Previous Posts: June 2011
Caravaggio in Canada
June 8 2011
Picture: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
If you're in Ottowa over the summer, the National Gallery of Canada's new exhibition Caravaggio and his Followers looks to be worth a visit (17th June - 11th Sept). And if you're in Ottowa on 18th June, then why not go to the day long symposium. Details here.
Zoffany - call for papers
June 8 2011
Picture: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. 'Self-Portrait as David' by Zoffany.
To coincide with the Royal Academy's new Zoffany exhibition (10th March-10th June 2012, and before that at the Yale Center for British Art, 27th October 2011-12th February 2012), a conference on Zoffany and his International Contexts will be held at the RA on 14th May 2012.
If you fancy giving a paper, send your proposal to Martin Postle by 30th September - contact details at the bottom of the page here.
British landscapes - new conference
June 8 2011
Picture: Yale Center for British Art. 'Wollaton Hall' (detail) by Jan Siberechts, c.1697
This looks interesting - a new conference on early modern British landscapes, organised by the Paul Mellon Centre on 18th November. It will:
...explore the origins of British landscape as a pictorial genre, addressing developments in the two centuries that followed Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. It aims to re-examine landscape imagery in drawings, paintings and prints of the period, by exploring its relationship with other 'arts of prospect' employed to observe, record and moreover evaluate the country's transformations. Prospects assumed various forms, visual and verbal, and included maps, plans and elevations, as well as views and verse, pageantry and theatrical scenery, the collaborations of artists, architects and surveyors, patrons, poets and place-makers. A prospect was a far-reaching vision of the future as well as a survey of the present, if also oftentimes reflecting on the pasts that had shaped the national territory. Accordingly, a central theme of the conference will be to consider the relationship between landscape imagery and the making, unmaking and remaking of Britain as a nation state.
Speakers include Kevin Sharpe, Andrew McRae, Joseph Monteyne, Christine Stevenson, Paula Henderson, An Van Camp, and Julie Sanders. Sign up here for a very reasonable £20.
Nicked
June 7 2011
Picture: Tribune De l'Art
The above works by Hals and Jacob van Ruisdael have been stolen from a museum in Holland. Two Boys Laughing, and Wooded Landscape were taken on 26th May from the Hofje van Aerden in Leerdam. More here.
New acquisition at NPG
June 7 2011
Picture: National Portrait Gallery, London
The NPG in London has acquired this very fine pastel by Daniel Gardner, The Three Witches from Macbeth. The picture shows Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Elizabeth, Viscountess Melbourne and Anne Seymour Damer, the sculptor. It was acquired through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme. Says the NPG's catalogue entry:
This unusual group portrait depicts three of the most notorious women of the late 18th century. They were intimate friends sharing a common passion for Whig politics and the arts. Whereas Lady Melbourne had been friends with Anne Seymour Damer since the early 1770s, the friendship with Georgiana was fairly recent and this pastel may in part be related to Melbourne’s desire to publicize their friendship. While all three women are described as having enjoyed attending private theatricals and tableaux vivants, Gardner’s choice of the cauldron scene from Macbeth can also be related to their shared and shadowy political machinations as leading members of the Devonshire House circle. The composition has no parallel in Gardner’s oeuvre and it is assumed that either Damer or Melbourne suggested the design.
I find the last suggestion a little odd - Gardner was a pretty good artist, and his compositions are varied enough. I don't think it would have been beyond his powers to come up with the grouping himself. He need only have read Shakespeare's stage direction for the scene (act IV, scene 1), which states - 'A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron. Thunder. Enter three Witches.'
Today's announcement was twinned with news of an exciting exhibition at the NPG this autumn; The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons runs from 20th October 2011 to 8th January 2012. More here.
From £3m to £12m to £17.5m - Watteau continues to Surprise
June 7 2011
Picture: Christie's
The government has put a temporary export bar on Watteau's La Surprise. The picture, which was an exciting new discovery when first sold at Christie's in July 2008, is priced at £17.5m, should any public galleries be interested in raising the funds to buy it.
Thought to have been lost for over 200 years, the picture was estimated by Christie's at £3-5m in 2008. It sold for £12.3m (inc. premium).
Of course, with today's non-existent acquisition budgets, you have to wonder whether the whole process is something of a charade. I'll eat my trousers if any museum raises the money to buy it - so what, really, is the point in pretending we might be able to stop the picture being exported?
Repin it in
June 7 2011
Picture: Christie's
Forgive the rubbish pun, but yesterday Christie's set a new record for a work by Ilya Repin (1844-1930). A Parisian Cafe, 1875, had been estimated at £3-5m, and sold for £4.5m (inc. premium). The strong price is - thankfully - a sign of the continuing strength of the Russian market.
Sotheby's also sold a fine Repin yesterday, a portrait of his wife, Vera, for £1.1m. And they too set a new record for a work by the Russian artist Vasilya Vereschagin. His The Taj Mahal, Evening sold for £2.28m. It had been estimated at just £250-450,000.
Cocteaup
June 6 2011
There's a bit of an odeur in France ahead of the opening of a new museum devoted to the work of Jean Cocteau. One Cocteau expert says a large number of the exhibits are fakes, while another says they're genuine. As is often the case with a recently deceased artist, it seems to come down to a battle over who has the right to be seen as the sole 'expert', with the power to pronounce on authenticity. From the Guardian:
Art expert Annie Guédras, who was designated by Cocteau's heirs as the only person legally authorised to "evaluate, authenticate and index" his paintings and drawings, examined the Wunderman collection. She concluded that dozens of works were copies or fakes.
However, the Cocteau committee, set up to manage the artist's estate, headed by Pierre Bergé – co-owner of Le Monde and partner of the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent – disagreed.
... Bergé called in another art expert, a decision that infuriated Guédras, who accused him of calling into question her professional judgment as well as breaking the legal agreement designating her as the only person authorised to authenticate Cocteau's work. She promptly resigned from the Cocteau committee and sued. Last year she won unspecified damages equivalent to three years' salary, a decision that Bergé immediately took to appeal.
Lowry self-portrait
June 6 2011
Picture: Bonhams
There's a touching self-portrait of L S Lowry coming up for sale at Bonhams. In Group of People with the Artist, 1961, Lowry is seen on the left, in profile, very clearly standing apart from the group. Says the catalogue:
[Lowry] is the only figure not physically connected on the picture plane to any of the other people. It is almost as if he has been rejected by the assemblage and is staring into a lonely abyss. This is no coincidence as it is surely symbolic of Lowry's state of mind and how viewed himself within society.
Yours for £100-150,000, on 29th June.
Art History Futures - 'She paints like Picasso'
June 6 2011
Meet Aelita Andre, who has her first solo show in New York. Aelita is four.
Says Angela Di Bello, director of the Agora Gallery:
'She's special in that she really knows what she's doing... if you look at her paintings you'll see that they're balanced... it's one painting after another, she's very very consistent in her work, so she's already developed a style that is hers. What's interesting about her work is that it's abstract impressionism but it's also surrealist in the way she includes objects in her works, and how she includes objects.'
Dubbed 'the youngest professional painter on the planet', Aelita's paintings are priced at up to $9,900 each. Of 24 paintings in the exhibition, 9 were sold by the end of opening night.
Only in New York?
Rockwell painting found on US Roadshow
June 6 2011
Picture: SodaHead.com
Norman Rockwell's Little Model has surfaced on the US version of the Antiques Roadshow. The picture was painted in 1919 for the cover of Collier magazine, but had been in a private collection since. The value given was $500,000.
The man who said we should pay more for museum entry
June 3 2011
The Director of the Met Museum, Thomas Campbell, has taken the brave step of increasing the 'suggested entry price' for his museum. It's now $25 from $20.
Campbell points out that each visitor actually costs the museum $40, so something has to give. Personally, I think $25 is well worth it, especially as there are all sorts of concessions for various groups.
I wonder what the equivalent cost-per-visitor is for the National Gallery in London?
RA Summer Exhibition App
June 3 2011
Picture: Royal Academy
The RA's Summer Exhibition opens to the public on 7th June. For a preview, there's a snazzy app to download, with videos, images etc.
New Burlington and British Art Journal
June 2 2011
Picture: National Gallery, London
Plop onto my desk at once come new issues of The Burlington Magazine and the British Art Journal.
Treats in the former include:
- A rare document on Giorgione (an inventory of his goods found in Venice after his death - in which his name is given as Georgio, not Giorgione).
- Discussion of an alterpiece by Bartolomeo Montagna.
- A freshly cleaned painting by Andrea del Verrochio in the National Gallery, London (above, and more details here).
And in the BAJ:
- A theory on the possible identity of Anne Clifford in a lost portrait.
- Lucian Freud's 'Scottish interlude' by Sandra Boselli.
- The Belton Conversation Piece by Philippe Mercier.
British paintings destroyed in Tripoli
June 2 2011
Picture: Art Newspaper
A number of paintings from the Government Art Collection appear to have been destroyed after the British Embassy in Tripoli was evacuated. Apparently, it was a priority to take computers and documents on the plane out, but not the art.
The GAC had 17 pictures on loan to the embassy, including, from left above, Philip Reinagle's 1797 Harrier Killing a Bittern, Edmund Havell's William Stratton, and a landscape in the style of Salvator Rosa.
Hopefully they're all ok, and hanging in some enterprising Libyan's bedroom.
Together at last
June 2 2011
Picture: China.org.cn
The two halves of one of China's most famous paintings have been re-joined for the first time in 360 years. From AFP:
The painting [by Huang Gongwang], which is more than 600 years old, was partly destroyed in about 1650 when its owner, a rich collector, ordered it burned.
This was shortly before his death, and experts have speculated he was hoping to take it with him to the afterlife.
The collector's nephew managed to salvage most of the painting, but not before it was torn in two, and for the next three and a half centuries they were never reunited.
Wednesday's event at Taipei's National Palace Museum came a little more than three years after China-friendly politician Ma Ying-jeou became the island's president, ushering in a period of warmer relations with the mainland.
£5m Michelangelo drawing at Christies
June 1 2011
Picture: Christie's
Christies will offer this drawing by Michelangelo, a preparatory study for the abandoned Battle of Cascina fresco, on 5th July. The upper estimate is £5m. Lovely - but a lot of money for a fragmentary sketch.
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
June 1 2011
The SNPG will re-open soon after an £18m refit. Tim Cornwell in The Scotsman has a preview:
About 15 years ago the portrait gallery tottered on the brink of closure, until plans to transfer key artworks for a new Scottish gallery caused wholesale revolt in Edinburgh. Yesterday, director James Holloway could stand on its showcase top floor and declare its new galleries among the best in Scotland, if not the UK.
"What we have got on this floor are fabulous spaces for showing art," he said. The gallery, he suggested, represented "Scotland's family objects. It's Scotland's DNA. It's thrilling that we are going to be back, and firing on all cylinders."
...
Exhibitions in main gallery spaces will run for about four years, drawing on the portrait gallery's existing collections with some loans. The small galleries will change 18 months or two years, while the photography gallery will stage three exhibitions every year, exploring "what in many ways is Scotland's greatest art form," said Mr Holloway.
I wonder what Ramsay, Raeburn et al would say about photography being Scotland's 'greatest art form'.
Sketches by Jean Francois de Troy
June 1 2011
Picture: Sotheby's
An important set of seven sketches by Jean Francois de Troy will be offered at Sotheby's in Paris later this month. Brilliantly painted, they were the artist's initial designs for a series of Gobelins tapestries. They mostly carry an estimate of EUR200-3000,000. An eighth is catalogued as 'Studio of de Troy', tho' frankly you'd be hard pushed to tell the difference.
The sketches will be sold under 'Faculte de Reunion' rules: each one will be auctioned in the normal way, but at the end the opportunity will be presented to buy the group by offering them all at the cumulative price. If nobody bids for the lot, then the previous seperate sales go ahead.
Maybe size is everything...
June 1 2011
Picture: Sotheby's
I mentioned earlier a 2 inch high miniature by Frida Kahlo, estimated by Sotheby's at a hefty £800k-£1.2m. But it turns out it didn't sell.
