Previous Posts: articles 2018
Art History toys (ctd.)
January 13 2017
Picture: via Dangerousminds.net
We love these at AHN: figurines modeled on characters from Hieronymous Bosch paintings. They retail at around $45. More here.
Old pictures, old clothes
January 13 2017
Picture: Sotheby's
I'll be going out to the US on a mini auction & museum tour the week after next, so I'm glad I'll be able to catch Sotheby's 'Costumist', Jonquil O'Reily, giving a lefture on 'Precious Textiles and their Painted Forms' at Sotheby's New York. Regular readers may remember that Jonquil recently had a look at codpieces. The lecture is on Sunday 22nd January at 3pm. More here.
And while we're on New York, here's the Antiques Trade Gazette's highlights of the Old Master week. I'll write a more detailed report when I'm there.
One that got away (ctd.)
January 13 2017
Picture: Sotheby's
From La Repubblica newspaper in Italy comes news that the Italian government tried to stop the sale of a 15th Century painting sold last year by Sotheby's in London. The picture was a gabella showing the Flagellation of Christ, and was painted in 1441 by an artist commonly called the Master of the Osservanza, but who has now been suggested to be Sano di Pietro (1405-1481). Gabellas were used as decorative covers for the official account books of the city of Sienna, and were decorated with the coats of arms of the officials who drew them up. Most Siennese gabellas (105 of them) are now housed in the state archives in Sienna, but a number are in private collections and museums. Here's one in the Metropolitan Museum. La Repubblica says there are 136 in total.
The Italian government claimed that this painting must at some point have been 'stolen', was therefore still the property of the state, and should be returned to Italy. They presented no proof it was stolen, or when it left the Sienna archive. They also conceded that it left Italy 'before rules on export licences existed'. The picture had been in the possession of the German artist Franz von Lenbach, who died in 1904. So Sotheby's ignored this rather crude attempt to seize a painting being sold legitimately, in good faith, and it made £1.38m against a reserve of £400,000-£600,000.
I don't think there is any international legal mechanism by which Italy could seize the painting, wherever it ends up, since the claim on it is so weak. But I daresay it might not stop them trying. If I were the new owner, I probably wouldn't want to lend it to an Italian museum any time soon, just in case. The wider point here is that it's time we came to an internationally agreed statute of limitations for these restitution cases.
Guffwatch
January 13 2017
Picture: Christie's
The news that Trump's nominee for Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, is a part-owner of a $14.7m painting by Willem de Kooning, called Untitled III, gives us a chance to look at how Christie's catalogued the painting when it came up for sale in November 2014:
“Untitled III is among a series of paintings made in the late 1970s that convey a keen sense of place—the atmospheres of ocean and the sky in East Hampton…The soft, voluptuous colors and textures of blue-greens and melting whites and yellows summon the out of door ambiance of natural light.”
Maybe Trump would translate this 'draining the swamp'.
Mnuchin is the son of an art dealer, Robert Mnuchin, and a former Goldman Sachs partner.
In related news, there has been some concern from US museums that Trump's proposed tax changes will lead to a reduction in charitable giving to the arts.
New V&A Director
January 13 2017
Picture: Labour Party
Extraordinary news just in that Tristram Hunt, the current Labour MP for Stoke and former Shadow Secretary of State for Education, is to become the new Director of the V&A museum. His appointment will trigger a by-election in the normally safe Labour seat, but we can leave the political machinations to others. Let's just say that if I was a Labour MP under Jeremy Corbyn's zombie leadership, I'd want to get the hell out too.
I think Hunt will be a good fit at the V&A. It's true that he has no museum experience, but we'll come onto that in a moment. There's no doubting his academic bona fides. Hunt is a historian by training, and before entering politics was a lecturer at Queen Mary University in London. His thesis and an early book were on Victorian civic pride and urban re-generation (the pre-requisite, in such a field, to know a great deal about drains and sewage gave rise to the quip - back in my own historian days - that Hunt 'knows his sh*t'). Hunt was also for a time a leading TV historian, presenting programmes on things like the English Civil War. (His role as TV's hunky historian has now been taken over by Dan Snow, who's an equally good presenter, but with better muscles.)
So, Hunt is a good and proven communicator, and a first-class brain. Many years ago, when I was running the All Party History Group in the House of Commons, he came to do a lecture for us on Engels, and was brilliant. Many will wonder though whether one can become director of a national institution like the V&A without ever having worked in a museum before. And to that I think we must say; why not? I think there's certainly room for unconventional candidates like Hunt. The point of a museum director is to be a respected leader, a public figurehead, and even an impresario. These skills are sometimes not easy to find within the museum world, especially hese days where there's an increased emphasis on management rather than scholarship. We all know of museum directors who have risen to the top having been essentially managers, and they tend to have all the charisma of a piece of carpet - which soon becomes reflected in the museum itself. Mercifully, such directors are rare.
I know of others who were in the mix to become V&A director, and I must say I'm disappointed that one in particular did not get further consideration. But I think Hunt is an excellent choice. I'm glad too to see that political opinions are no bar to being considered a national museum director, as I wrote at the time of Martin Roth's resignation following the EU referendum. The V&A has slightly suffered in the past by being too distant from the national conversation, a fact in part due to the diligent and quiet effectiveness of its recent directors. Now, in a political and economic environment where museums will need to shout louder to be heard and supported, I think Hunt's presence will be key.
There's a wider point here too, following the recent and lamentable decision in Edinburgh not to have a dedicated director of the National Gallery of Scotland. The appointment of a director is such a crucial moment in a museum's story. We will see now how energised the conversation around the V&A will be, both in the short and long term, thanks to Hunt's appointment. How terrible that the National Gallery of Scotland can no longer have the same opportunity.
Update - a quip from HUnt, as reported on Twitter by Christian May:
Asked why he was leaving Corbyn's Labour party to become a museum director, Tristram Hunt says he wants something more forward looking.
Update II - some of the culturati are enraged because Hunt has in the past questioned the abolition of entry charges for national museums. Does his selection by the V&A signal a willingness to re-consider entry charges by that institution? I think the V&A, along with places like the Imperial War Museum, felt they used to be get a better deal before free entry.
Personally, I'm in favour of it, but would like to see a more intelligent way of slicing up the free entry pie.
Update III - a reader writes:
Tristram Hunt may have the necessary skills to lead the V&A in the political world of the arts sphere in London, but it feels like a very top-down appointment. Hunt will hopefully raise the profile of the museum, and encourage major donations, but will his lack of a deep understanding and love for the collection manifest itself in minor but important ways, such as a prioritisation of the big project over the small, of modern over the traditional, and of money over thought. Will there not be a disconnect between Hunt and the curatorial staff?
Another adds:
Peculiar choice.
At least he's educated and moderately intelligent in an academic establishment sense. But has he ever managed a large staff and a multifaceted organization.
One would prefer to have someone who knows a bit about art and other cultures as well and has ties for corporate and private support which will become increasingly important.
Update IV: here's Will Gompertz's take.
Met backs away from Modern & Contemporary
January 12 2017
Picture: The Metropolitan Museum
At least for now; a planned new $600m extension has been put on hold until at least 2022, reports the New York Times.
New book on Charles Le Brun
January 12 2017
Picture: Paul Holberton
I've been meaning to mention a new book on Charles Le Brun, the first monograph on the artist. It's by Wolf Burchard, and can be bought here. Wolf will be giving a lecture on Le Brun at the Wallace Collection on 27th January at 6.30pm; book here.
This is not Shakespeare (ctd.)
January 12 2017
Video: Steve G Wadlow/YouTube
At long last, a break to the monotony of me banging on about the Cobbe Portrait not being Shakespeare; we have a new pretender called 'The Wadlow Portrait'. It is owned by an antiques dealer called Peter Wadlow. In the 1960s he acquired a portrait of an unknown man, and thought little of it. Many years later, an English professor who happened to be visiting Wadlow's house saw the picture, and said he thought it looked like Shakespeare. And ever since Mr Wadlow has been hoping to prove that his picture is William Shakespeare. He has created a website, www.isthiswilliamshakespeare.co.uk to set out his case that the sitter is indeed Shakespeare.
There is, however, no evidence at all that the sitter is William Shakespeare. Not one jot. The site has the usual cleverl annotated diagrams, pointing out imagined things like casts in an eye, which apparently means the sitter might be Shakespeare. The picture has been dated to about 1595, and the age of the sitter might fit that of Shakespeare at the time. But that's about it. Mr Wadlow has taken the picture to our friends at Lumiere in Paris, who have taken their usual whizzy scans, but have not revealed anything of note yet. Except they have made the above video, which 'merges' the Wadlow portrait with the Droeshout engraving (which does show Shakespeare) to apparently demonstrate that the sitters might be the same person. NB: you can do this kind of thing with so many contemporary portraits - which often followed the similar poses of the head - and imagine you're seeing the same sitter. If you don't believe me, have a go on Photoshop and see for yourself. There will be a point when the Wadlow portrait can be made to look like Elizabeth I.
One thorn in the side of the Wadlow portrait is a coat of arms at upper right which is, alas, not that of William Shakespeare. To get around this problem, the Wadlow site claims that this coat of arms is a later addition, and thus not at all connected to the sitter. The evidence for this is an analysis of the coat of arms by a Herald at the College of Heralds in London, who said that the coat of arms seen in the painting does not match a standard English coat of arms. Therefore, Wadlow says, the coat of arms must be something inaccurately imagined by a later artist. The possibility that the picture might not be English, or the coat of arms innacurately rendered by an artist unfamiliar with such things, seems not to have been entertained.
"Let none presume to wear an undeserved dignity."
Update - Steve Wadlow writes:
Thank you for writing an article about ‘The Wadlow’ portrait, (so named by others,) We are delighted to have an expert like yourself showing an interest, so I thought it only fair to answer the points you made.
I started looking into the identity of the sitter when there were two incidents in a relatively short period of time in which people mentioned that the portrait looked like William Shakespeare. Having no background in art history I have consulted experts such as (amongst others) Sir Roy Strong (ex National Portrait Gallery) Karen Hearn (ex-Tate) and Rupert Featherstone (Hamilton Kerr) they are all of the same opinion (after I had asked if it may be by Gheeraerts) that the painting was English in origin painted in the English style.
You accuse me of not having entertained the idea that it might not be English, but having consulted such eminent people I did not think it was my place to dismiss their opinions.
The Hamilton Kerr also x-rayed the portrait and that showed up areas of over-painting. One of these seems to be beneath the coat of arms so I believe it is reasonable to deduct that this was added later. The x-ray also shows that there is another coat of arms and possibly some text beneath the overpainting.
As to your statement that this is not Shakespeare, you will no doubt have noticed that the website is called “Is this William Shakespeare” not this is William Shakespeare.
You also say that there is “not one jot of evidence.” The evidence that has come to light so far is that the painting came from a manor house that was under-going restoration in the late 1960s, in the Banbury area and from our research so far the best match is Great Tew. As you know, Great Tew was once owned by the Keck family. Robert Keck (of Temple) owned the Chandos portrait. You will also be aware that George Vertue noted that Keck owned two portraits of Shakespeare one which was the Chandos and another (now lost) oil on panel painted in 1595. (He left his estate to Francis Keck of Great Tew, (the Chandos had previously been sold.) I know that you haven’t yet seen my painting but it is oil on panel and has been dated at around 1595. Shakespeare was 31 in 1595 and there is a figure 31 on the painting.
There is also the facial similarity which I think is undeniable as do most of the people to whom I have shown it. This includes Lumiere technology who took it upon themselves to create the video comparison which you featured with you article.
I am not stating that the portrait is definitely Shakespeare [the website did state this, but since changed] but given what has happened so far I hope that you would agree that it is worth continuing my research. If nothing else I am learning a lot about William Shakespeare and Tudor painting.
Behind the whitewash
January 12 2017
Picture: Dr Jonathan Foyle
The historian and writer Dr Jonathan Foyle has shared this photo on Twitter, showing a 17th Century picture discovered behind an office wall in London. It's believed to show Kensington Palace.
'Was Nazi Art Really That Bad?'
January 12 2017
Picture: Spectator
In The Spectator, William Cook suggests that not all the art that Hitler liked was 'that bad'. He particularly highlights, if that's the right word, the above c. 1937 'Four Elements' by Adolf Ziegler (above), which Hitler liked so much that he hung it over his fireplace.
[...] at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich’s answer to Tate Modern, there’s a sign that things are changing. Amid the usual trawl through 20th-century modernism, one room has been set aside. ‘Artists under the National Socialists’ comprises only 11 paintings but it’s the most interesting room in the whole museum. It shows that in Nazi Germany, things were rarely black and white. For every diehard Nazi or ‘degenerate’, there were dozens of artists whose political position was more vague. Some supported the regime then turned against it. Others opposed it, then gradually acquiesced.
Dominating this display, on show here for the first time, is ‘The Four Elements’ by Adolf Ziegler. Of course when you know how Ziegler sucked up to the Nazis, and hounded brilliant artists like Beckmann and Kirchner (Beckmann driven into exile; Kirchner driven to suicide), this painting seems revolting. But when you strip away that knowledge, something far more challenging emerges. It would be so much easier if bad men and bad politics made bad art. If only life were that simple. But when you look at this picture with fresh eyes, you’re forced to acknowledge an awkward truth. Despite the repugnant morals of the man who made it, it’s actually not that bad.
Ziegler’s work is too close to the Third Reich, too complicit in its crimes against humanity, but several other paintings in this room are strong enough to stand alone, regardless of the time when they were made. Eighty years ago, modernism was bold and radical, realism was reactionary. Today, the most risqué show in Germany would be a display of realistic art.
I've not seen Ziegler's painting. And as an avowed empiricist I usually prefer to judge everything on its own merits. But if a painting is specifically produced to appeal to, and conform to, an ideology as hateful and destructive as Nazism, then surely the only thing we can admire it for is its technical merits; whether it was 'well painted'. And even in this case I'm not so sure. This is not to say that the painting is not an interesting object worth displaying.
Restitution news (ctd.)
January 12 2017
Picture: Artnet news
Two new restitution stories: first (on Artnet) that the food company Dr Oetker is to return a number of works it discovered were looted, including the above painting by Hans Thoma; and secondly that the German government has asked the Sprengel Museum in Hanover to return a watercolour by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (on TAN).
Wildenstein cleared
January 12 2017
The art dealer Daniel Wildenstein has been cleared of tax evasion. The ATG reports:
After a long-running case the Paris court judge said there had been a “clear attempt" at concealment but the defendants were cleared because of weaknesses in both the investigation and French tax fraud legislation.
The judge's view that an attempt was made to conceal assets means that presumably it's not all over yet, for, as ATG adds:
The tax authorities are pursing the Wildenstein family in a separate civil court case for a reported £480m.
'Treasures from Chatsworth' Episode 10
January 11 2017
Video: Sotheby's
This video looks at Chatsworth's Mortlake tapestries. I love a good tapestry. It's curious how little regarded they are today, generally.
By the way, did you know that the most valuable single set of cultural items in the UK are the Abraham tapestries at Hampton Court?
Update - a reader writes:
The Devonshire family formerly owned the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries, now at the V&A because of death duties. I mention that because apropos your comment that tapestries are little regarded today, the late Duke in his memoirs where he discusses the treasures surrendered because of said death duties wrote "I cannot pretend I miss the tapestries".
KMSKA acquires new Van Dyck head study
January 11 2017
Picture: KMSKA
The Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp has bought a fine head study by Van Dyck. The picture relates to a figure in Van Dyck's 'Crowning with Thorns' in the Prado museum in Madrid (below). (By coincidence, the model used is perhaps the same model as another head study in Prado's collection.) The purchase price has been reported as €234,000, and the sale was made from a French private collection. I believe the picture was sold at Tefaf a couple of years ago.
The newly acquired picture has not, as far as I know, featured in the Van Dyck literature before. But this is common with Van Dyck's head studies. Very few were published in the 2004 Van Dyck catalogue raisonné, but we know that Van Dyck's working practice means there must be many more out there, and they continue to turn up in the most unlikely places. Indeed, since the sale was safely some time ago, here's one I found in a 'yard sale' in Ireland.
My golden rule with these things is that the study must relate to a finished picture. Invariably, these studies were made to be transposed into larger pictures. And while often one comes across head studies that look as if they might have been painted by someone like Van Dyck, I find that if there's no link to a known painting it's very difficult to make a secure case for the attribution. This is sometimes because an artist's head study might be painted in a style that is typically looser and freer than the style they would use in their finished and more worked up painting - and it's that 'finished' style that many experts seek to compare a picture to.
What's so interesting with the KMSKA's new purchase is that while it does indeed relate to a finished picture, in the Prado, in terms of its basic pose and outline, and indeed all the relevant points of schematic information, such as the highlights and shadows, there is a crucial but subtle difference between the two. This is seen in how Van Dyck has depicted a 'real person' in the ad vivum head study, compared to how that same head is transformed into a 'character' in the finished painting (above). For example, in the KMSKA study, the model is a little more contemplative, and looking slightly downwards, as one would be I suppose if you were a model being painted from life. But in the finished picture in the Prado that person has been given a specific role to play, and has to join in the action. So Van Dyck now makes him look slightly upwards, towards Christ, his forehead is more furrowed, and his eye is just sufficiently more expressive. The bandana marks him out as a ruffian of some kind. One often sees this change in Van Dyck's head studies, from the 'real person' in the head study to the character in the finished picture. It's only noticeable because he was such a good artist.
New extension at National Gallery of Scotland (ctd.)
January 11 2017
Video: NGS
This all looks good. Though it means there will be no room for the curators (or indeed a Director).
Update - I'm told there is almost universal antipathy among staff to Sir John Leighton's plans to restructure the management of the Scottish National Galleries. Two questions arise; why is Sir John so determined to go against the wishes of his staff? And how did the Trustees ever let this proposal get so far? Someone's been asleep on the job...
New Tate director
January 11 2017
Congratulations to Maria Balshaw, who has been appointed the new director of Tate. She's currently director of Manchester city galleries. More here.
Update - the appointment must be formally approved by the Prime Minister; until then the Guardian has taken to calling her the 'Director-Elect'!
Turner & 'meglip'
January 10 2017
Picture: National Gallery
I've always been fascinated by how advances in artistic materials have driven creative change. Our view of art history tends to be, for example, that at various points in history great artists ushered in a creative revolution that drove forward the next chapter in painting; Titian and 'colore' in Venice, or Monet and impressionism in France.
I'm simplifying, and I certainly don't doubt the place of individual artistic genius in the evolution of art. But just as significant, sometimes, can be the technical development of artist's materials. Titian and his Venetian colleagues would likely not have developed the 'colore' style - based more on broader brushwork and less reliant on drawing (or 'disegno') - had they not been obliged by Venice's damp and watery environment to paint increasingly on canvas (in abundant supply, thanks to all those sailing ships) rather than fresco and panel. They also had the benefit of vibrant new pigments which, due to Venice's pre-eminence as a trading port, came from faraway places such as Afghanistan. Similarly, the fact that by the later 19th Century paint manufacturers had figured out how to put ready-mized paint in durable tubes, thus increasing its portability, greatly benefited the impressionists.
Anyway, the point of all this is to point you to some new research published in a chemistry journal, Angewandte Chemie (and summarised here at Science Daily) which has discovered more about the drying agents used by artists such as Turner in the 19th Century. 'Megilp', or 'gumtion', made oil paint dry more quickly than before and allowed artists to use extra layers of colours and glazes more rapidly, and more spontaneously. The new research just published has discovered how these admixtures actually worked:
The researchers combined several spectroscopic techniques to explore the gels on multiple scales. They managed to define the molecular interactions of the hybrid organic-inorganic gel system and the mechanisms of gelling. The team uncovered processes similar to those behind the drying and aging of oils. Lead is known to accelerate these processes, which explains the formation of the gel. These findings show that lead not only catalyzes the gelling process but contributes to the structure of the medium.
Regular followers of the recent Old Master fake scandal will recall that lead-based drying agents are also added to forgeries to help make the oil paint dry faster. In this case, the rapid drying is not to help the forgers paint better, but to make the paint look older.
Update - it's Megilp, not Meglip, as I put it in the title.
'Trouble in the Gulf'
January 9 2017
Picture: TAN
In The Art Newspaper, Georgina Adam makes a series of predictions for the art market in 2017. Most interesting perhaps is her observation that Gulf state money will cease to have the major impact it once did:
It is difficult to avoid the impression that the Gulf mirage is fading. The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi project seems stalled and no acquisitions have been announced recently; the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi has been delayed again, although buying continues; while the Qataris, having accumulated a sensational selection of works of art, appear to be cutting back on spending. And falling oil revenues have caused budgets to be slashed widely. Unrest in the region is discouraging tourism. I see this market continuing to stagnate.
This is not Shakespeare (ctd.)
January 8 2017
Irony alert - a story about new research finally proving that William Shakespeare the playwright really was William Shakespeare from Stratford (and not someone else entirely, like the Earl of Oxford) was illustrated in The Guardian with... you guessed it, the wrong portrait.
Anyway, the new information on Shakespeare is fascinating, and centres around his application for a coat of arms. It becomes clear, thanks to archival research by Heather Wolfe, that:
[...] “Shakespeare, Gent. from Stratford” and “Shakespeare the Player” are the same man. In other words, “the man from Stratford” is indeed the playwright. Crucially, in the long-running “authorship” debate, this has been a fiercely contested point. But Wolfe’s research nails any lingering ambiguity in which the Shakespeare deniers can take refuge.
This will likely not stop the 'Oxfordians' from continuing to claim that Shakespeare was not Shakespeare. Woe betide anyone who gets caught in the crossfire between Oxfordians and Stratfordians - it can get bizarrely bitter.
