Previous Posts: entries 2023
A Hirst fake?
July 15 2022
Picture: via The Times
In The Times, David Sanderson has an interesting story about a Damien Hirst spot print said to by its owner to be a fake, and by its vendor - Sotheby's - to be genuine. In 2004, the novelist Ken Follett bought the print at auction for £4,000. He hung it on his wall cheerfully for almost 20 years until he had it reframed, but when the framer contacted Eyestorm, a gallery which produced Hirst's spot prints, it was suggested it might be fake. When Eyestorm then got in touch with Hirst's own company, Science Ltd, to get an official view of authenticity, they said it was indeed a fake. From The Times:
The email from the employee claims: “The design has all of the incorrect spots typically seen in fake editions, and the paper borders and material are not consistent with those originally produced by Eyestorm.“We don’t have this edition recorded in our old system, so I’m inclined to think that Sotheby’s never sent it to us for authentication at the time of sale, which is a shame.”
Not so fast, say Sotheby's, who requested the print back for examination, and then themselves got in touch with Science Ltd:
“Since a query was raised earlier this year Sotheby’s has undertaken appropriate due diligence to verify that this is an authentic piece by the artist and further to these inquiries is satisfied with the 2004 designation.”
All of which sounds unsatisfactory. Who is right? One of the great appeals of contemporary art for collectors is supposed to be that questions of authenticity never arise. But when you get artworks which are produced in such numbers, and with so little direct connection to the hand of the artist, then such confusion is probably inevitable. Add in fakes, because the 'original' is so easy to fake, then the dividing lines become almost impossibly blurred. Perhaps the most concerning thing here is that both parties could be right, or rather, wrong. In other words, nobody can be certain, even now while the artist is still alive and within twenty years of the artwork being sold. I wouldn't be wanting to try and sell these things in 50 years time.
Van Gogh self-portrait discovery in Scotland
July 14 2022
Video: NGS
Exciting news at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, where they've discovered a previously unknown Van Gogh self-portrait on the back of his Head of a Peasant Woman. The self-portrait was hidden beneath backing board and glue, and found when conservator Lesley Stevenson took an x-ray in preparation for their forthcoming exhibition Taste for Impressionisn. It was painted at a time when Van Gogh was more than usually hard up for materials, and making studies of peasant figures for his famous painting, the Potato Eaters.
The NGS say they are going to investigate whether it is possible to remove the backing board without damaging the picture beneath. I suspect it is, but will of course take time. If I had to guess from the photo above, I'd say the self-portrait is probably unfinished. If they can reveal it, it will only be the second Van Gogh self-portrait in public ownership in the UK. Unless of course we find another one - I'm sure the National Gallery in London will be x-raying their own Van Gogh Head of a Peasant Woman very soon.
More here, and you can see a high-res image of the x-ray here.
National Trust unveils its Clandon plans (ctd.)
July 11 2022
Video: National Trust
Last week, on the morning of the Prime Minister's departure, the National Trust unveiled its plans for Clandon Park, the 18th Century palladian house gutted by fire in 2015. And its not quite what we were expecting.
In 2016, the Trust announced they would restore the state rooms on the ground floor, and leave the upper floors as flexible space. Which, as I wrote at the time, seemed like a sensible compromise between restoration and recreation. As the Trust said then:
Given their historic and cultural significance, and the fact so many original features have survived, we believe we should restore the magnificent state rooms on the ground floor – the most architecturally important and beautiful rooms.
The Trust's video setting out this plan has since been deleted. And now, however, the Trust has said it will only leave one room in its original state, the Speaker’s Parlour, which survived the fire largely intact. The house will instead be left in its fire damaged state, as part of a new visitor experience to apparently demonstrate how such houses were built, or as the Trust says, "offering people a unique ‘X ray view’ of how country houses were made”. Consequently, the magnificent marble hall will not be restored, but left as you see it in the photo below left.
From Harriet Sherwood's coverage in The Guardian:
Plans by the National Trust, which has owned the Grade I-listed house since 1956, will allow visitors to see the “raw power and poetic beauty” of the building after the flames stripped away panelling and plasterwork and brought down floors, said Kent Rawlinson, the project director.
The external walls and windows of the building near Guildford, Surrey, will be restored by heritage craftspeople, but the interior will be largely conserved in its fire-damage state.
Once the work is complete, in about five years, a series of interior walkways and roof lights will allow visitors to view the shell of the house up close and from new angles.
I think this is very disappointing. First, and most worryingly, the Trust’s primary purpose is to preserve the properties it has in its care. Its slogan is, ‘forever, for everyone’. But the decision not to restore the house, or at least part of it, means they’re turning their back on the ‘forever’ part. It represents a committed departure from the Trust seeing preservation and conservation as its most important role. Instead, the primary concern is to create what visitors are deemed to want to see.
Secondly, it appears the decision is being driven primarily by cost. I’m not sure quite why, but the house was under-insured. The £65m settlement the Trust received from its insurers is not enough to cover a proper restoration. The cost of the current plan will be met by the payout, but also from the Trust's reserves (which, during the pandemic, Trust management refused to dip into in order to avoid sacking so many staff). So far, the Trust has confirmed to me that all the £65m will be spent at Clandon, but not that it will all be spent on the building and contents itself.
I find the idea that the Clandon plan is a good way ‘to learn about how these houses were built’ to be quite childish. It should be possible to learn how houses are built without leaving them a ruin. In any case, we are not short of county house ruins in Britain. And what better way could we learn about how such houses were built than in trying to recreate them, by rediscovering and preserving the skills 18th Century craftsmen and women would have used in the 18th Century?
Will Trust members and visitors welcome the new Clandon? Personally, I think the idea of standing in a burnt out shell feels grim - a form of heritage rubbernecking - and will soon lose its novelty. Who would want to go back to Clandon for a nice day out, and spend money in the tea room and gift shop, once they’ve seen it?
But the most depressing part of all this is that it seems to me not enough questions are being asked as to how the Trust let this all happen. What lessons are being learned? Has, for example, the Trust overhauled its insurance policies, to fully cover the cost of reinstatement at all its properties? Because surely the really important thing is that it never happens again.
Let me know what you think.
Update - a reader writes:
The decision by the Trust to abandon what Pevsener called “one of the most important early Palladian rooms in England” and what Simon Jenkins, ex-chairman of the National Trust, described as “one of the great rooms of early Georgian England” should not be left unchallenged.
The importance of the Marble Hall at Clandon was recognised by the Trust itself in 2017 when it revealed its initial restoration plans and to do a U-turn after seven long years is incredibly disappointing to all lovers of architecture, beauty and social history.
The real question is ‘why' and the Trust needs to urgently issue a statement to clarify its decision making, There are at least four competing theories:
Reason 1 - the house speaks. The official line, per the glossy PR film issued by the Trust, seems to suggest that after 7 years everyone suddenly realised on reflection that the story of the house was best told if it was left as a ruin. As you say, it is a childish rationale and does not offer 'unique opportunities to tell stories', whatever the Trust says. Witley Court, Nymans, Seaton Delavel plus dozens of English Heritage buildings are all presented in a partially ruined state. There is no need for another.
Reason 2 - there is nothing left to restore. The pre-prepared responses from the NT Twitter feed take a different view, They say that insufficient historic fabric survived to complete a decent reconstruction yet in 2017 their website said ”Given their historic and cultural significance, and the fact so many original features have survived, we believe we should restore the magnificent state rooms on the ground floor”. How can both views be true?
Reason 3 - follow the money. Your research indicates that insufficient insurance may be the reason for the volte face. If this is the case then why hasn’t the Trust mentioned this in their announcements to date?
Reason 4 - decolonisation. Clandon has historic links to the slave trade and Jenkins mentions “putti and slaves in deep relief’ on the stucco ceiling of the Marble Hall. Is it possible that the idea of recreating something with these associations was simply too difficult for the Trust to contemplate? If this is thecae, then what precedent does it set?
As a local resident, I have kept a keen eye on Clandon and despite a number of requests there has still been no inventory of items lost or saved following the fire. It is as if the Trust has simply lost interest in the house.
Contrast the current spin and lack of ambition with the response of the Trust to the fire at Uppark in 1989. Nearly 4,000 dustbins were filled with the fragmentary remains of the all the principal rooms and four years later the house re-opened, The effort galvanised the community, enabled lost crafts to be re-learned, and the house today tells its story far better than if it had been left as a ruin.
Given the critical spotlight cast on the Trust in recent years, it seems to me that the Clandon fiasco is another own goal. It does nothing to assuage those who believe that the Trust is increasingly ashamed of the buildings in its care.
Many good points. What I also find surprising is how the Trust made its U-turn without any wider public or membership consultation.
New Eric Ravilious film (ctd.)
July 11 2022
Video: via You Tube
It's in cinemas now, and above is the trailer. More here.
Hockney's life drawings at Bath
July 11 2022
Picture: Holburne Museum
I like the look of the new exhibition at the Holburne Museum in Bath, devoted to life rawings by David Hockney. I think he's one of the greatest portrait draughtsmen in British art. In the FT, Jackie Wulschlager is similarly impressed:
There is no surface that David Hockney cannot capture in a few strokes: a café table crawling with ants in Luxor; sun-bleached, sharp-angled modernist facades on a Los Angeles boulevard; a French provincial hotel’s parquet floor illuminated as light falls across ornamental iron balcony railings. Jowly ageing poets — W H Auden, Stephen Spender — resemble weathered cliff faces. The exuberance of London restaurateur Peter Langan bursts out through his busy kitchen worktop — lobster, colander, grater, wine glass.
The show runs till 18th September.
How much do museums make from NFTs? (ctd.)
July 11 2022
Picture: Uffizi
The answer goes from 'not much' to 'none at all' - further to my earlier post about how little the Uffizi made from the sale of its €240,000 Michelangelo NFT (just €70,000), Gareth Harris and Ben Munster in The Art Newspaper report the Italian government has now stepped into stop the practice, citing concern over the way the contracts have been drawn up, especially the allowance for a €100,000 'production fee'. Which is a lot, for a jpeg.
Re-framing Segantini
July 7 2022
Picture: via The Frame Blog
On the Frame Blog, Lynn Roberts has news of a not entirely successful re-framing of the Getty Museum's 1897 painting Spring in the Alps by Giovanni Segantini. The new frame is the plain white one, below. The trouble is, the gold frame (top) was designed by the artist himself. Lynn is not impressed:
This seems an astonishing misdirection of the spectator away from the artist’s work and intentions. Collectors in the past have often reframed the pieces they have bought or inherited as a way of imprinting their ownership on them, or marrying them with other works in their galleries, or as part of the redecoration and updating of an interior which has descended from an older generation [3], but a better, less subjective and more historically enlightened approach must be expected today of the world’s major museums.
New Nathaniel Bacon discovery
July 7 2022
Picture: Burlington Magazine
The latest Burlington Magazine has an article on a very important new discovery by Karen Hearn, of a portrait by the 17th Century artist Sir Nathaniel Bacon. The portrait is of his wife Jane, Lady Bacon, and is currently in Government House, Sydney. Bacon was an amateur painter and enthusiastic gardener, as you can see in the background of the portrait, showing the garden at his house, Brome Hall. More here.
Graffiti in Saenredam
July 7 2022
Video: National Gallery
Here's National Gallery curator Justine Rinnooy Kan discussing why someone vandalising the interior of a church in Saenredam's painting Interior of the Buurkerk at Utrecht.
London Old Master sales
July 7 2022
Picture: Christie's
I was hoping to see the Old Master sales in London, but couldn't get there, thanks to the 'rona. But I watched them online, alongside rolling news coverage of Boris Johnson's pleasingly agonising demise. Sotheby's evening sale made only £7m, which isn't far off some day sale totals. The top lot was a £1.18m Brueghel the Younger. But we should remember they hived off several strong pictures for their Jubilee sale, including; a £730k Constable cloud study, a £2.3m Bonington, and a £1.9m Millais. So we can bump Sotheby's overall OMP total up to about £13m. They also sold a fine Canaletto drawing for £400k. Their total suffered a bit from the large Van de Velde not selling at £4m-£6m. In 2012, it made £5.3m. In Sotheby's Day sale, the lovely David Martin self-portrait I highlighted a few weeks ago made £113k, against an estimate of £20k-£30k.
Before anyone says, 'ha - Old Masters are sinking!', Christie's sold their fine Van Dyck Portrait of a Monk (above) for £3.38m. In 2011 it made £713k. Christie's total was £28m. Other top lots included a £9.4m Cranach the Elder Nymph, and a Rembrandt print made £1.4m. A copy of a Caravaggio's Cardsharps made £264k - this is the picture which was subject of a £6m lawsuit over claims it was by Caravaggio himself. A £3m-£4m Turner of Heidelberg, with a Rainbow bought in. A picture which soared away, and which looks like one of those pictures which might reset the market, was a Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger Portrait of a Lady, at £567k.
Apologies...
July 5 2022
...for the poor service lately, Covid has visited us again. Not me, my wife. This new variant is quite unpleasant, I'd recommend keeping clear of it. More tomorrow.
Some talks
July 2 2022
Picture: Society of Antiquaries, Mary Tudor by Hans Eworth
Here are some art history talks over the next few days you might be interested in, either in person or online.
July 5th, 1-2pm, art historian Hope Walker will be speaking on Hans Eworth, Mary Tudor's court artist. At the Society of Antiquaries, and online, details here.
July 6th, 6.30-7.30pm, the director of the new Eric Ravilious documentary, Margy Kinmouth, will be talking about how the film was made. Details here.
July 7th, 12.45-1.30pm, art historian Carla van de Puttelaar will speak on Scottish portraiture from 1644-1714, in particular David and John Scougall. At the National Gallery of Scotland or online. Details here.
Brexit and the art market (ctd.)
July 2 2022
Picture: Apollo
In 2008 the UK art market was almost as large as America's - the UK had 34% of the global market, the US 35%. Now, however, the UK's share has fallen to 17%. What's happened? Many things, but predictably Brexit has been a major impact since 2016. What can be done? In Apollo, Jane Morris looks at the continuing impact of Brexit on the shrinking UK market, and concludes that some urgent action is required:
Experts say the UK could reduce the rate of import VAT on art to zero, in line with Hong Kong and New York: it is administratively simple and would flag a determination to smooth trade. Flawed European legislation, such as the artist’s resale right and importation of cultural goods rules, could be revisited and improved. Art businesses could be included in government plans for freeports, from which they are currently and inexplicably excluded. It could even be made easier for major collectors to bring the artworks they already own into their UK homes, or exempt certain art transactions from capital gains tax using tax breaks similar to the ‘like-kind’ schemes in the United States.
All of which would certainly help. But as regular readers of AHN will know, they were all on the wish list of art market Brexiters back in 2016, who looked at many of the things which frustrated them about the UK art market, and thought Europe was to blame. But the government took no action on things like the artist's resale right, because it would have implemented it anyway, seeing more votes (or rather, headlines) by appealing to artists rather than art dealers. And if an import Vat cut hasn't happened yet, I'm afraid it is unlikely to happen now. In a cost of living crisis, which government is going to cut the price of paintings, over the price of food?
The simple fact is, the art market doesn't register high enough on the government's radar. We know it wasn't even on the radar when the government began negotiating the Brexit deal back in 2017. And more recently, the decision to exclude art from those new freeports ministers are so keen to shout about was deliberate - because they didn't want to be accused of benefiting rich collectors storing art in tax shelters.
So I'm afraid we'll see the UK art market continue to suffer from Brexit, in a slow, death-by-a-thousand-cuts way, just like the rest of the UK economy. Meanwhile, we will see France take a greater share of the European market, while the big modern and contemporary sales will increasingly coalesce around Asia and the US. I'm sorry to be so gloomy about it, but I see no other outcome.
No one wants the Villa Aurora? (ctd.)
July 1 2022
The "€470m" villa in Rome with a fresco by Caravaggio, Villa Aurora, has failed to find a buyer for the third time of asking, this time with a reserve of €226m. More here in The Times.
NFTs, meet cliff
June 30 2022
Picture: Non-Fungible, chart showing overall NFT sales in USD
If NFT mania isn't quite entirely dead, it's at least sitting anxiously on a trolley in A&E. Yesterday, Bloomberg declared NFT sales to be 'tanking', having 'fallen off a cliff'. The backdrop is the crash in cryptocurrencies. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is down 2/3 from its peak, and Ethereum (used to trade NFTs) is down more, 77%.
In the Wall Street Journal, Kelly Crow looks at a recent sale of NFTs at Christie's, which totalled $1.6m, noting that:
... the house has only sold $4.6 million in NFT art so far this year including Tuesday’s sale. Last year, it sold nearly $150 million worth of NFTs.
Nicole Sales, Christie’s business director of digital art sales, said collectors are sifting the best digital artists from the rest, consolidating around a canon more likely to survive the tumult of the broader cryptocurrency markets. “It’s about the art now, not the speculators,” she said.
That last quote is reflected across the NFT industry as it tries to put a brave face on everything falling apart; the crash is good, they say, because nobody liked making all that money, and now we can focus on shitty pixelated cats instead.
Meanwhile, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has made a late entry into the NFT game, with the website La Collection, who, regular readers will know, also sell the British Museums NFTs. But while the BM is still trying to offload Jpegs of their Hokusai prints for $150,000, the MFA Boston is starting at a more cautious $314, with sales explicitly linked to fundraising to conserve works of art by Monet at Degas. Which feels a more sensible way of doing it than the BM's naked cash grab. Gradually, I feel we're working our way to a place where NFTs might make some sense.
One of La Collection's pitches is that “NFT ownership allows for your assets to exist in perpetuity.” But on Rightclicksave.com, Jason Bailey explains that for many, the idea of NFT security is an illusion:
Many NFT collectors are living under a potentially devastating misapprehension — that their NFTs exist fully on the blockchain and are therefore safe. The reality is that the artwork and metadata for roughly 90% of NFTs are not stored on the blockchain. Typically the token itself lives “on chain” and links out to the art, metadata, and other assets “off chain.”[...]
There is no way to sugarcoat this: NFTs on private servers (~40% of all NFTs) are doomed and there is nothing one can do, as a collector, to save them. When a marketplace mints a new NFT and creates a permanent link from the token on the blockchain to an image stored on their private server, the collector has zero control over what happens to the image.
It gets worse. Because NFT marketplaces are essentially tech startups and, statistically speaking, 90% of tech startups fail, 50% in the first five years, when these marketplaces do fail, they also shut down their private servers, at which point your images disappear and your NFT permanently points to nothing.
Jason is offering a new service to help people back up their NFTs, which sounds like a sensible thing to do. But probably the most sensible thing is to not to buy one right now, until at least the dust settles.
London Art Week
June 29 2022
Video: LAW
I'm heading to London this weekend to see the Old Master sales, and will also look in on some of the dealers exhibiting as part of London Art Week. It's a good event, most of the galleries have special exhibitions on, and if you're lucky, there might be a free canapé or two. You can see who's exhibiting here.
Things that have caught my eye include, the above portrait of Mrs Margaret Smith by George Romney, at Libson & Yarker, which is about as good as Romney half-length portraits get, the sort of thing you might expect to see in the Frick Collection. And my friend Miles Wynn Cato has a number of new discoveries, including works by Thomas Gainsborough, and the below fascinating life portrait of John Locke, done in pastel in 1696 by his friend Dr Alexander Geekie, and unrecorded since 1727.
Save Omai!
June 29 2022
Picture: NPG
A group of historians and art world luminaries have called on the government to do more to prevent Joshua Reynolds' Portrait of Omai from being exported from the UK. The list includes David Olusaga and the former arts minister Lord Vaizey. The picture was export stopped three months ago, with a figure of £50m required as a matching offer. The question now is whether there is any sign of a bid being made, which would justify a further three month stop.
I don't know, but I would assume the call for government help is being made because no institution has felt able to fundraise such an enormous sum. The picture was sold at Sotheby's in 2001 from Castle Howard for £10m. So it is now valued at five times as much, which doubtless reflects both the evolution of the art market, and rising interest in depictions of non-white subjects in western art. It may sound like a steep rise, but I think it's probably a fair valuation. Reading between the lines of the original DCMS press notice on the painting, it has not been sold, rather the owner - said to the Irish billionaire, John Magnier - has applied to export it.
Of course it would be wonderful if the painting could be bought by a UK public institution. But £50m is surely out of reach of UK museums, especially at times like this. More here from James Pickford and George Parker in the FT, and read the text of the letter here.
Tefaf robbery
June 28 2022
Video: via YouTube
Robbers have targeted a jewellery stand at Tefaf in Maastricht. Two of the gang, of four, have been apprehended. The fair was closed for a while, but reopened. More here in the Antiques Trade Gazette.
When I used to man stands at fairs like Tefaf, one of the ways we'd pass the time was to plan the perfect heist in the jewellery section. But I don't remember ever planning it like these guys did, just smashing cases with a hammer, and walking out. What morons.
By the way, anyone who's been to Tefaf will recognise the behaviour of the calm gentleman sitting on the bench throughout the raid - the type of collector who will under no circumstances be dissuaded from enjoying their complimentary glass of champagne.
Derby Museums' £1m endowment
June 28 2022
Picture: ArtFund
One of my favourite museums, Derby Museums, has raised a £1m endowment to help support its operations in the long term. The fundraising operation, in times like this, was a very impressive feat for a UK regional museum - AHN says many congratulations! More here.
Bonhams' buying spree (ctd.)
June 28 2022
Picture: Bonhams
The UK auction house Bonhams has been buying up regional international auction houses, and the latest acquisition is Cornette de Saint Cyr in Paris. It will now be known as Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr. This is in addition to Bonhams buying Skinner in Boston, Bukowskis in Stockholm, and Bruun Rasmussen in Copenhagen. Bonhams was bought by a UK private equity firm in 2018. It's interesting to see how they're expanding internationally, but not necessarily in the UK. More here.
