Category: Research

members of the [research] team are almost 100 per cent certain that this is the skeleton of Hansken, a female Asian elephant that became a travelling curiosity at the time and was known to have died in Florence in 1655.

Although Ray only saw the skeleton of Hansken, Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn painted the elephant from life when he saw it in Amsterdam in 1637. 

This now means that Rembrandt's paintings and sketches are the original and correct portrayal of the type specimen of an Asian elephant. 

Prof Lister said the team was excited to finally be able to assign the Asian elephant its correct type specimen.

Enrico Cappellini, lead author of the study from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, said, 'That you can still see it as a life drawing by Rembrandt demonstrates how science and art remain inseparable.'

The most prominent differences between Asian and African elephants are that African elephants have bigger ears, are generally larger and have more wrinkled skin.

The news is that Rembrandt H v R has suddenly become a natural history artist, alongside people such as JJ Audubon, Gould, Maria Sybilla Merian etc. The relevant word is 'iconotype', ie the first pictorial representation of the first scientifically described specimen. Other artists  drew elephants before Rembrandt, but Hansken was the taxonomic specimen used by John Ray.

The elephant in question was a celebrity in Europe from arrival in Holland to death and is well recorded in print and manuscript-- Stefano della Bella drew a significant number of sheets, probably in Paris and finally in Florence, and it is definitely the same elephant in his etchings  --  I think there can be no doubt, or as little doubt as is inevitable in all matters historical, that the skeleton in Florence is of the animal drawn by Rembrandt in Amsterdam in 1637. For me the clinching detail [...] is the wooden ribs, first noted by John Ray in 1664, for more see this long post at Nature.

What is very strange is that Pliny, circa AD 70, is very clear on their being two distinct and different types of elephant,  Indian and African, I can not for the life of me understand where and why Linneaus went wrong  -- the fetal specimen he acquired was known to have been brought from Africa by the West India Company.

Díaz Padrón argued that the painting was "believed to be, and documented as, a Velázquez original in the 17th and 18th centuries … by the professors of the Royal Academy, including Francisco de Goya". It was only in the 19th and 20th centuries that the painting's provenance was changed, he said, with historians coming to believe it to be a later copy by Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo, Velázquez's son-in-law and successor as painter to the royal court.

He argued that this was a mistake and that the painting was the first "boceto or modeletto" — a first draft or sketch – painted by Velázquez, which the king then asked him to reproduce on a larger scale, which now hangs in the Prado.

Díaz Padrón said: "Today, the moment has arrived to revise these judgments, and restore the painting's authorship to Velázquez." He said: "I don't see any differences between the boceto and the definitive work … the colours are typical of Velázquez in both pictures."

The debate is anything but settled, however, and the Prado museum denies that the painting in Kingston Lacy, bought by the English landowner and art collector William Bankes in the early 19th century, is an original.

Díaz Padrón says that Lay Kingston painting, is a preliminary study of Las Meninas, but this is unlikely. In the X-ray test performed to Las Meninas, will appreciate, numerous changes, introduced during the process of composition. These changes are only in the original canvas and not in the copy. This is a copy of the basic composition of the canvas of the Prado, once finished. If this was a modeletto, would reflect occult version of the Prado painting, not the final version.

Diaz Padron insists on ignoring the evidence, physical and chemical. According to him: "An artist is not a pigment, not a glue, not a color" but a painting, it is.

Confusion over the works of Velasquez and del Mazo has been around for centuries. 

Aside from the Kingston Lacy painting, the National Gallery paid £10,000 in 1890 for what it thought was a famous original portrait by Velasquez of Admiral Pareja.  For some years now that work has been “downgraded” and is generally thought to be by del Mazo.

What’s always intrigued me is that the Gallery has a fully authenticated del Mazo which, while it bears some similarities to the Admiral Pareja portrait, is much less impressive.  If the Admiral Pareja portrait is a copy by del Mazo, he clearly had some facility in imitating Velasquez’s technique – see also the rather splendid work in York.

To enable graduates, already specialists in the world of the arts, to improve their connoisseurship qualities. Incorporating the latest insights of neuroscientific research applied within the context of a thorough knowledge of the historical, economic, legal and sociological processes that shape the art market, are essential.

To lead students to a better understanding and to critical visual cognitive-perception of artworks through the study of neuroscience. The deeply human side of the talent of the connoisseur, on the one hand, and the limits imposed by the laws of brain and of cognitive-perception, on the other hand, are studied.

To prepare the students, already specialists in the world of arts, to excell in the knowledge of the legal framework and all issues related to the art market in a global world. The academic program ‘Connoisseurship’ targets on the knowledge of the legal aspects of different law systems, to be taken into account in the global art market today. Various legal disciplines will be examined and practical cases will be studied.

To put the definition of authenticity in art in the context of the very nature of the work of art and on the legal system. Vendors, buyers, auctioneers, dealers, and agent-strategies have to be understood in the legal, sociological, fiscal, and economic context.

To provide the acquisition of theoretical and practical knowledge for material analysis by specialized laboratory techniques. Diagnostics based on technical results, require great experience to produce the rightful attributions. It focuses on a detailed observation of the work of art, essential in this context.

To increase skills for evaluation and expertise in the light of the art market experience. It needs a ‘period eye’ and the understanding of the specificity of each work of art.

I spotted in a recent update you attributed the Cromwell 'Warts an All' quote to a work by Samuel Cooper. I always understood this to be an instruction he'd given to Peter Lely - and in fact have set this as a question in a recent quiz I wrote...

Do you believe it to have been Cooper instead? Or was it just a mistype?

A rare early colour image of Vincent van Gogh’s Six Sunflowers has been tracked down in Japan. It reveals that Van Gogh designed a bold orange frame for his still life. The framed painting, once in a private Japanese collection, was destroyed in an American bombing raid during the Second World War.

This newly discovered image is from a very scarce portfolio produced in Tokyo in 1921, which has escaped the attention of art historians. It is reproduced in The Sunflowers are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece, by Martin Bailey, to be published by Frances Lincoln on 5 September.

Van Gogh’s narrow wooden frame was painted in orange, producing a dramatic effect when set against the blue background of the still life. This reflects Van Gogh’s love of complementary colours (such as orange and blue), which have a vibrant effect when placed next to each other. Van Gogh has also varied the orange, so that it is a deep orange where it is next to the blue background and a lighter orange next to the lilac table.

We can now see how Van Gogh wanted to present his Six Sunflowers: the yellow-ochre sunflowers were set against a rich royal blue background and then framed in orange. This framing would have been revolutionary in 1888, when pictures were traditionally hung in gilt frames or, for very modern works, in white frames.

While researching my book on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers I was astonished to find that the artist’s self-mutilation had been reported soon after it happened in a Parisian newspaper. It appeared in Le Petit Journal on 26 December 1888, three days after Van Gogh slashed off the lower part of his left ear, following a row with Gauguin. Until recently, only one short newspaper report of the mutilation was known, which was published a few days later in an Arles weekly, Le Forum Républicain.

The newly discovered article in a Parisian daily records important details. Le Petit Journal reported that Van Gogh used a razor. He then went to a “house of ill repute”, where he “gave his ear in a folded piece of paper” to the doorkeeper. Van Gogh told the recipient: “Take it, it will be useful”. These baffling words suggest that Van Gogh must have been suffering from an acute mental problem throughout the night, and did not just slice off part of his ear in a passing moment of madness.

The Parisian report is also important in another sense. Van Gogh’s self-mutilation was the first item of provincial news in Le Petit Journal, so the article must have attracted considerable attention in the capital. It would have been seen by many of his friends and much discussed in the Paris bars that Van Gogh frequented. This must have only added to the distress of his brother Theo, who was a respectable figure running an art gallery.

It seems astonishing that a virtually unknown individual living over 600km away who mutilated himself would have warranted this attention in a four-page Parisian newspaper (taking a quarter of the space devoted to provincial news that day). But even then, there was something sensationalist about the ear incident which grabbed public attention.

• Van Gogh completed his original four paintings of Sunflowers in less than a week, twice as fast as has been assumed. He chose to depict sunflowers because the weather was bad and his models failed to show up. 
• There is also a second “unknown” Sunflowers painting which has always been hidden away in private collections. This is Van Gogh’s Three Sunflowers, with a bright turquoise background. It has never been exhibited in living memory and its whereabouts have been a mystery. Bailey reveals that Three Sunflowers was acquired by the Swiss-based Greek shipping tycoon George Embiricos, who sold it in the late 1990s. It was then bought by the present owner, a very discreet collector with a taste for Van Gogh.

I am delighted and extremely excited to have received an award from the Art Fund's Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grant programme. For the next seven months I will be able to put aside two days a week to spend time in London’s libraries and museum collections hunting down any possible link there may be between Britain and Spain’s leading 18th-century portrait painters: Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) and Francisco de Goya (1746-1828).

This project was inspired by the visual similarities between Dulwich Picture Gallery’s portrait of the musician Samuel Linley (1778), which Gainsborough reputedly painted in 48 minutes, and Goya’s portrait of the Spanish composer, Manuel Quijano (1815), which is in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona (see above). Both portraits are half-length portraits and set in oval frames, and both are evocative portrayals of each sitter’s artistic sensibility.

Although the visual similarities between the two artists have often been remarked upon they have never been properly explored. Goya, who was 19 years younger than Gainsborough, would have known the elder artist by reputation. My hunch is that he is very likely to have known the numerous prints that were made after Gainsborough’s portraits and widely circulated throughout Europe, some which surely made it to Madrid where Goya worked.

In order to ascertain this, my first port of call will be to the British Museum’s Prints and Drawings department to look through the many boxes of prints after Gainsborough’s portraits. I hope to determine which prints Goya might have been able to see in Madrid and demonstrate the role they might have played in his development as a portrait painter, particularly in terms of pose, gesture, facial expression and the setting of a figure in space.

The [Rice Portrait] website claims that the portrait is signed several times in monogram, inscribed JANE and dated 1788 but, from my lengthy experience of examining British portraits, these apppear to be purely incidental and meaningless markings. They were not noted by Thomas Harding Newman, owner of the portrait in 1880, who attributed it to Zoffany. They do not appear in photographs taken by Emery Walker in about 1910, despite claims to the contrary on the website. They were not apparent to the professional painting conservator who examined the portrait with others at Henry Rice's request before cleaning it in 1985. They were not apparent to Christie's experienced cataloguing staff in 2007 when the portrait was put up for sale in New York, despite an earlier report of initials on the portrait.

1: The art market

The main additions are 180 sale catalogues - featuring 39,000 lots - which represent the publication of three sources that are fundamental for any student of late 17th & early 18th century art in Britain:

A volume of catalogues from 1689-92 compiled by Narcissus Luttrell (1657-1732) and now in the British Library, considered "by far the most important source of information concerning late seventeenth-century taste" (H&M Ogden). Thanks and congratulations to Anna and Peter Moore for having transcribed this volume so efficiently.

A scrapbook of unique art trade ephemera assembled by John Bagford (1650/1-1716) book seller, historian and art dealer. As well as its sale catalogues, the album's trade cards, lottery proposals and handbills are published. The volume, also in the British Library, provides an exceptional view of the every day workings of the picture trade around 1700.

The Houlditch manuscript, a set of catalogue transcripts owned by Richard Houlditch (died 1759), & now in the National Art Library. The pre-1740 contents are published here, which are the chief source for names of auction buyers in the early 18th century.

In addition, brief listings of 300 further sale catalogues - mostly from the 1740s and 50s - are published, describing the sales of artists and collectors who were active earlier in the century.

The index of art sales has been updated with 130 records covering the years 1700-1704. This half decade saw the start of long-term growth in the art market that continued to the 1730s; there was also a changing of the guard within the picture trade, as leading figures of the 1690s died or retired, and new salesmen emerged to replace them.

In total there are now 62,000 auction records on the website. 430 people who bought at auction are identified; 220 people involved in selling pictures by lottery, auction or as dealers/retailers; and 225 addresses where art sales took place  5,300 prices paid for pictures and related services are documented. Collectively these provide a rich & detailed account of artistic production and consumption in this period, when London emerged as a major centre of the international art trade.

2: Sculptors

A list of over 600 sculptors, carvers and related trades has been published, with links to the online edition of the great Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660-1851, from which this information comes. Many thanks to Greg Sullivan and Ann Sproat for sharing their data.

In addition, research for this website has revealed the names of around 50 previously unrecorded masons, carvers and sculptors, which are currently being added to the Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors.

3: What books did painters read?

If we study the books that painters and others read, we can enter their intellectual world, discover the skills they sought to master and learn about the wider interests and concerns. Materials are now published which address this essential question:

A listing of 320 book subscriptions  across architecture, poetry, history, languages, gardening, theology, natural history and travel. Which two dozen titles did Sir James Thornhill order? Which architectural treatise was popular with early 18th century decorative painters? Which dictionary did painters rely on for help with foreign languages  How did they get their clients' titles and honours right?

The libraries of two prominent painter-dealers are recorded in sale catalogues: Henry Cooke (1700-1) and John Closterman (1706)

During the early 18th century several landmark book collections were formed, such as by the Earls of Oxford and Pembroke. A useful introduction to this subject, which describes 20 of the main book collectors in our period, is provided through the publication here of Semour de Ricci's English Collectors of Books and Manuscripts.

4: Dutch-language materials

Brief notices about painters in England, which appeared in the Dutch press, are published. These were recycled from the London press and show that people in the Netherlands were kept aware of the London art world from time to time. The extracts also include a few Dutch newspaper advertisements for both London and continental book and picture sales, which can help us to understand the networks of distribution that enabled sale catalogues to circulate across borders.

We know that hundreds of Dutch painters came to work in London in the 17th century, but we know precious little beyond that. Two documents now published offered detailed information about the circumstances of these migrations. One dates from 1671  and the other from 1687 (a third, from 1714  is already online). We owe Sander Karst of the University of Utrecht our thanks for kindly translating these contracts.

5. Functional changes

There are two small changes that aim to improve users' ability to access the data on the site: 

A book icon is now displayed next to 'full-text' sources (which contain transcripts or summaries of texts) to distinguish them from 'bibliographic' sources (which are index-style listings, with no texts).

It is now possible to browse through the database of places according to several categories, such as book shops, the premises of colour men, art sale venues, coffee houses, and sites of decorative painting.

‘…let me beg to assure you that the comparative richness of the frames now made for them has been adopted with not the remotest view to their impression on the eye as mere splendid decoration.  The pattern has been selected by me and its dimensions determined solely with a view to the advantage of the Pictures: a Frame is so much a part of the Picture, that almost invariably we a little change the effect or colour of some part the moment we place it in the frame, and the work as certainly is the better for it.  The finest picture, seen without an appropriate Frame, loses a great advantage; as on the other hand it sustains material injury from a Frame injudiciously selected.  The most unbecoming character of a frame is the very plain and very narrow… the next defection is the Frame with large obtrusive Ornaments in the centre, and the corners of it.  A good frame (a merely safe one for the general effect of the picture) should be sufficiently broad and rich, but the ornament of that richness composed through-out of small parts, and usually it should be unburnished… The Frame is the clear Decanter not the brush…’

Using an art historian’s keen eye and analytical skills (art historians call it “connoisseurship”), Palermo was able to identify the previously unattributed manuscript and its image of an Old Testament prophet as the work of 15th-century Spanish painter Pedro de Palma. Hand-drawn on a large vellum sheet and beautifully illustrated, the manuscript had been donated to Rice in 1949 by New York City bookseller and antiquarian Paul Gottschalk and is housed in the library’s Woodson Research Center as part of the Illuminated Sacred Music Manuscript Collection.

I like your blog and your wit

I have nothing against an internet catalogue, but why publish an e-catalogue for your new exhibition "Rediscovering Van Dyck" if nearly half of the photographs when you browse it online are missing due to copyright problems?

The Picture So Far...50 Years in Painting Conservation is a landmark retrospective of the painting conservation profession and practice. Such a comprehensive review has not been presented in this country before and the event has broad appeal, not only to conservators but to curators, art historians, dealers, and collectors. The conference will also address the present challenges facing painting conservation and will conclude with a chaired panel discussion on our future directions. We are very pleased to have attracted pre-eminent international speakers (Nicholas Penny, David Bomford, Richard Wolbers, Joyce Hill Stoner among others) who will offer an extremely valuable insight into this, one of the key professions within the ’fine art family’.

1. Patronage, Acquisition and Display: Contextualising the Art Collections of Longford Castle during the Long Eighteenth Century

Birkbeck College, University of London (School of Arts)/The National Gallery, London

2. Sir Philip Hendy (1900-1980) director and scholar in Leeds and London 1934-1967: the acquisition and display of art and curatorial practices in ages of austerity

University of Leeds/The National Gallery, London

While Hendy was responsible for some major acquisitions over his long tenure (1946-1967), what’s striking is how many mistakes he made.

Letting David’s Napoleon in his Study go in favour of purchasing this Tiepolo sketch: he seems to have had a particular interest in 18thc Italian works.

Acquiring the only wrong “Rembrandt” from Chatsworth.

And a Giorgione which is substantially not original (putting it politely), even if it could definitely be attributed to him.

Then there’s the Delacroix which never was, and, similarly, the Pontormo  and the Cavallino which turned out, quite quickly, not to be so.

Also a Batoni which, in near forty years of visiting the National Gallery, has never been exhibited in the main rooms.

And there was the controversies over the Renoir dancers at £163,000 in 1961 and the early version of Rubens’ Judgement – when, again, his great Daniel in the Lions’ Den went to Washington

On the plus side, there’s the Burlington Cartoon and getting extra money out of HM Treasury – at a time when was possible to do so – to help buy the Uccello St George*, Monet’s large Waterlilies and Cezanne’s Large Bathers.

Indeed: how many £3.36s [the price for downloading a will here in the UK] have we all thrown away! But yes one does occasionally find gold, as in my long piece on La Tour’s Mlle Ferrand.  

But the main value in wills (and in law cases which are often even more fruitful, and show a less public side to the people we encounter) is the biographical information they give on artists and sitters.

 I started to draw up a list of more minor discoveries: instant examples included Katherine Thornhill identified from Sarah Clayton’s will (copied from a pastel which I tentatively attribute to Cotes), whle the pastellist/opera singer Mrs Du Parc was properly identified through her will (and that of Goupy), as was Mrs Gibbons but it instantly became obvious that this would take far too long…

 I’m not sure that I would call these “lucky” hits as they involve quite a lot of work!

Quite a nice example is the will of painter Edmond Lilly, 1715, in which he gives "to my said nephew Edward Lilly the originall Picture of the blessed Virgin and the Angell commonly called the Salutation about 5 foot in breadth and 7 and half in height, one Picture of the Goddess Minerva about 5 foot in breadth and above 8 foot in height, one whole length picture of Queen Ann of or near the size of the said picture of Minerva. Also a picture of a devout Virgin 3 foot 4 Inches by 4 foot 2 Inches or thereabout" A year later he added a codicil, in which he mentions: "one whole length Picture of the Dutchess of Richmond copyed after Vandike 5 foot and half in height and above 4 foot in broeadth marked on the back with Letter (L) and likewise the Picture of Grapes soe much esteemed by his Papa 30 Inches by twenty five."

In 1708 Simon Dubois bequeathed to Lord Somers "my father and mothers Pictures drawn by Van Dyke" and to his wife "my Pictures of the Tower of Bable and of a Woman playing upon the Lute a little fruit piece that my Wife's Sister Coppied and the Battle of my own painting which hangs in the inward[?] Room"

...it seems William Dobson's grandmother was a bit of a collector, leaving ‘a great picture of Judyth cutting of Hollofernes head',  ‘six small pictures of allabastor’, ‘twelve round pictures of the twelve monthes of the yeare’, and a picture each of King James and the King of Denmark. 

Interestingly for the grandma of a Royalist, she left the Judyth picture to another grandchild's husband, the regicide Sir James Harington...