20th Century
Courtauld scan reveals figure under Picasso
February 13 2025

Picture: courtauld.ac.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Courtauld Institute in London has shared news that x-ray and infra-red scans undertaken within its conservation studios have revealed a figure (or 'mystery woman') underneath Pablo Picasso's 1901 Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto.
According to the institute's website:
Conducted in collaboration with the Oskar Reinhart Collection, ‘Am Römerholz’, Switzerland, the unknown artwork was discovered when The Courtauld took x-ray and infrared images of Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto – a portrait depicting Picasso’s sculptor friend painted in 1901 and one of the earliest examples of the artist’s Blue Period – ahead of its display as part of the upcoming The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, opening 14 February.
The Courtauld’s analysis of the painting reveals it played an important role at a crucial stage in the young Picasso’s stylistic development, at a time when he was moving away from colourful, Impressionistic paintings towards a distinctly more melancholy artistic style which became the defining phase of his career known as his Blue Period.
Leonard A. Lauder Publication Grants
February 7 2025

Picture: metmuseum.org
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art are inviting applications for publication grants 'in the field of modern art and theory, and modern visual culture'. Six grants are available per year, with a value of typically between $4,000 and $7,000, with no single grant more than $12,000 to be awarded.
Applications must be in by 31st March 2025.
Harvard Gifted Munch Treasure Trove
February 5 2025

Picture: Harvard Art Museums
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Harvard Art Museums have announced that they have received a gift of 62 prints and 2 paintings by Edvard Munch from the collection of Philip A. ’37 and Lynn G. Straus. The works will feature in an upcoming exhibition which opens on 7th March 2025.
According to their website:
“It is hard to overestimate the significance of Munch’s painting ‘Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones).’ Capturing the tension between proximity and distance — spatial as well as emotional — the work addresses the universal theme of the human condition,” said Lynette Roth, the Daimler Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum at the Harvard Art Museums. “The Strauses had generously loaned their painting for the inaugural installation of the renovated Harvard Art Museums building that opened in November 2014, and we are thrilled to be able to teach with and display it alongside the other significant paintings from their collection going forward.”
Picasso and Paper in Cleveland
February 1 2025

Picture: Cleveland Museum of Art
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I'm late to news that the Cleveland Museum of Art opened a fascinating sounding exhibition in December dedicated to Picasso and Paper.
According to their website:
Pablo Picasso’s prolonged engagement with paper is the subject of the groundbreaking exhibition Picasso and Paper, organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in partnership with the Musée national Picasso-Paris.
Showcasing nearly 300 works spanning the artist’s career, the exhibition highlights Picasso’s relentless exploration of paper. His appreciation of and experimentation with the material is revealed in the works ranging from collages of cut-and-pasted papers to sculptures from pieces of torn and burnt paper, manipulated photographs, drawings in virtually all available media, and prints in an array of techniques. The exhibition’s highlights include Femmes à leur toilette (1937–38), an extraordinarily large collage (9 13/16 x 14 1/2 feet) of cut-and-pasted papers, which will be exhibited for the first time in the United States; outstanding Cubist papiers collés; artist’s sketchbooks, including studies for his best known paintings, including Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; constructed paper guitars from the Cubist and Surrealist periods; and an array of works related to major paintings and sculptural projects.
The show will run until 23rd March 2025.
Suzanne Valadon at the Centre Pompidou
January 9 2025

Picture: Centre Pompidou
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Centre Pompidou in Paris will be opening a new exhibition on 15th January dedicated to Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938).
According to their website:
Suzanne Valadon had not been the subject of a monograph since the one devoted to her by the Musée National d’Art Moderne in 1967. Presented at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in 2023 (“Suzanne Valadon. A World of Her Own”), then at the Musée des Beaux-arts de Nantes (2024) and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (2024), the tribute to this ostensibly modern artist, free of the conventions of her time, continues at the Centre Pompidou in 2025, enhanced by new loans and new archives.
The exhibition showcases this exceptional figure and highlights her pioneering, but often underestimated, role in the birth of artistic modernity. It reveals the great freedom of this artist, who did not really adhere to any particular movement, except perhaps her own. The exhibition of almost 200 works draws on a wealth of national collections, in particular the largest, that of the Centre Pompidou, but also from the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie.
The show will run until 26th May 2025.
Elegant Edwardians at The Royal Collection for 2025
December 12 2024

Picture: RCT
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Royal Collection Trust have shared news that one of their primary new exhibitions for 2025 will be entitled The Edwardians: Age of Elegance.
According to their website:
Explore the opulence and glamour of the Edwardian age – the period between the Victorian era and the First World War.
Visitors will learn about the lives and tastes of two of Britain’s most fashionable royal couples – King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, and King George V and Queen Mary – from their family lives and personal collecting to their glittering social circles and spectacular royal events.
More than 300 objects from the Royal Collection will be on display – almost half for the first time – including works by the most renowned contemporary artists of the period, including Carl Fabergé, Frederic Leighton, Edward Burne-Jones, Laurits Tuxen, John Singer Sargent and William Morris.
The show will run from 11th April until 23rd November 2025.
May 2025 Release: John Singer Sargent - The Charcoal Portraits
December 6 2024

Picture: Yale Books
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Exciting news that a new volume on John Singer Sargent's Charcoal Portraits will be published in May 2025.
According to the book's blurb:
In comparison with his portraits in oil, John Singer Sargent’s charcoal portraits are relatively little known. In this authoritative new volume, Richard Ormond documents the nearly 700 drawings that make up this distinct strand of Sargent’s oeuvre. These portraits capture the essence of British and American high society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, portraying an elite clientele that includes aristocracy, royalty, politicians, artists, writers, actors, financiers, and philanthropists. Among Sargent’s subjects are such prominent figures as the Astors, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Du Ponts, the Prince and Princess of Wales, Ethel Barrymore, W. B. Yeats, and Winston Churchill.
Though renowned for his paintings of women, these charcoal portraits also reveal Sargent’s interest in depicting athletes across a variety of sports, from cricket and fencing to football and polo. This shift in subject matter from prewar to postwar, along with a sparser style characteristic of his charcoal work, casts new light on Sargent’s depictions of the period’s social landscape.
Portrait of Rasputin's Murderer Soars
November 27 2024

Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A pastel portrait of Prince Felix Yusupov, who is most famous for his hand in the murder of Grigori Rasputin, soared at Sotheby's London yesterday. The portrait was one of three by the Russian female artist Zinaida Evgenievna Serebriakova offered in the recent Fabergé, Imperial & Revolutionary Art sale in New Bond Street. Felix's realised £276,000 (inc. premiums) over its modest £40k - £60k estimate, and his wife Irina Romanova's (niece of Emperor Nicholas II) realised £204,000 over its £50k - £70k estimate.
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As it happens, Felix's life has become of great interest to me in recent years and I would heartily recommend his rather eccentric memoir entitled Lost Splendour to anyone who'd like a colourful account of what it was like to be a Prince in late Imperial Russia. Both his Romanov wife Irina and him managed to escape persecution from the Bolsheviks and eventually settled in between France and England for the remainder of their years. Plagued by debts and depressed jewellery prices (the easiest way Russian emigrees could raise funds in those days) Felix Yusupov eventually had to part with his family's prized Rembrandts (1) (2) to stay afloat, paintings which eventually made their way into the National Gallery of Art in Washington via. the dealer Joseph Wiedner (and eventually resulted in a very messy legal battle). I sometimes daydream of whether the changing attitudes to questions of restitution, evident in many western galleries and museums these days, will ever reconsider the ownership of these two pictures in the future.
Degenerate art: the trial of modern art under Nazism
November 20 2024

Picture: claudinecolin.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Musée Picasso in Paris will be opening a new exhibition in February 2025 entitled Degenerate art: the trial of modern art under Nazism. This exhibition will be the first in France to tackle the subject.
According to the website sortiraparis.com:
The exhibition looks back at the ideological and methodical offensive waged by the Nazi regime againstmodern art, notably through the infamous Entartete Kunst exhibition held in Munich in 1937. By shedding light on this dark chapter in art history, the exhibition offers an enriched reflection on the attacks on the artistic avant-garde, through emblematic works and an in-depth historical context.
Curated by Johan Popelard, head of the conservation and collections department, and François Dareau, researcher at the Musée Picasso, this exhibition recalls the scale of the Nazi regime's persecution of the arts. More than 20,000 works, including those by figures such as Vincent Van Gogh, Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso, were confiscated, destroyed or sold. Major artists such asOtto Dix, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee were stigmatized as representatives of this so-called "degenerate art", culminating in Entartete Kunst, which brought together over 600 works by around a hundred artists.
The show will run from 18th February until 25th May 2025.
Sotheby's New York Modern Sales realise $322m
November 19 2024

Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Results from the recent Modern Evening sales at Sotheby's New York appear to show that the high-end of the Modern and Impressionist market is in a rather good place at the moment. Sydell Miller's single-owner auction, which was a white-glove sale (meaning all lots sold), brought in a total of $215,953,000 (all figures inc. premiums). The top lot was Monet's Nymphéas (pictured), which achieved an impressive $65,500,000. Likewise, the Modern Evening Auction achieved a total of $106,184,000, with a bust by Alberto Giacometti making the top price of $13,250,000.
Whether or not you attribute these positive results to what the New York Times has described as the 'Trump Bump', the real test will perhaps be on Thursday when Maurizio Cattelan's highly anticipated Comedian [also known as the Banana duct taped to a wall] is offered for sale carrying a $1m - $1.5m estimate. The Modern and Contemporary market never fails to produce surprises, it seems.
The Christie's New York 20th / 21st Century Evening Sales are scheduled for this evening, so more news to come.
Egon Schiele: Living Landscapes - at the Neue Galerie
November 11 2024
Video: Neue Galerie
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I missed the news last month that the Neue Galerie in New York have just opened their latest exhibition entitled Egon Schiele: Living Landscapes, a display which focuses on the artist's attention to nature throughout his career. The show will run until 13th January 2025.
Leonard A. Lauder Research Center Publication Grants
September 23 2024

Picture: MET
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Leonard A. Lauder Research Center, based at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, are providing grants for publications in the sphere of modern and visual culture.
According to their website:
The Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art invites applications for grants supporting publications in the field of modern art and theory, and modern visual culture.
We use the term ‘modern art’ inclusively to refer to architecture, drawing, design (including exhibition, graphic, interior and stage design), film, painting, performance, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and textiles in the period from the last third of the nineteenth century through to the 1960s, from any country region or culture.
On how much money might be available:
Up to six grants per year typically between $4,000 and $7,000, with no single grant more than $12,000 to be awarded.
Applications must be in by 30th September 2024.
Good luck if you're applying!
$200m Sydell Miller Collection coming up at Sotheby's
September 20 2024

Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Sotheby's New York have announced the sale of $200m worth of art from the collection of the eyelash and haircare mogul Sydell Miller (d. 2024) in November 2024. Spanning over 90 lots, works on the block will include high-value paintings by Monet, Picasso (pictured), Kandinsky and Matisse.
According to their website:
After selling her company, with a renewed sense of time and energy, she turned her focus to family, philanthropy and collecting. Informed by countless family visits to galleries, museums and auctions, Miller built the foundations of the extraordinary collection to follow. Alongside her pursuit of fine art, Miller also began collecting design. Her initial focus in these formative years was on iconic French eighteenth-century furniture and European design, particularly the French Art Deco period of the 1920s and 1930s. Guided by her impeccable eye for beauty and craftsmanship, she sought out pieces that captured the elegance and refinement of that era. Over time, Miller’s collecting interests broadened to include not only historic masterpieces but also daring contemporary Design works. She began integrating modern and post-war design into her collection, acquiring pieces by such celebrated designers as François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne, and – as her passion for decorative arts and design evolved – she showed increasing interest in works by emerging Contemporary designers, including Robert Goosens, David Wiseman, Joseph Walsh and others. What distinguished Miller as a collector is how she lived with these works – fine art and design were not separate categories but coexisted harmoniously in her spaces. Throughout her pioneering career, her self-avowed aim was always to promote “individual expression and creativity”, and this aesthetic is at the heart of her collection.
Picasso acquired by Pinakothek der Moderne
September 18 2024

Picture: deeds.news
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich have acquired Pablo Picasso's Femme au violon. Painted in 1911, the work is celebrated as being created at the pinacle of the artist's cubist period. The work has been on loan to various institutions in Germany before an effort was made, with the assistance of various funds, to acquire it.
Here's the painting's full provenance, as supplied by the press article linked above:
Provenance of the painting: earliest 1911-1912 Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, Paris; 1912 Alfred Flechtheim, Düsseldorf; latest 1913 to at least 1917 Franz Kluxen, Münster and Boldixum; at least 1920 to at least 1922 Max Leon Flemming, Hamburg; 1927 Galerie M. Goldschmidt & Co, Frankfurt am Main (on commission); no earlier than 1927, no later than 1931 to 1942 Hermann Lange, Krefeld / Berlin; 1942 to 1964 Marie Lange, Krefeld; since 1964 private collection; 1994 to 2004 on loan from private ownership to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie; 2004 on loan from private ownership to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum Berggruen; since 2014 on loan from private ownership to the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Sammlung Moderne Kunst in der Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Munnings Film
September 17 2024
Video: National Sporting Library and Museum, Virginia, USA
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Sporting Library and Museum, Virginia, and the art historian Christopher Garibaldi have teamed up to create this video documentary on aspects relating to the art and life of Sir Alfred Munnings for the Art History Festival 2024. This film also contains presentations by Marcia Whiting, Curatorial Associate, Munnings Art Museum, and Claudia Pfeiffer, George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Deputy Director & Head Curator.
Sleeper Alert!
September 13 2024

Picture: Gorringe's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A reader has kindly been in touch with news that this nude study soared past its modest £60 - £80 estimate at Gorringe's this week to achieve an impressive £38,000. The painting's description in the online catalogue was 'Impasto oil on board, Abstract composition, Nude art school study (believed to be Slade)'. I wonder what the consignor thought after hearing the result!
Evelyn de Morgan in Wolverhampton
September 6 2024

Picture: BBC
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Wolverhampton Art Gallery will be displaying 30 works of art by Evelyn de Morgan in October. The loan is an attempt to recreate a solo exhibition the artist had in the city back in 1907 and 'has been curated to closely resemble the original'.
According to the BBC:
It will feature oil paintings, a plaster cast sculpture, sketches, drawings and newly-painted artworks that recreate three of her original paintings which were lost in a 1991 fire. ...
Jean McMeakin, chair of the De Morgan Trustee Board, said she was delighted to bring the exhibition to Wolverhampton.
“The exhibition not only illuminates her talent, her inspirations and her influences but in so doing, her inner thoughts, social and ethical values are also revealed,” she said.
The loan will run from 19th October 2024 until 9th March 2025.
Sarah Purser in Dublin
July 17 2024

Picture: hughlane.ie
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
As 2024 is shaping up to be the year for exhibitions on female artists, the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin have recently opened a show dedicated to Sarah Purser.
According to the exhibition's blurb:
Sarah Purser (1848 – 1943) was a hugely influential figure in Irish artistic circles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both as an artist and as an organiser. She played an important role in the founding of Hugh Lane Gallery and helped secure Charlemont House as the gallery’s permanent home. It also marks the centenary of the founding of the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, which Purser established in 1924.
Sarah Purser was born in 1848 in Dún Laoghaire and studied in Switzerland, Dublin and Paris, where she studied at the Académie Julian. On her return to Dublin, she established herself as one of the leading portraitists in the city. Hugh Lane Gallery has a fine collection of her work, with sensitive portraits of Jane Barlow, Edward Martyn, Maud Gonne and W. B. Yeats along with the figure studies, Portrait Study, Mother and Child and Painting of a Woman. [...]
The show will run until 5th January 2025.
Mabel Pryde Nicholson in Rottingdean
July 15 2024

Picture: rottingdeanheritage.org.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A new exhibition will be opening at The Grange Gallery in Rottingdean, East Sussex in a few days' time. It is dedicated to Mabel Pryde Nicholson, the the mother of abstract pioneer Ben Nicholson and modern architect Kit Nicholson, and the sister of the Scottish artist James Pryde.
According to the exhibition's website:
The Grange Gallery is pleased to announce the first exhibition of paintings by the artist Mabel Pryde Nicholson (1871–1918) in more than 100 years.
Her story has been overshadowed by the artistic successes of the men in her family: she was the first wife of the Edwardian society portraitist and still life virtuoso William Nicholson, the mother of abstract pioneer Ben Nicholson and modern architect Kit Nicholson, and the sister of the Scottish artist James Pryde.
Running 20 July – 26 August, ‘Prydie: the life and art of Mabel Pryde Nicholson’ brings together more than 30 objects from private collections and public institutions including the Tate, Pallant House Gallery and the Scottish National Gallery. The exhibition also features letters, photographs and personal objects, almost all of which have never been on public display and will coincide with the publication of the first biography of Mabel Pryde Nicholson by Lucy Davies.
Klimt in Perugia
July 4 2024
Video: Retesole TV Umbria
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Gallery of Umbria have been lent Gustav Klimt's The Three Ages of Woman for a special exhibition. Interestingly, the painting was exhibited at the 1910 Venice Biennale and the 1911 International Exposition in Rome and remains in the collection of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome. The show will run until 15th September 2024.