Face of the Day
October 18 2012
My colleague Emma Rutherford has spotted the above miniature on Ebay. Can readers suggest what the sitter might have said when she first saw the portrait?
New acquisition in Wales
October 18 2012
Picture: National Museum of Wales
The National Museum of Wales has acquired two early 18th Century landscapes of Margam House, near Port Talbot. The pictures (which I valued for the museum about a year ago), cost £218,500, of which £142,300 was provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund. So more good news from HLF on the picture buying front. The pictures aren't especially good, but with early Welsh art you have to slightly take what you can get (there, I've said it).
You can find more details on the acquisition here on the BBC, but nothing on the museum's own website (another case of a museum's left hand not talking to its right).
Coincidentally, the present Margam House (which looks very different to the house in the view above) is in the process of applying to the HLF for a grant to restore the gardens.
Wise words from HM
October 17 2012
Picture: BG
Saw this on the wall at the National Portrait Gallery this evening.
It's all going modern at the National Gallery
October 17 2012
Picture: National Gallery/Estate of Richard Hamilton
I had a quick look at the new Richard Hamilton exhibition at the National Gallery yesterday. Boy, could he not paint.
Regular readers, who know what a reactionary stick-in-the-mud I am, won't be surprised to hear that I'm a little puzzled by the National's direction of travel at the moment. They seem to be on a quest to contemporise everything. We recently had the Titian Metamorphosis show, in which Titian's Diana masterpieces were shown next to robotic antlers, naked bathers, and stage designs. Now we have Richard Hamilton's park-railing pastiches of Poussin and Titian. And later this month we'll have Seduced by Art, in which we can "View Old Master painting through a new lens with the National Gallery's first major exhibition of photography", where contemporary photographs will be hung alongside "historical painting".
It's all most curious.
'It's a snip'
October 16 2012
Video: Art Fund
The National Gallery in London is exhibiting Poussin's 'Extreme Unction', which, as I reported a while ago, the Fitzwilliam Museum is hoping to buy. It is one of the Rutland series of Seven Sacrements. In the video above, Fitzwilliam curator Jane Munro sets out the picture's merits. The price is £3.9m after tax deductions, which is rightly described by David Scrase in this video, as 'a snip'. The Kimbell Museum in Texas recently shelled out £24m for their Sacrament.
Waldemar went to see it at the National, and wrote a lively piece about the picture in the Sunday Times. He said (and I thoroughly agree with him);
If they had had a cash box in the room, I would have emptied my pockets into it there and then. As it is, I hope you will join me in adding a donation at artfund.org/poussin.
I hope they raise the cash, and have until November to do so. There is just one thing which might hinder the effort - the Fitzwilliam currently has no director. Timothy Potts recently left to go to the Getty, and a replacement has yet to be announced. Normally, one would expect such an appeal to be led by a museum's director, someone who can act as a focal point for the marketing and lobbying, and help generate the private donations needed.
A very heavy 'dialogue'
October 16 2012
Picture: BG
Doubtless when it is 'installed', dramatically lit, and with a label beside it, this 'Treetrunk' by Jurgen Bey will be worth the £4-6,000 Christie's says it is. And doubtless too it will, as the catalogue entry states, 'offer a dialogue between culture and nature'.
But to me, as I was walked past Christie's this morning and saw it being lifted through the front door, it just looked like a large log with two chair backs stuck into it.
Major art theft in Holland
October 16 2012
Video: Zie.nl
Works by Picasso, Matisse, Monet and Gauguin have been stolen from the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam. They were taken early this morning. In the video above you can see one of the gaps on the wall. More details here.
Update: see images of the stolen works here.
Update II - a reader writes:
It's a great loss of paintings and probably will have a knock-on effect on museum security - especially as it's a loan exhibition. Extremely sad for the owners of the Triton Collection.
The thing that intrigues me is - in the absence of Golfinger in his underground kunstbunker - paintings are used as collateral in criminal deals: but if they are largely unsellable, how are they worth anything as collateral? As ransom, I suppose, but that would surely be passing a great danger of getting caught on to whoever uses them.
Sadly, the art ransom racket is now so well established that there is probably little chance of the perpetrators getting caught. Too many galleries have paid out ransoms, and thieves have worked out how the system works. Usually, the art goes to somewhere like the Balkans. There, the artnappers get in touch through well-established channels with those looking to recover the works. Eventually, a ransom is paid. If you're the Tate, you call it a 'fee for information'. Each person in the recovery chain back to the thief gets a lick of the spoon, so to speak, and there is little incentive to help police catch the real masterminds. As a result, art galleries likke the Kunsthal are increasingly paying the price for too much connivance between insurers, thieves, and middle-men.
Update III - another reader has a theory:
Thank you for posting the link to the recently stolen pictures. I know twentieth century art is less of your area but I can't help noticing that often there seems to be one or two dodgy pictures among the art haul - never to be recovered! In this instance, the Matisse is interesting .... Sometimes you have to feel for the insurers.
The bin with a Damien Hirst on it.
October 15 2012
Picture: Vipp/Wonmark.com
But not in it. Not yet.
Order yours here.
The sleeper from Harrods
October 15 2012
Picture: Mail/BNPS
A lost picture by John Godward, which was bought from Harrods in 1957 for £100, has sold at Lawrences in Crewkerne for £380,000. More details here.
A Holbein sitter identified?
October 15 2012
Picture: Royal Collection/Telegraph
Conservation of a Holbein in the Royal Collection has revealed more clues about the identity of the sitter. I'll try and get more images, like x-rays, from the Royal Collection. But I'm a bit pushed for time today, so for now, find the basic story here.
Update - see more images and the x-ray here.
Update II - find further details here at the NPG, and watch a talk by Royal Collection curator Clare Chorley here.
A sign of Parisian good taste
October 12 2012
Picture: Emma Rutherford
My colleague Emma Rutherford, in Paris for a conference on portrait miniatures, sends me this photo for my Van Dyck scrap book. She says that Avenue Van Dyck is 'pretty and tree-lined'. Bon.
I think we need a Van Dyck Avenue in London. But we having nothing so cultured. According to Google Maps, the closest we have here in the UK is a Van Dyck Close. It's on a housing estate sandwiched between the M3 and the Basingstoke ring road. Also on the estate is a Rembrandt Circle, Gainsborough Road, and Rubens Close. Excellent. Do any readers of AHN live there?
Update - a reader writes:
The avenue Van Dyck in Paris near the pleasant Parc Monceau is in quite pleasant company: avenue Velasquez (small but accessing the park), avenue Rembrandt, etc. The rue Rubens is in a more popular "quartier" near the Gobelins and less green or tree-lined.
While in England, a reader says:
I don’t live on Van Dyck Close but....my mum lives close by to Constable Road in Eastbourne (which connects to Gainsborough Crescent, Reynolds Road and Hogarth Road and Turner Close).
And another:
Correspondents have probably already said that there's also a Van Dyck Road in Colchester. Appropriately, Gainsborough Road branches off it and curves back to end on it.
There's another one in Ipswich, again surrounded by other artists. Landseer features prominently in both.
Suffolk probably does have a real sense of its role in painting.
In case you can't get to Frieze...
October 12 2012
Video: Blouin
...this is what you're missing. Or perhaps not missing.
I love the way art isn't sold at Frieze - it is 'placed'. Do some people really take themselves that seriously?
It's Frieze Week!
October 11 2012
Picture: BG
So London's art dealing district is full of trendy contemporary art parties like this. You know, the kind where nobody actually goes into the gallery to look at the art.
Appreciating Wright of Derby
October 10 2012
Picture: Derby Museum
Read this tragic little editorial in the Derby Telegraph, and weep:
Today we pose a controversial question in the hope of provoking a serious debate.
Do we invest time and money in trying to maximise the potential of the city's impressive multi-million pound Joseph Wright Collection or, at a time of deep recession when the city council is being forced to cut millions from its budget, do we sell off the works of art to fund other projects?
Why are we asking such a question? Because, in a year when the Joseph Wright Gallery reopened in Derby after a £150,000 refurbishment, paid for by council tax payers, 40% of those people we asked had never heard of him, while 13% had heard his name but did not know he was an internationally-acclaimed painter.
We even tried to make the survey a little easier by posing our question outside some of the key places in Derby associated with the artist. And all of the 100 people quizzed lived locally and came from all age groups.
We have nothing against our heritage – indeed we are rightly proud of it – but we feel it is vital that the people of Derby engage in a debate about such an important issue.
Clearly some of the lack of knowledge could be tackled with improved education. We wonder just how many of our children are taught about Joseph Wright in our primary and secondary schools?
We could also follow the example of other city's like Wakefield, which built a gallery bearing the name of the world-famous sculptor, Barbara Hepworth, who was born in the Yorkshire city.
But, to pursue this option, will cost money and it needs to be supported by all sections of our community. We wonder whether there is an appetite for this sort of thing when so many people are losing their jobs or struggling to cope with cuts to services.
Is now the time to cash in this valuable asset and plough the money into something which will give real and significant benefit to the people of our city?
It is a difficult question but it needs to be asked.
No it doesn't. The question that really needs to be asked is why, in an editorial in which it complains about bad education, the Derby Telegraph cannot spell 'cities' correctly.
Still, it's at least heartening to read that Derby Museum, in a bid to 'increase awareness' of Derby is planning to mount a touring exhibition of 35 paintings by Wright.
That Raphael competition
October 10 2012
Picture: Teylers Museum
I recently mentioned a novel approach to making attributions by the Teylers Museum in Holland. The museum's curators weren't sure about the attribution of the above drawing, and so decided to ask members of the public what they thought.
A reader has taken up the challenge. He identifies the lower head in this drawing, below, in the Louvre, and writes:
I don’t mean to be a killjoy, but the red chalk study of three heads (Teyler’s) can no way be Raphael. It’s a spiritless, meticulously drawn facsimile of a ‘lost’ drawing. I know the bottom study from a drawing in the Louvre (inv. 3862). The style of this bottom head study reminds me of Raphael’s long-standing competitor, Sebastian del Piombo, but the top two rule out such an attribution.
Met acquires Gerard portrait of Talleyrand
October 10 2012
Picture: Metropolitan Museum
I've always had a soft spot for Francois Gerard's portraits - one my earliest sleepers was a Gerard. So I'm grateful to the indispensable Tribune de l'Art for alerting us to a fine new acquisition by the Metropolitan Museum in New York of a portrait of Talleyrand by Gerard.
I've always been fascinated by French neo-classical portraitists, and how they managed to survive, or not, the tribulations of the French Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration. Jacques-Louis David, for example, was a better painter than Gerard, his pupil - but Gerard was undoubtedly the better politician. He ended up as a Baron, and the pre-eminent court painter, while David had to endure years of exile in Belgium. One perhaps can see a partial explanation of Gerard's success in this pleasingly flattering portrait of Talleyrand, himself one of the great survivors of the age.
Talleyrand, incidentally, once owned the Van Dyck Portrait of a Young Girl we discovered in Paris a couple of years ago.
Achtung - PR blunder alarm!
October 10 2012
Picture: Mail/Newsteam
Regular readers will know that I take a very dim view of auctioneers who cash in on the highly distasteful Nazi memorabilia market. So let us applaud Northampton auctioneer J P Humbert's spectacular PR own goal, and say loudly 'serves you right'. Recently, Humbert's staged an auction full of Nazi items on the holiest day in the Jewish year, Yom Kippur. They even saw fit to festoon their rostrum with Nazi flags. It was all very Nuremberg. When the blunder made the news, Humberts tried to make amends by offering a donation to the Holocaust Education Trust. But this was rightly turned down. From The Daily Mail:
A spokesperson for the charity said: 'The Holocaust Educational Trust will not accept any donations from organisations which profit from the sale of items associated with the Nazi regime.
'It is our view that these items are best placed in archives, museums or in an educational context.'
Mr Humbert defended the auction house, based in Towcester, Northants, and said yesterday: 'Not being Jewish, how am I expected to know the dates of Jewish festivals?
Mili-Masters
October 10 2012
Picture: The Art Newspaper
Fresh from his impressive conference speech (the success of which means that we must modify one of Harold Wilson's famous quips; clearly an hour is now a long time in politics), Labour leader Ed Miliband has visited the new fair of the moment, Frieze Masters. Good to see a British politician supporting the art market.
New York fake scandal widens
October 10 2012
Picture: The Art Newspaper
The murky fake ring which apparently led to the closure of famous New York gallery Knoedler (above) last year seems to have ensnared another well-known dealer. Now Julian Weissman is being sued by a Kuwaiti sheikha, Paula Al-Sabah, for allegedly selling her a fake Motherwell. The picture is alleged to have come from the same source that provided Knoedler with its fakes.
I firmly believe that a frighteningly large proportion of the modern and contemporary art market is affected by fakery. Caveat emptor...
A Batoni in storage
October 10 2012
Picture: Brentwood Gazette
There's an interesting little story in the Essex local press today about the council's art holdings. The most valuable piece in their collection is the above Batoni, of Thomas Barrett-Lennard, 17th Lord Dacre, with his wife and daughter. Valued at £2.5m it is, needless to say, in storage. The Batoni was given to the council, along with other family portraits, by the late Sir Thomas Barrett-Lennard. The Council is hoping to display the works more effectively, but one wonders why it has taken them so long to find a suitable home. And doubtless a similar situation exists across the country with paintings that are owned by local authorities. As the PCF has sadly shown, 80% of publicly owned paintings are in storage.
There must be plenty of museums who would like such a fine work. The picture is an interesting, if rather sad one. The Dacres' daughter, Anne, had died before it was painted, and when the couple visited Rome a year after her death, they asked Batoni to include her portrait. He copied her likeness by Thomas Hudson, which accounts for the strange un-Batoni like quality of her head.
Dacre was a great patron of the arts. Some years ago we discovered his portrait by Andrea Soldi, which is now in the Rienzi House Museum in Texas (where, if you happen to be in Texas, you can soon see an exhibition on Romney).
Update - a reader writes:
I'm told that the great Eric Pickles has waded into this debate. I was pleased to hear that he supports wider display of publicly owned art, but was slightly surprised by his suggestion for how this should be done. Apparently the best place to do so is in supermarkets.
I would agree that the public could hardly avoid seeing these hidden treasures if they were next to a till in Morrisons, but I doubt very much if it will aid their appreciation. It hardly seems necessary to point out that there are other public buildings or more worthy not-for-profit sites such as churches or local museums/heritage sites which would welcome them.
You could get a lot of Clubcard points for a Batoni.
