Sleeper Alert!
October 8 2021
Picture: Christie's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News has arrived that the following The Adoration of the Magi catalogued as by the 'Circle of Rembrandt' realised €860,000 (inc. commission) over its €10k - €15k estimate at Christie's Amsterdam on Wednesday. The literature notes indicate the picture was considered a Rembrandt in full until it was downgraded during the 1980s.
Mystery Room and Painting
October 7 2021
Picture: David Adler Archive
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A small fun piece of detective work this, the Country Houses of the UK and Ireland Facebook Group have posted the following photograph of an interior. Unfortunately, both the room and painting are unidentified and an academic is trying to track down the identity of both. If you happen to recognise the room or picture, do get in touch via. my email address above.
Update - The knowledge of the readers of AHN has prevailed once again! Mattia Biffis has been in touch to explain the painting seems to be Giuliano Bugiardini's portrait of Leonardo de' Ginori, c. 1528 held at the NGA in Washington D.C. Curiously, the provenance starts at the turn of the century, suggestion perhaps that this photograph is evidence of a previous unknown ownership (?)
Glasgow Acquires Genoese Van Dyck
October 7 2021
Picture: Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Brilliant news that the Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum have acquired Van Dyck's portrait of the Marchesa Lomellini.
According to the article linked above:
Painted during the artist’s six years in Italy between 1621 and 1627, it features a young Marchesa Lomellini, a member of the noble Lomellini family of Genoa, and is the first van Dyck to enter the city’s collection.
The artwork comes from the collection of Sir Ilay Mark Campbell, 7th Baronet of Succouth (1927-2017) and Lady Campbell.
She and her family offered the painting to the Glasgow Museums Collection, which is cared for by the charity Glasgow Life, as part of the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme, administered by the Arts Council on behalf of the UK Government.
The acceptance of the work from the collection of Sir Ilay and Lady Campbell settled £2,450,000 of tax.
The painting will be on display from 18th November 2021.
Allen Memorial Art Museum Acquires Garzoni Miniature
October 7 2021
Picture: PM & Co
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Apologies, I missed this piece of news from September that the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Ohio has acquired Giovanna Garzoni's miniature portrait of Zaga Christ (pictured). The work was acquired from the London dealers Philip Mould & Co with funds raised by donors of the museum.
According to the museum's director Andria Derstine:
The acquisition of this important miniature expands the Allen’s ability to tell vital stories about race, gender, and cultural exchange in the early modern period. We are excited by the new connections and interpretations it makes possible.
Yale Center Seeks Identity of Black Child in Painting
October 7 2021
Picture: TAN
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Art Newspaper have published an interesting piece of research being undertaken by the Yale Center for British Art Studies into the identity of a black child. The boy appears in A portrait of Elihu Yale with Members of His Family and an Enslaved Child (around 1719), attributed to John Verelst, from the center's collection.
According to the article:
Homing in on the depiction of the enslaved child, the YCBA’s research team enlisted a pediatrician to estimate the boy’s likely age, which was determined to be around 10, says Martin. Drawing on records from the early 1700s, the curatorial investigators note that it was then routine to ship boys of African descent under 10 years of age to Britain to serve as domestic servants in affluent households. The child would probably have served as a so-called page in the household of one of the men depicted.
Regularly readers might remember this brief story I published last October, showing results from a similar piece research into a seventeenth century picture from Warwick Castle.
MBS Spends more on Leonardo than Newcastle United
October 7 2021
Picture: Christie's / Newcastle United
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I was bemused to see that some of the English Press have been pointing out that Newcastle United's new prospective owner Mohammed bin Salman spent more money on buying Leonardo's Salvator Mundi than the Premier League Football Club Newcastle United. The club is set to be purchased in a £305m deal whilst the painting was purchased for £342m (inc. commission) at Christie's in 2017. A rather interesting comparison that puts things into perspective, I suppose.
Hunting for Butterflies at the Galleria Carlo Orsi
October 7 2021
Picture: Galleria Carlo Orsi
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Galleria Carlo Orsi in Milan have recently opened a curious sounding exhibition on the reasons that people collect works of art. A caccia di Farfalle. Lo spirito del collezionista (Hunting for Butterflys - The Spirit of a Collector) features works by Pompeo Batoni (Lucca, 1708 - Roma, 1787) (pictured) Lorenzo di Credi (Firenze, 1456/1459 - 1536) and Giorgio Gandini del Grano (Parma, inizi XVI secolo - 1538) and reflects on themes such as joys, obstacles, stumbles, passions, loves and mistakes.
Although the exhibition will run only till 5th November 2021 the exhibition catalogue has been published online for free (in Italian).
MET Conserve Cosway's Mrs. Dalrymple
October 6 2021
Picture: MET
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Conservators of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have recently restored Richard Cosway's portrait of Marianne Dorothy Harland (1759–1785), Later Mrs. William Dalrymple.
According to the museum's catalogue note:
When this portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1779, an art critic decried Cosway’s “painful and minute attention to little Circumstances,” which gave his work “a coxcomical and ridiculous air.” Indeed, the painting does reveal Cosway’s minute attention to the furnishing of a fashionable, feminine interior, emphasizing such features as the dressing table bearing a pincushion, scent bottles, and powder puff.
Here is what the picture looked like before conservation treatment:
Old Master Drawings at the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis
October 6 2021
Picture: @museunacionalsoaresdosreis
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis in Porto, Portugal, has recently opened their latest exhibition Drawings by European Masters in Portuguese Collections. The exhibition contains 100 works loaned from private and national collections including 'the only Leonardo existing in Portugal'.
The show will run until 31st December 2021.
First Reviews of Poussin Exhibition
October 6 2021
Video: The National Gallery, London
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The first reviews have arrived for the National Gallery's upcoming exhibition Poussin and the Dance.
The Guardian's Jonathan Jones has given the show 5/5 stars, expressing that:
The National Gallery has cracked art’s most elitist code. Its liberating new exhibition unleashes a Poussin who is human, passionate and high on ancient history. This it achieves with a razor-sharp focus on his first 10 years living in Rome and feasting on its pleasures.
Alaistair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph has gone the other way giving the show a mere 2/5 stars, explaining:
Well, check out these wild and naughty pagan pictures filled with drunkenness and dacing and sex: they demonstrate that Poussin, as a young man at least, could let his hair down. For all his formality, Poussin was also "fun". I'm not buying it (...) But if this exhibition makes him come off as anything, it is as a colossal nerd.
Laura Freeman in The Times is more positive:
Poussin, the classicist’s classicist, has a reputation for chilliness, for pictures more intellectual than instinctive, for a certain Latin-primer formality. Not so, say the curators who have borrowed more than 20 paintings and drawings that show Poussin at his riotous, bibulous best. You know how millennials talk about going out-out? Well, this is Poussin out-out, Poussin in his toga glad-rags, Poussin on the town with “the lads”, the lads being Bacchus, Silenus and that old goat-god Pan. This is the Poussin of satyrs and maenads, of boozy putti and Priapic worship.
The exhibition runs from 9th October 2021 till 2nd January 2022.
Bonhams October Sale
October 6 2021
Picture: Bonhams
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Bonhams London have uploaded their October Old Master Paintings sale online. The auction will take place on 26th October 2021.
As usual with these mid-range sales, there are many interesting and curious pictures available with very tempting prices. I won't spoil the fun by pointing any out in particular!
Arnold Houbraken text Translated and Digitized
October 6 2021
Picture: abebooks
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
CODART (Dutch and Flemish Art Curators Network) has shared news that the RKD (Netherland's Institute for Art History) have translated into English and digitized Arnold Houbraken's Groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en -schilderessen. This important eighteenth century text, which provides a history of Dutch painters, will feature on the RKD's Study Series. The online publication will be celebrated with a lecture (in Dutch) on 14th October 2021.
Sotheby's Reveal another Botticelli
October 6 2021
Video: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Sotheby's New York have announced that they will be offering a late work by Sandro Botticelli in their January 2022 sale. The work will be consigned with an estimate "in excess of $40 million."
According to the press release:
Executed in the late 15th/early 16th century, The Man of Sorrows is a masterful late period work by the artist, when Botticelli was greatly influenced by the fanatical Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola and adopted a style characterized by Christian symbolism and visionary spirituality. The portrait of the resurrected Christ reveals an important coda to Botticelli’s well-known earlier career, while also encapsulating the artist’s singular style with a stunningly modern and human portrayal of Christ.
...
The Man of Sorrows was first recorded in the collection of Mrs. Adelaide Kemble Sartoris (1814-1879), a famed English opera singer, who along with her husband, were two influential socialites in Victorian England and in Rome. The painting descended in the family to Adelaide’s great granddaughter, Lady Cunynghame, who sold it at auction in 1963 for £10,000 ($28,000). Since then, it has remained in the same distinguished private collection, practically unseen until its recent inclusion in the major monographic exhibition devoted to the Florentine master at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt in 2009–2010.
The picture will be toured around the globe, including stopping in at Hong Kong, Dubai, Los Angeles and London, before the sale in January.
The Dulwich Picture Gallery are Hiring!
October 1 2021
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Dulwich Picture Gallery in London are hiring a Curator.
According to the job description:
MAIN DUTIES
• To bring innovation and excitement to Dulwich Picture Gallery, drawing public attention and developing new audiences through innovative displays, exhibitions and interpretation;
• To work with The Sackler Director, Deputy Director and Senior Leadership Team to maximise the Gallery’s unique potential – its building, art, gardens, people and location.
• To take responsibility for the planning, supervision, delivery, documentation and monitoring of conservation care, display, loans and storage to the highest collection management standards.
• To develop and deliver partnerships to further the understanding and reach of the Collection through active networking, publication, lecturing, and communications.
• To act as an ambassador for the Gallery, and to contribute to fund-raising and income-generation activities.
The salary on offer is between £41,000 - £55,000 and applications must be in by 18th October 2021.
Good luck if you're applying!
'Remember Me' at the Rijksmuseum
October 1 2021
Picture: The Rijksmuseum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Rijksmuseum have a new exhibition of Renaissance Portraits at the moment. Remember Me: Stories about Portraiture in the Renaissance focuses on nine themes including Ambition, Admire Me, Pray for Me, This is Me, Learned, Authority, Cherish Me and Down the Generations.
The Guardian have picked up the story that the show contains some of the earliest European portraits of African men. The article suggests that recent political events have had an impact on how curators of the museum have approached the subject.
Artemisia at the Wadsworth Atheneum
October 1 2021
Picture: @TheWadsworth
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut opened their latest exhibition By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artist in Italy, 1500-1800 yesterday.
According to the blurb on their website:
Women artists played a vibrant yet overlooked role in Italy around 1600. The first exhibition solely dedicated to Italian women artists at the Wadsworth, By Her Hand explores how important women artists succeeded in the male-dominated art world of the time. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–after 1654), one of the most fascinating seventeenth-century Italian painters, takes center stage.
The Wadsworth’s Self-Portrait as a Lute Player is compared with a related painting from the National Gallery, London—a rare opportunity to see these paintings side by side. Gentileschi’s pioneering depictions of strong women, such as her Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes from the Detroit Institute of Arts, will also be on view.
Beyond Gentileschi, the accomplishments of a diverse and dynamic group—from the court painter Sofonisba Anguissola (1532–1625), to the Venetian pastel artist Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757), among other talented and virtually unknown Italian women artists—are introduced and celebrated.
The show will close on 9th January 2022.
Did Rubens Paint This? 'AI' Says No
September 27 2021
Picture: The National Gallery, London
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Guardian published a rather bizarre story yesterday regarding claims made by a Swiss company called AI Recognition that AI software has decided that Rubens did not paint The National Gallery's Samson and Delilah (pictured). The claims were brought forward by the 'scientist co-founder' Dr Carina Popovici who says that their complex algorithm has decided with a 91.78% accuracy that Rubens did not paint the picture.
The article has quoted the art historian Dr Katarzyna Krzyżagórska-Pisarek who has also expressed doubts about the work:
The significance of this new AI method of authentication is potentially groundbreaking. Devoid of human subjectivity, emotion and commercial interests, the software is coldly objective and scientifically accurate. Many questionable works were attributed to Rubens at the beginning of the 20th century… There is today a distinct need for more reliable methods of connoisseurship.
As Bendor has pointed out on Twitter, this story shows that "computers still don't understand how artists worked. And probably never will".
If readers would like to read a serious text explaining the authorship to Rubens, then here's the National Gallery's 1983 Technical Bulletin which provides all the details you'll need.
CLASS SOCIETY: Everyday Life as Seen by Dutch Masters
September 27 2021
Picture: Hamburger Kunsthalle
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Hamburger Kunsthalle will be opening their latest exhibition on Dutch seventeenth century paintings in November. CLASS SOCIETY Everyday Life as Seen by Dutch Masters will include works by the likes of Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch and Gerard ter Borch, Jan Steen, David Teniers and include a modern response from artists Stefan Marx and Lars Eidinger.
According to the gallery's website:
With Class Society. Everyday Life as Seen by Dutch Masters, scheduled from 26 November 2021 to 27 March 2022, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is devoting a comprehensive show comprising some 150 works – paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and videos – to a chapter of an extremely multifaceted epoch of European art history. The exhibition is primarily based on the Hamburger Kunsthalle’s superb holdings of Dutch 17-th century paintings, which at the same time are the main emphasis of the museum’s Old Masters Collection and are meant to be acknowledged accordingly with this show. Another essential part of the presentation is dedicated to overarching aspects and, based on socio-cultural developments and political factors, it draws up a characteristic image of Dutch society in the 17th century that the selected artists seem to have portrayed in their paintings.
Beyond this, the exhibition evaluates the representations on display according to socio-critical issues of the 21st century and thus links them to our own everyday reality. The art of the Old Masters, as well as the context it was created in, often appear far removed from current debate, as their original intention seemingly has nothing in common with the complex contexts and topics concerning our society today. The exhibition wants to break with these prejudices by discussing controversial theses.
The show will run from 26th November 2021 - 27th March 2022.
NGV Acquire Lavinia Fontana
September 27 2021
Picture: NGV
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Australia have acquired Lavinia Fontana's The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine. This painting, dating to c.1575, is the earliest painting by a woman in the gallery's collection. It is one of three paintings that Fontana made of this scene before her marriage in 1577, a period when she seemed to have favoured subjects of strong women from history and biblical tales. The work was previously with the dealers Callisto Fine Arts and was presented to the NGV by the Felton bequest.
Sleeper Alert!
September 24 2021
Picture: Weschler's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News on Twitter (via. @auctionradar) that the following 'Manner of Rembrandt' realised $225,000 (hammer price) over its $1k estimate at Weschler's in Maryland. One imagines the new owner is hoping that their new purchase is this very picture that appeared in a Rembrandt catalogue raisonné during the early twentieth-century.
