Woburn Abbey Claude to be Sold (?)
May 10 2025
Picture: artscouncil.org.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Arts Council's Private Treaty Sales page has just uploaded a notice of what seems the potential sale of Claude Lorrain's Landscape with Rural Dance. The painting has been part of the collection of the Dukes of Bedford at Woburn Abbey since the mid-eighteenth century. The website explains that 'The following painting is to be sold no sooner than the 1st July 2025', however, no precise details regarding the value of the work have been provided.
More news as and when it appears.
Temporary Export Ban on Loyd Collection Botticelli
May 10 2025
Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The UK Government has announced a temporary export ban on Sandro Botticelli's The Virgin and Child enthroned, which was sold from the Loyd Collection at Sotheby's London last year for £9.96m (inc. commission). Any interested UK institution has until 8th August 2025 to find £10.2m (which includes VAT) to keep the painting in the country.
According to their press release:
Christopher Baker, Committee member:
Dating from the early 1470s, this affecting devotional work, demonstrates the sophistication of Botticelli’s painting early in his career in Florence. Probably intended to inspire private prayer in a domestic setting, it is an image that has a wider resonance as it delicately explores the power of maternal love.
The cult of, or enthusiasm for Botticelli, of which it formed a part, had grown during the Victorian era and the painting arrived in Britain in 1904; it was acquired by Lady Wantage and entered the renowned Lloyd collection.
Further research on the placement of Botticelli’s work in his career and the organisation of his workshop, as well as links with the wider context of Florentine Renaissance art would all be of enormous benefit. In view of these intriguing possibilities every effort should be made to try and secure this beguiling painting for a British collection.
Bendor on National Gallery Entrance and Rehang
May 10 2025
Picture: artreview.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Gallery unveiled their new entrance to the Salisbury Wing this week alongside their much awaited rehang. I'm sure Bendor would like me to draw attention to his review which can be found here online in full.
Julia Alexander (1967-2025)
May 9 2025
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Several articles have been published online (1) (2) paying tribute to the life and career of the curator Dr Julia Alexander who died suddenly and unexpectedly last weekend. Alexander was the first female director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and had only recently been appointed the new Head of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
To quote the Kress Foundation's website:
Julia’s career was one of remarkable success. In 1996 she joined the Yale Center for British Art at Yale University, first as curator of paintings and sculpture and then as the museum’s associate director of programmatic affairs and associate director for exhibitions and publications. In 2008, Julia joined the San Diego Museum of Art as deputy director for curatorial affairs. After five years in San Diego, Julia came to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in 2013, serving as the museum’s fifth director and the first woman to hold the position. In 2024, Julia became the President of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in New York City.
Scented Visions at the Watts Gallery
May 9 2025
Video: Watts Gallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey, will be opening the latest leg of the Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850-1915 exhibition next week.
According to their website:
Engage your sense of smell to gain a new appreciation for the cultural context behind Victorian paintings, and the artists’ intentions. This exhibition includes three bespoke scents, created by Puig in collaboration with Artphilia, inspired by key elements within selected Pre-Raphaelite works.
Discover the works of renowned artists such as Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, John Frederick Lewis, John Everett Millais, Evelyn De Morgan, G F Watts, Simeon Solomon, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Featuring loans from the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, Birmingham Museums Trust, and Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, this exhibition offers a unique opportunity to explore the Pre-Raphaelite movement through a multi-sensory lens.
The show will run from 15th May until 9th November 2025.
Getty Cleans Snijders & Workshop of Rubens Larder Still Life
May 9 2025
Video: @GettyMuseum via Instagram
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Getty Museum have published the following video regarding the recent conservation and cleaning of their Larder Still Life given to Frans Snijders and Workshop and Workshop of Peter Paul Rubens.
Masterpieces from Kenwood at Gainsborough's House
May 9 2025
Picture: English Heritage
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Kenwood House, which is currently undergoing renovation in a few areas, has loaned a selection of their masterpieces to Gainsborough's House in Sudbury.
According to the Suffolk gallery's website:
This exhibition represents a unique opportunity to see masterpieces from Kenwood House featuring six by Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88), including two of his most iconic paintings, Mary, Countess Howe (c. 1764) and Lady Brisco (c. 1776).
This exciting exhibition also includes work by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), George Romney (1734–1802), Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807), Jean-Baptiste Pater (1695–1736) and François Boucher (1703–70).
Masterpieces from Kenwood aims to promote greater engagement with historic British art and to place Thomas Gainsborough in the context of his contemporaries, both in Britain and France. In an unprecedented collaboration with English Heritage, Gainsborough’s House is delighted to present this exhibition of outstanding paintings on loan from the world class Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House, London.
You'll be able to see the Kenwood pictures there until 19th October 2025.
Fries Museum acquires Wybrand de Geest Caravaggio Copy
May 9 2025
Picture: Fries Museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from CODART that the Fries Museum has acquired Wybrand de Geest's copy of Caravaggio's Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy. The work was picked up at an auction in Barcelona and will appear in the museum's upcoming show on the artist which opens later in September.
Sotheby's New York May Sale
May 9 2025
Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Sotheby's New York have uploaded their upcoming Master Paintings & Sculpture sale online. The live auction will take place on 22nd May 2025.
Apologies...
May 8 2025
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Apologies for the slow service this week. I will get a chance to catch up tomorrow morning, if all goes to plan!
Getty Provenance Index Update (ctd.)
May 2 2025
Picture: Getty Provenance Index
Posted by Bendor Grosvenor
Dear AHNers - we have an art historical emergency on our hands. I'm afraid the newly updated Getty Provenance Index (which Adam first reported below) is a disaster. I've no doubt it was built with good intentions. Art historians everywhere will always applaud the Getty for investing so much in making the raw materials of art history available for everyone, for free. But the new Getty Index simply does not work.
I would say that we must hope the Getty can fix it, but it seems the new site has been years in the making. I'm told it will not be easy to change. Our best hope is that they retain the old Index as a standalone website. The old Index is still available here. If it ceases to be made available (and I gather the plan is to soon switch it off) then provenance research will go backwards by decades. The new website threatens not only to be a setback for regular provenance research, but restitution claims too.
Regular AHNers will I'm sure be familiar with the old site. As you can see from the image above, it was possible to search by multiple categories, including: artist, title, owner, date, auction house, and so on. You could find within seconds a specific painting from millions of entries, covering art sales over the last four hundred years. An entry would have the date of sale, auction house, often dimensions, all displayed easily. Sale data from 1933-45 was especially detailed, which, combined with other databases like LostArt.de made searching for potentially looted artworks more accessible than ever before.
Within the old Index system, you could also bring up the whole contents of a particular sale. The sale entry would often have a long note compiled by one of the Getty's amazing provenance researchers, giving further information about who was selling what, when and where.
Hardly any of this is now possible in the new Index. There is no equivalent way of searching by specific criteria, like former owners. Even when you find a painting, it is a struggle to find basic information about it, like when it was sold, or at which auction house. The research notes about the sales seem to have vanished. I've had some discussions among fellow art historians who have been trying to use it. None of us can get the results we used to. The new user guides are jargon heavy and hard to understand. So far, we cannot believe how much of a setback the new site represents, nor that the Getty has spent so long and so much on making the Index worse. (If someone from Getty wants to get in touch to show we are mistaken, please do!)
The old Getty Index was one of the most transformative art historical tools of the last two decades. Anyone, anywhere could do provenance research which would either have taken months in an archive, or was simply impossible before. Here's a couple of examples from my own work.
Sometimes, the Getty Index made breakthroughs extraordinarily easy. For example, when the above early 17th painting of three girls holding fans came up for sale at auction in 2008, the sitters were unidentified. I simply put the word 'fan' into the Getty's title box, and amongst the 133 paintings sold with that word in the title, soon found that the painting at auction had been sold in 1824 with comprehensive details about the sitters' names. Other research proved that this evidence was correct, and that the sitters were indeed three sisters from the Egerton family.
Of course, provenance research is rarely so easy! But without the Getty Index, it would have been almost impossible to find in this case. Sadly, I have tried to replicate the 'fan' search on the new Index site, with no success. You cannot search among titles, indeed there appears to be no title category at all. There are a mystifying number of other categories, like 'identifier for object', but few usable art historical terms. Moreover, you cannot bring up a large number of items to search through at a time, like those 133 paintings with the word 'fan' in the title. The most I can get is 5 results at a time, and wading through the results is very laborious.
Another example. When I was investigating a painting of a mystery bridge in Derby Museum for Britain's Lost Masterpieces for the BBC, I was able to find on the Getty Index an entry for a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby of the Ponte Nomentano.
The entry onthe old Getty Index told me the painting was in Wright's posthumous sale, and was unfinished. It was a match for our painting. There were also links to digital scans of the original catalogues in other databases.
It is possible to find this painting on the new Index site, if you put in 'Nomentano', but even then it is hard to find the artist's name, let alone further information about the sale, and so on. The results page - with headings like 'Object Used in Data Assignment' - suggests that the new Index has been designed more with 'data' in mind than art history.
All of us who have worked on provenance research are enormously grateful for all the work the Getty and its scholars have done to support our field. If we lose the Getty Provenance Index as it was, it will be an extraordinary step backwards for art history, and all the work the Getty has done over almost 40 years will be diminished, or even redundant. What can be done? We must somehow get the Getty to agree for this old site to remain online. If you can, please email the Getty at ProvenanceIndex@getty.edu to make the case for this.
Update - a reader writes:
I suppose to be fair one should try to work with the new format. It may be possible to get it to do what the old one did with a little persistence ...
The same reader writes short while later:
I’m wrong. It is rubbish.
Update II:
A reader with experience of construction art historical databases writes:
'Linked data' [the idea behind the Getty's new database] was the next big thing in the internet about 15 years ago [...] The idea is simple: to offer a highly structured and logical scheme into which every single bit of historical data can fit. The vision then was that the internet was going to become one vast repository of information that was linked logically.
I'm really surprised to see that this approach has survived. It's fine when you have lots of data but in fact the Getty provenance index is quite 'thin' - it has tons and tons and tons of lists of pictures, and (ok there is a bit more, but) that's about it. So when you create a really fancy structure, all the user really sees is the structure - you can't really see the small amount of data within, because it's hidden by all the scaffolding surrounding it. They haven't done any user testing among people who actually use the database for art history - or if they did, they just ignored it. I have no idea, for example, how to get a catalogue view. Looking up an artist and trying to get a simple list of everything he did - that doesn't seem to be possible. Nowhere do we learn which bits of data are the direct primary source and which are extrapolations.
This rings true with my attempts to use the new database so far. Most of what I see is the structure.
£20m+ Canaletto coming up at Christie's London
May 2 2025
Picture: Christie's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Christie's London have announced that they will be offering Sir Robert Walpole's Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day by Canaletto in their July 2025 Old Master Paintings Evening Sale. The painting, which measures 4 1/2 feet wide, will be offered carrying an estimate 'in excess of £20 million'.
According to their press release:
Having only appeared at auction twice in its 300-year history, in 1751 and 1993, this picture is in a remarkable state of preservation with the surface of the painting beautifully textured and the rich impasto of the figures intact. Inaccessible to scholars throughout much of its history, it has only recently come to light that the picture hung at 10 Downing Street, where it is first recorded in 1736, in the collection of Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745). This illustrious early 18th century provenance makes it – along with its pendant of the Grand Canal – the earliest recorded work by the Venetian master to be hung in an English house, predating King George III’s purchase of Consul Joseph Smith’s Canalettos by a quarter of a century. Exceedingly ambitious in both scale and conception, this highly evocative view is testimony to Canaletto’s prodigious talent and exacting technique, painted at the highpoint of his career. It is his earliest known representation of a subject to which he would return repeatedly, marking the starting point for Canaletto painting such festivities. This picture will be on on view at Christie’s New York from 3 until 15 May, followed by Hong Kong from 22 to 28 May, before returning to London for the pre-sale exhibition from 27 June to 1 July.
Painted Gold at the Doge's Palace
May 2 2025
Picture: palazzoducale.visitmuve.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A new exhibition entitled PAINTED GOLD. El Greco and the Art between Crete and Venice has just opened at the Doge's Palace in Venice.
According to their website:
After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Candia [the route between Venice and Crete] became the most important artistic centre for the ancient Byzantine tradition, which saw the involvement of over a hundred workshops of ‘madoneri’, especially iconographers producing popular devotional images. At the same time, Venice – like a new Byzantium – welcomed a growing influx of artworks and artists from the Aegean islands. Iconographers, or painters of icons, travelled or immigrated between Crete, the Ionian Islands, and the Venetian capital. This led to a unique synthesis between the native Byzantine courtly tradition – already an essential element of Venetian artistic heritage – and the Western figurative language, which evolved from late Gothic to the Renaissance, becoming more human-centred, naturalistic, and dynamic.
A fortunate relationship developed and remained unbroken between the golden age of the Venetian Renaissance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the early nineteenth century, marked by moments of always original symbiosis. The seven sections of the exhibition chronologically illustrate this unique pictorial journey; at the heart of this fascinating narrative of history and painting stands the most famous and extraordinary figure of the ‘school’: Dominikos Theotokopoulos, or El Greco (1541–1614). Born in Crete, he began his training within the post-Byzantine tradition before making his way to Venice around 1567 – an essential step for artists of the time.
The show will run until 29th September 2025.
Possible Habsburg Princess Acquired by Museum Hof van Busleyden
May 2 2025
Picture: Museum Hof van Busleyden
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
CODART (the international network of curators of Dutch and Flemish art) have shared news that the Museum Hof van Busleyden in Mechelen have acquired the following portrait of Mary of Austria (?) attributed to the Master of the Magdalene Legend.
According to their article:
The painting was previously shown in the 2021 landmark exhibition Children of the Renaissance. This exhibition was curated by Dr. Samuel Mareel and was nominated for the International Exhibition of the Year by the Museum+Heritage Awards. Until recently, it belonged to a private collection and was brought to market through the British art dealer James Macdonald Fine Art.
This work is associated with a second portrait, which may depict an older sibling. Together, the two paintings reveal strong iconographic connections with other Habsburg family portraits, such as the triptych of Eleonora, Charles V, and Isabella attributed to the Master of the Mechelen Saint George’s Guild (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), as well as examples from the Royal Collection. A detailed examination and further research will follow this important acquisition.
Austen & Turner at Harewood house
May 2 2025
Picture: Harewood House
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Harewood House in West Yorkshire have opened a new exhibition today imagining an encounter between Jane Austen and JMW Turner (imagine that).
According to their website:
For the very first time, the work of these two legendary artistic figures will be brought together, co-curated by Harewood House Trust and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York.
In 1775, two icons of British culture were born into an era of huge social change. 250 years later, we celebrate Jane Austen and JMW Turner, uncovering their shared interest in the society and culture of the British country house and its landscape.
We imagine an encounter between these iconic figures, whose innovative works recorded the Regency era. Through Austen’s and Turner’s eyes, the show explores the world of the country house in their time and their impact on how we think about stately homes today.
Thrilling, evocative and rarely seen paintings and manuscripts will bring the Regency country house to life. The original manuscript of Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon joins early Turner watercolours and the very paintbox he used when he visited Harewood – all brought to northern England for the first time for this exhibition.
Burlington - Latest Issue
May 2 2025
Picture: burlington.org.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
This month's edition of The Burlington Magazine focuses on French Art.
Here's a list of the main articles featured within:
Rosalind Joy Savill (1951–2024) - By Stephen Duffy and Christopher Baker
A new border from Abbot Suger’s Saint-Denis - By Michael W. Cothren and Mary B. Shepard
Friendship tokens: Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s paintings for Madame de Pompadour - By Yuriko Jackall, John K. Delaney and Michael Swicklik
British press reaction to the London exhibitions of David, Lefèvre, Wicar and Lethière - By Humphrey Wine
Recasting and republicanising Millet’s horizons: Félicien Rops, Jean-François Raffaëlli and Jean-Charles Cazin - By Richard Thomson
Bravery, ingenuity and aerial post: an enamelled bowl by Joséphine-Arthurine Blot - By Daniëlle O. Kisluk-Grosheide
Antoine Caron and Italy - By David Ekserdjian
Henry Singleton's 'The Surrender of the two sons of Tipu Sultan' coming up at Bonhams
May 2 2025
Picture: Bonhams
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
One of the highlights of the upcoming Islamic & Indian Art sale at Bonhams in London is Henry Singleton's The Surrender of the two sons of Tipu Sultan. The work, which is rather famous due to it portraying an important event captured by an artist who as it happens never went to India, has been consigned by a descendant of Major General Sir David Baird who is actually depicted in the scene. The work will be offered on 22nd May 2025 carrying an estimate of £200,000 - £300,000.
Getty Provenance Index Update ?
May 2 2025
Picture: https://www.getty.edu/research/provenance/
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News has arrived that the Getty Provenance Index, one of the most important tools in provenance research for the art trade, has been updated. Press reports are heralding the news that 12 million records are now available through the website.
I've had a quick play around with the new system and it appears overly complicated indeed (compared to the old one, at least). Perhaps it is time to get studying the user guide.
To take a quote from the 'Conceptual Introduction':
In its pre-Arches form, the Getty Provenance Index represented provenance information gathered from historic documents by replicating the tabular structure of the source material as flat-file records, meaning each entry was a single, independent row without links to other data points. In the remodeled Getty Provenance Index in Arches, those flat-file records have been transformed into a linked open data system. This means each entity is uniquely identified and connected to other relevant data using controlled vocabularies and semantic connections. This remodeling from relational to graph data transforms the implicit relationships recorded in a flat-file row into an explicit, relational web of entities that consolidates people, objects, places, and events into uniquely identified resources.
In Arches, Getty Provenance Index data is generated through events. Often, but not always, these events are related to historic transfers of ownership. These events create data that populates one of nine Resource Models used in the Provenance Index: Activity, Group, Person, Physical Object, Place, Provenance Activity, Set, Textual Work, and Visual Work. These models are based on the Linked.Art metadata application profile of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) reference model.
Right. I better start thinking in terms of 'events', I suppose.
Thoughts and experiences from AHN readers are always welcome!
Update - Bendor adds: WHAT THE HELL HAVE THEY DONE? True, I am not tech minded, but from my first look, Getty have taken a resource which was astoundingly helpful and easy to use, and made it impossible to use, and utterly bamboozling. For example, the old search function allowed you to easily search for items by all manner of categories, from previous owner to lot title. Now it seems impossible to do this. And the guides to help you figure it all out are, I'm afraid, fairly unintelligible. Please bring back the old system?
Er... what are those doing there? (ctd)
May 2 2025
Picture: Kunstauktionshaus Schloss Ahlden GmbH
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Following on from the strange encounter with some wind turbines last year, it appears that more defaced 19th century paintings by Eike Heinrich Redel (born 1951) are coming up for sale in Germany. This particular example entitled 'Ich habe eine große Meise', which translates to 'I have a big tit' (the bird kind), carries an estimate of 1,400 - 2,800 EUR.
The National Gallery acquires mysterious 16th-century altarpiece for £16.4m
May 1 2025
Picture: The National Gallery, London
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Gallery in London have announced their acquisition of the following The Virgin and Child with Saints Louis and Margaret by an Unknown Netherlandish or French artist. The work, which dates to about 1510, was acquired for £16,420,000 through Sotheby's with assistance from the American Friends of the National Gallery.
According to the press release:
The identity of the artist responsible for this impressive panel is a mystery. In fact, whether the painter was Netherlandish or French is up for debate. The overall sense of plasticity, monumentality, and the strong shadows recall the work of French painters like Jean Hey. On the other hand, the composition and versatile execution – alternating smoothly painted areas and minute details with more dynamic passages – pay homage to the Netherlandish tradition of Jan van Eyck (The Virgin and Child with the Canon Joris van der Paele; Bruges, Groeningemuseum) and Hugo van der Goes (The Portinari Altarpiece; Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi). The Netherlandish hypothesis is supported by the painting’s Baltic oak panel, since French artists tended to use locally sourced oak.
Stylistic parallels can be found with the early work of Jan Gossaert. The dramatically foreshortened faces of the saints and angels are reminiscent of some of his early drawings, for instance the left saint of The Holy Family with Saints (c. 1510-5; Albertina, Vienna). The treatment of the brocade and metalwork compares well with passages from Gossaert’s Adoration of the Kings (London, National Gallery). Both artists also used similar underdrawing techniques, especially the way of sketching the ocular cavities, the knuckles, the shading of the Virgin’s forehead, and the absence of wash. The eccentricity that pervades the panel also recalls Gossaert’s manner. This painting challenges art historians’ tendency to focus on names and demonstrates that for the late medieval and Renaissance periods, anonymity can intersect with extraordinary quality.
