About Art History News
Welcome to Art History News! It began in 2011 and is written by Bendor Grosvenor, a historian, art historian and art dealer. The aim is to provide a useful source for art history related news stories, such as exhibition announcements, new research and recently discovered paintings, along with the odd bit of humour.
The site currently has a regular readership of over a seven thousand a week. AHN welcomes contributions and opinions. We don't have a comments section like most blogs, for the simple reason that all reader feedback is incorporated into the main site, and not ignored in an area where nobody ever goes. So, if you have a news story, or simply want to agree or disagree with what AHN or someone else has said, then please get in touch.
About Bendor Grosvenor
Bendor works for Philip Mould Ltd in London, a gallery specialising in Old Masters and British pictures. He studied English history at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and UEA. His PhD was on foreign policy in Benjamin Disraeli’s second government, a subject on which he has published a number of articles, and most recently a book of edited documents published by Cambridge University Press for the Royal Historical Society.
Bendor has been interested in the history of art since an early age, and found his first ‘sleeper’, or mis-catalogued picture (a portrait by Sir William Fettes Douglas), whilst studying at university. He has made a number of historical and art historical discoveries, on subjects as varied as the relationship between Queen Victoria and John Brown, to the identity of the Flemish sixteenth century court painter, Steven van Herwijck. He has identified a number of important lost paintings, including pictures by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Thomas Lawrence, and recently re-identified the Scottish National Portrait Gallery’s iconic portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie by La Tour as being the Prince’s younger brother, Prince Henry.
Bendor is a member of the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Council on National Records and Archives, and the Lord Chancellor’s Forum on Historical Manuscripts and Academic Research. He used to work in politics, advising the Conservative Party on arts and heritage, and was a member of the Arts Taskforce set up by David Cameron under the chairmanship of Sir John Tusa. He has written a silly Christmas book, Crap MPs, and has also written articles for a number of publications, including The Guardian and The Art Newspaper, History Today and the British Art Journal. He regularly comments on art historical stories on TV and radio programmes such as Today, PM, and BBC Breakfast. Bendor did the research for and appeared in the BBC1 television series 'Fake or Fortune?'. He is currently working on the third series, which will be broadcast in Autumn 2013.
