Auction horror of the week
September 18 2012
Picture: Mullocks Auctioneers
Ghastly, ghastly. But which is worse - the fact that there is a demand for this sort of thing (the estimate is £2,000-£3,000), or that auctioneers are prepared to cash in on it?
Update - isn't it a fake?
Update II - a reader writes:
I have been watching Alistair Sooke's Roman art series (Treasures of Rome) and found it both stimulating, educational and visually stunning, opening an area of art history I know little of - and in it have seen sculpted images of characters besides whom Himmler is an amateur in the cruelty stakes apparently. Which auction house would not handle an ancient bust of Caligula? And would you condemn them for doing so?
Nope. But then Caligula's victims, their children and grandchildren, aren't still alive.
The Sooke series is really excellent - catch it on iPlayer if you haven't seen it.
Update III - a reader writes:
Caligula may be a slightly ropey counter-offensive, but what about Maoist/Stalinist items?
Degas programme - whither connoisseurship?
September 18 2012
Picture: Patrick Rice
A reader writes to ask what happened to all the connoisseurship in the Degas programme?
It was all thoroughly engaging, but I was left with just one criticism that left me rather restless/confused afterwards that egged me on to write this.
After closely following your recent impassioned arguments in favour of the importance of connoisseurship, I was really excited and expecting to see the reliable truffle dogs Dr Grosvenor and Mr Mould dramatically searching out comparable sketches/drawings, pointing fingers at several close comparisons in high-res images and taking us on journeys to several museums to set the new picture alongside the most stylistically comparable works to spot convincing similarities. And yet I was dismayed to see practically none of that. To me this was a unique opportunity for you to do so, the item in question being a preparatory drawing this time round: an example of the most intimate psychological evidence that we have of Degas’ mind, not influenced by the intended receiver’s expectations of high technicality, refinement or clarity, and therefore more readily digestible by a connoisseur. These episodes are your opportunity to demonstrate to the entire world how to look as an art historian, and not only like an art historian, and to begin the destruction of obstacles like notions of sorcery and elitism that continue to circle and suffocate this extremely crucial subject.
Like the majority of your audience, I can claim no familiarity with Degas. In fact my steam shamefully runs out even earlier than yours – ca1770! I am thoroughly convinced that your painting’s provenance is what you claim, and yes the physicality of it (i.e., the pigments, support, and so on) certainly seems legit. But can these things, however complete, be independently used to attribute a work? (I already know your answer to that!!) Christie’s and an unnamed respectable expert rejected the picture on the grounds of the dancer’s ‘trivialised’ physiognomy (probably not even realising it’s a sketch) and on the sloshy signature, and some might agree that Connoisseurship failed them there, but then why didn’t you or Dr Cullen et al use your connoisseurship to convince the general public? (perhaps Dr Cullen accompanied by some other respected Degas authorities should have featured in more scenes to present their comparative work and have a court-like debate)…
In short, my personal view is that on this occasion the team seems to have given up on connoisseurship, it being allowed it to perish under the more factual hand of scientific analysis and book-keeping. The vast majority of the 3.8 million people that viewed your show were left with the impression that where connoisseurship cannot ‘seem to work’, science and inventories step in to go the length – to the layman, this will seem to happen for each case, especially with artists like Mondrian. When in fact the only times when Connoisseurship does not ‘seem to work’ is whenever the consulted authority is weakly informed. Works of art that remain on a ‘knife’s edge’, best left ‘attributed’ or worse ‘ascribed’, can only indicate the incompetence of an expert to sufficiently support a connoisseurial hunch, which may be in favour or in opposition of an attribution. Controversial, given the amount of works still left in the balance today by some of the world’s foremost, but definitely true.
Interesting points raised here, and yes, it would have been good to delve more into the connoisseurship side of the argument. As I indicated in my post below, I couldn't help but be a little sceptical of the picture at first, despite all the provenance research, because I couldn't satisfy myself on a connoisseurial basis that it was 'right'. But I soon realised that I was basing my view of Degas' work on the wrong assumptions (and ignorance), and the more I looked at his sketches and lesser known works the more comfortable I became with Patrick's picture. Then all the other arguments fitted neartly into place.
The trouble is, though, how do you explain all this to a BBC1 audience* in such a way as to hold the attention of 3.8m people for an hour? Regular readers will have seen the difficulties I've had on this site trying to explain how connoisseurship works, and why it matters. So imagine how hard it is to actually film the process, and not only do that, but make it look exciting too. Because actually watching connoisseurship in action - someone looking at a painting - can be pretty dull. And in this programme it was felt that the research and technical analysis helped make a good claim for the picture, and that it was worth focusing on those aspects and explaining them in as much depth as we could to the audience in the time available. Of course, I don't favour making attributions based exclusively on one type of evidence over the other.
Those hungering for a little more connoisseurship will I hope be satisfied with the next two programmes. In focusing on Turner and Van Dyck we discuss connoisseurship more fully. The last programme, on Van Dyck, sees the concept explained in considerable detail.
Update - a reader writes:
I think most viewers will understand the Fake or Fortune programme's pitch (from the title alone perhaps?) so I would not worry about demands for greater depth, detailed comparisons etc. That's what your and other 'blogs' can direct us to. The show is entertaining and informative - it adds to our knowledge about the ways of the art business, the difference between value and cost - incidentally, do you ever get to stride along a Parisian boulevard or up one of the grand staircases in some foreign museum? Or do you pop round to the Witt or other library, or is everything just emailed to your desk where you are chained?
Yes, in the next two programmes I'm allowed out of the gallery (even as far as Kent).
Not art history...
September 18 2012
Video: Mother Jones
...but probably art, and definitely history.
When art history goes wrong, ctd.
September 17 2012
A sad indictment of some modern art history teaching from Lynne Truss.* Writing in The Telegraph of her experience of a graduate art history degree at the Courtauld, she reveals that she gave up:
To be honest, I didn’t even like art history. The course was designed not to teach us about art, but to drill us in the techniques and dogmas of art-history scholarship, most of which I had no patience with.
I've heard similar tales from many students. They sign up for a course at the Courtauld thinking they're going to look at paintings and learn about art. But alas...
*via The Association of Art Historians and Ayla Lepine.
Update - a reader tweets:
Yes, well I find this to be more evident at the Institute of Fine Arts. It is not about the Art, but the theory applied.
While another leaps to the Courtauld's defence:
I did my MA at the Courtauld so my experience might differ from the Graduate Diploma course. Having said that, I experienced a similar start of term; the long reading list, searching for books, photocopying reams worth of chapters and articles, carrying heavily laden book bags home, visiting other libraries to try track down books, having to read books in tandem with a course mate at the National Art Library because it was the only copy in London. But I don't see what the big problem is? The MA course is only 9 months so there's a lot to read in a short time; the aim is to be prepared and informed to later discuss themes in class.
My MA course was in the 'History and theory of the art museum', led by Giles Waterfield. Even though we weren't studying pictures per se, rather the history of their display, we had many encounters with paintings. We had sessions in the Courtauld's print room with a curator and in the main gallery spaces with Ernst Vegelin. We had field trips to Petworth House, Berlin and Florence. We visited the conservation department at the National Gallery in London and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence with Helen Glanville (who also gave us seminars in painting conservation). We absolutely got to look at paintings! [...]
I will admit that not all my friends at the Courtauld enjoyed their course as much as my 'History and theory of the art museum' peers and I did. My own experience at the Courtauld was the complete opposite of what you claim in your post! I found my course to be well structured, comprehensive, challenging, engaging (in debate and face to face with art) and inspiring (my PhD research was developed directly from my MA dissertation). Good or bad experiences at the Courtauld seem to depend very much on the individual course specialisation and the tutor. I did my research and looked very carefully at the course contents and who was teaching it. If only all tutors could by like the wonderful Giles Waterfield!
So there you have it - if you do a course at the Courtauld, a tutor to aim for is Giles Waterfield. And I can speak first hand of his enthusiasm for showing pictures to pupils, as he's been to our gallery with groups before.
Of course, really the Courtauld is full of excellent tutors, and courses. Please note that at the start of my post I said 'some teaching'...! (Tho' that said I still haven't recovered from the Courtauld's attempt to close the Witt Library...)
More on the Degas
September 17 2012
Picture: BBC
We had a 20% audience share last night for the first episode of 'Fake or Fortune?', with 3.8m viewers. The grand fromages at the BBC are pleased with the figures, which are high for an arts programme. We hope to do better next Sunday, when we're back at our usual 7pm slot. If you saw it, thanks for tuning in. Next week's programme should be even better, with not one but three paintings up for inspection.
The critical feedback so far has been encouraging, with the Telegraph being very kind:
It’s hard to imagine a more artfully crafted – if you’ll pardon the pun – piece of Sunday night factual telly than the return of Fake or Fortune?
Meanwhile, over on Twitter the programme has its very own troll, and a famous one too. The critic and arts presenter Waldemar Januszczak (of whose programmes and writing I'm a great fan) really doesn't like the show. He dismissed the Degas as 'dodgy' and a wrong 'un before he'd even seen the evidence in the programme, on the basis of a short clip on the news. That's an impressive display of connoisseurship, don't you think? One might have thought there'd be a certain solidarity among arts TV makers, especially those that share commissioning editors...
Still, the main thing for me was that we were able to showcase some quite complicated art historical investigations to the broadest possible audience. Normally, terms like 'connoisseurship', 'provenance research' and 'pigment analysis' are banished to BBC2, BBC4 or even the radio. Sadly, there was quite a lot of research we weren't able to squeeze in. Untangling the provenance of the two versions of Blue Dancer was highly complicated, and made our brains hurt. But a saving grace was that the sizes were listed, and of course matched up.
Another unbroadcast but key part of the research we presented to the Degas catalogue compilers focused on our theory that Patrick Rice's picture was a study for the one in Hamburg. The alleged weaknesses in Patrick's picture are all forgiveable if one accepts that it was no more than a preparatory effort for the finished picture in Hamburg. Patrick's picture had to be judged not against the many famous, finished Degas' we are familiar with from books and museums, but against his sketches and studies, which are far less known, and hardly ever reproduced (in some cases only in poor black and white photos in the catalogie raisonne). And the best proof that Patrick's picture was indeed a study came in the discovery of two important pentimenti, or changes, in the painting. The first was that Degas had changed the position of the right hand double bass head - it was originally substantially further to the right. He had also painted the dress of the dancer before he then moved the double bass head over to the left. Such movements rule out any suggestion that Patrick's picture was a straightforward copy of the one in Hamburg.
A few Tweeters, including Waldemar, are still convinced that the picture is a fake. Let us consider, then, the probability that we are dealing with a faker. If so, we have to have a pre-war faker who was able not only to pre-empt pigment analysis techniques not yet invented, but, even more specifically, to find and use the unusual pigments that Degas favoured. How did this faker, before 1945, know how to do this? How did they have access to the Goupil stock books to find the missing provenance of another version of the Hamburg picture, and get the right size? Why did they bother to introduce pentimenti? Not even Han van Meegeren, the famous forger of Vermeer, went to such lengths.
Finally, some readers have suggested, in light of our debates here at AHN on connoisseurship, that the scientific tests and documentary research we carried out on the picture mean that the judgement of connoisseurs, who had previously rejected the picture, are redundant, and thus is connoisseurship itself. I would argue instead that our programme merely highlighted what happens when connoisseurship goes wrong. As I've said before, there are good connoisseurs and bad connoisseurs - but the latter does not mean we should condemn the practice of connoisseurship itself. If a doctor misdiagnoses you, do you question medical science itself, or do you get a second opinion?
And in any case, scientific testing and provenance research must all form part of any connoisseurial analysis these days, if necessary. For what it's worth, I was at first very sceptical of the picture, but then my expertise in Degas is very limited indeed. I run out of steam after about 1830. It was only after looking away from the image I had in my mind of Degas' work - that is, the well-known museum, book, and poster examples - and started to focus on his lesser known (and frankly lesser) works such as studies and sketches, that I began to see comparisons that could be made. The most valuable aspect of the whole exercise, for me, was endless close looking at as many Degas' as I could find. I mean real, get the binoculars out and look like a nutter close looking. For it is the art of close looking, so rarely taught and encouraged among art historians these days, that any aspiring connoisseur needs to learn. If it means getting told off for leaning over ropes in galleries, so be it. But, armchair connoisseurs please note, it's more useful than making judgements from the telly.
Update: an interesting response from a reader, posted above.
No more holes - search for 'Leonardo' mural ends
September 17 2012
Picture: National Geographic
I learn from the ever-indispensable Three Pipe Problem that the search for Leonardo's mural, The Battle of Anghiari, has ended. The news comes from a few small announcements in Italian press, and means that the National Geographic Channel is no longer funding any research. This is surely a Good Thing. The initial results were rather blown out of proportion (for more see Martin Kemp's view here). But it was all good fun while it lasted.
X-ray reveals Velasquez original
September 17 2012
Picture: Meadows Museum, Dallas
Intriguing story in The Washington Post about Velazquez's portraits of Philip IV, which are known in a number of autograph versions. An x-ray of a version in Dallas has apparently proved that it is the first. It will be exhibited alongside a version from the Prado in a new show, which runs until January 13th. Regular readers will remember the Met's restoration of their version, which saw them upgrade the attribution to Velazquez in full.
Watch!
September 16 2012
Picture: BBC
This is my last plug, I promise. At least, until next week's episode. The first of our new series of 'Fake or Fortune?' is on BBC1 tonight, Sunday, at 6.30pm. The picture in question is the little 'Blue Dancer', above, signed 'Degas'. Is it by him, or a worthless fake?
Next week we'll be focusing on three possible paintings by Turner, and the week after a possible Van Dyck. By the way, the next two episodes will begin slightly later, at 7pm. This means we will clash with the X Factor, but then happily nobody watches that...
To anyone who has stumbled across the site for the first time, welcome! I'll post more on the 'Blue Dancer' tomorrow.
Optimism
September 13 2012
Picture: Daily Mail
It could be a £20m Turner! Or a £500 copy. You decide. Either way, it seems that the easiest way to get free publicity these days is to claim that you might have found a masterpiece. It doesn't matter if it's a worthless copy - few journalists can begin to tell the difference, and fewer still can be bothered to ask someone who can. We saw a similar story last month with yet another 'Leonardo' discovery. (Is it a coincidence that both stories were featured in the Daily Mail?) Soon, we will be able to bastardise Andy Warhol's famous line, and say 'In the future, every painting will be world-famous for 15 minutes.'
BBC SouthEast (the 'Turner' belongs to a Kent antiques dealer) asks me if I can go on telly and talk about the discovery. Should I be kind and optimistic, or should I give the picture, and the world's press, both barrels of brutal, AHN honesty?
The wisdom of crowds
September 13 2012
Picture: Cambridge University Library/PCF
Or in this case, art historian and reader Tim Williams. He has found that one of the unattributed pictures in yesterday's post on mystery PCF pictures, the portrait of Thomas Broughton at Cambridge above, is by (or after, I can't tell from the image online) Nathaniel Dance. Below is the engraving which carries the attribution to Dance [courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery].
Excellent work Tim - Cambridge University Library owes you one. Thanks for your suggestions on the others everyone - keep 'em coming.
Face of the Day
September 12 2012
A rare stray into current affairs in honour of this Benghazi-an.
Finding Richard III
September 12 2012
Picture: Philip Mould/Historical Portraits
I've long been sceptical of archaeologists leaping to conclusions from, say, one shard of pottery - but the latest evidence from the search for Richard III's body is potentially of exceptional importance.
The bones found underneath a car park in Leicester, in a former Franciscan friary where Richard is thought to have been buried, have to be sent for DNA testing before any positive identification can be made. However, it has been revealed that the battle-scarred skeleton suffered from scoliosis, and so one shoulder would have been visibly higher than the other. That's not quite the same thing as having a hunch back, but a deformity of sorts nonetheless.
If that is the case, then we can clear Shakespeare of at least one accusation of Tudor propoganda, and begin to reinterpret Richard's iconography, which almost universally shows him with a raised shoulder. It gets higher and higher the further one goes into the 16th Century, as can be seen in an example we sold a while ago, above. Compare that to the much earlier version belonging to the Society of Antiquaries, below. It's often been thought that all the portraits of Richard showing a 'hump' were the result of the Tudor black legend. But if he really did have a raised shoulder, that tells us a great deal about how we should view 16th Century royal iconography.
By the way, no amount of digging will persuade me that he did not kill the Princes in the Tower.
Sleeper Alert
September 12 2012
Picture: Bonhams
At least two people got excited enough at yesterday's minor Bonhams sale to bid this '19th Century French School' head of a monk to £49,250 (inc. premium), from its £700-£1,000 estimate. Clearly 17th Century, and Flemish, I thought it had a sniff of Jordaens about it. It looked much better in the flesh than the illustration. Perhaps we will soon see it again.
Update - a reader writes:
Isn’t someone guessing it’s a study of the monk on the lower right of Ruben’s altarpiece of “The Last Communion of St Francis” [KMSKA, Antwerp]?
A £7m Steen on the block
September 12 2012
Picture: Arts Council/Sotheby's
A reader alerts me to the sale of a fine Jan Steen, Grace before Meat, from the Walter Morrison Picture Settlement (ie, Sudeley Castle). The pre-auction guide price for any museums interested in acquiring this tax exempted picture is £7m. Probably the lower auction estimate will be around that level when it comes up for sale at Sotheby's in London this December.
Who painted this?
September 12 2012
Picture: Your Paintings/Glasgow Museums
Here's a tricky connoisseurship test. I've just come across this picture on the PCF/Your Paintings website. It's listed as copy of a self-portrait by John Baptist de Medina - although you'd be hard pressed to tell from the photo. It must be covered with a very old layer of consolidating material. Still, when the venerable Public Catalogue Foundation said they were going to photograph every publicly owned oil painting in Britain, they certainly meant it.
A reader who is helping the PCF with attributions and identifications has sent in these mystery pictures, and asks the AHN sleuths for some crowd-sourcing assistance; see here, here, here, here, here, and here. Can anyone make any breakthroughs?
Update - Art historian James Mulraine wonders if the neoclassical scene might be by Rosa di Tivoli (1655-1706).
'Gates of Paradise' re-open
September 12 2012
Video: Al Jazeera
Well, they won't actually open, but you can at least see them again. After a 27 year restoration programme (that's fine art conservation, Italian style), Lorenzo Ghiberti's magnificent renaissance gates for the Baptistry of San Giovanni in Florence have gone on show again. More details here.
Museum Makeover
September 12 2012
Video: Boston MFA
The central gallery at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which I lauded here once before, has been given an impressive looking makeover.
How to publicise an exhibition in the 21st Century...
September 10 2012
Picture: Walker Art Gallery
...find a Penis in a painting! There's all sorts of excitement in the press at the news that a willy has been 'found' in Millais' Isabella, ahead of the new Tate Pre-Raphaelites show. In case you can't find it, it's the erect-looking shadow of the man in the left foreground. From The Independent:
One of the works on show at the exhibition, which opens tomorrow, is the first painting by John Everett Millais as a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood he helped found, called Isabella. One Tate curator has uncovered a hidden image in the painting which shows a character in the foreground with what appears to be an erection.
Isabella, painted in 1848 when Millais was just 19 years old, will force people to “shove aside their preconceptions” and “dramatically changes the way we see the work,” Carol Jacobi said. “It gives us a different view of the Victorians.”
The painting shows the character in the foreground on the left angrily leaning forward, with his leg outstretched and using a nutcracker. The sexual suggestion is produced by a shadow on the table.
Dr Jacobi said: “The shadow is clearly phallic, and it also references the sex act, with the salt tipped into the shadow,” before adding: “We can assume it’s deliberate, so then that raises the question: what’s it there for?”
But wait, what's this? I have just this minute 'discovered' two similar 'shadow willies' in Millais' The Carpenter's Shop (Tate, below), a work previously thought to be all about religion. But, Stop the Press - Millais must have been willy mad! And the picture's all about 'wood' - OMG! Can readers find any more examples?
Update - a reader writes:
Pretty sure there's something ropey going on in 'The Ornithologist' too...
... and what's Grace Hoare trying to hide behind that hat? I think we should be told!
Update II - meanwhile, a reader more at home in the 17th Century wonders, justly, what the hell is going on with this Velasquez. Ooph.
I feel a book coming on: 'Da Penis Code', anyone?
More on that 'Leonardo' sculpture
September 10 2012
Picture: davincihorseandrider.com
Following my report on the 'Leonardo' sculpture last week, and the potentially reckless taking of a modern mould from a fragile 16thC beeswax original, a distinguished sculptor writes:
To make a mould directly from such a complex wax if genuinely by Da Vinci as Pedretti alleges, would - as you say - be reckless.
Even the most minutely detailed 'piece mould' would risk damaging the original as 'walls' would have to be built on the surface of the original wax to mark the boundaries of each part of the mould.
Though there is clearly a wire armature inside -visible where one foot has fallen off, other extremities would also be at risk during the process if the armature was missing in them too.
However Museums and others can now make non-invasive, non contact replicas of even the smallest 3D objects by laser scanning followed by rapid prototyping using an SLA (stereolithography) file generated and processed from the laser scan.
Replicas can be made directly in wax built up in layers by a form of 3D printing. Following skilled finishing to match the surface of the original, these wax replicas could then be used to make bronzes by the traditional 'lost wax' process. Because the 3D information is digitised replicas can also be easily generated in different sizes.
The oldest restitution claim ever?
September 10 2012
Picture: Museo Prado
In Italy, the National Committee for Historical, Cultural and Environmental Heritage has made a formal request to France for the return of the Monal Lisa. More details in the Independent, which adds, at the bottom of its webpage:
*This article was originally erroneously illustrated with a copy of the Mona Lisa in Spain's Prado galery [sic]. This has since been rectified and now shows the original painting.
But actually, why not? The Italians should ask the Prado if they can have the copy back, as a consolation prize.
Update - a reader writes:
It must surely gall Italians that the Louvre owns more easel paintings by Leonardo (5) that there are in the whole of Italy (4, not including the Baptism).
