Anne Dawson Damer
January 19 2023
Picture: Libson Yarker
London based dealers Lowell Libson and Jonny Yarker have a new catalogue out. It includes a rare bust by Anne Seymour Damer, of Caroline Campbell, above. They're currently exhibiting at the Winter Show at the Armoury in New York. More here.
Sarah Miriam Peale
January 19 2023
Picture: Christie's
There was an auction of 19th Century American pictures in the US today, among which a still life by Sarah Miriam Peale, 'considered [say Christie's] to be the first independent female professional artist in the United States', made $277,000, against an estimate of $40-$60k. The auction also saw a new record for a George Washington portrait by Charles Peale Polk, making $630,000 (est. $200k-$400k).
New York Old Master sales
January 16 2023
Video: Sotheby's
There are some fine pictures on offer at the New York Old Master sales. And not least because this year Christie's have moved their sales back to January to coincide with Sotheby's sales, having experimented with a Classic Week sale later in the Spring since 2016. (Very long-suffering readers may remember I wasn't convinced by the idea back then. Though, as is often the case these days, I'm embarrassed to see how I wrote about it).
Sotheby's have their usual Old Master part I & II sales, but also two dedicated collection sales (both 26th Jan): the Fisch Davidson collection, and the Theiline Scheumann collection. Sotheby's David Pollack discusses the latter in the above video. David is good at these, they should let him do more.
The Fisch Davidson sale includes the $25m-$35m Rubens of Salome and the head of John the Baptist, and a $4m-$6m Orazio Gentileschi of the Penitent Magdalene. It looks to me as if the entire sale has been guaranteed, at over $50m. If that guarantee has been underwritten by the auction house, and not a third party, itrepresents quite an investment by Sotheby's, as well as faith in the market; none of the estimates are what I would call 'enticing', they're all serious prices. The Rubens is labelled as a 'premium lot', which means if you want to bid on it, you have go through extra hoops to demonstrate you've got the cash.
In Sotheby's regular Old Master sale (26th Jan) they have a newly discovered late Titian, Ecce Homo, ($1.5m-$2m) which is unfinished and gives a great glimpse into Titian's technique towards the end of his life. If you're interested in the market for British art, there's two reassuringly expensive portraits to keep an eye on: a $200-$300k Peter Lely and a $400k-$600k Joshua Reynolds. By the way, it's 300 years since Reynolds was born.
The picture I'd most covet at Sotheby's is their previously unknown study of an old man by Van Dyck (above, $2m-$3m). It's from early in Van Dyck's career, about 1618-20, and relates to his series of pictures of St Jerome, in particular an example at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. Painted in oil on canvas, later laid onto panel, the study is an extraordinary example of Van Dyck's genius in handling oil paint, even at the age of 18, as well as his sensitivity to his subjects. In the finished picture of St Jerome, the same sitter appears with no less attention to detail, in terms of his age and the folds of his skin, but is nonetheless given the spiritual inner strength one would expect in such an important biblical figure. In the newly discovered study, however, we see merely an old man; dignified, yes, but pathetic too, as Van Dyck's brush explores unsparingly the details of his body. Incidentally, AHN has played a role in the emergence of this painting; over a decade ago, the painting's late owner, Albert Roberts, responded to an article I'd written on here about Van Dyck connoisseurship, and asked what I thought of his picture, which he'd bought in a minor auction for $600. I told him I thought it looked like a Van Dyck! And over the following years helped him get it established as such, including in an article in The Burlington Magazine by the Rev. Dr. Susan Barnes.
Sotheby's has some great 18th Century pastels in their drawing sale, including a basket of apples by Liotard estimated at $1.2m-$1.8m.
At Christie's (25th Jan), there's a $2.5m-$3.5m) Pieter Brueghel the Younger, a previously unknown Christ crowned with Thorns by Leonardo's pupil Marco D'Oggiono, and an impressive pair of portraits by Goya at $15m-$20m. A lost landscape by Watteau which surfaced in Paris at auction as just 'Ecole Francaise', despite having belonged to the Wildensteins as a known Watteau (and looted by Nazis during the war) is estimated at $2.5m-$3.5m, and testament to how even well known paintings can lose their attribution. If you're after a potential bargain, keep an eye on their J. E. Safra collection sale, which includes works like this Turner of The Splugen Pass estimated at $1.5m-$2m, but all being offered without reserve. So you never know... For some reason, the catalogue for Christie's day/online sale of Old Masters has not yet been published. Sotheby's part II is here.
Restoring the King Arthur tapestry
January 16 2023
Video: Met
At the Metropolitan Museum, they're restoring a series of c.1400 Netherlandish tapestries, the so-called 'Heroes' set. Some of them were once turned into curtains in the 19th Century, so they need some TLC. In the video above you can see the tapestries being cleaned, which involves hoses, and detergent. I sometimes wish we could clean paintings like that. Back in the day, I once read, they used to rub them (tapestries, not paintings) with breadcrumbs. More here.
Parthenon Marbles (ctd.)
January 15 2023
Picture: BG
It looks like the Parthenon Marbles are staying at the British Museum. There was some suggestion last year that the British Museum would effectively return the Marbles to Athens, after the BM began negotiations and talked of a 'Parthenon Partnership' with Greece. But in the last few days, the Greek Prime Minister has said there won't be such a deal, stressing that Greece cannot accept the BM retaining ownership of the Marbles.
On the face of it, it might look as if negotiations collapsed because the Greeks won't accept even formal title remaining with the BM, even if the Marbles themselves were to remain in Athens. But it seems clear from details that have emerged on the British side that what was being offered to Athens was far from anything like a long-term loan. First, there was a well-sourced report in Bloomberg that the BM was offering only 'a proportion of the Marbles sent to Athens on rotation over several years'. Then the UK Culture Secretary went on the airwaves not once but twice to say that in her view, and George Osborne's view, the Marbles 'belong here in the UK'. If you were the Greek government, given the domestic sensitivities in Greece over the Marbles, there's no way you'd concede the fundamental question of title in return for a partial loan over only some years. That would leave the British Museum looking like winners, and settle the issue forever, with not much left for Greece.
If you wanted to be cynical about it, you might think that was what the British Museum and/or the UK government knew would happen all along, but now at least it looks as if they have tried to be generous with the Greeks. Meanwhile, the British Museum continues to hide behind the 'we can't deaccession the Marbles because it's against the law' formula, without ever having the courage to request that the law be changed (as other UK museums have done). It's all very predictable really.
There's a good summary of where we are from Tom Seymour here in The Art Newspaper.
Van Gogh claims
January 15 2023
Picture: TAN
Two separate claims have been made against owners of Van Goghs, including a version of his Sunflowers. Martin Bailey has more in The Art Newspaper here.
Restoring Piero della Francesca's 'Nativity'
January 15 2023
Video: National Gallery
I've been meaning to write about the National Gallery's restoration of Piero della Francesca's Nativity. The picture's meaning had become somewhat lost under the usual combination of dirt and old varnish, but also thanks to some unfortunate old restoration, which involved shaving down the centre of the panel, to make it fit better. Now, a new filet of wood has been inserted into the centre and retouched to reincorporate it into the original, which means that details like the angel's eyes and Christ's hands now have their proper form. More crucially, some previously very obvious areas of damage, including the heads of two shepherds on the right, have been restored, and are no longer as distracting as they were. There was some rather unfortunate criticism of the quality of the restoration in the press, but when I went to see it just recently, I was extremely impressed. Restoring panel paintings is always difficult, because getting the texture right can be a great challenge. In this case, when I looked at the picture in various reflected lights, I couldn't see where the restoration began and ended. In the video above, Jill Dunkerton explains what she and colleagues at the NG did to the picture, for which they all deserve special praise. More here.
New Burlington Magazine
January 15 2023
Picture: Burlington
The January edition of the Burlington Magazine is all about Bronzino. Including, some new analysis of Art Gallery of New South Wales's version of Bronzino's Portrait of Cosimo I de Medici in armour, which appears to show it is the prime version.
Can NFTs make a comeback?
January 15 2023
Picture: Christie's
...ask Jane Morris in Apollo Magazine. You and I know the answer to this is of course no. At least, not back to the crazy heights of Beeple's $69m 'Everydays' at Christie's. But the article is worth reading, if only for this take from someone at Christie's:
But it’s a positive in the long run if it results in fewer people buying for pure investment.
I doubt that's what they say in the accounting department at Christie's, where, as far as I can see, there are no upcoming NFT auctions. Nor at Sotheby's.
By the way, I had a look for the promised 'virtual museum' which was touted by the poor sods who paid $69m for Beeple's jpeg. It still seems not to exist. Their earlier iteration of an online museum for Beeple, called B.20, is still available to visit, and still rubbish.
New Artemisia for MFA Boston
January 15 2023
Picture: MFA Boston
A small oil on copper of the Christ Child Sleeping by Artemisia Gentileschi has been acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It looks (from the catalogue entry) like it was bought privately through Christie's, from a collector who bought it in France in 2015. Back then, the auction estimate was EUR15-20k. As a signed and certainly attributable, it must now be very valuable. There's more of these small on copper examples out there, so keep your eyes peeled.
Hogarth at St Barts' hospital
January 15 2023
Picture: Guardian
William Hogarth's large wall paintings at St Bart's hospital in London are to be restored, as part of a £5m lottery grant. From what I've seen of Hogarth's large-scale works, they tend not to be a success; let's see if a bit of TLC can improve them. More here.
London Old Master sales (ctd.)
December 24 2022
Picture: Sotheby's
I promised a review of the London Old Master sales, but it's taken me a while, apologies. The first thing is, I should probably title this post, 'Brexit and the Art Market', because the story of the sales wasn't so much the art, as the economics.
Regular readers will know I began warning about the effects of Brexit on the UK art market back in 2016. And sadly, many of my fears have come to pass. The number of pictures on offer in the London sales tells the story; normally, Christie's would have their two downstairs rooms open for Day Sale pictures, but this time only the smaller room was open. At Sotheby's, we'd normally expect to see the two main rooms uptairs contain works from the Evening Sale, but here again things were different; the first room was given over to the Sir Joseph Hotung collection (albeit very tastefully, with a sort of World of Interiors stage set), while the largest room was almost entirely hung with works coming up in Sotheby's January sale in New York. It's true, the London December sales are secondary to London's July sales, but it's come to something when the best works on offer at both sale rooms are those from a preview of their New York sales.
The talk from those I spoke to was of London feeling the pressure from Paris for lower and mid-level pictures. Hence the thinness of the Day Sale offerings. And this is understandable; if you were a consignor in Europe, would you want to ship your picture to the UK, through customs checks at some expense, and then have a symbol in the catalogue next to your picture telling prospective bidders that they'll have to pay an extra 5% on top of the hammer price (because of the UK's post-Brexit import VAT regime)? Moreover, if you're Sotheby's and Christie's, sourcing Old Master pictures from Europe, would you want the hassle and expense of shipping to London, when you have salerooms in Paris? London probably still makes sense for pictures over £100,000. But under that, it's a different question.
Customs, incidentally, is a major problem for bringing art into the UK right now. The UK shipper I regularly use has grown so fed up of waiting for hours and hours at UK customs that he's now opened a warehouse and business in Belgium. He does all his European and international shipping from there now, and if he is bringing works into the UK, he gathers as much as he can together in the Belgian warehouse first, and then does one big truck-load, which is better for navigating UK customs delays, rather than smaller, more regular van loads as he used to. Still, last week he tells me was waiting at Folkestone for ten hours. These delays, on top of the red tape, and the import taxes, are really taking a toll on London's ability to source pictures for auction. I'm afraid I find it very depressing, but then I tend to find most things Brexit-related very depressing.
Anyway, what there was at the December sales did reasonably well, on the whole. The Venus and Adonis attributed to Titian and Studio made just over £11m at Sotheby's, against an estimate of £8m-£12m. A Canaletto of the Grand Canal made £3.6m. The little Constable study I admired before the sale made £289k. The still lifes from the Grasset Collection at Sotheby's sold very well, including a Jan Davidsz. De Heem est. at £1m-£1.5m which made £2.7m. This had been bought at Sotheby's in 1987 for £200,000. In fact, many of the Dutch 17th Century still lifes made solid gains on their recent market history, including a Floris Claesz. van Dijck which made just over £2m, against an estimate of £600k-£800k, and had been sold for £290,000 in 1995.
On this point, The Art Newspaper had one of those periodic 'the Old Master market is dying' articles, which have been appearing for over a decade now, and which tend to focus on pictures that have lost money in recent auctions. An example in the December sales was a Francesco Trevisani of The Virgin sewing with the Christ Child, which was unsold at £80k-£120k, but which had been bought for £180k in 2007. Results like these, as regular readers will know, don't show that the Old Master market is dying, more that, in covering over 600 years of art, they reflect the changing tastes within it. Dutch 17th Century still life is having a moment right now, but Italian early 18th Century religious art is probably not.
One of the areas of Old Master art which has been in fashion for some years now, Italian gold ground paintings, still seem to be doing well, such as the 13th Century Bolognese School Crucifixion at Sotheby's, which made £1.72m. Incidentally, I discovered recently that pictures like this, which have no firm attribution, are for some reason not included in the overall Old Master sale totals that make up things like the annual Art Basle Art Market Report (and which the 'dying Old Master market' articles are partly based on). In fact, as far as I understand it, not even the Venus and Adonis Sotheby's sold for over £9m this month will be included, because it is 'Titian and Studio'. It's also worth pointing out that these art market reports don't include major non-auction sales like the Rijksmuseum's purchase of Rembrandt's Standard Bearer for €175m. Another gold ground picture to do well this time round was a Madonna and Child given to Barnaba Agocchiari at Christie's, at £882k, est. £400k-£600k.
Sotheby's sale totalled £32.7m, though that figure includes some 19th Century pictures. The Hotung sale made £29m, which included a little Van Dyck grisaille of the collector Lucas van Uffel, at £504k. Christie's evening sale totalled £13.1m, with their top lot being a Jean-Francois de Troy of The Reading Party, at £2.9m. The next highest was the Van Dyck of Henrietta Maria, which made £2.4m, est. £2m-£4m. There was a long delay at Christie's on the night of the sale as they tried to reach a potential bidder on the phone, but in the end it seems there was only one bidder, and the hammer went down at £2m. The little newly discovered Holbein Portrait of Erasmus made £1.1m. A Van Dyck Crucifixion which was almost sold as not Van Dyck a year ago, but was withdrawn at the last minute, made £327k. I thought this was a bit cheap, for a major Crucifixion by Van Dyck. Perhaps it was held back by some minor condition issues, especially around the seam in the middle, joining the two pieces of canvas together. I'd like to see it cleaned. On the other hand, the Rubens portrait of Isabella Clara Eugenia which also almost sold as not by Rubens last year (when I was one of a few people hoping to buy it), was this time withdrawn before the sale.
In the Day Sales, Christie's made £1.1m, Sotheby's £3.3m. The former's top price was a Venus and Cupid by Pieter Isaacsz, which made £214k (est.£20k-£30k). Sotheby's top seller was a still life by Anna Ruysch, £327k (£50k-£70k). Another Anna Ruysch made £201k (est.£30k-£50k). Anna was sister of the better known Rachel Ruysch, but her works are very rare. Other interesting results included a recently discovered Landseer of a Woodcock, which made £81k (est. £20k-£30k).
I was pleased to see that all of Sotheby's Day Sale pictures had their own catalogue note, which used to be standard practice, but these days has fallen by the wayside (Christie's, for example, did not). I think such notes are crucial if we're going to expect new collectors to get involved with Old Masters, especially since it's through the auction houses that most new collectors will first come into contact with the Old Masters market. Otherwise, it looks as if you're really only hoping to sell to the trade. Perhaps the Christie's high-ups can be persuaded to let the Old Master department employ a few more cataloguers.
I bought a little picture, but it's too early to reveal what it is. I'm pleased with it though. That's it from me for this year, I hope you all have a good Christmas. See you in 2023.
€6,000 for a Michelangelo cartoon?
December 24 2022
Picture: TAN
For my latest Diary column in The Art Newspaper, I wrote about the chase for a 'sleeper' of a lifetime.
Why are pastel portraits so good?
December 24 2022
Picture: Sotheby's, A Portrait by Maurice Quentin de la Tour in Sotheby's 'Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries' sale, 25 Jan 2023,New York
The great Neil Jeffares has written an essay for Sotheby's, on the delights of collecting 18th Century pastels. For him, it's the portraiture that holds the greatest appeal:
How and why did the pastellists working in France before the Revolution uniquely capture our attention so strikingly, coherently and beautifully, compelling us to set aside political and social considerations?
As with all portrait painters before the invention of photography they were unburdened by the existential questions of representation: obtaining a good likeness was unselfconsciously a clear and specific target — indeed disputes about their success filled the Châtelet [10] and are a rich source of information about obscure painters who had fallen out with their clients and better established ones called in to provide expert testimony. (The conventional phrase “capturing a likeness” distracts from a more serious, Barthesian point: in a successful portrait, it is the sitter who captures the viewer.) But that of course is a very incomplete prescription for recreating works that to modern eyes are dominated by conventions: conventions of composition and of accessories (less central, and so less hackneyed, with simple pastel busts than in the official portraits d’apparat almost always executed in oil), as well as technical conventions of just how paint or pastel is applied to the support to create those representations. The story here of the dix-huitième pastel is the pursuit of the exquisite, a concept which (as Guillaume Glorieux [11] has argued) was legitimised by Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, whose publication in France in 1740 was taken as a justification for a short century’s display of conspicuous consumption, of the douceur de vivre or the obscene displays of luxe insolent that brought about a Revolution. Rousseau noted that “D’autres maux pires encore suivent les Lettres & les Arts. Tel est le luxe, né comme eux de l’oisiveté & de la vanité des hommes. Le luxe va rarement sans les sciences & les arts, & jamais ils ne vont sans lui.” [12] We have been embarrassed about this ever since — with the exception of the end of the nineteenth century, when there was a brief return to the values of the heady days of the Ancien Régime before the world was again returned to sobriety by war. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Belle Époque and the Ancien Régime are singled out in Thomas Piketty’s recent work as high points of wealth inequality; as we return to those levels today, perhaps a third wave of interest in pastel should be expected.
More here.
Sleeper alert (ctd.)
December 20 2022
Picture: Boston Magazine
The little Rembrandt head study offered in a minor US auction as 'Manner of Rembrandt' last year - which Adam Busiakiewicz spotted when he was running AHN - has been written about extensively in The Boston Magazine.
The article is a profile of the man who bought it, Cliff Shorer (above), and his sleuthing in establishing the picture's attribution, and its fascinating WW2-era provenance. Cliff is the owner of Old Master dealer, Agnews, having bought the firm in 2013, and has a good track record of discoveries, including a Durer drawing. The Boston Magazine describes Cliff as 'the closest thing the art world has to James Bond', which I don't doubt, although Bond would surely know about AHN's views on the use of white gloves...
According to the article, the picture has so far had a positive reaction in Rembrandt circles. Cliff links it to the same model used by Rembrandt in King Saul (above). I am glad to see a growing acceptance of the idea that Rembrandt - like other artists - did produce studies and sketches, as seen for example in the recent announcement of the Bredius Museum's Crucifixion discovery. Under the Rembrandt Research Project there was sometimes a view that Rembrandt's pictures emerged fully formed, with what were previously accepted as preparatory works downgraded to copies.
A new Rembrandt self-portrait?
December 20 2022
Picture: Bas Czerwinski/ANP/AFP via Getty Images
The well-known Rembrandt scholar Gary Schwartz has announced news of a previously unacknowledged Rembrandt self-portrait. Well, I say unacknowledged, but I mean once acknowledged andthen downgraded - like so many Rembrandts, it was believed to be a Rembrandt until relatively recently. In 1969 Horst Gerson first doubted it, and then so too did the Rembrandt Research Project. From Codart:
A long-lost self-portrait of Rembrandt has been rediscovered by Gary Schwartz. The new discovery is published in his latest book Rembrandt in a Red Beret – The Vanishings and Reappearances of a Self-portrait.
The painting has not been seen in the Netherlands for nearly 125 years and has not been on public display since 1967. It is currently being presented in Escher in The Palace, the city palace in The Hague where the self-portrait was housed from 1850 to 1894.
For his research, CODART founder and Rembrandt specialist Gary Schwartz drew on numerous unpublished documents in the Dutch Royal House Archive, the archives of the American and German governments, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, German courts, as well as private correspondence between Hereditary Grand Duchess Elisabeth of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and the German-American Rembrandt specialist Jakob Rosenberg. Schwartz’s new publication reconstructs the adventures of this significant work.
[...]
It was taken for granted that the painting was a genuine Rembrandt until 1969, when the German-Dutch art historian Horst Gerson suggested that it might be by or in imitation of Ferdinand Bol. Although Gary Schwartz maintains that no Bol expert has ever entertained this idea, the Rembrandt Research Project did actually take it seriously. Gary Schwartz: “Doubts about who produced the painting were fueled by the damage sustained by the self-portrait after it was stolen in Weimar. Incompetent overpainting misled people as to the work’s quality. Comprehensive new technological research work carried out by the renowned Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft in Zürich has revealed that only the face is work by the original painter. And anyone looking at that face will struggle to regard it as anything other than a self-portrait by the master himself”. In his new publication, Gary Schwartz argues that the work deserves to be acknowledged as by the master himself. He interrogates and refutes objections to accepting the painting for what it appears to be, a Rembrandt self-portrait.
More here on Artnet. You can see a decent photo of it here. Gary's website and always entertaining blog is here.
£40 Ebay purchase makes £130,000
December 20 2022
Picture: Bukowskis
A picture bought by a Scottish art collector for £40 on Ebay has been sold for £130,000 at an auction in Sweden. From George Mair in The Times:
The still life is understood to have been listed on the internet site by a UK seller. They described it as “an antique oil painting of flowers, indistinctly signed”. The work was obscured by grime and flecks of white paint used to recolour the original gold gilt frame.
It was snapped up by a buyer in Edinburgh who thought it would look nice on his wall. The Scot, who wishes to remain anonymous, posted online a photograph of the faint signature in the lower right-hand corner. An art enthusiast in the US responded to say that the name looked to be that of Helene Schjerfbeck, a Finnish modernist artist whose most famous work, Dancing Shoes, sold for more than £3 million.
Experts at Bonhams in Edinburgh confirmed that the work, dubbed White Roses in a Glass, was painted by Schjerfbeck during a visit to St Ives, Cornwall, in the late 1880s.
The 33 x 25cm painting was sent to Bukowski’s, the Swedish auction house that Bonhams acquired this year. With a high-end estimate of £120,000 it sold to a Nordic collector for £130,000.
The Bukowskis catalogue entry, with better photos, is here.
Cezanne's earliest self-portrait?
December 20 2022
Picture: Cincinnati Art Museum
An x-ray of a still life by Cezanne at the Cincinnati Art Museum has revealed it was painted over a portrait, making it perhaps the earliest self-portrait of the artist. More here.
Restitution news (ctd.)
December 20 2022
Picture: Cambridge Museums
More major returns have been announced. First, the Pope has instructed Vatican Museums to return its fragments of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece (or rather, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church). Second, Cambridge University will return over 100 Benin bronzes to Nigeria. The latter case involved the Charity Commission, and I think is the first major case of the Commission allowing museums legal cover to deaccession artworks, after the possibility was spotted by Alexander Herman of the Institute for Art and Law, thanks to an amendment in the new Charities Act (as reported in the Guardian here).
Ary de Vois portrait for Museum de Lakenhal
December 20 2022
Picture: Codart
News of a Dutch acquisition from the Codart website:
Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden has acquired a painting by the seventeenth-century painter Ary de Vois. The Leiden fijnschilder painted A Portrait of an Ensign of the Leiden Civic Guard in 1664 at the height of his career.
De Vois was probably born in Utrecht in the first half of the 1630s. He probably first trained in Utrecht with Nicolaus Knüpfer, who also taught Jan Steen, and then in Leiden with Abraham van den Tempel before joining the Leiden Guild of St. Luke in 1653. Work by the painter is rare in the Netherlands. Only very few works by De Vois can be seen in Dutch museums.
