Previous Posts: articles 2018
Van Gogh still life to be auctioned
September 28 2014
Picture: FT
One of Van Gogh's final still life paintings is to be sold at Sotheby's in New York in November, where it is estimated to sell for up to $50m. More here in the FT.
National Gallery membership launched
September 25 2014
Video: National Gallery
The National Gallery in London has launched a new Membership scheme. Regular readers may remember that I first revealed this back in April 2014. The above feel-good video doesn't tell you what you get for your £50, but the 'exclusive benefits' promised are these:
Free exhibition entry Enjoy free, unlimited entry to all exhibitions
Exclusive events Experience the Gallery away from the crowds through our exciting programme of Members' events, including private views of exhibitions and talks with curators and experts
Special offers Take advantage of a range of discounts and offers available for Members in the Gallery shops, cafés and Dining Rooms
Members' website Browse your online Membership magazine featuring exclusive interviews, films and articles, and find out about forthcoming events and offers
Members' e-news Stay up to date with all that’s happening at the Gallery, along with the latest offers and events direct to your inbox.
Some news reports have said membership will allow you to 'beat the queues'. This isn't really the case, and you still have to get a timed ticket. You do though get a free bag. You can join here.
The National Gallery has also released details of its forthcoming exhibitions, which include:
Inventing Impressionism 4 March – 31 May 2015
Soundscapes: Listening to Paintings 8 July – 6 September 2015
Goya: The Portraits 7 October 2015 – 10 January 2016
I'll say it now; Goya is probably the most over-rated portraitist in the history of western art.
Update - a reader writes:
Whilst I am pleased that the NG now has a membership group, I am sorry that, like a numbe of other institutions, it has failed to institute a category of life membership. For the many people who are worried about the widely documented unreliability of Direct Debit, and the tiresomeness of annual renewal, this is surely the best option to support such an institution. Most others of comparable stature are willing to accept a lump sum to cover life membership; the fact that the NG is not suggest that they are not entirely serious about the whole enterprise.
Update II - another reader writes:
Oh, the ghost of Robert Hughes is going to come and haunt you for that dismissive opinion !!
Cleaning Leonardo's 'Adoration of the Magi'
September 24 2014
Pictures: Opficio delle Pietre Dure
The Art Newspaper alerts me to the conservation of Leonardo's unfinished work of 1481, The Adoration of the Magi. The picture, which is in the Uffizi in Florence, has been cleaned of some of its uppermost layers of dirt and old varnish by Florence's conservation institute, the Opficio delle Pietre Dure.
The picture already appears to have more depth to it, especially in the sky, trees and areas such as the archway underneath the stairs. As you can see in the picture above, a number of details are now more visible than before. Below is the picture pre-conservation (see a high-res version here).
Another gain is the presence of a blue wash in the sky, which had appeared yellow thanks to the old varnish.
The cleaning job is so far only partly done, as revealed by the (for now odd-looking) areas where the old surface layers are still visible. The image below shows the group of figures around the staircase seen in UV light. The darker greeny/blue areas are where the old varnish layers are still intact.
In the normally lit image below, you can see how murky the figures look compared with the crisp sharpness of the now-cleaned architecture. Cleaning the figures will be the hard part, as they'll be much more vulnerable to any solvents.
There's a good selection of photos of the cleaned areas on the OPD's website here.
Update - the website ArtTrav has an interview with one of the conservation team here.
Cleaning Elizabeth I
September 23 2014
Video: NPG
Great video here from the National Portrait Gallery, where conservator Sophie Plender discusses cleaning the 'Phoenix' portrait of Elizabeth I. The end result looks fantastic (you can see it in the new 'Real Tudors' exhibition I mentioned yesterday). Congratulations to Sophie and all involved.
Guffwatch
September 23 2014
Audio: Alison Carlier/Jerwood drawing prize
Roll up everyone, for here perhaps is a Guffwatch to beat all Guffwatches. From the BBC:
A sound piece, lasting 75 seconds, has won a prestigious prize for drawing.
Adjectives, lines and marks, the winner of this year's £8,000 Jerwood Drawing Prize, will be exhibited alongside two other prize winners from this week.
Its creator, Alison Carlier, describes the piece as "an open-ended audio drawing" that offers "a spoken description of an unknown object".
Established in 1994, the Jerwood Drawing Prize is the UK's largest annual open exhibition for drawing.
It is the first time an artwork consisting solely of sound has won the top prize in its 20-year history.
The extract Carlier reads aloud describes a "hard, red, brown" Roman pot found in the London borough of Southwark.
Its source is a reference book on Roman excavations in south London held by the Museum of London.
Yes, that's right: someone has won eight thousand quid just by having the chutzpah to read out a few lines from an old book, and enter the recording into a drawing prize. Absurdism has reached a new level. What next? Could I enter the Nobel prize for literature with a well-cooked steak?
To understand how a sound piece became 'a drawing', we must look to the guffy criteria of the Jerwood prize, as set out by one of the judges, Gavin Delahunty, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at Dallas Museum:
“The shortlist is made up of those artists who knew how to embrace, or indeed reject, the manifold approaches to drawing that exist today. Naturally such a process of selection is always a subjective exercise grown out of the different visual and intellectual sensibilities of the jury. This vital tension between the judges ensured that the final selection went beyond any singular voice or tendency delivering a superb and surprising group of “drawings” for exhibition and commendation.”
Here we have a classic construct of Guff-ism; the need, because people don't know what else to say, to make every statement a contradiction. '...to embrace, or indeed reject...' We see this all the time in contemporary-speak: 'something constructive, but at the same time also destructive', and its primary purpose, as demonstrated again by Gavin, is to permit the creation of 'tension', another favourite old chestnut from the contemporary world.
Update - a reader writes:
I am speechless.
Another wonders where the money comes from for the prize. The good news is that none of it is public money.
Another reader writes:
[...] from my experience teaching it is this type of crap-speak that is being taught in the universities. The new generation unleashed on the public will all be "communicating" in this way.
Schama on MacGregor
September 23 2014
Picture: FT
In the Financial Times, Simon Schama, one of our great historians, interviews one of our great museum directors, Neil MacGregor, and looks at the British Museum's new 'Germany' exhibition. Well worth a click.
Wallace's 'Great Room' re-opens
September 22 2014
Video: BBC
I'm a big fan of seeing pictures in daylight, so it's great to see that the Wallace Collection's 'Great Room' is now open again, with a glass ceiling.
They still (judging from my most recent visit) have an aversion to dusting the frames at the Wallace though...
Update - Waldemar doesn't approve of the hang:
They took the roof off. They opened up some windows in the ceiling. They commissioned an acreage of gorgeous red damask. They managed somehow to make the space appear twice as big. All this works. I’m less sure about the hang. The finest Wallace pictures are here — the Rembrandts, the Van Dycks, the Velazquezes and, of course, Frans Hals’s Laughing Cavalier — but instead of grouping them according to national schools or matching genres, the Wallace has scattered them about the new gallery by following a pattern of tenuous connections.
Thus, Lawrence’s posh portrait of George IV, from 1822, is hanging next to Van Dyck’s moody self-portrait as the shepherd Paris, from c1628, solely because Sir Richard Wallace intended once to give the picture to George IV, then changed his mind when the king predeceased him. Is that really a good enough reason to disrupt chronology this much?
I thought the pictures also looked overcrowded in a busy two-tier hang. Fewer connections, better spacing would be my doctor’s orders.
Want to run the National Gallery?
September 22 2014
Picture: BBC
Then click here for the candidate brief. This is what you need:
Experience
• A recognised and established leader in the art world with an international reputation for excellence and an outstanding record of achievement.
• Expert knowledge of The National Gallery’s collection probably with experience gained in museums or academia.
• Management experience gained in a major institution, with a track record of motivating staff, managing performance and delivering change.
• A proven ambassador with experience of successfully persuading and influencing a range of audiences, including funders.
Attributes
• A passionate advocate for the role of old master painting in the modern world with the ability to communicate this passion widely.
• The ability to lead with wisdom, imagination and energy.
• A strategic thinker with a clear vision for the future of the National Gallery and the ability to provide direction whilst encouraging entrepreneurship, spontaneity and creativity in others.
• An exceptional communicator with the ability to inspire staff, engage supporters and excite partners; the ability to build relationships of trust and strength through diplomacy and persuasion.
• The ability to manage financial, operational and commercial activities including meeting ambitious targets for both income generation and efficiencies.
• The ability to demonstrate confidence, resilience and effectiveness in a high profile role; an impressive leader who can handle demanding organisational and political contexts well.
• A practical, inclusive and open management style with the ability to generate confidence, build teams, take difficult decisions and deliver change.
Applications close 6th October.
De-accession time in Delaware (ctd.)
September 22 2014
Picture: DIA
I've been covering (most recently here) the disastrous way the Delaware Art Museum has gone about selling some of its collection to plug a financial black hole. Now, the director of the Detroit Institute of Arts which has (though through no fault of its own) the mother of all black holes to fill, has written this stinging riposte to Delaware's activities. In the DIA's newsletter, Graham Beal [above] writes:
There are those who assert that selling a couple of works to save the institution is a reasonable thing to do, as has come up in the Detroit bankruptcy case. But a sudden influx of cash to address a financial bind doesn't solve anything.
Recently, there has been a lot in the press about the Delaware Art Museum's determination to sell as many as three of its most notable artworks to pay off debts incurred through an ambitious expansion about a decade ago. The first, William Holman Hunt's Pot of Basil, has already been sold.
While hardly a household name, Hunt was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of young painters who, in 1848, challenged the British art establishment with a vision entirely at odds with accepted practices. Because their brightly colored, meticulously detailed style was also at odds with most forms of modernism, their fall from prominence was precipitous and long- lasting. Now they are back in fashion with a vengeance and the Delaware trustees hoped to get $8 million out of the painting -- almost half the debt. It sold for $4 million, probably creating the need to sell more than the two already assigned for sale: a Winslow Homer painting and an Alexander Calder sculpture.
The museum and the community are being stripped of their masterpieces -- its very reason for being. The debt may be satisfied but patrons may be scared away and a new shadow cast over the museum.
A few years ago, rather than address the structural problems causing annual operational deficits, the National Academy of Design (NAD) -- the oldest art museum in the country founded by some of the nation's most important artists -- sold two paintings, one given by an original member!
There were alternatives that would have entailed sacrifice. But selling art did not solve the [Manhattan museum's] problem, and a few weeks ago, the NAD let go a significant portion of its staff.
In the Great Depression, the DIA remained open and staffed, largely thanks to the secret support of Edsel Ford. The City of Detroit arts commissioners could have sold the van Gogh self-portrait, Matisse's The Window, Ruisdael's Jewish Cemetery, or even Breugel's Wedding Dance, but the thought never seems to have crossed anyone's mind.
And if they had, not only would we not have them today, we would not have been given much of the art that came from private donors or the financial contributions that enabled so many purchases. Why give to a museum that, in times of crisis, converts your treasured donation into cash to make up for failed fundraising, bad management or poor fiduciary judgment?
Commendable stuff.
Art Detective strikes again (ctd.)
September 22 2014
Picture: Your Paintings/ Bury Art Museum
Sharp-eyed Art Detective specialist Barbara Bryant has spotted the above portrait of the 14th Earl of Derby (the first man to be Prime Minister on three seperate occasions) sans attribution at Bury Art Museum. She has identified the portrait with an engraving after Henry Perronet Briggs, and presumably the Bury picture must be that exhibited by Briggs at the Royal Academy in 1839. You can see more discussion about the discovery here.
I'm especially pleased to see this discovery because I'm a bit of a Derby anorak. I wrote my PhD on Derby's son, the 15th Earl, who was Foreign Secretary under both his father and Benjamin Disraeli. I also own a marble bust of the 14th Earl by Matthew Noble, which is on display at the House of Commons. The last time I saw it, many years ago, someone had stuck a piece of chewing gum up his nostril.
Mr Turner (ctd.)
September 22 2014
The ArtFund has an interesting interview with Timothy Spall, the actor who plays Turner in Mike Leigh's forthcoming biopic. Here, he tells about the fateful day he heard he got the part, and how he learned painting for two years to prepare:
One day in 2010 I was walking down Maiden Lane, where JMW Turner was born, and I went into this pub [the Porterhouse] for a quick pint, and I saw Turner’s name on a plaque. So I phoned Mike Leigh because about seven years before he’d mentioned that he was thinking about doing something about Turner, and thought I might be right for it. So I left a message saying I was sitting right under where he was born. I was about to go home when I got a call asking me to come to his office, where he said: ‘Untitled 2013 is going to be the film about Turner I mentioned. I want you to play him, and I want you to start painting.’
You always spend a lot of time working on a character, but preparing for Mr Turner is the most I’ve ever done. They found me a wonderful teacher, Tim Wright, who was absolutely brilliant. His portrait of me is in the BP Portrait Award exhibition [at the National Portrait Gallery until 21 September]. I had two years of lessons. We did life drawing, still life, speed drawing, working in ink, watercolour and then oils. I did about 300 images in all, including maybe 10 quite large watercolours and oils, culminating in a full-size copy of Snow Storm – Steam Boat off a Harbour’s Edge, which is just so wonderful. Even having studied it so closely, it’s still one of my favourite paintings. Look at it, and you can tell that he was on that deck, you can see he went to the top of that mast. You know he was there.
Help buy William Blake's cottage
September 22 2014
Picture: Guardian
The Blake Society is trying to buy the cottage where William Blake lived in Sussex between 1800 and 1803. They need to raise £520,000 by 31st October. More here.
'The Real Tudors'
September 22 2014
Picture: Society of Antiquaries, London; Mary I by Hans Eworth.
A new display at the National Portrait Gallery in London sounds interesting; 'The Real Tudors', says the NPG;
[...] allows visitors to rediscover the well-known Tudor monarchs through the most complete presentation of their portraiture staged to date.
Works from the Gallery’s Collection are presented alongside exceptional loans and a prized possession of each monarch, as well as recent research undertaken as part of the Making Art in Tudor Britain project, to help visitors understand how and why such images were made. The search for a ‘real’ portrait of Lady Jane Grey in the sixteenth century is also explored through the display of a commemorative portrait of Jane that dates from the Elizabethan period.
Following its London run The Real Tudors: Kings and Queens Rediscovered will form the core of a larger exhibition organised in partnership with Réunion des Musées Nationaux – Grand Palais at the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, in 2015.
The show closes 1st March 2015. More here, and a review by Alastair Smart in the Telegraph here.
Will computers replace art historians?
September 22 2014
Picture: The Prisoner
In the Financial Times, I looked into the question of whether computers will soon replace art historians, following on from the recent research published by Rutgers University in the US. You can read the article here, or listen to the podcast here.
Constable Vs. Turner (ctd.)
September 22 2014
Video: ArtFund
The V&A and Tate are showing exhibitions on Constable and Turner. In this ArtFund video, art historian Jacky Klein looks at who is better. She plumps for Constable in the end.
Update - Mark Lawson has also written about the two artists here in The New Statesman.
Update II - a reader writes:
Regarding Constable and Turner the former was the greater painter and the latter the greater artist.
A similar statement was made I believe regarding Picasso and Matisse.
Nice distinction.
Not Van Dyck at Downton?
September 22 2014
Picture: ITV
Downton Abbey is back for its latest series, and very enjoyable it is too. I've noticed a couple of times in the press that mention is made of Highclere Castle's (where the series is filmed) 'Van Dyck' of Charles I on horseback with M. de St Antoine, seen above. The latest is in the Daily Express, where cast member Kevin Doyle tells how the cast and crew take extra care around the picture, which is reportedly valued at £17m. Highclere Castle's own website also calls the picture 'Van Dyck'. I have never seen the picture in the flesh, but it is very clearly listed as a copy in Sir Oliver Millar's catalogue raisonne of Van Dyck's English period works. The original is here, in the Royal Collection.
Millar lists a number of copies after Van Dyck at Highclere, including a detail of the large portrait of Charles I's five children, which you can see just by Carson's head in the photo above.
Newly discovered Wtewael on show in London
September 22 2014
Picture: National Gallery
A newly discovered painting by Joachim Wtewael has gone on display at the National Gallery in London. The picture, a Raising of Lazarus painted c.1605-10, had lain unnoticed and without attribution at Wycombe Museum in Buckinghamshire, until it was suggested by a specialist at Bonhams that Wtewael might be the artist. The picture was then sent to the National Gallery for cleaning, and it will now be on show there for ten years. You can see a pre-restoration image here, on Your Paintings.
The picture is 'Painting of the Month' for October, and you can read more about the picture here.
I don't know who the Bonhams specialist was - well done whoever you are!
It's Referendum Day
September 17 2014
Video: BBC
Today we're going to the polls here in Scotland to vote on whether the country should be independent. As I said before, I'll be voting 'no'. But my prediction is that 'yes' will win, just.
Anyone wanting to know something of the history behind all this can see the programme I made for the BBC above, on Bonnie Prince Charlie. It has been put onto YouTube in four 15 minute parts; part 1 is above, part 2 is here, 3 here and 4 here.
Update - going to bed now at midnight, and YouGov (the same pollsters who gave Yes a lead two weeks ago) have called it for No, 54% - 46%, citing a last minute shift. Great...
Update II - it's No! The UK is saved. But it will never be the same again. The Prime Minister has announced a raft of constitutional changes, including further devolution and a fundamental reform of the Westminster Parliament, which he wants completed before the next General Election in May 2015. It's all a bit last-minute, as we've come to expect.
Staff changes at AHN
September 9 2014
I'm pleased to announce that Art History News has a new Deputy Editor. She is very qualified for the job, being my daughter, but sadly cannot yet read or write, and her connoisseurship stretches only to being able to spot her cot, which she seems not to like. Please therefore excuse the lack of posts for a few days, while I train her up.
Update - many thanks indeed for all your kind emails.
Update II - her name is Gabriella.
Update III - Can I seek your further indulgence on paternity leave? I may have to take this week off too. I'm also a little distracted by the Scottish referendum (which I expect 'Yes' to win, just), and am working on what that means for the UK's art collections.
Italian Museums (ctd.)
September 4 2014
The Independent has more grim news from the Italian museum world; the Galleria Borghese's climate control system (which is, open the windows every now and then) has apparently caused Raphael's Deposition to 'warp'. But apparently the 'deformation in the painting ha[s] now been reduced'. So that's alright then.
But from Turin, there's better news, as the Galleria Sabauda is to be re-opened following refurbishment. But, reports The Spectator:
From 30 October, Leonardo’s drawings, including the famous sage-like self-portrait [above] and the drawing for the head of the angel in the Louvre’s ‘Virgin of the Rocks’, will go on permanent display in the Sala Leonardo, while drawings by other masters in the collection — including Raphael’s ‘Study of a Youth Playing the Lute’ — will be shown in the second vault. In December, with the reopening of the Galleria Sabauda, the Savoy paintings will go back on view. As well as works by Duccio, Fra Angelico, Mantegna, the Pollaiuolos, Filippino Lippi, Veronese and Orazio Gentileschi, the collection includes Netherlandish paintings by Van der Weyden, Van Eyck, Memling, Rembrandt, Brueghel and Rubens — among them a charming portrait by Van Dyck of the three children of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, sent by the English Queen to her sister Christine of Savoy.
I presume the Leonardo drawings won't actually be on 'permanent display', as they certainly shouldn't be (for conservation reasons). By way of comparison, the Albertina in Vienna only brings out Durer's famous 'Hare' only once every six years.
