Previous Posts: articles 2018
Current reading
January 4 2017
Picture: BG
I've been asked to review this for Apollo Magazine. Does the title suggest that it follows the old trope of art dealers all being cads and bounders?
'Treasures from Chatsworth' Episode 8
January 4 2017
Video: Sotheby's
This episode of Sotheby's excellent Chatsworth series tells the story of their portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Gainsborough. I didn't know the picture had at one point been stolen.
'Treasures from Chatsworth' Episode 6
January 4 2017
Video: Sotheby's
This episode features one of the most extraordinary Trompe l’oeil pictures ever painted, Jan Van Der Vaardt’s Trompe l’oeil Violin.
Auction estimate changes in UK
January 4 2017
Picture: Art Observed
The Antiques Trade Gazette reports on a new ruling by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority on auction estimates. At the moment, an auction catalogue gives an estimate of just the hammer price. Only at the end of the catalogue (usually) does the small print tell you that there will be a buyer's premium on top (ranging from about 10% to 30%).
The dispute has a long history in the battle between dealers and auctioneers. The former have felt that auctioneers mis-represent 'the price' of goods - which, to a punter, invariably appear cheaper than a gallery's full retail price - by not including all the extras. It appears that in this case the person who made the official complaint to the ASA was a dealer. Auctioneers have always tended to resist making it easier to see the total price including commissions, even though these days with online bidding platforms and the like it would be the work of a moment. At the main London and New York auction houses, for example, large screens behind the auctioneer convert the hammer price instantly into foreign currencies. But the total price with premium is never shown, until the post-sale press releases want to stress how much everything sold for. But that said, I think really most people bidding at auction are pretty aware of what the total price wil be, even if it sometimes comes as a nasty shock on the invoice (with VAt and everything on top).
The ASA's suggested solution is for auction estimates in catalogues to be presented thus:
Guide price £70,000-80,000 + 10% buyer’s premium and other fees
OR
Guide price £1000–2000 + 20% buyer’s premium and other fees (minimum £150)
£4m Government Indemnity payout for Zoffany
January 4 2017
Picture: TAN
Martin Bailey in The Art Newspaper reports that the UK government will have to pay out £4m to the owners of a painting by Zoffany (above) that was destroyed in the tragic fire at Clandon Park. The payout will be made directly by the Treasury, as the picture (on loan from a private collection) was covered by the Government Indemnity scheme. This allows museums to cover the risk of damage or loss to a painting, without paying an insurance premium. The government - ie, taxpayers - assumes all the risk. The scheme is vital for exhibitions and loans in the UK. The fact that the payout is, as TAN reports, the highest ever made, tells us a great deal about the success of the scheme. For £4m is not really a significant sum, in relation to all the works of art that have been covered over the years.
Van Gogh's lost sketchbook? (ctd.)
January 4 2017
Picture: via Artnet News
The publishers of the so-called 'Lost Arles Sketchbook' by Van Gogh - which I think it's fair to say that most Van Gogh experts have said does not represent the work of Van Gogh - have said that they may take legal action if anyone says the drawings are fake. The threat specifically is that the publisher:
“reserved the right to undertake any appropriate action to repair the damage caused by these claims that describe her [the book's owner] as a forger.”
Which is an interesting formulation, because as far as I know, nobody has actually said; 'these drawings are fakes made by the book's alleged owner', But if the publisher of the 'Lost Sketchbook' wants to bring that question into the debate, then so be it.
Certainly, there's something very modern about the portrait drawings in the sketchbook. My guess is that if the drawings are fakes, then they have been made relatively recently.
Waldemar in Conversation (ctd.)
January 4 2017
Video: National Gallery
Here's the Great Waldemar on fine form discussing the National Gallery's 'Beyond Caravaggio' exhibition. Well worth a click.
During the talk we learn that Waldemar is making a film on the Mary Magdelene myth in art, to be on the BBC early this year.
John Berger 1926-1917
January 3 2017
Video: BBC
John Berger, the great art historian, critic and communicator, has died. He was 90. Here is an obituary in The Guardian, here is a 'life in quotes' (a good one: "Hope is not a form of guarantee; it’s a form of energy, and very frequently that energy is strongest in circumstances that are very dark.”), and here is the New York Times take on his life. Above is the first episode of his lauded BBC series 'Ways of Seeing'. Here is his interview with Jeremy Isaacs in Face to Face, from the days when such programmes were more about the subject than the interviewer.
I'll be back on regular blogging duties tomorrow. Happy New Year to you all.
Merry Christmas
December 24 2016
Video: King's College Cambridge
Time to sign off for a while - may I wish you all the best for Christmas and the holidays. Thank you for your company and interest over the year. It means a great deal to me. I'm sorry that blogging has been a little patchy over the last week or so; the Deputy Editor has been unwell. I'm glad to say she seems to be on the mend. I leave you with my favourite carol, perhaps one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written. Sadly, we don't know who wrote it. May 2017 be less seismic than 2016, may all your art history wishes be fulfilled, and may your stockings brim with satsumas.
Job Opportunity (ctd.)
December 22 2016
Picture: NG
The advert for the post of Curator of Dutch and Flemish pictures at the National Gallery (following Betsy Wieseman's departure to the US) is up. Deadline is 20th January. Salary £45k-£57k. If you're applying, good luck!
Stolen Castlevecchio pictures returned
December 22 2016
Video: via You Tube
All 17 pictures stolen from the Castelvecchio museum in Verona in 2015 have been officially returned to the museum. Earlier this month, the gang behind the raid (most of them at least) were given jail sentences. The security guard who was on duty at the time (it was inside job) got ten years. Not enough?
More here.
Curators favourite winter paintings
December 22 2016
Picture: NMNI
The BBC has a piece on UK museum curator's favourite winter paintings. Anne Stewart from the National Museum of Northern Ireland has kindly chosen a Breughel the Younger (above, detail) which we featured on Britain's Lost Masterpieces earlier this year.
Museum director appoints first female Pope
December 22 2016
Picture: New Yok Times
Actually, that should read, 'Pope appoints first female museum director'. But just imagine.
Anyway, congratulations to Dr Barbara Jatta on her appointment as head of Vatican museums. Might someone at last be tempted to fix those queues?More here.
Poocasso
December 22 2016
Picture: Picasso Museum
Writing in The Art Newspaper, Diana Widmaier Picasso reveals that Picasso sometimes liked to paint with human excrement. He particularly favoured:
[...] excrement produced by his daughter Maya (my mother [above]), then aged three, to make an apple in a Still Life, dated 1938. According to him, excrement from an infant breast-fed by its mother had a unique texture and ochre colour.
Get out of that one, conservators.
Rijksmuseum buys Liotard oil
December 22 2016
Picture: Sotheby's/Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum has successfully acquired and exported from the UK a fine painting by Liotard, called 'A Dutch Girl at Breakfast'. The Rijksmuseum bought the painting at Sotheby's earlier this year for £4.4m, and then had an anxious wait while the picture went through the usual export licence processes. That has now been completed and the Rijksmuseum has now been able to announce its new acquisition. The bidding was brave and deft stuff for a museum these days - so kudos and congratulations to all involved.
The picture was recently on show in the UK during the Royal Academy's Liotard exhibition.
Update - today, 22nd Dec, is Liotard's birthday.
Sotheby's NY Old Master sales
December 20 2016
Picture: BG
Sotheby's January New York sale catalogues are online; Evening sale here; Day sale here; drawings here. There are many fine things as ever; Turner, Zurburan, an equestrian study by Rubens, and an Orazio Gentileschi that used to belong to Charles I. Shown above is a picture that caught my eye when it was previewed in London, a wonderfully zany El Greco, which is catalogued cautiously as 'attributed to El Greco' with an estimate of $400k-$600k.
I'll be in New York for the sales, part of a US jaunt I'm making to visit a few museums. There's an intriguing picture called 'attributed to Rembrandt' which I'm looking forward to seeing. The estimate is $300k-$500k, which is not much for a Rembrandt - if it is one. It seems from the text and exhibition history that the attribution is or was supported by Seymour Slive, Christopher Brown and Horst Gerson. We can doubtless deduce by the absence of his name from the catalogue that Ernst van de Wetering of the Rembrandt Research Project does not endorse the attribution. Looking at the literature, it seems it has been published and exhibited as a work by Rembrandt in full - until now. Such are the vagaries of Rembrandt scholarship.
Cruise ship auctions (ctd.)
December 20 2016
Video: Princess Cruises
Further to my post below, here's a video from Princess Cruises on their 'art auctions'. For which read, 'print auctions'.
'The world's largest art dealers'
December 20 2016
Video: Park West Gallery
If Donald Trump was an art dealer, he'd work for the Park West Gallery. A significant part of their business comes from cruise ships, where 'auctions' (like this one, with a lot of seemingly random gavel banging) convince unsuspecting holiday makers to pay strong prices for prints and reproductions. A key sales trick is to talk about 'estimated retail value' as a means of persuading people they're getting a bargain. But whose estimate? And often successful bidders don't get the actual work they've seen on the ship, but another replica shipped out from their storage facility in Florida.
On Bloomberg, Vernon Silver has written about Park West's cruise ship auctions, and why it's not a good idea to buy at them.
Shh!
December 19 2016
Picture: TAN
Gareth Harris in The Art Newspaper reports on a row in France over whether kids should be quiet in museums. One school group was told to shut up a little too zealously by a warden in the Musée d'Orsay, and the ensuiing hoo-ha has drawn in the French culture minister.
Time for a French equivalent of Kids in Museums?
New art history library in Paris
December 19 2016
Picture: INHA
In Paris, the Institute National d'Histoire de l'Art has opened its new library in the beautiful 'salle Labrouste', in what was formerly the Bibliotheque Nationale. More here.
I once filmed a scene there for 'Fake or Fortune?' The library was closed at the time, and the bookshelves were empty. But no viewers seemed to notice.
