Previous Posts: March 2024
The National Gallery acquire the Duke of Rutland's Poussin
March 25 2024
Video: The National Gallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Gallery in London have announced their acquisition of Poussin's Eucharist, a work of art owned by the Duke of Rutland and acquired through a hybrid Acceptance in Lieu scheme settling £7,111,704 of tax.
According to the press release:
The picture is one of a cycle of seven scenes Poussin painted, in the second half of the 1630s, showing the Catholic Sacraments, for his friend and patron, the Roman antiquarian Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657): 'Baptism', 'Penance', 'Eucharist', 'Confirmation', 'Marriage', 'Ordination' and 'Extreme Unction'. The sacraments are Christian rites through which divine grace is communicated to human beings. Poussin illustrated them with biblical and early Christian imagery. The series was brought to Britain in 1785 where Sir Joshua Reynolds, founding President of the Royal Academy, declared ‘The Poussins are a real national object.’ The series was so successful that a second suite of sacraments was commissioned from Poussin in the late 1640s by the French collector Paul Fréart de Chantelou (1609–1694). That second series is on loan to the National Galleries of Scotland.
Chicago Club to Sell Monet
March 25 2024
Video: CSB Chicago
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Chicago that the city's Union League Club, a private members club, is selling a $10m Monet to help pay for a rennovation project. The painting was gifted to the club by a member back in 1895, when it was valued at $500.
Sleeper Alert!
March 25 2024
Picture: kollerauktionen.ch
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The following painting catalogued as 'Genoa, 17th century' realised 110,000 CHF over its estimate of 10,000 - 15,000 CHF last week at Koller in Switzerland. Van Dyck was the name being whispered throughout social media. Let's see if it turns up anywhere interesting in due course!
Graham Sutherland's Study of Winston Churchill Coming Up for Sale
March 22 2024
Picture: artscouncil.org.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Arts Council's website has alerted me to news that Graham Sutherland's Study of Sir Winston Churchill, a work of art which is under the exemption scheme, has a notice of sale on it. The painting, which appears to have always been in a private collection since it was completed in 1954, will be offered for sale at Sotheby's in June carrying a guide price of £800,000.
Monet in York
March 22 2024
Picture: yorkartgallery.co.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Gallery in London are loaning their Monet of The Water-Lily Pond to the York Art Gallery for a special exhibition which opens in May. The loan is part of an initiative to help celebrate the gallery's bicentenary.
According to the website blurb:
Painted by one of the founders of the Impressionist movement Claude Monet (1840-1926), ‘The Water-Lily Pond’ (1899) will be the centrepiece of an exhibition which will bring together key loans from regional and national institutions alongside collection works, and a large-scale commission by contemporary artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan. Monet’s canvas will be explored in the context of 19th-century French open-air painting, pictures by his early mentors, and the Japanese prints which transformed his practice and beloved gardens in Giverny. By displaying canvases by those contemporaries he inspired, as well as more modern artworks and a new commission, the exhibition will reveal how Monet’s radical approach to painting had, and continues to have, an enduring influence on artists.
The show will run from 10th May 2024 until 8th September 2024.
Zurbarán's only signed Still Life on Display in Madrid
March 22 2024
Picture: The Norton Simon Museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Norton Simon Museum in California has loaned the Prado in Madrid Francisco de Zurbarán's only signed and dated still life. The work, dated to 1633, will be featured in a special display until 30th June 2024.
Hans Jakob Oeri Drawing Soars
March 22 2024
Picture: Christie's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from the recent Christie's Drawings sale in Paris that the following double portrait soared past its estimate two days ago. Hans Jakob Oeri's Double Portrait of Ludwig Schulthess-Kaufmann et Emil Schulthess-Schulthess realised an impressive €226,800 over its €15,000 - €25,000 estimate.
According to the catalogue note:
Born in Zurich, the brothers depicted here are depicted in their daily lives, engaged in two activities that are central to the family’s interests. The flowers in the foreground will be dried between the pages of a book held by one of the brothers, probably Emil. The reference to botany refers to the father, Leonhard Schulthess-Nüscheler (1775-1841), an amateur biologist and painter of flowers. The art is evoked by the instruments brought by Ludwig, which indicate the next stage of their work, when the plants are drawn after drying. The twins’ love of drawing carried them into adulthood, and they became amateur artists, focusing on the depiction of historical monuments.
Rachel Ruysch Exhibition for the Alte Pinakothek in November
March 22 2024
Picture: Alte Pinakothek
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Alte Pinakothek in Munich have recently announced that they will be opening an exhibition dedicated to the still life painter Rachel Ruysch in November. The show claims to be the 'world's first major monographic exhibition of her work.'
The exhibition will run in Munich between 26th November 2024 until 16th March 2025 and will then head for its US leg in Toledo and Boston later in 2025.
Liverpool Museums asks for Clues for Unidentified Portrait
March 22 2024
Picture: BBC
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Liverpool Museums are appealing to the public, and presumably researchers and experts too, for clues and information as to the identity of this intriguing and unidentified portrait. The painting, undertaken by William Lindsay Windus in 1844, has a rather intriguing folkloric tale attached to it:
In 1891, nearly 50 years after the painting was created, a listing in a catalogue claimed the boy was a stowaway whom Windus had met on the steps of the Monument hotel in Liverpool. According to this narrative, Windus took pity on the boy’s condition, employed him as an errand boy and sent his portrait off to a frame-maker’s shop. Serendipitously, a passing sailor spotted it, realised the child was his missing relative – and reunited the boy with his parents.
This charitable tale, with its unlikely happy ending, would have made the portrait more appealing to wealthy Victorian art buyers.
“It’s a wonderful story, but I’m quite sceptical,” said [Kate] Haselden. “This child may have been a native Liverpudlian. Black people have been living in Liverpool since at least the 1730s.”
Click on the link above to read more.
The Prado to send 70 Artworks to China
March 20 2024
Picture: Prado / Pudong Museum of Art
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Hot on the heels of the Pudong Museum of Art's recent Caravaggio exhibition, the Museo Prado in Madrid will be sending 70 works of art to China in April for a special exhibition entitled Ages of Splendor: A History of Spain in the Museo del Prado. Press reports explain out of the group being sent '16 of which will be leaving Spain for the first time, and nine will be out of their home in Prado for the first time.' In particular, the Prado's version of the Mona Lisa (pictured) will be featured in its own special display pointing out its history both past and present.
The exhibition will run from 23rd April 2024 until 1st September 2024.
Piero Della Francesca Panels Reunited in Milan
March 20 2024
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Italy that a group of panels by Piero Della Francesca have been reunited for a special exhibition at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan. The 8 panels were once part of a grand polyptych created by the artist between 1454 and 1469 for the altar of the Augustinian church in Borgo San Sepolcro, Arezzo. The altarpiece was dispersed at the end of the sixteenth century and the surviving panels are now split between various museums across the globe.
The exhibition will run until 24th June 2024.
Restitution Claim for Courtauld Rubens Panels Rejected
March 20 2024
Picture: Courtauld Gallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The UK's The Spoliation Advisory Panel have rejected a restitution claim regarding three panel paintings by Rubens now in the Courtauld Gallery in London (spotted via. @artlawalex). Ms Christine Koenigs, the granddaughter of the banker Franz W. Koenigs, had made a claim (alongside other heirs) in relation to the sale of her grandfather's paintings [including the Courtauld Rubens panels] when his Jewish-owned Bank went into voluntary liquidation in 1940 in expectation of the imminent Nazi invasion of the Netherlands.
According to the link above:
The Panel concluded that the claimants had neither a legal nor a moral claim to the 3 paintings and that the works should continue to be enjoyed in a public museum in line with the wishes of Franz Koenigs.
Click on the link above to read the full report.
Boston MFA Conserves Vivarini Altarpiece
March 19 2024
Picture: MFA Boston
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Museum of Fine Arts Boston have just concluded a five-year conservation project on a magnificent altarpiece by Bartolomeo Vivarini. Painted in 1485 for the church of St. Andrew, Rab, Croatia, the work has undergone vast sets of treatment for the frame, gilding, polychrome sculpture and panel paintings.
The altarpiece will be redisplayed in the museum's European galleries on 21st March 2024.
Attribution! The Old Master Drawings Board Game
March 19 2024
Picture: troiscrayons.squarespace.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Some terribly exciting news to report (spotted via @alexandrelafore) that the old master drawings website Trois Crayons are releasing a board game in the very near future. Entitled Attribution! The Old Master Drawings Board Game, this really does look like the perfect birthday or Christmas present we've all been waiting for.
There will be a launch later this week, so stayed tuned for further details.
Leemput's Copy of Van Dyck's Pembroke Family Reidentified
March 19 2024
Picture: State Hermitage Museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The art historian James Innes-Mulraine has published a very interesting blog about a nifty piece of research into the Van Dyck and Lely copyist Remigius van Leemput (1607-1675). In particular, the piece focuses on what happened to Leemput's copy of Van Dyck's enormous group portrait of the family of the Earl of Pembroke, preserved today at Wilton House. Through an excellent piece of sleuthing and provenance research, with the assistance of the pastels art historian Neil Jeffares, both Neil and James have rather convincingly reidentified the following painting in the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia, as almost certainly being Leemput's painting. Click on the link above to read more.
Sell off the Period Rooms, says the Brooklyn Museum
March 19 2024
Picture: artnet.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
ArtNet.com have shared news that the Brooklyn Museum will be selling off the contents of four period rooms, alongside 200 furnishings. The initiative is due to attempts to regain gallery space for permanent displays of 'Indigenous Arts, Contemporary, Arts of the Americas and more'. Regular readers might remember that the museum sold off a selection of paintings including Old Masters in 2020.
According to the article linked above:
“We know [the period rooms] are much beloved,” said museum director Anne Pasternak in an email. “We have been studying them intensively over the past few years, with input from outside experts as well as our curators, and the truth is that some of them are of lesser quality, duplicate comparable works in the collection, and/or require extensive conservation to be on display.” [...]
“Deaccessioning allows curators to refine and focus the collection, ensuring that we continue to display work that resonates and tells meaningful stories for our visitors,” said Pasternak. “Thus, we are very invested in making room for many of our great collections that have never had permanent gallery space in the Museum, such as Indigenous Arts, Contemporary, Arts of the Americas, and more. While it is always difficult to part with any work in our collection, the curators have been very careful to select objects that, while very good examples of their kind, will not diminish our collections by their absence.”
The auctioning off of the rooms and their contents will take place this month at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina.
I should also mention that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York sold a selection of 174 lots of Chinese ceramics and jades yesterday at Bonhams. Click here to see the results.
Recent Release: Portraits du Maître de Dinteville
March 19 2024
Picture: silvanaeditoriale.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I failed to mention the publication of this interesting volume at the end of last year. Portraits du Maître de Dinteville is a new scholarly book by Camille Larraz and Rafaël Villa which focuses in on this sixteenth century master usually identified as the artist Bartholomeus Pons. Active in both Troyes and Auxerre between the years 1535 and 1541, this publication aims to draw attention to known and previously unpublished works given to the artist and places him alongside some of his close contemporaries.
Was schätzen Sie? - Is this by Rubens?
March 18 2024
Video: Dorotheum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Austria's ORF III recent episode of the antiques and art show entitled Was schätzen Sie? featured a potential painting by Rubens this week (drag through to 11.35 minutes to watch). The show is hosted in the galleries of the Austrian auction house Dorotheum.
Four Years since Oxford Art Heist
March 18 2024
Picture: oxfordmail.co.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
It has been four years since a group of burglars stole three paintings from Oxford's Christ Church Picture Gallery. Press reports seem to suggest that absolutely no progress has been made into identifying the criminals or having the paintings returned. It is quite something that despite our modern cities being filled with cameras, that these modern tools have seemingly proven useless in trying to track down the escape route of these criminals...
Spend day with Conservators and Curators at Apsley House
March 18 2024
Picture: english-heritage.org.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Apsley House in London are running an interesting day-long event in April with their conservation and curatorial team. Attendees will be seemingly able to listen to various talks on recent conservation projects and curatorial research related to the house and its historic collection of art.
The day will be held 19th April 2024 and is free for English Heritage members.
