Previous Posts: articles 2018
New US bill to protect loans
December 13 2016
Picture: TAN
The Art Newspaper reports on a new bill in the US designed to make it easier to secure international loans for museums:
The bill was firmly backed by the US Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD). Its executive director Christine Anagnos said: “The exchange of works of art between countries supports cultural understanding and enables Americans to experience works that they otherwise might never have a chance to see in person.”
But;
[...] opponents say it would allow Russia to exhibit art and cultural property that was forcibly seized during the Bolshevik Revolution and block the heirs of the original owners from filing claims in US courts. The bill exempts objects that were looted from 1933 to 1945 by the Nazi regime or its allies, and for any works seized after 1900 by a foreign government against “members of a targeted group”. Critics say the later definition is too loose, and it could be argued the Bolsheviks’ appropriation of art and cultural heritage as government property was not aimed at a specific group.
The Old Master market is not dead (ctd.)
December 13 2016
Picture: BG
Further to the Old Master sales this week, here's Colin Gleadell's overview of the market in The Telegraph:
[...] the sales revealed real strength in the under £1 million bracket, emphasising a flourishing market for the best work by minor masters.
In the select evening sales, demand was more robust than it has been for years, egged on by tempting estimates that had not been driven up by auction house competition for the properties. [...]
Whereas last year 34 per cent of Sotheby’s Old Masters were unsold, this year the damage was reduced to just 17 per cent, and the total £14.8 million, while not a big one, was above the pre-sale estimates. [...]
A figure Christie’s was particularly proud of was the low 19 per cent of lots unsold; it was one of their best ever, they said.
Still waiting for the New York Times' take on the sales...
In my photo above are a pair of portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte from the studio of Allan Ramsay. They sold at Christie's for what I thought was a bargain £37k inc. premium, having been estimated at £40k-£60k. The overall quality was better than the usual 'studio' fare with these portraits, which were merrily churned out by Ramsay's assistants.
Rubens' self-portrait to be restored
December 13 2016
Picture: Rubenshuis
I was glad to discover that one of the Rubenshuis museum's star pictures - his c.1630 self-portrait - is to be restored. At the moment it is rather obscured by a thick and plastic-looking layer of varnish, which in normal viewing conditions has the effect of deadening the painting. The varnish, one of the newer 'synthetic' varnishes, was applied no doubt with good intentions during an earlier restoration, in the hope of avoiding the fate of traditional organic varnishes, which go yellow.
As is so often the case in conservation, every generation of restorer's is convinced they've got the best solution to a problem. But in fact they're just storing up trouble for the next generation of conservators.
The picture will leave the Rubenshuis in January, and be back on display in 2018.
Ribera's 'Bearded Woman'
December 13 2016
Picture: Web Gallery of Art
I never knew the story of Ribera's painting of Magdalena Ventura. Jonathan Jones has written about it in The Guardian:
Ribera’s painting Magdalena Ventura, also known as La mujer barbuda – The Bearded Woman – shows its subject breastfeeding her baby. This is Ribera’s none too subtle way of showing us that Ventura is anatomically a woman, for there is no sign of that in her face. Her huge, black beard makes her look like an Old Testament patriarch. Her facial features too are heavy and powerful, in other words they conform to common assumptions of what looks “masculine.” Her body is big and muscular, her hands strong and hairy. Her clothes are finely coloured but gender-neutral – again, they evoke a Biblical prophet.
Ventura’s husband, standing behind her right shoulder, looks less of a man than she does. His beard is smaller, his physique slighter. Ribera captures the fact that he is overshadowed by his wife’s fame, for Magdalena’s defiance of 17th century images of womanhood made her a celebrity in Italy. She came from Abruzzi where, according to the inscription on a stone slab in Ribera’s painting, she gave birth to three sons before her beard suddenly grew when she was 37 years old. In the painting she is 52.
Two more Max Stern restitutions
December 13 2016
Pictures: TAN/Max Stern Foundation
In The Art Newspaper, Catherine Hickley reports on two more restitution successes by the Max Stern Foundation in Canada. The above marine picture by Jan Porcelis and the below Landscape with a Goat by Willem Buytewach the Younger were spotted in German auction houses. More here.
For earlier AHN on another Stern restitution case that I was involved with when I used to work for Philip Mould, see here.
Ferens acquires Castello masterpiece
December 13 2016
Picture: Art UK
The above c.1650 picture by Valerio Castello, Tobias Healing the Blind Tobit, has been acquired by the Ferens Gallery in Hull. The picture has been on loan there since 1973, but has now been bought with help from the Art Fund and the Arts Council. It will be restored and put back on display in time for the Ferens grand re-opening (it's currently undergoing a £4.5m refurbishment) in January 2017. More here.
Fitzwilliam's new Whistler pastel sketches
December 13 2016
Picture: Guardian/ACE
The Fitzwilliam Museum has acquired three pastel sketches by James Whistler through the UK government's Acceptance in Lieu scheme. One of the sketches shows Cicely Alexander (above right), the daughter of one of Whistler's most important patrons. The Guardian reports:
The sketch was made for one of Whistler’s most valuable patrons, the banker William Alexander, who was buying his work when many thought his art was recklessly modern. He had bought the first of the artist’s famous Nocturnes. A later one would lead to a famous libel action when Whistler sued the critic John Ruskin for describing it as “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”, and was almost bankrupted when he won but was awarded a farthing damages.
Alexander also bought Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1, better known as Whistler’s Mother. The artist then offered to paint the banker’s eight-year-old daughter, and gave him the pastel sketch – his first ideas for the portrait. He was already working on a portrait of her older sister May, but promised that Cicely would get his full attention.
Whistler said: “I should work at the present moment with more freshness at this very fair arrangement I propose to myself than any other.” The final portrait became one of his most admired works, now in the Tate collection: Harmony in Grey and Green – Miss Cicely Alexander.
The latest annual report for the Acceptance in Lieu scheme, and also the new Cultural Giving Scheme, has been published by the Arts Council, and is well worth a read. Many great treasures have been acquired by the UK's museums this year, all gratis, including (ahem) the portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie by Allan Ramsay that I helped discover.
What I want for Christmas
December 12 2016
Picture: Amazon
Not.
But if you want to know what it feels like to be one of Hirst's studio assistants, then you can order it here for £8.99.
Here's the pitch:
Damien Hirst: Colouring Book features the British artist's most iconic works rendered as simple line drawings. Coloring fans of all ages can immerse themselves in themes and motifs found within some of the artist's most enduring series, including anatomical models, butterflies, medicine cabinets, spin paintings, color charts and kaleidoscope paintings. Featuring Hirst's most popular images, including "The Incomplete Truth," "Myth," "Loving in a World of Desire," "Hymn," "For the Love of God," "Benevolence" and more, the volume brings some of the most controversial and groundbreaking work of contemporary art to a witty coloring-book format.
Sadly, Amazon says the book 'is not eligible for review'.
Sotheby's OMP mannequin challenge
December 12 2016
Video: Sotheby's
Only just seen this - terrific. Award for the most athletic pose goes to Andrew Fletcher. The winker at the end is Julian Gascoigne.
'Treasures from Chatsworth' Episode 3
December 12 2016
Video: Sotheby's
This one's on the Old Master drawings at Chatsworth, including Leonardo's 'Leda and the Swan' drawing at Chatsworth. As the Duke says, 'it's on the fringes of pornography'.
'Treasures from Chatsworth' Episode 2
December 12 2016
Video: Sotheby's
This one's on some of the sculpture at Chatsworth, new and old.
€15m Leonardo drawing discovery
December 12 2016
Picture: New York Times
The New York Times has news of a previously unknown drawing by Leonardo, which has been deemed the real deal by the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Apparently it was found by a Paris auction house, Tajan, after a collector walked in off the street:
In March, Mr. Prate [Tajan's Old MAster specialist] recalled being “in a bit of a rush” when a retired doctor visited Tajan with 14 unframed drawings that had been collected by his bibliophile father. (The owner’s name and residence somewhere in “central France” remain a closely guarded secret, at his request.) Mr. Prate spotted a vigorous pen-and-ink study of St. Sebastian tied to a tree, inscribed on the mount “Michelange” (Michelangelo).
“I had a sense that it was an interesting 16th-century drawing that required more work,” said the elegantly suited Mr. Prate, speaking in the boardroom of Tajan’s Art Deco premises, near the Paris Opera.
He eventually asked for the view of Dr Carmen Bambach of the Met, who said:
“The attribution is quite incontestable,” Dr. Bambach said, even though the drawing has no pre-20th-century ownership history. “What we have here is an open-and-shut case. It’s an exciting discovery.”
A closely related drawing is in Hamburg.
The drawing has been valued by Tajan at about €15m.
London Old Master sales (ctd.)
December 10 2016
Picture: Bonhams
The sales in London appear to have been a success. Sotheby's combined sales for the week made £19.8m. The evening sale pulled in £14.8m, which even without the buyer's premium exceeded the high estimate of £11.85m for the sale. By Sotheby's own admission there were no really stellar lots in the sale, so the strong performances, with many lots going substantially over-estimate, was a sign of the health of the Old Master market. Sotheby's day sale was also solid, making £4.4m in total. Their press release is here.
Christie's evening sale made £12.24m. Their two stellar lots, a £4m-£6m Goya and the £10m Monarch of the Glen by Landseer were withdrawn. For the whole week, Christie's sold £17.2m. Christie's press release is here. Evening sale totals are here. The day sale (here) was a little patchy. (But I think Christie's suffers here by having it on a Friday, when Old Master fatique has set in and most people have started to leave London. Their day sale used to be on Wednesday, but then they moved the evening sale to Thursday (from Tuesday). Perhaps they should be brave and have the day sale befor the evening sale, on Thursday afternoon. Why not?
I'll go through some of the individual prices achieved in a later post. But I think (even though as an Old Master dealer I am of course open to accusations of bias) that this is the year we can put 'the Old Master market is dying' story to bed. Last year's sale totals, gleefully seized on by those who wanted to herald the demise of Old Masters, were indeed down on previous years. But as I and many others explained this was due to vagaries of supply, and the unusual absence last year of a single mega picture selling for big money. This year we've had two; the Rubens of Lot and his Daughters at Christie's, and the Orazia Gentileschi at Sotheby's. This year, Christie's have sold £152m of Old Master pictures. That's about £100m more than last year.
Of course, we mustn't expect the New York Times to run an 'Old Masters are back' story. But an acknowledgement that Old Masters never really went away might be nice.
Finally, points for effort go to Bonhams press office, who heralded Bonhams' sale of a newly discovered sketch by Constable (top) for £869,000 as "setting a new world record at auction for a small-scale sketch (under 10 inches) by the artist". It's a very fine picture, and I'm glad it sold well.
New Rubens drawing after Raphael on display
December 10 2016
Picture: Pheobus Foundation
A previously unknown drawing by Rubens after Raphael has gone on display for the first time in Belgium. The drawing (above) surfaced in a small auction house in Belgium earlier this year, and sold for €670,000 to the Phoebus foundation. I'm told the underbidder was the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
Here's the Phoebus press release:
The pen-and-ink drawing with horsemen is a double-sided drawing. It is a study of Arab horsemen, which came under the management of The Phoebus Foundation in May of this year. Katharina Van Cauteren, curator of the exhibition and Chief of Staff of The Phoebus Foundation, explains why the work is so important. “This sketch is based on a scene by the Italian painter Raphael (1483-1520). However, Rubens isn’t making a copy. He breathes life into Raphael’s composition. Horses snort. Muscles are taut. A clever perspective draws the viewer into the story. This makes the drawing the first example of a brand new style: it is a forerunner of northern Baroque. With his entrepreneurial mind, Peter Paul Rubens was playing a new market here. His refreshing aesthetic was particularly to the taste of the public of his day. Rubens created an innovative visual language that conquered the world in no time”.
The drawing is on display in an exhibition organised by the Phoebus foundation in Ghent, called 'For God and Money: the Birth of Capitalism'. I went to see the show recently, and can highly recommend both it and Ghent. As regular readers will know, Belgium is my new favourite country. More on the show, which runs until 22nd January, here.
Dispute over Mucha's 'Slav Epic'
December 10 2016
Picture: Economist
When Alphonse Mucha gave his giant series of paintings 'The Slav Epic' to the city of Prague in 1928 it was under the proviso that a permanent home would be built to house them. That never happened, and Mucha's heirs are now suing the city saying that the terms of the gift are void, and so ownership must revert to them. The city doesn't dispute that a permanent home must be created, but says that they're still working on it.
More here.
First Cezanne portraits show
December 10 2016
Picture: Guardian
The first exhibition to look at Cezanne's portraits will be held in Paris, London, Washington. Paris goes first, at the Musée d’Orsay from 13 June-24 September 2017, then the NPG in London form 26 October-11 February 2018, and finally the National Gallery of Art in Washington from 25 March-1 July 2018. More here.
Who will save Nonsuch Palace? (ctd.)
December 10 2016
PIcture: DCMS
The V&A have raised the £1m required to keep a rare watercolour of Nonsuch Palace in the UK. The picture had been bought by an overseas buyer earlier this year. More here.
London Old Master sales (ctd.)
December 6 2016
Picture: BG
I'm sorry for the lack of posts lately, I've been hither thither in London during the Old Master sale week; meetings, client lunches, conservation planning, that sort of thing. I also managed to pick up a picture in a regional sale through an online bid which, miraculously, actually worked for once.
I thought I'd quickly mention a few things that have caught my eye in the London sales.
Here is a piece I've written for The Art Newspaper about some of the highlights on offer in the main evening sales: Goya, Constable, Brueghel.
I didn't mention in TAN a rather interesting picture at Christie's; a previously unknown portrait of Erasmus by Peter Brueghel the Younger (above). It seems to be the only portrait Brueghel ever painted. Does the subject matter, taken after a portrait by Holbein, give us any insight into the artist himself? Or was it just a random commission? Who knows. The estimate is conservative: £40k-£60k.
All eyes at Sotheby's will be on this rare double child portrait (above) by Titian and his workshop. The estimate is £1m-£1.5m. It was last on the market in 1828 in Paris, when it made 200 'Louis'. The two boys are members (it is thought) of the Pesaro family, who commissioned Titian's famous Pesaro Madonna. I like the way the slightly anxious boy on the right is fiddling with his necklace.
A newly discovered Constable oil sketch at Bonhams (above) is real gem - small but sparkling, it will surely exceed it's estimate of £200k-£300k.
I've also been taken with some of the offerings in the cheaper (at least, relatively cheaper) Day Sales.
This Madonna at Prayer (below) at Christie's is a newly identified Sassoferrato. There are Sassoferratos and there are 'Sassoferratos'. But I thought this one was unusually good, and beautiful. In the main areas it is in excellent condition. The estimate is £30k-£50k.
At Sotheby's this unfinished portrait by Danloux (below) is priced at £12k-£18k. The fact that it is unfinished makes it appear strikingly modern, and I would expect it to sell well.
I love the story of Henry Cope, the 'Green Man', whose portrait by Francis Cotes is at Sotheby's (below, £15k-£20k). He was apparently obsessed with all things green, and according to one contemporary account; "He ate nothing but greens, fruit and vegetables; had his rooms painted green, furnished with green sofa, chairs, tables, bed and curtains. His gig, livery, portmanteau, gloves and whip were all green." He looks remarkably healthy, considering. Cotes painted in both oil and pastel. This portrait is in oil; the pastel expert Neil Jeffares tells me that Cotes didn't have a green pastel colour that was stable.
There were also some good pictures at Sotheby's from their New york preview, for the January sale, which looks to be very strong. I'll post more on these tomorrow.
Losing your looted art
December 6 2016
Picture: Mail
In September this year, agents from the US department of Homeland Security arrived at the house of Opera singer Craig Gilmore and his partner David Crocker looking for a painting; Melchior Geldorp’s “Portrait of a Lady” (above). The picture had been looted by the Nazis from the National Museum in Warsaw, and through a sale in New York a decade ago had been traced to the Gilmore and Crocker. They agreed with the evidence and surrendered the painting. Writing in the LA Times, Gilmore describes what it's like to have to surrender such a favourite object, and how to send it off in style:
As the day of departure drew near, we did what anyone would do for a loved one who was leaving: We threw a farewell party. Emulating our 17th century lady, David and I sported neck-ruffs crafted from car air filters, and prepared a buffet of Polish sausages, pierogis and vodka punch. Our friends came, marveled at the story, and expressed their personal goodbyes. It was a cathartic evening.
The evening before she was to leave, we carefully moved her to an easel at the end of our long entry hall. We desired to send her off in a style that honored the time she had graced our household. The next morning we dressed to the nines, chilled champagne for a final toast with the Homeland Security agents, and nervously awaited their arrival.
Throughout this ordeal, the lead agent had graciously allowed us to feel like we had control over the process. Receiving no formal request for the painting’s return, we felt we were repatriating of our own volition. Reading the necessary paperwork, however, there was no avoiding the terminology being used: seizure. It stung. We signed the paperwork, and then our beloved 400-year-old friend was unceremoniously wrapped in what looked like blankets and pillows from someone’s couch and put into the back of a nondescript vehicle.
Then she was gone.
