Previous Posts: June 2014

Everyone wants to know whether this market is a bubble and, if so, when it will burst? This seems unlikely to happen any time soon: the sheer amount of global wealth; the massive museum-building programmes; the positioning of art as an element of the celebrity and fashion worlds, and the seductive lifestyle the art world offers are all very attractive to the super-rich.

But I like to keep in mind what the Chinese say: “Trees can’t grow as high as the sky.” All markets are cyclical; the art market has had booms and busts before, for example, during the armed conflicts of the 20th century, in the 1970s and in 1990: each time mirroring the global economy.

There are parallels between this situation and the art market in England between 1860 and 1914, “the golden age of the living painter”, according to art historian Gerald Reitlinger. It was a time of rapid economic growth thanks to the technological revolution, and new patrons of art came from these manufacturing and trading fortunes.

The sometimes scandalous lives of Pre-Raphaelite artists and their circle were well publicised; advances in printing meant that 600,000 impressions were sold of Millais’ winsome child, “Cherry Ripe”. Contemporary artists were stars: Edwin Long’s florid “The Babylonian Marriage Market” (1875) sold in 1882 for £6,615 (almost £700,000 today) – then a record for a living English painter. It was bought by Thomas Holloway, a multimillionaire from sales of ointment and medicines. The art establishment was outraged, and in Holloway’s obituary the Art Journal sniffed: “Those whose productions he acquired may possibly have to regret the inflated prices which . . . their works assumed.”

Long’s prices did collapse, along with those of many Victorian artists. The first world war and the Great Depression would end that boom.

How will today’s art stars fare in the future? Major political upheavals or financial problems inevitably have an impact on investment and the art market cannot be immune. Almost all the huge prices are, however, being made as a growing pool of ultra-rich buyers battles for a small number of brand-name works. There is a vast hinterland of good art by creators whose names will never be widely known and whose works will never achieve such heights. The overall trend of the market is upwards, historically, but not for everyone, and not always.

The partially cleaned ' School of Holbein' portrait of Lord Bergavenny is definitely based on the Wilton drawing or an exact copy of it, because it reproduces a slight error of draughtsmanship in the original drawing. There is also a miniature based on the same drawing, claimed to be by Holbein.

One of the characteristics of Holbein's (alleged) use of a form of Camera lucida (like Ingres) is the occasional misplacement of  one of the eyes, usually the one furthest from the picture plane. This can be caused by the sitter slightly changing the angle of his/her head, during the creation of the drawing.

This phenomenom can seen very clearly in the painting of Jane Seymour where her right eye (further from the picture plane) appears larger than the nearer, left eye. Surprisingly this has been transferred, apparently unnoticed by Holbein, from drawing to painting.

In the case of Bergavenny, the sitter's left eye in the Wilton drawing is very slightly too high up, in relation to the nearer eye, which Holbein will have drawn first and this has been reproduced in the painting, now being cleaned.. 

In other drawings, the sitter has turned slightly towards Holbein so one sees more of the eye than the strict rules of perspective  allow-( I believe this is what happened with Jane Seymour). 

The drawing looks immensely more powerful than the painting in its present state and I much look forward to seeing if it improves with cleaning.

Britain’s Royal Collection is to undergo the most ambitious condition survey ever carried out on a major group of paintings. On the eve of the conservation project, The Art Newspaper can give the precise number of paintings for which the collection is responsible: 7,564 works in oil. This is the first time that the number has been confirmed in the past 500 years. The works will all be condition-checked and properly photographed, and images of most of the paintings will be published online, revealing for the first time the extent of the world’s greatest private collection.

The Painting Condition Survey is due to begin this summer with the “lesser” palaces—Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, Sandringham in Norfolk and Balmoral in Scotland. A team of four conservators and frame technicians will move systematically through each of the royal residences, room by room. Desmond Shawe-Taylor, the surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, says that the paintings will be taken off the wall, one by one, and removed from their frames. This will be a complex logistical exercise, since the pictures hang in 13 royal residences throughout the UK.

Step 18: sign 'Vincent'.

We do not know who invented the term ‘Old Master Painting’.  It seems to have emerged in the London art trade two hundred years ago. ‘Master Paintings’ is the not very felicitous but very useful new term which combines Old Masters with art that cannot yet be called modern.  Etymological enquiries of this kind draw our attention to the shifting definitions essential to the history of taste as it evolves not only in the art market, but in museums and galleries.

If the National Gallery’s collection is in some respects canonical it should be noted that since 2000 it has acquired by gift and purchase works by Maulbertsch, Calame, Balke, Menzel and Gallen Kallela – Austrian, Swiss, Norwegian, German and Finnish artists.  And by the time this is published will have acquired a major North American painting by George Bellows, whose work has perhaps never previously been shown in the context of European art.

How are such changes made?  What are the preconditions for an institution redefining itself in this way?  These are not easy questions to answer.  The personal interest of a Director or the enthusiasm of a Curator, the support of Trustees (or their indulgence) are all significant forces, and so too is the work of academic art historians and critics.  But perhaps the most important factor is the eye for new opportunities, the sense of discovery, generated by dealers and collectors.  It is in the art market that new reputations are most commonly made, at least at first.

His decision comes as he approaches his 65th birthday this December. The exact date of his retirement will depend on the appointment of his successor. 

Under Dr Nicholas Penny’s Directorship, the National Gallery staged the most successful exhibition in its history, Leonardo da Vinci, Painter at the Court of Milan, as well as major exhibitions on painters including Barocci, Veronese and, this autumn, Rembrandt. In 2013, for the first time ever, annual visitors to the Gallery exceeded 6 million.

Reflecting on his six years as Director, Nicholas said “I have enjoyed my years as Director and am grateful to the Trustees, staff and to the Gallery’s supporters for helping to ensure that the Gallery has continued to prosper despite a steadily declining grant – to flourish both as a great and popular resource and as a home for scholarship, a national gallery admired internationally."

He added “Following my retirement I have many plans, but chiefly look forward to spending more time with my family, friends and books.”

Mark Getty, Chairman of the National Gallery Trustees, expressed the Board’s gratitude to the Director for all he has done for the Gallery, saying “Nick has been an extraordinarily successful Director of the National Gallery, steering the nation’s acquisition of the two great Titian paintings, ‘Diana and Actaeon’ (pictured) and ‘Diana and Callisto’ jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland, and this year securing the acquisition of the Gallery’s first major American painting, ‘Men of the Docks’ by George Bellows. The Board are hugely grateful to him for his energy, vision and commitment to the Gallery’s work. We will miss him greatly.”  

The Board of Trustees will shortly begin its search for a new Director. Under the Museums and Galleries Act of 1992, the Director of the National Gallery is appointed by the Trustees with the approval of the Prime Minister.

Nicholas Penny has agreed to stay in office for the entirety of that recruitment process, in order to affect a smooth handover to his successor.

It is very worrying that two such talented museum directors have apparently had enough. What have they had enough of?

Ultimately their dignified departures are personal matters and their own business. But it must be getting harder to run a big London museum. The capital is famous for art in a way it has never been before, and tourists flow ceaselessly through its galleries. There's a media assumption that every exhibition should be a hit, a political belief that galleries should provide not just well-run collections, but entertainment and education for everyone. Publicity and accessibility are everything.

Nicholas Penny and Sandy Nairne are characterful people with ideas about art. Is that kind of originality being driven out of a museum world driven by increasingly populist expectations and, at the same time, shrinking budgets? Are we about to see a new technocrat generation of museum bosses who keep their heads down, put PR first and do all they can to meet goals defined by politicians and the press?

This year has seen a taboo broken when a critic actually called for a museum director to be sacked because of (supposed) poor attendances. That kind of pressure doesn't exactly leave much room to experiment. Museums cannot just be machines for entertaining us. They should have a quieter side where the art comes first, the crowds second and a scholarly side that reveres someone like Penny.

This looks depressingly like the end of individuality in the museum world.

But though he’ll be missed, he’s doing the right thing at the right time, when he can still do the shows and write the books that no one else alive could have done or written. But of that’s only if you believe he is really retiring – and if I were a betting man I’d wager that he’s had a call from a large American museum.

Head of Marketing: 'We need someone to be on hand for the press photographers, any ideas?'

Head of Sale: 'What about John, who secured the consignment?'

Head of Marketing: 'I wonder if the piece doesn't require a female hand, to, er, resonate with the masculinity of Giacometti's vision?'

Head of Sale: 'Ok, what about Catherine, our senior specialist who wrote the catalogue entry? She knows all about the piece'.

Head of Marketing: 'Hmm. Not quite the right look.'

Head of Sale: 'Marie, the intern?'

Head of Marketing: 'Great idea!'

Yes, quality in art and monetary value these days seem to have little in common. I met Andy Warhol in the 1980s when he came here to Kong Kong for an exhibition of his Xerox-type portraits of local big-wigs, whether done by him or his "Factory" workers I know not. It was quite difficult carrying on a conversation with him because of his minimalist line in dialogue. At the time this seemed to me quite smart because his verbal technique generated maximum publicity with minimum effort. It was interesting to see that when he died his apartment was filled  with antiques like a country house; there were no "Factory" products in sight.

I haven't been to the Tate 'Folk Art' show, but I did see some nice examples of 17th century British folk art, some quite good pictures, and textile representations of animals made in the Caucasus in the C19th in Cheffins in Cambridge today, for free.  The Cheffins exhibition continues until Wednesday, when, unlike the items in the Tate, they can be bought. How great is that?

When angry collectors started suing Knoedler & Company for selling dozens of multimillion-dollar forgeries, the gallery’s former president, Ann Freedman, insisted that she and her colleagues had had no reason to think that any of the paintings were counterfeit.

“If Ann Freedman had any questions about these works, she and her husband would not have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in them,” her lawyer, Nicholas A. Gravante Jr., said of the paintings attributed to modern masters like Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.

Now, newly released documents in a continuing civil case show that at least one of the works bought in 2000 by Ms. Freedman herself contained a prominent clue that something was awry. The artist’s signature was spelled incorrectly: Pollok instead of Pollock.

The purchaser of a fake is deceived, and has every right to feel aggrieved; and the claim that the dealer has no notice of the forgery seems tenuous at best, one would think that Freedman should be able to correctly spell the artist's name.  That said, the misspelling of Pollock's name was also a clue for any prospective purchaser acting prudently and in the protection of their own interest.  At the least it should prompt a question to the seller.

Sandy Nairne is to step down as head of the National Portrait Gallery in February after more than a decade at the helm.

The director, who has been hailed for boosting visitor numbers by 40 per cent, “wonderful” exhibitions and acquiring acclaimed work, announced today he was to leave in order to pursue his writing and advisory work.

“It has been a great privilege to lead such a special institution as the National Portrait Gallery, and I am very proud of what we have achieved over the past decade,” he said, adding that the gallery was “in very good shape and will go from strength to strength”.

Sir William Proby, chairman of the trustees, said Mr Nairne “has done a tremendous job and will be greatly missed. He has significantly increased visitor numbers, put on some wonderful exhibitions… and overseen many major commissions and acquisitions.”

Mr Nairne, who had been director of programmes at Tate, was appointed NPG director in November 2002, following the departure of Charles Saumarez Smith. At the time attendance annual figures were 1.4m; they have since risen past 2m.

Before the Tate, Mr Nairne had worked at the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford.

Among the recent acclaimed exhibitions at the NPG under Nairne’s stewardship were Lucian Freud Portraits and the current Bailey’s Stardust exhibition of the photography of David Bailey.

During his tenure, the director oversaw the acquisition of the Van Dyck self-portrait earlier this year as well as the acquisition of a John Donne Portrait and Mark Quinn’s Self. He also commissioned portraits of Dame Judi Dench, Simon Weston and David Beckham.