Previous Posts: November 2014
Guffwatch - have we reached peak Koons?
November 18 2014
Picture: Sotheby's
Despite the headlines around Christie's $852m contemporary sale last week, it seems there are one or two stories that got buried amongst the hype.
The first is that, according to The Art Newspaper, almost half the lots in the sale were guaranteed lots. Therefore, we might be entitled to ask whether the sale really did total $852m, given that sometimes the price paid for a guaranteed lot is actually less than the 'price' reported by the auction house. For a recap on how the guarantee system works, see here.
Secondly, it was interesting to see the re-emergence of Jeff Koons' 'Pink Panther', which sold for $15.8m, against an estimate of $8m-$12m. This figure, however, represented a loss on the last time 'Pink Panther' sold, at Sotheby's in 2011 for $16.8m.
Regular readers may remember that back then, the 'Pink Panther' was the subject of more than one Guffwatch (here, and here, where Koons says the piece is 'all about masturbation'), after Sotheby's gave it the full Guff treatment when they estimated the work at $20m-$30m. Then, Sotheby's said that it was one of the greatest works of contemporary art ever created:
'Representing the highest tier of Jeff Koons' artistic achievement, Pink Panther is immediately identifiable as a masterpiece not only of the artist's historical canon, but also of the epoch of recent Contemporary Art...
The 'Pink Panther' was apparently underbid on this occasion by the mega dealer Larry Gagosian. It seems, though I can't be sure, that the buyer at Sotheby's in 2011 was the guarantor, in which case it's a rarely open example of someone taking a hit on Koons. There's three other examples out there too, so if you've got one, don't hold out too much hope for it.
Anyway, might the fact that the 'Pink Panther' struggled to get away for anything like its previously hyped level suggest that the market's wider enthusiasm for Koons isn't as great as we've been led to believe?
Christie's Vs. Sotheby's
November 17 2014
Picture: Christie's.
Looking at the numbers, it's clear that Christie's is absolutely whipping Sotheby's at the moment in the all important post-war and contemporary market. In the last four New York 'evening' sales (the big money ones), Christie's has taken in $2533m against Sotheby's $1380m. That's nearly twice as much. Ouch.
Guffwatch - Cy Twombly edition
November 16 2014
Pictures: Christie's
One of the attractions of contemporary art, from the market's point of view, is the fact that so much of it comes in 'series'. An example is Andy Warhol's 'Elvis' paintings, one of which, a 'Triple Elvis', sold last week at Christie's in New York for a record $82m. These series translate, financially, into readily identifiable units in which the only thing that matters is the price made by the last one. So if a Warhol 'Triple Elvis' is now worth $82m, then we can adjust the value of all the other Elvis paintings accordingly. I don't know how many 'Triple Elvis' paintings there are, but there's 22 of the 'Double Elvis' versions.
A similar series, which featured in Christie's mega $850m sale in New York last week, is Cy Twombly's 'Blackboard' paintings. Again, I don't know exactly how many there are of these, but it seems there are many, for they crop up regularly at auction. But spare a thought for the poor sod who has to write the thousands of words necessary to justify the immense status of these works in an auction catalogue. Surely, there's only so many ways you can describe a doodle?
Well, it seems there is indeed only one way to describe Twombly's tedious loops, but the solution cunningly adopted by the auctioneers is one recognised by students the world over; cut and paste!
See if you can spot the difference between the two following paragraphs. The first appeared in a Christie's New York sale catalogue last week, for the above 'Blackboard' painting, which sold for $69m:
The nuance and strength of expression that Twombly manages to inflect in his line while still maintaining a continuous rhythm and flow is what makes these lasso-works truly exceptional. Twombly’s incisive and idiosyncratic line simultaneously manages to express both a continuity and a fracturing of this flow, which generates a pervasive sense of dynamic independent movement caught up in a collective progression caused by an irresistible, insistent and perpetual force. In this, the lasso-line paintings reflect something of Italian Futurists’ use of the dynamic rhythm of disjunction to suggest motion, energy and simultaneity. Predating the advent of Fascist art and the Stalinist Realism of the 1930s and 40s, the motion studies of the Futurists were largely untainted by recent political history and as such they informed much of the new art in Italy in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Of particular relevance for Twombly were works like Umberto Boccioni’s 1911 studies for States of Mind and Giacomo Balla’s many studies of air currents and the flight of birds that also followed the example set in the 15th century by Leonardo. Twombly is also known to have been looking closely at Duchamp at this time, in particular, his early Futurist works, such as Nude Descending a Staircase and Sad Young Man on a Train, although it is perhaps the French artist’s Three Standard Stoppages that is most resonant in connection with such measured and yet poetic explorations of line as those that Twombly’s Blackboard paintings present.
The below paragraph appeared in another Christie's New York catalogue, for the below Twombly 'Blackboard' painting, which made $15m in 2011:
Twombly inflects his line with expressive nuance and strength, while maintaining a continuous rhythm and flow, making these lasso-works truly exceptional. Twombly's incisive, idiosyncratic line expresses this flow as simultaneously continuing and fracturing, generating pervasive, dynamic, independent movement, caught up in a collective progression, caused by an irresistible, insistent and perpetual force. In this, the lasso-line paintings reflect the Italian Futurists' use of disjunction's dynamic rhythm to suggest motion, energy and simultaneity. The Futurists' motion studies predated the advent of the Fascist art and Stalinist Realism of the 1930s and 1940s, and so were largely untainted by recent political history. As such, they informed much of the new art in Italy in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Of particular relevance for Twombly were works like Umberto Boccioni's 1911 studies for States of Mind and Giacomo Balla's many studies of air currents and the flight of birds, which also followed the example set in the 15th Century by Leonardo. Twombly also looked closely at Duchamp at this time, in particular Duchamp's early Futuristic works such as Nude Descending a Staircase and Sad Young Man on a Train. However, it is the French artist's Three Standard Stoppages that resonates most with Twombly's "blackboard" paintings' measured and poetic explorations of line.
The fact that some of the words have been shifted about a bit, to make sure that the two paragraphs are not absolutely identical, helps explain why so much contemporary art guff makes little sense.
Update - a reader writes:
In an entry of your blog you wonder how many"tedious loops" by Cy Twombly there are and you conclude that "there must be many since they regularly crop up at auction". You stress that contemporary art seems to like series.
Asking such a question is similar to asking how many abstractions Mondrian painted, or how many water lilies Monet painted, or how many Mounts Sainte Victoire Cézanne painted...I could go on and on. It is perfectly all right to find Twombly's abstraction "tedious", yet a closer look at the surface of these paintings, at the difference in light, the intensity of the brush strokes, might give your readers a different view of those works. It is a little too easy to dismiss them the way you do with simplistic conclusions based on the reading of a Christie's catalogue (a type of literature that is universally scoffed at, even among auction house staffers and collectors...).
Another point if I may: the price of a painting has nothing to do with its aesthetic value. They sometimes coincide and sometimes not. It is not Twombly's fault if two people were rich enough to compete at such heights for one of his works. It doesn't make it better or worse.
But perhaps, in your opinion, a Mondrian grid is just a grid and they look all the same. I do hope it is not the case though...
Personally, I'd say Monet's water lilly paintings are on a slightly different level, when it comes to variability and inventiveness, than a series of identical Warhol prints, or indeed even a monochromatic Twombly blackboard painting.
Many people make the mistake of thinking I begrudge wealthy contemporary artists their financial success. But this is far from the case. As I've said before, I even admire Damien Hirst from this point of view. My criticisms are always directed at the occasionally daft marketing and presentation of such works, and the justification of their immense value.
Guffwatch - 'Three Urinals', a million bucks each
November 15 2014
Video: Christie's
This video is a classic example of the guffy genre, with Christie's cataloguing of Robert Gober's 'Three Urinals' (1988). It made $3.5m earlier in New York this week. If you thought the urinal idea was old hat, having been done before by Duchamp in 1917, then think again, because Gober's uniquely inspirational achievement is to, er, 'recontextualise' the meaning of the urinal. And as the catalogue entry breathlessly notes, Gober's really amazing achievement is that he actually made these urinals himself:
Unlike Duchamp, who made art of mass-produced objects, Gober takes the form of a factory produced object and reconstructs it by hand, thereby reasserting his (and by default) the artist’s hand in these objects.
[...]
Though the purity of its form is almost Minimalist in its reduction, the hand-made quality of Three Urinals contradicts its formal austerity and Minimal coolness. Meticulously crafted by the artist, this work is composed of the humblest materials—plaster, wire, wood and enamel paint—in striking contrast to its real-life porcelain counterpart. The smooth contours invite the viewer’s touch, and the sheen of all-white enamel perfectly mimics the cleanliness and rigor of porcelain. But the difference in encountering the warmth of plaster and wood versus the cold, unfeeling indifference of porcelain provides a striking contrast. It exudes the uncanny feeling that the Surrealists termed frisson—the unexpected, chill-producing effect that two seemingly illogical objects could produce when combined. Lined up at regulation height directly onto the surface of the wall, Three Urinals celebrates the prosaic nature of the objects they purport to mimic. Except, on closer examination, this striking triptych is far removed from the ubiquitous sanitary ware on which they are based. This object is resolutely handmade, carefully constructed with a human quality and reinforcing the artist’s search for meaning in form and content rather than the artworld stratergizing that is associated with Duchamp’s readymades.
There are four 'striking contrasts' or 'contradictions' in the above paragraph. In fact, the whole paragraph seems to contradict itself. Read the full catalogue text here.
Update - another typical guffy construction in the description of Christopher Wool's 'Fool',* with an early deployment in the catalogue note of one of our favourites here on AHN, the Pointlessly Contradictory Sentence:
At once refined and elegant in its Minimalist simplicity, the painting is quiet yet shouts by use of the large-scale black lettering that extends to the uttermost limits of the canvas edge.
Can anybody tell me in what way the above painting is refined, elegant or quiet? It made $14m.
By the way, that's not just any old stenciled lettering we see here:
By breaking the words into their constituent letters and separating them out within a pictorial grid, Wool destabilizes the coherence of each word, thereby hinting at the fallibility of language itself. In the present work, he separates “FOOL” into “FO” and “OL,” so that the letters are prohibited from their descriptive role in forming words, and are left to exist simply as formal elements within a white field. This technique is especially potent considering the letter-count of “FOOL:” it contains four letters that fit so perfectly within Wool’s four quadrants, not unlike Indiana’s LOVE or Warhol’s early photo-booth self-portraits. Even the letters themselves are fractured by virtue of their stenciled nature; small slits cut into the stencil to allow for easier dissemination so that the “O” in “FOOL” is not a perfect circle, but bifurcated down the middle into two separate halves.
* Actually, officially the painting is called 'Untitled'.
Boom (ctd.)
November 14 2014
Video: Christie's
Wednesday evening saw a new record total for a post-war and contemporary art auction; $852m (at Christie's in New York). Which comes first, the bust or the billion dollar sale? One of the hotly contested lots, an Ed Ruscha painting that made $30m, was actually a giant canvas with the word 'Smash' written on it in large letters. Was the market being prophetic, ironic, or just dumb?
In the Financial Times, Melanie Girlis has this interesting take on who was buying what;
Melanie Gerlis, art market expert at the Art Newspaper, said: “There’s always been a huge American trading circle in modern, postmodern and contemporary art. But there are definitely more Chinese people buying. And at Sotheby’s there was a lot of Russian buying.”
Ms Gerlis said there were about 20 artists whose works had continued to rise “exponentially” over the past decade, fuelled by competitive buying between a comparable number of very wealthy collectors. But she added that these buyers would sometimes pay exceptional amounts for a work in order to boost the value of their existing collection, rather than for the work’s intrinsic value.
Other reports of the bidding frenzy here in The Guardian and here in The New York Times.
The National Gallery and the Slave Trade
November 14 2014
Picture: National Gallery
I haven't yet seen Frederick Wiseman's new (much admired) documentary on the National Gallery, but I was interested to see in this review in The New Yorker that the film contains a scene in which:
[...] a guide recounts for a group of black youths the founding of the National Gallery, in 1824, with wealth derived in large part from the slave trade. The question of what to make of that hangs in the air. It must matter. How?
I know I should really see the scene, and listen to the guide's full description, before making any comment on this. In fact, probably in today's climate of hyper-sensitivity I shouldn't really make any comment on it at all. But it says 'opinions' at the top of this blog, and sometimes they're shot from the hip.
The thing is, there's something about the 'I'm talking to black youths so I must mention the slave trade' assumption that I find just a little depressing in this context. Would we introduce all school groups, who one supposes are there for their first time, to art at the National Gallery this way? I doubt it.
Now, I'm not saying that we should gloss over any aspect of the slave trade and its legacy in any way. But I think it's fair to point out that it's not as easy to draw the National Gallery as an institution into the story of slavery as many think (and as the guide in Wiseman's film seems to think).
Nowadays it's often commonly stated that the National Gallery was indeed founded with 'wealth derived from the slave trade'. This assertion centres on the collection of John Julius Angerstein (above), who made his money in marine insurance, often under-writing slave ships. His 38 paintings were one of the group of works that formed the National's original collection.
However, it's worth noting that Angerstein's collection was not donated to the National Gallery, but bought by the government for £57,000 in 1823. Other what we might call 'founder collections' came from the likes of Sir George Beaumont and the Rev. William Holwell Carr, and these were donated, and, as far as I can tell, were not acquired with money connected to the slave trade; Beaumont's wealth came from coal, while Carr's was a rich benefice in Exeter (which he rarely visited), and money from his aristocratic wife.
The point is, does the purchase of Angerstein's collection therefore mean that the National Gallery itself was founded on 'wealth derived from the slave trade'? I'm not sure it does, but what do you think? (Specifically, the money in question came from the repayment, by the Austrian government, of a war loan).
Or is the argument here that should we judge each painting on who owned it, and the means by which they earned, stole or borrowed the money to buy it? If so, should we be more concerned that this picture by Cranach in the National Gallery once belonged to Hitler?
Update - a reader writes:
I'm not sure the analogy to the Cranach allegedly owned by Hitler in the NG is entirely apposite. From what the NG says, it seems they were given misinformation at the time of purchase. Subsequent information which came to light suggests at least the possibility that it was looted as there appears to be a gap in the provenance between 1909 and 1945 when it was taken from a warehouse to USA. We should not be concerned therefore about whether it once belonged to Hitler but how how he acquired it.
The Angerstein collection was acquired in 1823, the same year that the Anti-slavery Society was founded. Although in 1772 it was held that no law in England supported slavery this did not apply outside England and Scotland. The attitude towards slavery appears to have been somewhat ambivalent in the early part of the 19th century. The Slave Trade Act of 1807 abolished the slave trade but not slavery itself. The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 finally abolished slavery but importantly provided for huge sums in compensation to the slave owners for loss of their assets which speaks volumes about the attitude of the the legislators. To-day one assumes the compensation would have been paid to the slaves and the owners locked up for false imprisonment. The point is that the purchase has to be looked at in the overall context of the time in which it occurred. From that perspective it seems to me that the purchase can hardly be viewed as objectionable.
Van Dyck discovery at Christie's
November 12 2014
Picture: Christie's
Christie's have unearthed the above, previously unknown head study by Van Dyck, and will offer it for sale in December with an estimate of £200,000-£300,000. It relates to the series of head studies for Van Dyck's now lost portraits of the magistrates of Brussels, which were probably painted in the early 1630s. The study is similar in handling to the two studies in the Ashmolean (here and here), one in a private collection (and formerly with the London dealer Fergus Hall, who discovered it in New York), and the study found recently through the BBC television programme, the Antiques Roadshow, with which I was involved. This last study was offered at Christie's in the summer, but failed to sell with an estimate of £300,000 - £500,000.
Christie's sent me an image of the picture some time ago, and I had little hesitation in agreeing with the attribution. But like the four studies listed above, I suspect we can be fairly sure that the Christie's picture is somewhat unfinished, as there seems to be later overpaint in the drapery and background. The concept of the unfinished picture wasn't nearly as appealing in centuries gone by as it is today, and almost all Van Dyck's head studies (as with many other artists) were finished up by later artists to make them more saleable.
The Christie's catalogue speculates that the newly found study relates to Van Dyck's grisaille in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (above), which is all that survives of the artist's commission to paint the Brussels magistracy. In the grisaille, 7 sitters are seen. But we are fast running out of candidates for the head studies to relate to, for the new Christie's study and the Ashmolean heads could be said to candidates for the figures with their heads turned to the right.
However, most people forget that there was another, far larger Brussels magistrates group portrait painted by Van Dyck, for which we have not even a grisaille or drawing to give us an idea what it looked like. Both the large magistrates group and the smaller group related to the grisaille were destroyed in 1695 when French forces bombarded Brussels. The larger portrait had about two dozen sitters. So in fact the surviving studies could relate to either picture.
I'm fairly sure we can add to the five studies above heads such as this example in the Royal Collection. A series of similarly composed heads were worked up into more finished pictures with the addition of painted ovals, probably some time after Van Dyck's death. Some of them feature known magistrates such as Antonio de Tassis, but the majority are of unknown sitters.
Turner's 'Rome from Mount Aventine'
November 12 2014
Video: Sotheby's
Sotheby's wheel out the superlatives in their video for the £15m-£20m Turner coming up in December.
Fixing 'Adam' after the fall
November 11 2014
Video: Metropolitan Museum
This is well worth watching - a fascinating video from the Met on how they repaired a full-length marble 'Adam' by Tullio Lombardo which smashed to the ground in 2002, after its plywood base collapsed. The Met pioneered new restoration techniques for the project, which has taken over ten years. More here on the Met's site, and also here in the New York Times.
We should also congratulate the Met for being so ready to document and publish the restoration process. Many other museums would have preferred to keep the whole thing under wraps. But the Met is streets ahead of other institutions when it comes to their online presence.
Detroit safe at last
November 10 2014
Picture: The New York Times
The 'Grand Bargain' put in place to secure Detroit's debts has now been ratified, which means that no art needs to be sold from the Detroit Institute of Art. In effect, over $800m was raised to secure the DIA, from private donations, foundations and the State of Michigan.
More here from Randy Kennedy in the New York Times.
It's an extraordinary feat, and we should all hail the efforts of the DIA's director, Graham W. J. Beal (above). Has there ever been a museum rescue like it? How easy it would have been for him to follow the path of so many other US museums in distress, such as the Delaware Museum of Art, and simply sell stuff.
Update - there was a good programme on Radio 4 about all this, presented by the excellent Alvin Hall.
Meanwhile, in Norway
November 10 2014
Picture: TAN
...they're moving their National Gallery, into a new purpose built location by Oslo's waterfront. But, reports The Art Newspaper, a campaign group is hoping to keep the existing building, above, in use.
Endowing the Ashmolean
November 10 2014
Picture: Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean museum in Oxford is seeking to raise £50m for an endowment, and has so far made good progress, with £9m already raised. Last week, an anonymous donor gave a 'seven figure gift', so well done them.
Endowments are unusual in the UK. As in this case, endowments are being kick-started by the Heritage Lottery Fund, which is a new policy brought in by the current government.
I believe the idea of using Lottery money to fund endowments first surfaced in the 2005 Conservative heritage manifesto (which, ahem, I wrote!).
Canada Museum to return Nazi loot
November 10 2014
Picture: The Hamilton Spectator
The Art Gallery of Hamilton in Ontario has found that the above portrait by Johannes Verspronck was stolen by the Nazis in 1940. They are returning it to the heirs of Alma Salomonsohn. More here.
Update - the first version of this post linked to a news outlet with an incorrect illustration.
Ouch! The 'sleeper' bites back
November 10 2014
Pictures: Bonhams and Lyon & Turnbull
Regular readers may remember a 'Sleeper Alert' from late last year, when the above 'Circle of Francesco Albani' made £254,500 at a minor Bonhams auction in London. The estimate was £3,000-£5,000. The picture was an oil on copper, extremely dirty, and laid down onto a piece of panel.
At the time, sleuthing readers wrote in to note the similarity to the drawing below, by Annibale Carracci, in which Hercules is shown resting, and, crucially, with his hand in a different position to that seen in the painting. Was, then, the little oil on copper a variant or study by Carracci? Sleeper hunters love a 'pentimento', or evidence of a change (it makes a copy seem less likely). And the price seemed to suggest so.
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However, what appears from the online images to be the exact same painting has now been consigned to a sale up here in Edinburgh, at Lyon & Turnbull, with an estimate of £2,000-£3,000 (below). The picture has been cleaned, and, alas, was evidently not what the buyer at Bonhams was hoping it might be.
I should note that at the time of the Bonhams sale, a sharp-eyed reader wrote in to say this:
re. your Hercules item: a high price against a low estimate surely does not necessarily mean it's a sleeper. In this particular instance I would call it "speccy alert". As we all know, many of them just die a slow and painful death…
So in this case it seems he was right.
However, it's very unusual to see something recycled so quickly. One normally struggles on for a few years or so, hoping scholars might eventually agree. Might the picture have turned out to even be the wrong period, in which case it's a non-starter?
Anyway, I bet the underbidder at Bonhams is feeling somewhat relieved...
National Gallery's Canaletto on tour
November 7 2014
Picture: National Gallery
The National Gallery's 'Regatta on the Grand Canal' by Canaletto is going on a tour of UK museums next year. Here are the details:
The three host venues for 2015 are the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath; Compton Verney, Warwickshire and Sunderland Museums and Winter Gardens.
The Masterpiece Tour is part of the National Gallery’s commitment to promote the understanding, knowledge and appreciation of Old Master paintings to as wide an audience as possible. This opportunity to bring hugely popular National Gallery paintings to the public’s doorstep is being made possible by the generous support of Christie’s.
Victoria Art Gallery, Bath; 7 March – 3 May 2015
Compton Verney, Warwickshire; 9 May – 21 June 2015
Sunderland Museums and Winter Gardens; 11 July – 13 September 2015
More details here.
Further to my ongoing campaign to get more London museums to share their stored treasures, it's worth noting that the National Gallery is one of the 'good guys'; fully half their collection is on display at any one time. And as their storage is all on site, there isn't massive cost associated with keeping things hidden away. Of the NG's 14 Canalettos, 10 are on display. Which puts into context the 43 out 50 Constables that Tate has in a storage site in Southwark.
Incidentally, I asked Tate repeatedly for some sort of costing for their storage facilities, but all I've got so far is delay and obfuscation. Not exactly what one would hope for from a publicly funded institution...
Miniature heaven at Philip Mould
November 7 2014
Picture: Philip Mould
If you like your art 'in little', as they used to say in the 17th Century, then do go and see a new exhibition devoted to the British 18th Century miniaturist John Smart at Philip Mould in London soon, from 25th November to 9th December. Smart was one of the best, and spent much of his career in India. Here's the blurb:
Philip Mould & Co. is delighted to announce the forthcoming exhibition ‘John Smart (1741-1811), A Genius Magnified’. The exhibition will feature forty-five portrait miniatures from a European private collection with examples spanning Smart’s whole career. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue detailing hitherto unknown information on Smart’s life and career, and will be the first publication dedicated to his life and work since 1964, when Daphne Foskett published her seminal monograph ‘John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures.’
More here.
Sotheby's Old Master catalogue
November 6 2014
Picture: Sotheby's
The catalogue for Sotheby's London evening Old Master sale has gone online. Highlights include a £5m-£7m Canaletto, and the above Turner being sold by the Earl of Rosebery with an estimate of £15m-£20m (that's more, by the way, than the entire budget for the new film 'Mr Turner'). For the latter, there's an excellent catalogue note by Sotheby's specialist Julian Gascoigne.
In 2010, the Getty bought the last major Turner of Rome on the market, also sold by Lord Rosebery at Sotheby's, for £29.7m. Will they buy this one too?
Also interesting is the below c.1662 depiction of Llanerch Park in Denbighshire which, say Sotheby's, is likely to be 'the earliest topographical birds-eye view of a British estate'. The estimate is £400,000-£600,000.
Making 'Mr Turner'
November 6 2014
Video: FT
Here's a nice video from the Financial Times' arts editor Jan Dalley about Mike Leigh's new film 'Mr Turner', looking at how it was made, and how Timothy Spall learnt to paint for the role. Leigh gives a touching insight into how hard Spall tried to emulate the great artist.
Also, following my recent rants here and in the FT on how art galleries don't display enough of their collections, check out the below shot of gallery hanging, 19th Century style.
Important Van Dyck in Christie's December Old Master sale
November 4 2014
Picture: Christie's
It's now getting to that time of year when people like me begin to obsessively check the websites of Christie's and Sotheby's, to see if their London Old Master sale catalogues are online. Refresh, refresh, refresh...
They're not yet online, but I can tell you that Christie's have secured the above impressive portrait by Van Dyck of the musician Hendrick Liberti, which will carry an estimate of £2.5m to £3.5m. Painted in Antwerp in about 1628, it used to form part of the collection of Charles I, where it was described as 'ye singing man', and hung in the Bear Gallery at Whitehall Palace alongside Van Dyck's similarly dated portrait of Nicholas Lanier, the musician and courtier. It was Lanier's portrait which, in its brilliance, helped make Charles I so determined to secure Van Dyck's services as court painter from 1632 onwards.
New Moroni discovery at the RA
November 4 2014
Picture: Camilla McCulloch
The new Moroni exhibition at the Royal Academy in London is winning praise from the critics: here's Richard Dorment in The Telegraph giving it 4 stars out of 5; and here's Jonathan Jones in The Guardian doing likewise.
Meanwhile, sleuthing art dealer Rohan McCulloch alerts me to the fact that the above exhibit is a new Moroni discovery, having surfaced in a regional English auction last year as 'Italian School'. Rohan underbid it. I missed it completely. So congratulations to the buyer; going from sleeper to major museum exhibition in one year is an impressive feat.
Update - another sleuthing reader also spotted the picture, and sends this photo of it at the sale:
I seem to be the only person who didn't see it!
