Previous Posts: January 2013

New York’s defunct Knoedler Gallery was sued by a Liechtenstein-based family trust, which accused the gallery of selling a forged painting by the late artist Mark Rothko for $5.5 million.

The Martin Hilti Family Trust, named for the founder of construction tool firm Hilti AG, alleged in a complaint filed yesterday in Manhattan that the gallery deliberately withheld information about the painting that would have hurt the sale.

The gallery, on East 70th Street in Manhattan, has been sued by other collectors who alleged they were duped into purchasing fakes of works by noted artists, including paintings purportedly by Rothko, Jackson Pollock and William de Kooning. Knoedler unexpectedly closed in 2011 after 165 years.

The Hilti trust alleged in its complaint that it purchased what was represented as a 1956 Rothko work“Untitled” in November 2002. The gallery and its chairman Michael Hammer and director Ann Freedman falsely described the painting as coming from a previously undiscovered cache of masterworks owned by an unknown collector, described in the complaint as “Mr. X.”

A never-before-seen portrait of Nazi leader Hermann Goering painted by a Jewish artist during the 1930s is set to go under the hammer.

The oil painting by Imre Goth enraged the tyrant after it was completed, as he was furious that it depicted him as the morphine-fuelled drug addict he was.

Goering was so outraged by the artwork that Goth feared for his life, and was forced to flee Germany and seek refuge in Britain. The portrait never left the possession of its creator, and on his death 30 years ago he asked a friend to destroy it. But the confidante kept the unique work, and it is expected to sell for thousands of pounds when it goes up for auction next month.

The portrait forms part of a war memorabilia sale to be held by Mullock’s auctioneers in Ludlow, Shropshire on February 14. Its reserve price is £8,000, but it has previously been valued by experts as high as £50,000.

'The historical significance of this portrait cannot be denied,' said Richard Westwood-Brookes of Mullock's.

'As opposed to the official Nazi portraits of Goering, this shows him exactly what he was - a depraved drug addict - and for that reason I personally think it should be displayed publicly to show successive generations exactly what the Nazis really were, as opposed to their now more familiar propaganda images.'

I agree who would want it. The sad reality though is that there are lots of people out there who are Nazi sympathers/fans/memorabilia collectors and all it really takes is two of them!

..If you Google nazi memoribilia there are even dealers!

I too was bemused by Mullock's angle on the portrait. There's a faint sense like a bad smell in the back alleys of the auction world that shiny boots and swastikas are considered rather impressive.

For readers who can't wait until May, the Holburne has just opened "Painted Pomp: Art & Fashion in the Age of Shakespeare" based around the nine Larkins from the Suffolk Collection, currently in exile from Kenwood.  Judging by the numbers at the private view and over the opening weekend, not to mention the excited Twitterings, this is going to be one of our best yet....

New online publishing and best practice case studies, guest blog, and queries board are just some of the additions to our website which has been designed with your portrait-needs in mind! Find out what recent delegates at our Annual Seminar found relevant to their collections, how to identify portrait specialists, and practical guides to researching and interpreting portraits and devising learning programmes. Tell us what you think, submit reviews, and share your thoughts on the illustrated queries.

The network is supported by the National Portrait Gallery, National Trust, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, and Bristol Museums Galleries Archives. A grant from Arts Council England is assisting a great deal with our programming costs, and the website is entirely funded by the Foyle Foundation, for which we’re very grateful indeed.

The Museo del Prado has received an important donation of works from the Várez Fisa Collection in a ceremony attended by the President of the Spanish Government, Mariano Rajoy [above].

The donation, which comprises twelve, 13th- to 15th-century works of Spanish art from the Várez Fisa Collection, will enrich and complement the holdings of Spanish Medieval and Renaissance art in the Prado’s collections.

For the Tudor and Stuart elite, luxurious clothing was an essential component of court life.  Garments and accessories – and the way in which they were worn – conveyed important messages about wealth, gender, age, social position, marital status and religion.  Through the evidence of portraiture, In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion traces changing tastes in fashionable attire and the spread of fashion through the royal courts of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.  Using paintings, drawings and prints from the Royal Collection, and rare surviving examples of clothing and accessories, it explores the style of the rich and famous of the Tudor and Stuart periods.

"Our experiments demonstrate a possibility of how to reveal much of the hidden picture," Matthias Alfeld from the University of Antwerp said in a statement. "Compared to other techniques, the X-ray investigation we tested is currently the best method to look underneath the original painting."

Alfeld and an international team used macro X-ray fluorescence analysis to examine a mock-up of Rembrandt's original, created by museum intern Andrea Sartorius, who used paints with the same chemical composition as those used by the Dutch master. Sartorius painted one portrait on the canvas and then an imitation of "Old Man in Military Costume" on top.

 "Usage of the word speculative spiked unaccountably in 2009; 2011 saw a sudden rage for rupture; transversal now seems poised to have its best year ever." 

In fact, in its declarative, multi-clause sentences, and in its odd combination of stiffness and swagger, they argued that IAE "sounds like inexpertly translated French". This was no coincidence, they claimed, having traced the origins of IAE back to French post-structuralism and the introduction of its slippery ideas and prose style into American art writing via October, the New York critical journal founded in 1976. Since then, IAE had spread across the world so thoroughly that there was even, wrote Rule and Levine, an "IAE of the French press release ... written, we can only imagine, by French interns imitating American interns imitating American academics imitating French academics".

The mention of interns is significant. Rule, who writes about politics for leftwing journals as well as art for more mainstream ones, believes IAE is partly about power. "IAE serves interests," she says. However laughable the language may seem to outsiders, to art-world people, speaking or writing in IAE can be a potent signal of insider status. As some of the lowest but also the hungriest in the art food chain, interns have much to gain from acquiring fluency in it. Levine says the same goes for many institutions: "You can't speak in simple sentences as a museum and be taken seriously. You can't say, 'This artist produces funny work.' In our postmodern world, simple is just bad. You've got to say, 'This artist is funny and ...'"

Historically, the idea of scientific verification has arisen as a reaction against the perceived excesses of the connoisseurial tradition, a tradition which has fallen from favour over the last 50 years. The idea of individual 'expert knowledge' rests uneasily in the current climate. However, recent attempts by experts to develop definitive scientific methods for authenticating artworks are also proving to be problematic. Connoisseurship, it will be argued, still has its role to play within these debates.

I couldn't agree more that the increasing (or very nearly complete?) reliance on photography for portrait painting is a very great shame.

The really sad thing is that visitors to the NPG are now so inundated by photo-based work that it has become not just he norm, but the ideal.  In recent years  the Visitor's Choice at the BP Portrait Award has always been a photo-realist work, usually enormous in size.

Importantly, photo-realism is not always a fetishistic audit of wrinkles and pores, but is often disguised with a lots of brushy paint, a painterly interpretation of a photo.

 I once asked one of the BP Portrait Award judges about how seriously they take the rule that "the work entered should be a painting based on a sitting or study from life", when for so many pictures that sitting must only consist of taking some photos.  How softly do they use the word "should"?  She said that they trust that the artists have followed the rule, but she didn't sound so sure that it was possible to tell when a painting was done from a photo.  I can't say I was too encouraged.

For many years I worked from life [...] but [...] photography today is so accurate and so good that it's really so much easier just to take photographs and work from that.

I agree with you about the Emsley's comments on his practise, it is very dispiriting (especially so as I'm a painter myself). But I wonder if he's taken his conceptual thinking in the matter any further? 

Might it be that he's not actually making a portrait of Katherine per se (in the normally understood sense of the term), but has - according to his desire to transmit verisimilitude - instead made a still life painting of a photograph that happens to have her as a nominal subject-matter? This still life of a piece of photo paper with an image on it having then been executed (somewhat paradoxically) in a photo realist style. If he eschews the skill needed to reproduce tones, composition and accurate colour straight from the eye because he thinks the camera capable of doing this much more precisely, then what is he adding to the image by replicating an accuracy (using his eye and brush) that he thinks his eye cannot make in the first place? Futhermore, if he were to place the photo on a table and let it reflect some sheen from the surface, then include both in a depiction, would it not then be more accurately termed a 'still-life'?

Once the photograph has been made, and the decision to replicate it has been made, this can all too easily lead to the neutering of  just about all the potentially interesting creative decisions in an unquestioning drive for a desired verisimilitude of reproduction. Also we must ask how far a mechanically produced photo accords with what he may see with his own eye when Kate was sat before him. If it is very accurate, then he must still use his skill as an artist in mixing tones to accurately represent those in the photo. So, if he needs skill in doing this, why not just skip the photo and use them in front of the subject directly onto his canvas? He'd probably grow more as a painter.That is where the true art lies, and what sorts the men from the masters.

The camera is not an eye.

I never forget Freud's portrait of the Queen when it was published in the papers.  I thought it was quite awful.  Then I saw it in the flesh and it turned out to be a stunner: in fact, one of his very greatest works.

Kate's portrait looked pretty awful in the papers but I did have hopes... oh my God: it's ten times worse in the flesh!  What a great shame.  Compare this with the truly iconic early Diana portrait by Brian Organ: very 80's and very great!  A real icon of its time.  Why this obsession with photo realism and the BP awards?  It's been going on for years and we are all sick and tired of it!  The Duchess of Cambridge portrait is the worst example of its kind. DEPRESSING.

Within the disciplines mentioned above until now no specific education is available to experts specialising in authentication processes. Nowadays training mainly entails the gradual development of empirical knowledge that appears mainly within the international art and auction sector and in some cases in museums. Structural development of academic skills and competencies focussed on the complex domain of authentication in art simply does not exist. The congress organisers strive towards the development of specialised professional training entirely focussed on expertise on authentication matters.

The educational character will be demonstrated through a well-balanced and academic selection of topics, speakers and specific workshops. The congress requires participants with an inquisitive attitude that are willing to look across the boundaries of their own field.

Students from disciplines Art History, Conservation techniques, Material and Legal sciences from around the world will be invited to participate.

Presentations, lectures and discussions at workshops will be recorded and audio/video reports will be made available.

Programme overview

• Common terminology and understanding
• Standards for scientific research and technological research
• Education and training
• Cataloguing and publishing
• Dispute settlement
• Practical use, users
• Finance, Legal, Art trade implications
• Legal implications

I read your comment about connoissuership with interest. I seem to remember a program in the "Fake or Fortune" series about a disputed Monet painting during which the presenters,especially a certain Mr. Philip Mould, railed against the Wildenstein Institute. A barrage of scientific tests, and the testimony of the other experts, indicated the painting was authentic but the Wildenstein's in their infinite wisdom said "non" for the sole reason, as I remember that it didn't look right. Isn't that the problem with connoissuership ; there are just too many connoisssuers?.

Should the program "Fake or Fortune" speak to the connoissuers first before the barrage of tests or would that make it a ten minute program each week?

Having said that, I agree in many ways. I would much prefer to look at a painting and make up my own mind than read a 500 page report which has probably been commissioned simply to justify an insurance valuation. My judgement is probably wrong but it doesnt matter as painting is not a science; it is an art.

Your flagging-up of the conference and its ramifications also bring to mind the intense hostilities engendered over declarations of authenticity across the board in paintings etc. from Monet onwards where there are committees and families involved.

I have in particular been hearing about one deceased artist’s foundation, now fronted by the grand-daughter. This is now insisting on scientific analysis of anything put in front of them, which has just recently led to a certain work being ‘removed’ from the canon despite having earlier written testimonials from both the artist’s daughter and said grand-daughter (used as back-up by Christie’s).

This is as nothing against the Warhol shenanigans which have been well reported.

You are also quite right to highlight the need for students to include real experience of artworks away from the computer screen or slide show.

Subsidised unsnobby internships would be ideal ......in our dreams !

With growing concern I witness how museums and art historic scholars are trying to reattribute paintings of minor quality to be "masterpieces" simply by arguing with science. The most "shocking" example in my opinion is the new John the Baptist at the Prado. Even someone who is not a conoisseur can see at an instant, that this painting cannot have anything to do with the master.  The clumsy manner in how the upward gaze of the figure with his hand pressed to its chest has been handled is unworthy of a Titian. This is such a "baroque" gesture that one can ask if the painting has anything to do with the master at all. At an auction such a painting would fetch a few thousand Euros at its best. One could therefore just forget about it if there would not have been a noted scholar affiliated to an institution like the Prado who brought it to the attention of the art world. Now we have to deal with it which means that a lot will be written and about it. In my opinion the discussion will not be about the style, becaus here the painting can definitely not stand its ground.

To make one's point the discussion will therefore focus on the restoration report instead. Take the alleged Raphael painting of pope Julius II, that has recently been aquired by the Städel in Frankfurt. The x-rays show pentimenti what has been interpretated as part of "the creative process" that was inflicted upon the painting by the master himself. A standard argument by now to silence critics. As none of us has been with the artist as the painting was created how can we be so sure it was him? Only because a scientific report says so? It is hard to argue against it if you have only got your eye and your subjective opinion on your side. But what will become of conoisseurship if we rely exclusively on science? Nothing much, I guess. 

The authenticity of the work by Titian from Prado is not based obviously in the picture visible surface. The paint surface is destroyed by the heat of fire and in my opinion the restoration has not had the best results. I can not say if the work by Titian or Titian's workshop, but what I have clear is that the x-rays show that the work is a composition masterminded by Titian. The manner in how the upward gaze of the figure with his hand pressed to its chest is presented in a secure work by Titian and its radiograph. 

True, the St. John the Baptist only would be sold at auction for a few thousand and for this we must be thankful that there are museums that spend money on restore and analyzing a painting, which draws an important lesson about how the master worked. That said and knowing that the Prado recognizes that the value of the painting is essentially documentary I just hope that when finished the exhibition about its restoration and discoveries the curators are responsible enough (and I'm fear that no) to not expose the painting next to other works by Titian, because like happens with the Fracastoro in the NG lowers the level of collection.

Science to art history is not the end, [it] is an aid that connoisseurs have to learn to read.

One element you haven’t mentioned and is quite striking is the garment (cloak?) of the man in the immediate foreground. If it is any sort of accurate reflexion of the original composition it is the sheer amount of the picture space it takes up. Reminiscent of the Nationals man with a blue sleeve perhaps?

It's not just the vacant expression of the figure on the far right that seems to be a problem, it's the way that his head fits into the composition.  If he was taken out (or even reduced in size) the composition would improve enormously!  Anything to get rid of the heavy rectangular block across the tops of their heads.  It will be interesting to see what the conservator discovers.

It always is slightly lamentable that the workshop is brushed aside when these stories hit popular press. Many commissions required significant workshop input - such was the great demand on his studio.

As a related curiosity, the female figure seems to be a familiar/recurring face in many works attributed to Titian and his school - although a consistently utilised model has never been conclusively identified from documentary sources. 

Possibly a member of Titian’s workshop, or more likely a minor Venetian painter familiar with the conventions of Venetian painting working later in the century- they’re dating it 1580- but clueless how to weave them all together into a coherent composition. 

Points of interest, but not a great painting.

Rescued from its dark banishment in the basement, it now hangs in Room 10 of the National Gallery, surrounded by other Titians and further fine examples of Venetian painting, looking distinctly underwhelming and overpromoted. If this is a Titian, then it is not a very good one.

The first problem is the sitter’s presence, which seems small and standard when compared with the other Titian sitters in the National’s collection. There is none of the psychological force that glues you to the thoughts of the marvellous Man with a Glove on the opposite wall; and none of that fabulously brave picture-making that thrusts an elbow in your face in the nearby Man with a Quilted Sleeve.

The Burlington article admits the painting is in poor condition, which may explain a lot. Much is made of the skill shown by the artist in capturing the textures of the big fur coat, made of lynx, that the putative Fracastoro is wearing. It’s definitely the best bit of the picture. But in the next gallery, in Titian’s superb group portrait of the Vendramin family, the leading Vendramin also sports a coat lined with lynx, and in that instance the painting of the fur is beyond good — it is actually breath­taking. So swift and ­subtle and nuanced.

The single most un-­Titiany thing about the new Titian is its background. The putative ­Fracastoro seems to be standing in front of a grey wall in which we see two peculiar openings: a circular one above his right shoulder and a kind of rect­angular doorway above his left. This weird architectural arrangement appears nowhere else in Titian. The Burlington admits that it cannot be explained by recent overpainting. So why would ­Titian add such a strange background to what is otherwise an unambitious image?

Before it was hauled out of the basement, the painting was attributed to Francesco Tobido, known as Il Moro, who studied under Giorgione in Venice and worked in Fracastoro’s home town, Verona. Though he is largely ­forgotten today, we know that he, too, painted the syphilis doctor. Indeed, the only time I have seen a background like this before was in Il Moro’s portrait of a couple — one of whom is wearing thick fur — that hangs in the Doris Ulmann Galleries at Berea College, Kentucky.

On Waldemar Januszczak's doubts about the Fracastoro portrait attributed to Titian in the National Gallery, and in particular his point about the unusual architectural background: there is, or rather was, a circular window in "La Schiavona", also in the National Gallery, which was painted out by the artist.

Having seen the upgraded painting now myself I agree with your verdict that its condition means the attribution will continue to prove uncertain. Bits of it look good, but its not immediately likeable.

Two major contemporary video works – Bill Viola’s The Last Angel and Eve Sussman’s The Rape of the Sabine Women – will be on view alongside the historical works featured in Old Masters Week. This dialogue between the old and the new will highlight the power of visual languages at two distinct and transformative moments in time. Visitors to the view are encouraged to experience the relationships that exist in this art historical continuum across a variety of media.

Bill Viola’s The Last Angel is a ten-minute meditation on spirituality. Projected lengthways on a large plasma screen, the cryptic and hypnotic imagery depicts the lazy flow of water at the top of the frame, much like clouds scudding across the sky. While we are being mesmerized by this slow-motion imagery, eventually some bubbles start to collect at the bottom of the screen. In the final moments of this looped video, a fully-clothed angel emerges, plunging upwards through the shadowy underwater realm, creating a poetic visual experience.  His sudden arrival hauntingly evokes innumerable Renaissance depictions of divine visitations, visions and resurrections, with a beautiful, startling immediacy.