Previous Posts: articles 2018

"We were all so excited at the expert verdict – the Duke was absolutely cock-a-hoop," said Abbey curator Chris Gravett, who had noticed the evident quality of the painting during his nine years working for the duke, and had become increasingly intrigued by it. This was despite competition from a collection that includes 10 paintings by Van Dyck, 12 by Reynolds, three Gainsboroughs, and a room virtually wallpapered with 24 Canalettos bought by the 4th Duke on the Grand Tour in the 18th century. [...]

Since its brief outing to an exhibition of treasures from Woburn Abbey at the Royal Academy in 1950, where its authenticity was questioned, The Old Rabbi has hung high up in the private library among a group of paintings which have turned out not to be what previous dukes of Bedford had hoped, including a "not Van Dyck", a "not Hogarth", and two others not by Rembrandt.

Although there is no reference to The Old Rabbi in the family archives before a mention of it being cleaned in 1791, Gravett believes it was probably acquired with the two "not Rembrandts" in the 1740s.

It will now be taken down and displayed at head height, as the star exhibit among the display of gold and silver in Woburn Abbey's vaults when the house reopens to the public next weekend. 

As Professor van de Wetering has highlighted: “This painting is one of Rembrandt’s most impressive evocations of dignity in old age. The way the light makes the figure emerge from the dusky space and illuminates the wrinkled skin of the face, and the hands resting on a stick, makes it an outstanding specimen of Rembrandt’s art.”  It is therefore implied that this is more than a study of old age.  It is believed that the Woburn picture and a painting in the Gemaldegalerie, Berlin (thought to be a portrait of Rembrandt’s wife, Saskia) were intended as a pair.  Both were painted in 1643 on a mahogany panel taken from the same sugar case.  This along with the similarities of design and biblical style: the prominent hands each displaying a ring on the little finger, the black hat with fine decoration and the decorative chains has led to the suggestion from Professor van de Wetering that the pair are depicting the Old Testament biblical story of Boaz and Ruth.

“It’s an international problem,” London-based dealer Roger Keverne said. “Some Chinese dealers are trying to sell things before they pay for them. We don’t know the full extent of it. The concern is that they can also be the under bidders. They push prices up. It isn’t a genuine market.”

It will probably be easier to see Cecilia in Cracow...

Lissitzky-Kueppers inherited “Sumpflegende” in 1922 and loaned it to Hanover’s Provinzialmuseum in 1926, before she left Germany. The painting was seized from the museum in 1937 under the orders of Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels for the Nazi “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Munich.

Munich has “rejected returning the Klee painting with constantly changing reasons since 1992,” Christoph von Berg of Von Berg Bandekow Zorn, the Leipzig law firm representing the heirs, said in a statement sent to Bloomberg News by e-mail. “All attempts by the heirs to reach an agreement have been brusquely brushed aside.”

The Nazis seized thousands of modern works, seeking to purge German museums of art they saw as contrary to Aryan ideals. An online database compiled by Berlin’s Free University aims to document as many as 21,000 confiscated “degenerate” works by artists including Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Wassily Kandinsky and Klee.

In the degenerate art show, “Sumpflegende” was mocked as the “confusion” and “disorder” of a “mentally ill person.”

The show ahead consists of ever clearer evidence that Turner was a great and tremendous artist, Claude a charming one. At the heart of the display is the famous face-off between their two views of ancient Carthage; a face-off Turner engineered when he left his work to the nation, on the condition that these two works always hang together. Which they usually do, in the National’s octagonal gallery.

In Claude’s Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, the weak beam from a low sun on the horizon seems barely to reach the shore, and even the figures humping stuff onto boats in the foreground appear utterly exhausted. But when Turner adopts more or less the same viewpoint, he flicks a switch and the electricity surges on. The sun is rebooted to its nuclear setting. A volcano erupts in the bay and the waters boil.

The usual interpretation of Turner’s insistence that his work hangs next to Claude’s is that it was intended as a homage: a pupil’s thanks to his master. But I no longer believe that. On this evidence, Turner’s great burst of atomic sunshine constitutes an effort to flatten Claude in battle. This wasn’t an homage. This was a beating-up.

Viennese historian Burkhart List, 62, says he has acquired documents from old Wehrmacht archives that report a mass shipment of the Hatvany collection to two subterranean galleries, measuring 6,000 by 4,500 feet, in the Erzgebirge Mountains.

With the permission of the mayor of nearby Deutschkatherinenberg, Hans-Peter Haustein, he deployed a neutron generator inside the mountain to probe for the secret chambers.  

The device revealed that, 180 feet down, there are workings detailed on no maps and they appear to be man-made, not natural.

Mr List said: 'In the winter of 1944 - 1945 the records indicate that a mysterious transport arrived here from Budapest that was coded top secret.

'One of the photos [above] yielded up by the archives was of the Sonnenhaus, a large building directly in front of the Fortuna mine where I believe the art is stored.

'It shows a large contingent of SS. There was no military or logical state purpose for them to be here on a secret mission, unless it was to deliver the artwork into chambers which, climactically, are ideal for the storage of art.'

So far the explorations have yielded only a Schmeisser machine gun, a Nazi gas mask, plastic explosive detonators and a safe deposit key.

Visiting the Tate's 1984 Pre-Raphaelite exhibition was a life-changing moment, he said. "It galvanised my collecting. The whole exhibition struck me … the poetry, the storylines, the romanticism. As a businessman who didn't have any formal training, it … caused me to suddenly pick up books and feverishly read [about] what inspired the artists."

His fascination was further boosted by a visit to Leighton House, the exotic former home and studio of the Victorian artist Lord Frederic Leighton. Schaeffer said: "Of all the Victorian artists, I found him to be the king on the top of the mountain."

Yet in the 1950s and 1960s, at a time when high Victorian art was deeply unfashionable for collectors, British public collections sold off masterpieces that would today be worth millions. By the time Schaeffer began collecting in the 1980s, they had begun "scaling up in price". Even so, paintings that he could then buy for £100,000 would now cost a million, he said.