Previous Posts: January 2018
The Leonardo magic show
January 25 2018
Video: BBC
Andrew Graham-Dixon's new Royal Collection programmes on BBC4 have been excellent. Here's a fantastic moment when UV light reveals some faded copperpoint drawings by Leonardo. More on the programmes here.
The Otto Naumann sale
January 25 2018
Video: Sotheby's
Here's a Sotheby's film ahead of the sale of the Old Master dealer, Otto Naumann. As I've said before, Otto is the Obe-Wan of the Old Master trade, and it'll be strange not seeing him at fairs like Maastricht. I only met him a couple of times in my London trade days, but he was always generous to younger dealers. I hope his sale does well.
Old Masters in new spaces
January 25 2018
Video: Sotheby's
I noticed in the front of Sotheby's latest Old Master sale catalogue a series of photos showing pictures in New York-style apartments. They looked good, and are evidently part of an attempt to persuade people that old art can look good in a modern setting. Of course, AHN agrees entirely. Above is a video Sotheby's have released showing how the designer Victoria Hagan put the interior scenes together.
Happy Burns Night
January 25 2018
Video: Liverpool John Moores University
It's Burns Night, and here in Edinburgh we've done the full haggis supper. Newly released today is a new facial reconstruction of Robert Burns, based on his portrait by Alexander Nasmyth. Not entirely successful, I'd say. More here on the techniques behind the reconstruction.
Apologies...
January 23 2018
No news today; on my way to London to see the Charles I exhibition at the Royal Academy. Excited!
Update - a BBC film crew ambushed me for my take on the exhibition, during the private view. My immediate reaction? 'This is one of the greatest feats of curation of modern times'.
'Peaks and Glaciers'
January 22 2018
Picture: John Mitchell Fine Paintings
It may be because I'm half Swiss, but I've always had a thing for snowy pictures. So allow me to plug an annual selling exhibition in London, Peaks and Glaciers, put on by my friends William and James Mitchell on Avery Row, just off Bond St. William is an intrepid climber. The exhibition opens on 25th Jan, and runs until 9th March. Catalogue and further details here.
Me on connoisseurship! (ctd.)
January 22 2018
Picture: Martin Postle
I'm glad to say that we'll be doing my short course on connoisseurship again at the Royal Academy in London, this time in the summer; Saturday 30th June and Sunday 1st July. This will coincide with the Old Master sales in London. It was wonderful to meet so many AHNers on the last one. I'll post more details when the RA site is updated.
Tefaf drops art market report
January 22 2018
Picture: via FT
Surprising news from Melanie Gerlis in the FT that the Tefaf fair in Maastricht will no longer produce its annual art market survey. This was always big news ahead of the fair, and generated significant news coverage. But last year a new author was commissioned to write the report, and the numbers might not have been to everyone's liking, at least from the market's point of view. Gerlis writes:
In truth, their future hung in the balance after 2016 when economist Clare McAndrew, their author since 2008, said she was instead crunching numbers for the Art Basel franchise. Maastricht University professor Rachel Pownall ably took the reins for Tefaf last year but there were differences between her methodology and McAndrew’s, which led to vastly different results. Pownall revised the art market’s 2015 value to $44bn from McAndrew’s $63.8bn and for 2016 had a total of $45bn, while McAndrew had $56.6bn — even the direction of travel was different.
More here.
Tefaf recently signed another lease with the NEC centre in Maastricht, committing the fair to the city for another ten years. Personally, I agreed with those dealers who wanted to see the fair move to a larger, ideally capital city. At least somewhere that was easier to get to. A number of well-established Old Master dealers have decided not to do the fair this year.
Charles I's Titian in New York
January 22 2018
Video: Sotheby's
Another picture at Sotheby's in New York is this 6ft tall religious picture by Titian and his workshop, of St Margaret. It once belonged to Charles I, and when valued after his death was deemed to be worth more (at £100) than Leonardo's Salvator Mundi (at £30). Today the estimate is (by comparison with the Leonardo) a modest $2m-$3m.
As The Guardian reports, it was offered to a plumber, in part exchange for repairs carried out at the royal palaces during the Cromwellian regime.
It's one of two versions, the other is in the Prado.
A Velasquez two for the price of one
January 22 2018
Video: Sotheby's
Here's a Sotheby's video on a portrait partly by Velasquez in next week's New York Old Master sale. The head is all by Velasquez, but the rest was completed by another artist, Pietro Martire Neri. The catalogue entry is here.
When I was teaching a course on connoisseurship at the RA last month, we were lucky enough to spend some time with this picture. It was a great way to practice connoisseurship, seeing where Velasquez stopped, and where Neri began.
Two new Van Gogh discoveries
January 18 2018
Pictures: via TAN
When the Van Gogh museum was asked to give a view on the authenticity of a previously unknown Van Gogh drawing (above) it prompted them to reassess a work in its own collection. Now, the museum has declared that both works are indeed by Van Gogh. The picture above is The Hill of Montmartre with Stone Quarry, and is in the collection of the Van Vlissingen Art Foundation. The picture below is The Hill of Montmartre, and belongs to the Van Gogh Museum, but had been rejected by curators there as a pastiche. Both works were drawn in 1886. More here from Martin Bailey (himself a Van Gogh scholar) in The Art Newspaper.
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The $250 Rembrandt (ctd.)
January 18 2018
Picture: AHN
Remember the story of the discovery at auction of one of Rembrandt's Senses? It surfaced at auction in the US, with an estimate of just $250, and is now in the Leiden Collection. Now the three brothers who inherited the painting from their mother have described their decision not to sell it in a 'yard sale', and how they found out it had actually sold for $1.1m:
After their mom died in 2010, the three brothers cleaned out her house and decided to sell the items that they didn’t have a need for.
“We had a garage sale, but there were a few things like the china and silver that looked very nice and we thought, well, we don’t really want to just give them away,” [...]
The small painting was unsettling to Ned Landau during his childhood, and he recalled “As a kid I thought, ‘why did we have a painting like that in our dining room?'”
Their mother’s nicer items lived in Roger Landau’s basement for four years before approaching an appraiser, John Nye, who gave them an estimate of a few hundred dollars for the painting.
More here.
Another Tate Britain re-hang
January 18 2018
Picture: Tate
In an interview in The Art Newspaper, Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson reveals that he's going to re-hang the entire gallery. This is just five years after the previous director, Penelope Curtis, unveiled a much vaunted chronological rehang, which did away with the previous social and thematic one. Now - guess what - Tate Britain is going back to a thematic and social hang.
We must wait to see the finished result (in 2020), but this seems to me reflective of an institution which doesn't really know what it's about. Shackled to the mother ship of Tate Modern, Tate Britain seems to see itself not as a museum, but a giant exhibition space, one that's almost embarrassed by what it has to show. Consequently, the exhibition space - and what goes in it - must be changed every five years or so. A museum which was comfortable in itself, and happy to celebrate its collection, wouldn't do this.
There is of course one thing a new re-hang could achieve, and that is a significant addition to the hanging space by making use of the central Duveen Galleries. These walls are just left empty, above. A similar space exists at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which is used much more effectively. Given the amount of great art Tate Britain has in store, the under-use of the Duveen galleries is a shocking waste of hanging space.
'Stop reading, start looking'
January 18 2018
Here's my latest diary column for The Art Newspaper. I discuss the time I asked a group of final year art history students if they could identify a Titian - only one of 40 got it. Are our art history students being sold short?
Charles I: King and Collector
January 15 2018
Video: RA
Excitement is building ahead of the Royal Academy's new blockbuster show on Charles I and his art collection. Above is the RA's trailer. The show opens on January 27th. More here.
PS - I'll be writing about it in The Art Newspaper.
Introducing 'eVasari'
January 15 2018
Video: eVasari
Ever struggled to remember when Van Dyck's Italian period ended, or which cities he visited? There's a clever new website which helps you find out when and where artists travelled in their lives, and shows all the information visually. It's called eVasari; the video above tells you how it works, and site itself is here.
Antwerp 2018: year of the Baroque
January 15 2018
Video: Visitantwerpen.be
2018 is the year of the Baroque in Antwerp, one my favourite cities. There will be a range of Baroque-inspired events, with many featuring Rubens; more here. Sadly, the much delayed refurbishment means the KMSKA won't be open until 2019, but there are many other art treasures to see around the city, including at the Rockoxhuis and of course the Rubenshuis. At the latter, you'll find a newly loaned picture by Titian (below, and featured here in a short video).
How not to pack a drawing
January 15 2018
Picture: Crispian Riley-Smith
The drawings dealer Crispian Riley-Smith has shown on Twitter what happens when an auction house doesn't pack artworks properly. Happily, after a little conservation, the damage is less obvious.
Hunt for lost Ravilious works
January 15 2018
Picture: via Telegraph
The author of a new catalogue raisonné on the works of Eric Ravilious, James Taylor, has launched an appeal for 40 lost watercolours by the artist. Have you got one? More here.
William Blake at Petworth (ctd.)
January 15 2018
Picture: NPG
The William Blake exhibition at Petworth is now open; Maev Kennedy has had a preview in The Guardian.
