Category: Research
New updates at 'The art world in Britain, 1660 - 1735'
September 28 2012
Picture: York.ac.uk
More handy additions at the University of York's art history archive project. Editor Richard Stephens tells us that the new material online includes:
Listings of over 250 late 17th century auctions and lotteries have been added, making the index of art sales complete for the period 1660 to 1699. 13 newly transcribed sale catalogues include the collections of surgeon Luke Rugeley (1697), painter Herman Verelst (1702), art collector 3rd Earl of Leicester (1703) and dealer and print maker Alexander Browne (1706). Among other additions, a group of letters from Christiaan Huygens provides a window into the studio practices of Sir Peter Lely in the early 1660s.
Henry IX restored
September 19 2012
Picture: National Portrait Gallery
I'm delighted to report that the National Portrait Gallery has finally agreed to re-identify its portrait of Prince Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal York (or Henry IX as he is known to Jacobites). As I mentioned recently, the portrait had long been called a portrait of Prince Henry, but was then debunked some years ago. This means that, following my 2008 article in the British Art Journal, I've been able to re-identify portraits of Henry in both the London NPG and the Scottish NPG. The latter portrait, a fine pastel by La Tour, was being displayed as Henry's brother, Charles, and had appeared on countless posters, tea towels and book covers. (Sorry for the boast, but I'm rather proud the research). Now I just need to persuade the NPG that their portrait is actually by Mengs, not just 'circle of Mengs'. But this may take another five years...
More on the Degas
September 17 2012
Picture: BBC
We had a 20% audience share last night for the first episode of 'Fake or Fortune?', with 3.8m viewers. The grand fromages at the BBC are pleased with the figures, which are high for an arts programme. We hope to do better next Sunday, when we're back at our usual 7pm slot. If you saw it, thanks for tuning in. Next week's programme should be even better, with not one but three paintings up for inspection.
The critical feedback so far has been encouraging, with the Telegraph being very kind:
It’s hard to imagine a more artfully crafted – if you’ll pardon the pun – piece of Sunday night factual telly than the return of Fake or Fortune?
Meanwhile, over on Twitter the programme has its very own troll, and a famous one too. The critic and arts presenter Waldemar Januszczak (of whose programmes and writing I'm a great fan) really doesn't like the show. He dismissed the Degas as 'dodgy' and a wrong 'un before he'd even seen the evidence in the programme, on the basis of a short clip on the news. That's an impressive display of connoisseurship, don't you think? One might have thought there'd be a certain solidarity among arts TV makers, especially those that share commissioning editors...
Still, the main thing for me was that we were able to showcase some quite complicated art historical investigations to the broadest possible audience. Normally, terms like 'connoisseurship', 'provenance research' and 'pigment analysis' are banished to BBC2, BBC4 or even the radio. Sadly, there was quite a lot of research we weren't able to squeeze in. Untangling the provenance of the two versions of Blue Dancer was highly complicated, and made our brains hurt. But a saving grace was that the sizes were listed, and of course matched up.
Another unbroadcast but key part of the research we presented to the Degas catalogue compilers focused on our theory that Patrick Rice's picture was a study for the one in Hamburg. The alleged weaknesses in Patrick's picture are all forgiveable if one accepts that it was no more than a preparatory effort for the finished picture in Hamburg. Patrick's picture had to be judged not against the many famous, finished Degas' we are familiar with from books and museums, but against his sketches and studies, which are far less known, and hardly ever reproduced (in some cases only in poor black and white photos in the catalogie raisonne). And the best proof that Patrick's picture was indeed a study came in the discovery of two important pentimenti, or changes, in the painting. The first was that Degas had changed the position of the right hand double bass head - it was originally substantially further to the right. He had also painted the dress of the dancer before he then moved the double bass head over to the left. Such movements rule out any suggestion that Patrick's picture was a straightforward copy of the one in Hamburg.
A few Tweeters, including Waldemar, are still convinced that the picture is a fake. Let us consider, then, the probability that we are dealing with a faker. If so, we have to have a pre-war faker who was able not only to pre-empt pigment analysis techniques not yet invented, but, even more specifically, to find and use the unusual pigments that Degas favoured. How did this faker, before 1945, know how to do this? How did they have access to the Goupil stock books to find the missing provenance of another version of the Hamburg picture, and get the right size? Why did they bother to introduce pentimenti? Not even Han van Meegeren, the famous forger of Vermeer, went to such lengths.
Finally, some readers have suggested, in light of our debates here at AHN on connoisseurship, that the scientific tests and documentary research we carried out on the picture mean that the judgement of connoisseurs, who had previously rejected the picture, are redundant, and thus is connoisseurship itself. I would argue instead that our programme merely highlighted what happens when connoisseurship goes wrong. As I've said before, there are good connoisseurs and bad connoisseurs - but the latter does not mean we should condemn the practice of connoisseurship itself. If a doctor misdiagnoses you, do you question medical science itself, or do you get a second opinion?
And in any case, scientific testing and provenance research must all form part of any connoisseurial analysis these days, if necessary. For what it's worth, I was at first very sceptical of the picture, but then my expertise in Degas is very limited indeed. I run out of steam after about 1830. It was only after looking away from the image I had in my mind of Degas' work - that is, the well-known museum, book, and poster examples - and started to focus on his lesser known (and frankly lesser) works such as studies and sketches, that I began to see comparisons that could be made. The most valuable aspect of the whole exercise, for me, was endless close looking at as many Degas' as I could find. I mean real, get the binoculars out and look like a nutter close looking. For it is the art of close looking, so rarely taught and encouraged among art historians these days, that any aspiring connoisseur needs to learn. If it means getting told off for leaning over ropes in galleries, so be it. But, armchair connoisseurs please note, it's more useful than making judgements from the telly.
Update: an interesting response from a reader, posted above.
Van Dyck and Tapestry
September 7 2012
Picture: Tate/Lord Sackville/National Trust
Regular readers will know that I'm slightly obsessed with Van Dyck. So allow me to recommend a fascinating article online at Tate by Simon Turner which looks at Van Dyck's relationship with the Mortlake tapestry workshop. Turner builds on the theory that Van Dyck may have first been invited to England, in 1620, specifically to design tapestries, an intriguing idea which has some merit, especially when one sees the fluidity of handling and composition of The Continence of Scipio [Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford], one of few pictures we now were painted during Van Dyck's first brief stay in England. The article also reproduces a tapestry [above] featuring Van Dyck's Self-Portrait with Endymion Porter [Prado] in what was most likely its original frame (the one around it now is later, and entirely lacking in oomph). A similar frame is still to be found around Van Dyck's last Self-Portrait.
Berger Prize winner
August 10 2012
Picture: Yale Books
Congratulations to Terry Friedman, who has won the annual £5,000 Berger Prize for British Art History with his book 'The Eighteenth Century Church in Britain'. You can buy a copy of hte book - described as 'quite simply definitive' - here.
A hair to prove a Van Gogh?
August 9 2012
Picture: Telegraph
A hair found on a disputed Van Gogh is going to be DNA tested to see if it is Van Gogh's. From The Telegraph:
In a bid to settle one of the mysteries of the art world, the three inch long, red hair was lifted from "Still Life with Peonies" and DNA samples taken from it will be compared with those from Van Gogh's living relatives.
If confirmed a Van Gogh, the painting could fetch a value of £39 million and make Cologne art collector Markus Roubrocks, its owner, a multi millionaire.
The bright painting of a vase of multicoloured peonies resting on a wooden floor was discovered in a Belgian attic in 1977, and since then debate has raged in the art world whether it is the work of the Dutch master.
Mr Roubrocks, who inherited the painting from his father, has always argued it is an original Van Gogh dating from the spring of 1889 just a year before the artist took his own life. Two independent art experts who examined the picture independently backed his claim, but the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam contests this, saying the brush strokes are inconsistent with Van Gogh's style, and therefore the painting is nothing more than an expert piece of forgery.
Pity the article doesn't tell us what type of hair it is. Attribution by pube - now that's a story.
'for a licle picture of 12 artichoks.... £00-02-00'
August 6 2012
Many fascinating new documents have gone online at 'The Art World in Britain 1660-1735', including a list of picture payments from the 3rd Earl of Leicester (who bought a still-life of artichokes for 2 shillings), and a spirited letter from Godfrey Kneller to a client who seems not to have liked one of his paintings.
Splendid - free access to JSTOR...
July 25 2012
Picture: JSTOR
...or more importantly, to back issues of The Burlington Magazine - with JSTOR's new 'Register & Read' service for 'individual scholars and researchers'. To find out if you qualify, read more here.
Free money to look at portraits!
July 24 2012
The Understanding British Portraits Subject Specialist Network is offering four £500 bursaries for people wanting to study portraiture. You can apply here on their website. But before you get too excited, here's the inevitable bureaucratic stuff you have to get your head round first:
Applications should take the form of a concise outline (max. 500 words) of the proposed project, including:
- A description of the project and clear objectives
- Proposed activities involved in the project
- Specific partners expected to be involved in the research (e.g. local libraries, private collections, auction houses, museums, etc.)
- If the proposed bursary project is one element of a larger project, please demonstrate how it will relate to and contribute to the defined outcomes of the latter project.
- Desired outcomes of the proposed project
- Target audience
- CPD benefits
- Timescale of research (all projects must be completed by 22 March 2013)
- Estimated use of funds
- How the outcomes of the bursary will be disseminated among professional colleagues within the applicant’s organisation or region.
- Applications must be accompanied by a brief nomination from line managers.
I wonder if the costs of administering this laudable scheme are greater than the money given out? The site states that all applications will be read by the Understanding British Portraits Steering Group. This is comprised of The National Portrait Gallery, the National Trust, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums. That's a lot of people.
Axe falls on the Institut Neerlandais
July 23 2012
Video: TEFAF
The Dutch government has decided to stop funding the Institut Neerlandais in Paris. The IN, which promotes Dutch culture abroad, is closely involved with the Fondation Custodia in Paris, one of the best known art historical research centres in the world and home to the Frits Lugt collection. Fortunately, La Tribune de l'Art tells us that the Fondation will not be too badly affected by the cuts.
The above video is a brief overview of the Fondation Custodia from its director Ger Luijten. If your French is good enough, you can find details of the petition to stop the threat to the Institut here.
Caravaggio discovery - too good to be true?
July 12 2012
Picture: Biblioteca Marucelliana, Florence
There's an excellent article by Michael Day in The Independent on the Caravaggio 'discovery'. Either the wheels are falling off the discovery story, or there's an academic bitch-fight of epic proportions going on:
Unfortunately, an email dated 11 May last year has now surfaced in which the pair [of art historians who made the discovery] appear to be requesting electronic copies of the works. Neither are there any official records of them having viewed the works in person, according to Francesca Rossi, the official in charge of access to the castle's art and antiquities. She told Corriere della Sera newspaper: "I've never seen them here. They've never had access to the collection, they studied the images exclusively from the computer disc."
Reports yesterday suggest the disc sent from Milan to Brescia contained over 1,700 jpeg images – at low resolution. And in a very Italian twist, authorities in Milan have also announced an internal inquiry to establish if unwarranted collusion and even corruption was involved.
Mr Bernardelli disputed the claims of the Milan officials. "We saw the collection various times, even if these were outside normal hours, accompanied by different people," he said.
Other art experts have taken issue with the pair's conclusions. One critic, Professor Philippe Daverio, said that identification of a Caravaggio's organic and ever-evolving work could not be made by looking for the presence of key "designs". "Design doesn't exist in the character of Caravaggio," he said. "And design wasn't needed in his painting. These sketches can't really be compared to anything."
Another critic, Francesca Cappelletti, who helped to establish that The Taking of Christ was painted by Caravaggio, was blunter: "To me, these pictures still seem like typical works of Peterzano." Another critic, Tomaso Montanari, said sarcastically the claim was akin to taking 100 drawings by Verrocchio (Leonardo da Vinci's master) and attributing them to the creator of the Mona Lisa.
More on the Caravaggio discovery
July 6 2012
Picture: La Stampa No photo after a cross email from ANSA.
As you might expect, the Caravaggio 'discovery' story has gone round the world in a flash. Briefly, a team of Italian art historians claim to have found the works in the (publicly held) archive in Milan of Simone Peterzano, who employed Caravaggio as an apprentice between 1584-1588. From The Guardian;
"We always felt it was impossible that Caravaggio left no record, no studies in the workshop of a painter as famous as his mentor," Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz Guerrieri, artistic director for the Brescia Museum Foundation, told Italian news agency Ansa.
There is very little evidence to go on so far. It seems most of the works are drawings; of the 100 sketches newly attributed to Caravaggio, 83 are apparently repetitions of faces or poses from his known paintings. So the possibility is there that this is a cache of optimistically attributed studies done after the paintings. It's perhaps curious that some of the drawings published so far relate to works painted by Caravaggio long after he left Peterzano's employ, like the 1601 above drawing for the Supper at Emmaus [National Gallery].
The discoverer's e-book is already available to buy, so there's no doubt about the value of the publicity. Over at La Stampa there are some photos, which aren't clear enough to begin to make an opinion. In The Mail is a report with the sceptical view of other researchers.
More as I get it.
Update: more images here.
Update II - an email comes in:
Dear Sir, we verify on your website the publication of 2 images under ANSA copyright mistakenly attributed to La Stampa.
Please remove immediately and get in touch with our commercial department to clear the rights and pay the usage on your website.
Rubens or Van Dyck?
July 2 2012
Picture: Rubenshuis
There was a curious story in the Sunday Times yesterday (paywall) about the above portrait of Van Dyck, owned by the Rubenshuis. Apparently, a new type of x-ray has persuaded some scholars to change the attribution to Van Dyck; thus it is a self-portrait. The story was a little garbled, and the full research has not been published yet. But the gist was that the x-rays revealed a picture beneath the portrait which was close to the type of thing painted by Van Dyck at that time. Thus the portrait on top was more likely to be by Van Dyck.
The attribution of the painting has gone back and forth between Rubens and Van Dyck over the years. Personally, I always leaned towards Rubens, but not with great certainty. Early Van Dyck is fiendishly difficult, not least because he was a master of assimilation. Laughably, the self-appointed Van Dyck 'scholar' Erik Larsen once suggested, in his Van Dyck 'catalogue raisonne' that the picture did not only not show Van Dyck, but that it was by George Jamesone.
So I hesitate to pronounce on the evidence published so far. But this is a blog, and on blogs you're allowed to be a little cavalier. So for me, the x-ray theory sounds a trifle odd. This is mainly because even snazzy new x-rays don't let you determine what a painting beneath a painting looks like to the extent that you can make an attribution. In this instance the attribution is made more difficult by the obvious fact that Van Dyck was then working in Rubens studio. Furthermore, the composition doesn't strike me as a self-portrait. It is very different to Van Dyck's own undisputed early self-portrait in Vienna.
Finally, I am increasingly wary of what appears to be almost a new fashion amongst some Rubens scholars to take work from the period of Rubens' career when Van Dyck was working for him, and give it instead to Van Dyck. Such decisions often happen despite the opinion of previous Van Dyck scholars that the work in question was not by Van Dyck.
So I look forward to seeing all the new evidence, but for now I stick with the opinion of many Van Dyck scholars that it is the work not of their man, but Rubens.
Update - a reader writes:
I wish my George Jamesone portraits were nearly as good as the Rubens/Van Dyck portrait in today's blog. Jameson's work is now for the first time in years well illustrated by his room in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, those pictures vary in condition and quality, and it is great to see them on display,but are still of course a bit provincial by comparison.
At the Prado's Raphael conference
June 29 2012
Picture: 3PP
Three Pipe Problem reports on all you need to know from the Prado's Raphael conference here. I was pleased to learn that Sir Timothy Clifford (above, grey suit) presented the most amusing primary source of day 1:
'Raphael will do as he likes and not as he is told'
Did you know...
June 28 2012
...that if you want to order a high-res image of a painting from the Louvre purely for research purposes, they'll charge you EUR175. As we say over on Twitter, #incroyable
Want to find a Raphael?
June 20 2012
Picture: National Gallery
The National Gallery has a new micro-site to show you how.
New Kenneth Clark biography
June 18 2012
Picture: Sotheby's
Delighted to read in The Art Newspaper that a new biography of Kenneth Clark is being written. Clark, most famous for his epic television series, Civilisation, is one of my heroes (despite the fact that it contains not one mention of my other hero, Van Dyck). The biography, by Sotheby's UK Chairman James Stourton, will be Clark's first. More details here.
Update - a reader writes:
Surprised to see YOU make a mistake in your blog today.
The Sotheby's/publisher bumph may be claiming the biography of Lord Clark is the first, but actually Meryle Secrest published 'Kenneth Clark: A Biography' in September 1983 in hardback.
Another reader writes:
An example of how Clark remains under appreciated: last week I attended the Warburg Institute's very important conference on Aby Warburg and Walter Benjamin, which was a great success, but where Clark's name was not mentioned once in spite of the fact that he was one of the first English art historians to popularize Warburg's methods in this country (notably in the book on the nude).
Imagining Jane Austen
June 11 2012
Picture: Mail
There was a flurry of news about the Rice portrait of 'Jane Austen' this weekend. The portrait has long been claimed as Jane Austen thanks to its apparent provenance. But more recently the identity has been questioned, most notably by the National Portrait Gallery in London, and not least on grounds of date. It is thought to have been painted too late to show Jane as a girl. Jane was bown in 1775, but the portrait, stylistically and in the fashion represented, seems to date from the early 19th Century.
The family who own the picture have been on a long quest to prove that it does indeed show Jane. Their latest evidence that it is her, which hit the headlines this weekend, is based on a series of inscriptions found on old photographs of the painting. These prove, say the owners, that the portrait was by Ozias Humphry - an attribution which is important since it would push the date back to when Jane was a girl. The story goes that these highly important inscriptions have since been removed by over-zealous restorers. See more details in The Guardian here, and the background on the dedicated Rice portrait site here.
The Daily Mail concluded their report on the new evidence:
If the portrait is confirmed as being Austen, it may be an embarrassment to the National Portrait Gallery, which granted the picture a licence for sale abroad on the basis that it could not be the writer.
The gallery chose not to comment.
The NPG need not fear embarrassment, however. I applaud the owner's attempts to prove their painting is Jane. But I'm afraid these apparent inscriptions in old photos of the painting, which I have been shown, are (to me at least) not compelling. Nor is this the first time apparently conclusive 'writing' on the painting, seen in questionably interpreted and magnified old photographs, has been claimed. For the best critique of the painting's identity, read former NPG chief curator Jacob Simon's brief note here. In particular, he deals with the question of the apparent inscriptions written on the painting:
The [Rice Portrait] website claims that the portrait is signed several times in monogram, inscribed JANE and dated 1788 but, from my lengthy experience of examining British portraits, these apppear to be purely incidental and meaningless markings. They were not noted by Thomas Harding Newman, owner of the portrait in 1880, who attributed it to Zoffany. They do not appear in photographs taken by Emery Walker in about 1910, despite claims to the contrary on the website. They were not apparent to the professional painting conservator who examined the portrait with others at Henry Rice's request before cleaning it in 1985. They were not apparent to Christie's experienced cataloguing staff in 2007 when the portrait was put up for sale in New York, despite an earlier report of initials on the portrait.
New data online at 'The Art World in Britain 1660-1735'
May 31 2012
Picture: University of York
A range of new sources has been added to the inestimably valuable online art history project run by the University of York's art history department. The Art World in Britain 1660-1735 (edited by Dr Richard Stephens) has now reached 1.5m words of data, with the addition of the following:
Indexes of 'People' and 'Places': 2,600 names have been added to the index of people, comprising apprenticeship records of the Painter Stainers Company, based on the work of Cliff Webb. Several hundred other names have been added, of artists, house painters and others across Britain, using information from their wills. 100 addresses of colourmen and others have been added to the 'places' index, using data from Sun Insurance records. Miscellaneous other names and locations have also been added, of people and places mentioned in full-text sources published today.
Diaries, Memoir and Travel : Extracts from the diary of Dudley Ryder, 1715-16, including his long and revealing account of meeting with Sir James Thornhill as he worked on the St Paul's cupola. Extracts from the diaries of Viscount Percival, 1st Earl of Egmont, 1729-46.
Trade Organisations, Employment, Training : Records of the Virtuosi of St Luke, 1697-circa 1743
Wills: Lists of 700 wills of painters and related trades. Abstracts of 30 wills of painters and art dealers, including: Peter Roestraten, Remigius van Leemputt, Leonard Knyff, Thomas Highmore, Edward Davis, Parry Walton, Frederick Sonnius and Thomas Streeter.
Sale Catalogues: 6 sale catalogues from March 1691, generously contributed by Peter Moore, a PhD candidate of the University of York, who is attached to the 'Court, Country, City' project
Bills, Accounts and Receipts: Extracts from the Chirk Castle accounts, 1675-1721. Bill and receipt for frames made for Jacob Tonson by Gerrard Howard, 1733-4. Receipt from John Michael Wright to Sir Walter Bagot, 9 December 1675. Bill for pictures painted for Sir Walter Bagot by John Michael Wright, c.1676. Bill and receipt from Christopher Cock for the Duchess of Marlborough's purchases at the Kneller sale, 28 April 1726.
Inventories and Lists: A list of recipients of mourning rings at the funeral of Sir Godfrey Kneller. Probate inventory of Edward Cooper, London's leading printseller of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. 'A Note of Pictures' belonging to Viscount Fauconberg, 1684-93.
Correspondence: Petition of Jean Rambourt, circa 1670-85.
I like the idea of art dealers calling themselves 'The Virtuosi of St Luke' - something we ought to resurrect.
New Director at the Paul Mellon Centre
May 31 2012
Picture: York.ac.uk
Congratulations to Professor Mark Hallett, who has been appointed Director of the Paul Mellon Centre in London. The Centre is the pre-eminent supporter of academic art historical publications in Britain. Prof. Hallett takes over from Prof. Brian Allen. More details here.
