Burlington Magazine - October 2023
October 3 2023
Picture: burlington.org.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The front page of October's edition of The Burlington Magazine focuses on the rediscovery of a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi in the Royal Collection (mentioned in a post below), and contains a fine extended piece on the research behind this extraordinary reappearance.
Alongside the Artemisia text are the following articles in October's edition:
A new attribution to Giovanni Bellini: the ‘Virgin and Child’ in Pag - BY BEATRICE TANZI
Rediscovered drawings by Bartolomeo Spani for sculpture and goldsmithery - BY MARCELLO CALOGERO
Girodet’s ‘Coriolanus taking leave of his family’ rediscovered - BY AARON WILE
Paolo Portoghesi (1931–2023) - BY ANDREW HOPKINS
John Newman (1936–2023) - BY SIMON BRADLEY
The National Trust buy back a Kauffman in a No Reserve sale!
October 2 2023
Picture: bbc.co.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Interesting news that The National Trust have acquired Angelica Kauffman's Penelope awakened by Euryclea with the news of Ulysses' Return in Christie's New York's May 'REMASTERED: OLD MASTERS FROM THE COLLECTION OF J.E. SAFRA - SELLING WITHOUT RESERVE.' The painting, which eventually sold for $214,200 over its estimate $150,000 – 250,000, has been bought back for Stourhead, the country house of the Hoare family who sold the artwork back in 1883.
The BBC linked article above quotes the National Trust cultural heritage curator Stephen Ponder:
He said it was "a rare opportunity to acquire the painting for public benefit and return it for display and interpretation".
"With so little time available, I hardly dared hope that we might be able to find the funding and make a successful bid to bring the painting back to Stourhead," he added.
Mr Ponder said seeing it for the first time was "a very exciting moment" and "one of the highlights of his career".
This seems to be a rare and good example of how UK cultural and heritage organisations can be nimble footed when it comes to raising money to purchase works at auction, rather than through dealers at a later date (with added premiums on top, quite often).
Discover the Rare and Unknown in 17th Century Dutch Art with Koetser Gallery
October 2 2023
Picture: tefaf.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) have published a short video with the Koester Gallery, Zurich, regarding a charming Adriaen Coorte still life the dealers had on their stand at Maastricht earlier this year. The video is a part of TEFAF’s Meet the Experts series, which I'll continue to post as and when they are put online.
Free Lecture on Emma Sandys
October 2 2023
Picture: Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
For anyone passing Birmingham this weekend, the Pre-Raphaelite Society is hosting its Founder's Day Lecture on Saturday 7th October. This free lecture will be about the female artist Emma Sandys: The Drama of Womanhood and will be delivered by Dr. Serena Trowbridge.
According to the blurb on the society's website:
Emma, sister of the more famous Frederick, is rarely the focus of study, but her portraits of women from literature, myth and history offer a way into considering her approach to Pre-Raphaelite painting. The women Sandys depicted seen to resist a conventional interpretation, their eyes evading the viewer not through modesty but disinterest or preoccupation, their expressions often enigmatic or even challenging. In many of her painting, Sandys offers covert clues to her women's identity (an issue often further confused by the different titles used for the works), using symbolism, setting and facial expression. This illustrated lecture offers new readings of some of her paintings, and a look at some rarely-seen works by Sandys.
Dr. Serena Trowbridge is Chair of the Pre-Raphaelite Society, Senior Vice-President of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, and Reader in Victorian Literature at Birmingham City University. She has published widely on Pre-Raphaelite art and literature, and is currently working on 'Forgotten Women Pre-Raphaelites' (university of Delaware Press, 2024) and 'Pre-Raphaelite Women's Writing' (Routledge, 2025).
Although the lecture is free to attend, booking is essential.
Turning Heads at KMSKA
October 2 2023
Picture: kmska.be
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) will soon be opening their first major exhibition since the museum's reopening. TURNING HEADS BRUEGEL, RUBENS AND REMBRANDT will be a celebration of head studies and has been organised in collaboration with the National Gallery of Ireland.
According to the museum's website:
Interest in the tronie, the old Dutch word for ‘face’ surged in the 17th century, when artists like Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer poured their talent into painting the human face. The results are often small, but stunningly painted, drawn or engraved: intimate works that bring us closer to the artist than ever. Never before has the genre been covered so comprehensively. Turning Heads at the KMSKA brings together no fewer than 76 of the most eloquent masterpieces from Belgian and international collections.
The show will open on 20 October 2023 and close on 21 January 2024.
Lecture: Painting Conservation at Knole
September 29 2023
Picture: The National Trust
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Some readers might be able to make this fascinating lecture next week. Conservator Melanie Caldwell will be giving a talk next Tuesday 3rd October entitled Framing Knole, which focuses on recent campaigns to conserve and restore paintings at this important property.
According to the Trust's website:
Paintings Conservator Melanie Caldwell will talk about projects undertaken on paintings at Knole, including the Grotesque scheme in the Cartoon Gallery, the early Portrait of Sir Ralph Bosville from around 1600 and Sir Joshua Reynold’s Portrait of Huang Ya Dong.
Tickets cost a mere £7.
Raphael drawing at the Dorotheum
September 29 2023
Picture: dorotheum.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Art Newspaper have shared the news that the Dorotheum in Vienna will be offering a rediscovered drawing by Raphael on 25th October. The drawing relates to the Battle of the Milvian Bridge fresco which is in the Vatican’s papal apartments.
According to the article:
On the back of the sheet are drawings by Raphael’s assistant, Polidoro da Caravaggio, which were probably executed later. Dorotheum says that Paul Joannides, an emeritus professor of history of art at Cambridge University, has endorsed the attributions for both Raphael and Polidoro da Caravaggio.
The drawing will be offered with an estimate of €400,000 to €600,000.
Master Discoveries at Sotheby's New York
September 29 2023
Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Sotheby's New York have rebranded their mid-season online sales this year as 'Discoveries'. There are Discovery sales across all categories, including Contemporary Discoveries, Modern Discoveries and Master Discoveries. The latter, which contains the Old Masters and a large bulk of nineteenth century pictures, is as wide ranging as ever, and continues the path of re-thinking the traditional lot order arrangement (see this post for more on that).
Bidding for Master Discoveries closes on 6th October 2023.
Rijksmuseum places Olaf Photograph next to Verspronck
September 29 2023
Picture: Rijksmuseum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam have hung a photograph by the late Erwin Olaf next to Johannes Verspronck's Portrait of a Girl in Blue in their main galleries this week. This gesture was made in honour of the photographer who died unexpectedly last week at the age of 64.
Rijksmuseum director Taco Dibbits was quoted in 2018 as saying:
"Erwin Olaf is one of the most important photographers of the last quarter of the 20th century. His work is strongly rooted in the visual tradition of Dutch art and history."
Christie's Celebrating 50 Years in Amsterdam
September 29 2023
Christie's are celebrating 50 years of Christie's Amsterdam with a special auction entitled Made in Holland. This cross-category sale is full of works of art from different periods which are all interspersed.* Amongst the highlights of Old Masters featured within is the following Still Life by Jan Davidsz. de Heem (pictured), which happens to be one of the earliest recorded works by the artist and is estimated at 40,000 - 60,000 euros.
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* As cross-category online sales are becoming ever more popular, this format has opened up the question as to whether specially curated lot orders matter anymore. Does it matter in an online sale to have Old Masters grouped together, or ordered by national school and period? Is it good to have nineteenth century and much later works be interspersed with everything? Does this approach help encourage buyers of different categories to have a go at bidding in different categories? Or is it all just a bit confusing?
All opinions are welcome, and published anonymously!
The Kimbell Art Museum acquires Gainsborough's 'Going to Market'
September 29 2023
Picture: kimbellart.org
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Kimbell Art Museum has announced its acquisition of Thomas Gainsborough's Going to Market, Early Morning. Painted in c.1773, the work was heralded by the scholar John Hayes as ‘among the most exquisitely painted of all Gainsborough’s works’. Regular followers of auctions will remember that the painting was sold for £7.9m (inc. premium) at Sotheby's London in 2019. The picture was acquired by the museum through dealers Simon Dickinson Ltd.
According to the museum's website:
Going to Market, Early Morning represents a particularly poignant addition to the Kimbell’s collection as the museum’s year-long 50th Anniversary celebration draws to a close. The painting elevates the Kimbell’s holdings of eighteenth-century British painting, a fitting tribute to the British paintings that museum founders Kay and Velma Kimbell favored when originally building the Kimbell Art Foundation’s collection. Among them were two delightful and representative early paintings by Gainsborough, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly of the Lloyd Family (c. 1750) and Suffolk Landscape (mid-1750s), both acquired by the Kimbell Art Foundation in the 1940s. The larger scale and striking visual impression of the newly acquired painting complement the Kimbell’s full-scale portraits by Reynolds, Romney, and Raeburn.
Free Conference: John Michael Wright | New Perspectives and Directions
September 28 2023
Picture: nationalgalleries.org
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Galleries of Scotland are hosting a conference on the seventeenth-century artist John Michael Wright (1617–1694). This free conference will be held in Edinburgh on Thursday 26th October 2023. Booking through the website is essential to secure a place.
A list of the presentations and panels:
Panel 1 - Beginnings: Influences and Environments
David AHB Taylor (Independent): Pictor Scotus: John Michael Wright and Scotland
Molly Ingham (University of Edinburgh): Covert Catholicism: John Michael Wright and the British Catholic Experience
Maria Hayward (University of Southampton): ‘elegant and richly dressed’: Exploring Fashion and Fabrics in the Female portraiture of John Michael Wright
Panel 2 - Identity: Selfhood and Society
Kate Anderson (National Galleries of Scotland): ‘Nothing can repair my loss’: Death, Mourning and Memorialisation in the Portraits of John Michael Wright PAUL MELLON CENTRE for Studies in British Art
Karen Hearn (University College London): ‘I could not hinder my self from making it curious and full of variety…’: John Michael Wright’s Portraits of the Bagot Family, 1675-6
Matthew Augustine (University of St Andrews) and Steven Zwicker (Washington University in St Louis): Patrons, Portraits and the Fashioning of Identity: John Michael Wright beyond the Restoration Court
Panel 3 - Practice: Approaches and Associations
Helen Pearce (University of Aberdeen): John Michael Wright: Prints and Proof(s)?
James Loxley (University of Edinburgh): The Literary Connections of John Michael Wright
Catriona Murray (University of Edinburgh): Childish Things: Children and Material Culture in the Work of John Michael Wright
Panel 4 - Endings: Reception and Relationships
Carol Richardson (University of Edinburgh): Courtier, Designer and Propagandist: John Michael Wright and the 1687 Embassy to Rome
Adam Morton (Newcastle University): Promoting Religion by Means of Arts? Anti-Catholicism, Catholic Culture and John Michael Wright
Jane Eade (National Trust): The Artist and his Nephew: New Evidence from Sale Inventories
Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800 - in Baltimore
September 28 2023
Picture: Baltimore Museum of Art
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Baltimore Museum of Art is set to open their latest exhibition on 1st October 2023 entitled Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800.
As the museum's blurb explains:
Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800, the BMA’s much anticipated major exhibition opening October 1, 2023, aims to correct these broadly held but mistaken beliefs through more than 200 works of diverse media and scale. From royal portraits and devotional sculptures to embroidered objects, tapestries, costumes, wax sculptures, metalwork, ceramics, graphic arts, furniture, and more, Making Her Mark will feature objects from the 15th to 18th centuries that reflect the multifaceted and often overlooked ways that women contributed to the visual arts of Europe.
The exhibition’s focus on displaying exclusively objects made by women or toward which women contributed their labor distinguishes this project by putting women makers of all social levels in conversation with each other through their works.
Examples by artistic heroines such as Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Leyster, Luisa Roldán, Rosalba Carriera, Rachel Ruysch, and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun will join exceptional products of female artisanal collectives and talented amateurs who operated outside of the male-dominated professional arena and often remained anonymous in the historical record. Further, sublime examples of ceramics, metalwork, and cabinetmaking from this era will reflect women’s involvement in major manufactories and workshops.
The show will run until 7th January 2024.
What will happen to Birmingham's treasures?
September 28 2023
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
There is much speculation in the press currently regarding whether Birmingham Council will safeguard its historic collection of art from asset stripping in wake of its bankruptcy and £87m deficit for the years 2023-24. Cultural organisations are rallying to encourage administrators to preserve and protect collections and historic assets kept in sites such as the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Aston Hall (pictured) and the Library of Birmingham. It is hoped that the actions of Croydon and Northampton Councils, who sold off publicly owned works of art in 2013 and 2014 respectively to find money for other projects, won't set a precedent for this particular case.
The Royal Collection rediscovers a lost Artemisia
September 28 2023
Video: The Royal Collection Trust
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Royal Collection have been sweeping the internet recently with the exciting news that they have rediscovered an important work by Artemisia Gentileschi. The work, which was misattributed several centuries ago, was created during the 1630s when Artemisia was working alongside her father Orazio in London for King Charles I.
This recently conserved painting will be on view at Windsor Castle in a special display focusing on its rediscovery alongside other works by the artist and her father in the Royal Collection.
Mary Beale Sleeper! and less significant news...
September 28 2023
Picture: the-saleroom.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Lisbon that the following Portrait of a Gentleman with a Hat realised an impressive 37,000 euros on Monday over its 1,500 estimate. Catalogued as ‘Flemish School, 17th century’, the bidders for this sleeper knew that this was in fact a beautiful head study by Mary Beale (1633-1699), one of England’s most accomplished female artists of the seventeenth-century. There is little doubt that it depicts Mary’s husband Charles, and relates to another fur-hat portrait which is in the McMaster Museum of Art in Ontario, Canada. Beale’s head studies of her family remain the most sensitive and highly regarded in her oeuvre, and this example looks right up there in terms of quality and beauty.
It just so happens that I spotted this painting in an old sales catalogue back in April, and had posted it on my Instagram account as one of those lost treasures I hoped would reappear one day. Curiously, the portrait was sold at Christie’s New York in 1989 as a portrait by Jacob van Oost in full, a period when very few in the art world were thinking about what a Mary Beale looked like. It seems that coincidences do happen, and browsing through old sales catalogues for misattributions is always a fruitful and educational experience. I’m sure the painting will reappear somewhere interesting in due course.
Of less notable news is that I am very happily returning to my post as co-editor of this fine blog. I’ve had the great honour the past year and a half of cataloguing paintings in the Old Master Department at Sotheby’s, but have recently decided to return to this varied life where I can devote more time to enthusing for our corner of the art world. I’ll be continuing as a consultant at the auction house, which will give me the freedom to write here (open and honestly) and pursue projects elsewhere. It seems that an awful lot has been happening over the past few months, so it’s about time I got going!
As ever, all comments and suggestions are most welcome!
Apologies (ctd.)
February 17 2023
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I'm deep in book writing purdah!
Update - Further apologies for the long silence. One of the problems, and pleasures, of book writing is that it takes up all your mental energy. Or it does mine, anyway. The book by the way is a history of British art, out next year!
New York Old Master sales (ctd.)
February 6 2023
Picture: Sotheby's
I've been meaning to write something about the Old Master auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's in New York. The Van Dyck I liked so much made $3m. Eileen Kinsella has pretty much all the news covered on ArtNet:
The latest round of Old Master sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s marked the most robust in recent seasons, bolstered by top-notch private collection offerings (each house could boast a “white glove” sale), museum interest, and to an increasing extent, fresh interest from new buyers, both crossing over from other collecting categories or bubbling up from new pockets of regional interest around the world.
Christie’s pulled in $62.8 million on Wednesday with an offering of roughly 75 works with no-reserve prices, from the fully-sold collection of J.E. Safra ($18.5 million) and the main Old Masters sale ($44.2 million).
Yesterday, Sotheby’s took in a hefty total of $86.6 million for a main Old Master auction that realized $28.8 million, as well as a “white glove” or 100 percent sold offering of the prestigious Fisch Davidson collection that brought in $49.6 million for 10 lots alone, and was the highest-earning individual auction of the week. Yet another Sotheby’s single owner sale of Dutch paintings from the Theiline Schumann collection added $8 million to the total.
It's nice to see some positive news coverage about the Old Master market for a change. I added up the sale totals from both Christie's and Sotheby's major Old Master sales in New York over the last five years, and it does indeed look like the figures from last week show an upward trend. Although a caveat here is that Christie's keep moved their sale around quite bit, partly affected by the pandemic. Sotheby's sales were all in January.
- 2023 Christie’s (Jan) $64.5m Sotheby's $91m Total $155.5m
- 2022 Christie’s (June) $35.1m Sotheby’s $98.6m Total $133.7m
- 2021 Christie’s (April) $20.8m Sotheby’s $122m Total $142.8m
- 2020 Christie’s (Oct) $26.1m Sotheby’s $70.7m Total $96.8m
- 2019 Christie’s (May) $48.3m Sotheby’s $64m Total $112.3m
I also heard positive things from Old Master dealers at the Winter Show fair at the Armoury. That said, I doubt we can expect the 'Old Masters are in decline' narrative to shift from media outlets like the New York Times anytime soon. The NYT has not reported on the sale results, despite its very gloomy pre-sale assessment, here.
As regular readers will know, in my view the comparison with the contemporary art market is unfair. That sector is dominated by buying as speculation, and even within the contemporary market, there are areas of success and failure, against which the plodding reliability of Old Masters can be made to look attractive. Compare the Old Master sales to NFTs, for example, and you could present a very different view of the merits of investing in old art versus new.
There is one other point that needs to be made about the Old Master market, and this concerns estimates. I keep seeing reports that Old Master sales were 'lacklustre' or 'muted', because prices did not soar away above estimates. But this misunderstands the purpose of estimates these days. As a guide to what a sale will make overall, they are pointless. Estimates are part of the selling process, not an unbiased view of a picture's value. They represent the constant balance auctioneers have to strike between seller's expectations and buyer's appetites.
For example, the Rubens sold by Sotheby's in New York from the Fisch Davidson collection made $23.5m hammer price, and $26.9m with premium. But the estimate was $25m-$35m. So most observers might say, it failed to live up to expectations. But that's wrong, for the very high estimate itself represented a record for a Rubens of this kind, and would have been part of the auction houses' marketing, when it came to finding an irrevocable bidder (which is how this picture was sold). Imagine trying to persuade someone to place a pre-sale irrevocable bid on a painting before a sale if the estimate is low, as a way of getting potential bidders interested. Now, you might say, that's an unorthodox way to sell a picture. But remember, a sale is a sale. The days of auction houses simply taking items from a consignor, putting them on a wall, and waiting for buyers to come along and bid are long gone - and that's true even in the contemporary world, where the whole process of guarantees comes from.
Similarly, I've seen it reported that Christie's offering of the Safra collection of Old Masters was 'fell short of expectations', because it made only $14.7m total hammer price ($18.5m with fees), against a pre-sale estimate of $19.2m-$28.8m. However, the Safra sale was a 'no reserve' sale, which meant that in theory the Turner estimated at $1.5m could sell for $1. In other words, in this case, the estimates were designed to reflect the potential bargains on offer, so that potential bidders could see a $1.5m Turner, and think that buying it for anything less than $1.5m was bargain. If the Old Master market really was in decline, then having a sale with no reserves would have exposed that. Instead, everything sold pretty well.
By my count, 574 works in the Old Master category (not including drawings) were sold in the New York sales. It was the first time since 2015 that Christie's had their sales in the same week as Sotheby's. You could say that saturating the market with such a large number of works in one sale week represented a risk to the Old Master sector. And yet they all made solid prices. There's life in this market yet.
Fred Terna (1923-2022)
February 6 2023
Picture: Fred Terna, via NYT
The New York Times has an obituary of a remarkable artist, Fred Terna, who survived no less than four Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. What he saw in the Holocaust dominated his paintings, including 'Ascent in Fire' (above), painted in 2003. You can see more of Terna's work here.
Who was the 'Master of the Countess of Warwick'?
February 5 2023
Picture: Duke of Bedford
In the later 16th Century there was an artist active in England who painted portraits in a distinctive style, but whose name has eluded us. They came to be known as 'the Master of the Countess of Warwick' after a portrait of the Countess of Warwick at Woburn Abbey (above) became the 'type' name for a group of portraits suggested by Roy Strong as all coming from the same hand. Now, an exhibition of this artist's work has been assembled at Compton Verney, and, from documentation, a name has been suggested as to who this 'Master' might be; Arnold Derickson. I had always hoped it would turn out to be a 'Mistress'.
In the Guardian, Jonathan Jones reviews the show and gives it glowing praise. The show runs until 7th May, and you can find booking details here. There is mention of a catalogue, but I can find no further details on either how to order it, or the curators involved in this exciting work of art historical detection.
The Master's/Derickson's style is quite identifiable; polished noses, tight lips, and somewhat buggy eyes. They quite often surface without any attribution at all. We found a nice one, of Mary Tichborne, when I was working for Philip Mould & Co (who I see are sponsoring the Compton Verney show). This portrait of Sir Richard Hawkins (below) in the collection of the National Maritime Museum is also, in my opinion, by him.
