The Walpole Society hits 100
August 2 2011
Picture: Philip Mould Ltd
There was a pleasant do at the National Gallery last week to celebrate the Walpole Society's 100th birthday. The Society publishes, in weighty annual volumes, essential evidence on British art history (most famously the notebooks of George Vertue). If you're not a member, do consider joining. For just £45 a year you get their handsome volumes, and much else besides.
To underline how useful the Society's work is to someone like me, the most recent publication (of Charles Eastlake's travel journals) came in handy for our recent Van Dyck exhibition. Eastlake (1793-1865) was the first director of the National Gallery, and a great connoisseur. Plop onto my desk two days before the catalogue went to press fell Eastlake's notebooks - which revealed that he had seen our newly discovered portrait (above) in Paris on 25th August 1860 in the Rothschild's collection: "Van Dyck - A Girl - whole length - holding her white gown (dark under sleeves) in left hand - fan in rt - [[about]] 2 - 8 w - 3 - 5h." Good timing, eh?
There is a new small exhibition at the National showing how Eastlake used to go on shopping trips in Europe, and how difficult it was to be sure in those days that the 'Giotto' on offer really was a Giotto. Worth a visit.
Do you have a 'Cheerful and positive approach to life'?
August 1 2011
Picture: Wallace Collection
Then get a job in a museum! There are some plum vacancies in the art world, including three positions at the Wallace Collection. They are Curator of Old Master Pictures, Curator of French Decorative Arts, (both at £31-37k), and the post of Library Cataloguer (at £21-25k).
The qualifications needed for the curatorships includes the usual - PhD, knowledge of languages, teaching experience etc. But listed under 'Other desirable qualities' is a;
'Cheerful and positive approach to life'
So good luck - and smile! Alternatively, if you're a grumpy sod then go for the Cataloguer position - there's nothing about being cheery in the job spec for that... The closing date is 12th August. Full details here.
Other vacancies at the moment include:
Screw magnate buys Holbein
August 1 2011
Picture: Staedel Museum
Holbein's Darmstadt Madonna has been sold in Germany for a sum in excess of $70m. The buyer was, Reinhold Wuerth, the German industrialist whose family business makes screws (amongst other things). The seller was the Prince of Hesse, who faced a large bill for death tax. The picture is barred from export outside Germany, hence the apparent bargain price.
The picture is in quite amazing condition (you can zoom in on it here), and probably the best surviving guide to Holbein's technique. If you ever get half a chance to see it, do. I saw it about a year ago, and was so amazed at the level of finish and realism in areas such as the carpet that my brain for a moment could not compute that I was looking at a painting, and not an actual carpet. My eyes were literally deceived. It reminded me of Samuel Pepys when he first saw one of Simon Verelst's flower paintings (on 11th April 1669):
...a Dutchman newly come over, one Everelst, who took us to his lodging close by and did show us a little flowerpott of his doing, the finest thing that I ever think I saw in my life – the drops of dew hanging on the leaves, so as I was forced again and again to put my finger to it to see whether my eyes were deceived or no. He doth ask 70l for it; I had the vanity to bid him 20l – but a better picture I never saw in my whole life, and it is worth going twenty miles too see.
Is this by Turner?
August 1 2011
Picture: Museum of Wales
Off Margate was bought by the Museum of Wales in 1908 as a Turner. But since the 1950s its attribution has been questioned. Now, however, the Tate has pronounced that it is a genuine late work.
Beth McIntyre, curator at the Museum of Wales, told Wales Online:
“This painting was part of a large bequest to the museum in 1951 and shortly after it arrived, an expert questioned its authenticity. In those days, working out authorship wasn’t a question of science as it can be today, it was a question of ‘this doesn’t quite feel right’."
“This Turner – along with six others in the same bequest – is quite small and while it was identified as a Turner, the ‘late’ style was questioned at the time.”
Ms McIntyre felt the paintings should be seen by the Tate experts, and the decision paid off.
“We knew this painting had good historic provenance – we could trace its ownership back a long way,” she said. "However, Turner’s work was copied in his own lifetime so it was very difficult to be certain. So now we have confirmation from today’s experts that it is a Turner which is great news.”
Friday amusement
July 29 2011
Picture: Cartoon Stock
Stolen Lowrys recovered
July 29 2011
Picture: Liverpool Echo
A cache of Lowrys stolen in 2007 during an armed raid on a dealer have been recovered in Liverpool. One of the pictures was Tanker Entering the Tyne, thought to be worth £600,000. Perhaps inevitably, drugs seem to have been involved. It seems there's a fad amongst some drug dealers to use art as 'collateral' when making large deals. Full details here.
How the Leonardo show was put together
July 29 2011
Richard Dorment has the story behind the loan negotiations in The Telegraph.
Met's McQueen exhibition open till midnight
July 28 2011
Picture: Metropolitan Museum
A bit off-beam this one (and a chance to publish a cool photo)... but it's interesting to note that, for the first time ever, the Met Museum has extended their opening hours until midnight. It's for their exhibition on Alexander McQueen's dresses.
Sewell on 'Twombly & Poussin'
July 28 2011
Picture: Dulwich Picture Gallery
Perhaps inevitably, he doesn't like it:
Poussin has nothing in common with this charlatan and is abused by this silly exhibition and the overblown and extended conceit on which it rests
As ever, though, it's worth a read.
New tax concessions for art donations
July 28 2011
The UK government is currently consulting on a plan to give tax concessions for donating works of art to the nation. At the moment, the only tax break you can get for giving your Rembrandt to a museum is when you're dead, under the Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) scheme.
Now, you will be able to donate the Rembrandt whilst you're alive, and get a tax concession not on your inheritance tax liability, but on your income tax.
You can take part in the consultation here. The government wants views on:
- who will be eligible to apply for the new scheme;
- how to define pre-eminent and how these objects will qualify for the new scheme;
- how acceptance of offers will work;
- which institutions will be eligible to receive objects;
- how objects should be allocated to institutions;
- what conditions should attach to objects allocated to institutions;
- how the tax reduction should be calculated, including the rate of reduction which should apply per donated object; and
- whether there should be a cap on the amount of tax reduction per object or per donor.
Leonardo's two 'Virgin of the Rocks' to be displayed together
July 27 2011
Picture: Louvre, Paris (left), National Gallery, London (right)
They are rightly calling it a 'historic collaboration': later this year, both versions of Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks will be displayed together in the National Gallery's Leonardo exhibition. This will be the first time this has happened. In return, London's Leonardo 'cartoon' for Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and John the Baptist will be sent to Paris to hang alongside the Louvre's Virgin and Child with Saint Anne.
What a great coup the National has pulled off - many congratulations to the staff there. If you haven't booked your tickets yet, you can do so here.
New acquisitions for the National Trust
July 27 2011
Picture: Sotheby's
Colin Gleadell in the Telegraph has news of two enticing acquisitions by the National Trust. The first is for Montacute House, a fine portrait of James I by John de Critz, bought in the recent Old Master sale at Sotheby's for £199.250.
In the same sale, the Trust also bought the above full-length, for £157,250. Sotheby's had identified her as 'possibly Lady Anne Cecil' (c.1603-1676), and attributed it to Robert Peake. The Trust, however, believe she is Vere Egerton, the grand-daughter of Lord Chancellor Egerton, Lord Brackley, and they have an early inventory reference to prove it. This painting will now be hung at Dunham Massey. (I don't personally see that it is by Peake - it's a little too sophisticated for him. Is it by someone nearer to van Somer?)
It's great news that the Trust is able to buy quality pictures like this.
Oddly enough, this is the second newly identified portrait of Vere Egerton to surface recently. In 2008 we (Philip Mould Ltd) bought the below portrait of three unidentified girls at Christie's. Subsequent research proved that the girls were three grandaughters of Lord Chancellor Egerton, thanks to the discovery of an early 19th Century sale reference. The ages insribed above the sitters' heads also matched the dates of the three Egerton sisters, Elizabeth, Vere and Mary. Vere is on the left.
Jewish Polish painting restituted
July 27 2011
Picture: Auktionshaus Aldag
Here's a rare survival: Jewish Woman Selling Oranges was painted in Warsaw in 1880/1 by the Polish artist Aleksander Gierymski. The picture belonged to the Polish National Museum, but went missing during the war. It surfaced last year at a German auction, and has now been restituted. Old Warsaw can be seen in the background.
Adrian Searle on Freud
July 26 2011
A gently interesting video on Freud's Standing by the Rags, 1989. Worth a click.
Freud - new exhibition at the NPG
July 26 2011
A new exhibition of Freud's portraits will open at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in February 2012. The artist had been working with the gallery ahead of the exhibition.
'Leonardo' drawing case struck out
July 25 2011
The US Appeals court has thrown out a case against Christie's brought by the consignor of the above drawing. It was catalogued as 19th Century German School in a sale in 1998, but some scholars now say it is by Leonardo. Full details in the ATG here.
Wildenstein - 'Je ne sais rien'
July 25 2011
Guy Wildenstein has said he did not know about some 30 missing paintings found in his vaults:
...last week he spent 36 hours in police custody, sleeping two nights in the headquarters of a special art-theft squad outside Paris, where he was formally charged with concealing art that had been reported missing or stolen.
The crime, known officially as a “breach of trust,” carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison.
In the course of his questioning Mr. Wildenstein made a surprising claim: He told the police that the institute, which specializes in gathering detailed information about art for scholars, lacked any inventory for a roomy vault where dozens of valuable artworks that it does not own were discovered this year by the police.
“I didn’t inspect the vault,” Mr. Wildenstein said, according to internal court records of his questioning by an investigative judge while in custody. “We have never had an inventory of the vault.”
Full story in the New York Times here.
Freud - pre-superstardom
July 25 2011
Picture: New York Times, Self-Portrait etching.
In The Art Newspaper, Anna Somers Cocks has a good piece on Freud's critical reception as recently as 20 years ago:
Some very high prices have been paid for Freud's work in recent years, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995, selling for $33.6m in May 2008 at Christie's New York, a new record for a living artist. The short memory of the conformist, fickle art world has led many to forget, however, that only 20 years earlier he was considered a curious, late, insular British manifestation of expressionism and so of no serious interest. His first Paris retrospective, by the unorthodox curator Jean Clair at the Centre Pompidou in 1987, was widely denounced for being unworthy of an institution dedicated to the avant-garde. That same exhibition could not find a top venue in the US prepared to take it so it ended up at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, the same year.
Freud - the Studio Sale?
July 25 2011
Pure speculation, but if there is to be a Freud studio sale, it will surely be an epic. Are Sotheby's and Christie's already scrambling for the honours? Or was it all arranged a long time ago? Will Sotheby's' accidental shredding of a Freud drawing in 2000 count against them?
Freud - death of the portrait?
July 25 2011
Picture: Telegraph
Mark Lawson has a fine piece in The Guardian today, arguing that the death of Lucian Freud marks the death of the painted portrait. His point is that Freud was the last redoubt of the portrait painter in his battle with the photographer. He concludes:
For decades, Freud succeeded in a fight that is now unwinnable. With his passing, the art of the portrait has passed from the canvas to the screen.
Nowhere is Lawson's point more obviously made than the soul-destroying photo-realist portraits one finds in the BP Portrait Award. Personally, I can't see how painting a photograph of someone is any more skilfull than photographing a painting of someone. But they seem to be all the rage these days. And the wider question is not just, was Freud the last great British portraitist, but was he the last great British painter?
