, and original paneled rear construction.
Created for the administration of the Sacrament of Penance within the Roman Catholic tradition. Such structures became standardised in churches following the Council of Trent (1545–1563), which formalised the practice of auricular confession and encouraged fixed architectural solutions to ensure privacy, modesty, and doctrinal order.By the 18th century, confessionals had evolved into permanent fixtures within parish interiors, serving not only as liturgical furniture but as instruments of spiritual discipline and pastoral care. They structured an encounter defined by separation and concealment — priest and penitent divided by screen or curtain — reinforcing both anonymity and authority.
This example reflects the mature ecclesiastical craftsmanship of the period, when confession formed a central rhythm of communal religious life. Beyond its devotional function, the confessional booth stands as a material expression of institutional theology: a space designed for accountability, absolution, and the regulation of conscience within early modern Europe. It's a significant surviving example of religious furniture shaped by doctrine, ritual, and social structure.
Lot 89
Gabriele D'Annunzio Brutalist Eagle 1933
Cast Gold, Gild Bronze, marble pedestal, Gold Leaf, Patinated Accents
This gold Brutalist eagle, catalogued as Lot 89, occupies a charged intersection between aesthetics, power, and political theatre. Commissioned by Gabriele D'Annunzio—the Italian writer, poet, and playwright whose influence extended far beyond literature—the sculpture was conceived not as a decorative object, but as a symbolic instrument. Cast in gold and elevated on a severe architectural plinth, the eagle asserts permanence, dominance, and ritualised authority.
D’Annunzio presented the work as a personal gift to Benito Mussolini, a gesture emblematic of their complex ideological relationship. D’Annunzio’s theatrical nationalism, pageantry, and myth-making are widely understood to have provided the aesthetic and performative blueprint for Italian Fascism—an approach Mussolini would later systematise and weaponise. The eagle, an ancient imperial emblem, becomes here a distilled form: brutal, monumental, and stripped of sentiment.
Long believed lost during the war years, the sculpture resurfaced intermittently throughout the 20th century, passing through discreet private collections where its provenance was quietly examined and ultimately validated. Its reappearance within the Eldon Tyrell Art Collection reframes it not as propaganda, but as an artefact—an object that reveals how art, symbolism, and power can fuse into enduring visual language.
Lot 22
Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1450–1516) Ritual Mask
Late 15th century. Molded leather with natural patination
The present mask constitutes the first work from the Eldon Tyrell Collection to be made available publicly. Its selection as the inaugural lot is deliberate. This exceptionally rare leather ritual mask is one of only seven known surviving Masks created by Hieronymus Bosch, representing a scarcely documented aspect of the artist’s production beyond panel painting and drawing. Long assumed lost, objects of this type were likely created for performative, ceremonial, or didactic contexts closely aligned with Bosch’s moral and allegorical concerns. The beaked form has been widely interpreted as a symbol of contagion, corruption, and moral blindness—motifs central to Bosch’s imagery. Related figures appear in The Garden of Earthly Delights and The Temptation of Saint Anthony, where distorted anatomy functions as a vehicle for ethical instruction rather than fantasy alone. The hollowed eye sockets reinforce the mask’s role as an instrument of transformation, enabling the wearer to embody allegorical states rather than individual identity. The decision to place this work on view prior to auction signals the formal opening of the Tyrell Collection to institutional, scholarly, and market engagement for the first time. It marks not the dispersal of a collection, but its entry into history.
Lot 254
Sigmund Freud’s Chair 1930 by Felix Augenfeld
Leather upholstery, cast metal mechanism, wooden base
This very unique chair belonged to Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It was commissioned in 1930 from the Viennese architect and designer Felix Augenfeld by Freud’s daughter, Mathilde Freud, following her observation of her father’s habitual reading posture. Freud was known to sit with his legs resting across the armrests and his neck unsupported, a position that conventional furniture failed to accommodate. The chair was designed specifically for this use. Its padded arms provide support beneath the knees, while the backrest widens toward the top, allowing stability without constraint. The result is a one-of-a-kind object shaped directly by sustained observation rather than stylistic convention. The proportions and structure give the chair a distinctly anthropomorphic presence, upright and attentive in form. The chair forms part of the private collection of Eldon Tyrell, where it is recorded as Lot 254. No documentation survives regarding the circumstances or date of its acquisition. Within the collection, the chair is regarded as an artefact of authority and listening — an object associated with observation, interpretation, and asymmetrical power.