David Colijns Organ Shutters acquired by Nationaal Orgelmuseum in Elburg
April 3 2026
Picture: gld.nl
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from the Netherlands that the Nationaal Orgelmuseum in Elburg (the National Organ Museum) has acquired (via a permanent loan) two rare organ shutters painted by David Colijns (1582-1665). The works appear to have been transferred from the Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht and depict scenes from the life of David.
Lewis Walpole Library Lecture Online
April 3 2026
Video: Yale Library
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Yale Library have just published their recent annual Lewis Walpole Library Lecture online (see above). This year's lecture was presented by Frédéric Ogée on the subject of Art and Truth: William Hogarth and the English Enlightenment.
Alec Cobbe (1945-2026)
April 3 2026
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Sad news that the death of Alec Cobbe was announced on the Cobbe Collection's Instagram page yesterday. Cobbe was known throughout the artworld as a dedicated artist, musical instrument & art collector and a decorator and designer. One of his final projects was the redecoration of portions of Castle Howard, which won five major national awards.
Here's an extended article and interview from last year's FT which provides some details of Cobbe's many passions.
Two Monets coming up at Sotheby's Paris
April 3 2026
Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News has arrived that two Monets, both of which have been in private collections for a considerable time, will be auctioned off at Sotheby's Paris later this month. Les Îles de Port-Villez (1883) will be offered carrying and estimate of €3m - €5m (pictured) and a second Vétheuil, Effet du Matin (1901) will carry €6m - €8m.
According to the article linked above:
While sales of Monet’s 1880s Port-Villez paintings are relatively rare (most are held in major museum collections), in 2025 a Vétheuil canvas sold for $3.2 million at Christie’s New York, surpassing a low estimate of $1.8 million. In Paris this Spring, a similar outcome would not be unexpected.
“For a collector to be able to bid on a great Monet which is in perfect condition and has not been seen for a century, it almost doesn’t exist anymore.”
Revealing the feminine at the Musée Cognacq-Jay
April 2 2026
Video: Musée Cognacq-Jay
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris opened their latest exhibition Revealing the feminine - Fashion and Appearances in the Eighteenth Century a few days ago. It will run until 20th September 2026. The show features a great deal of portraits including those by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Jean-Marc Nattier, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.
Getty acquires De Heem and Pieter Claesz
April 2 2026
Picture: Getty
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Getty Museum have announced their acquisition of two still lifes by Jan Davidsz. de Heem and Pieter Claesz. The works had appeared in recent sales from Lempertz and Sotheby's New York (1 & 2).
According to their press release:
“This [De Heem] is the exceptional flower still life the Getty Museum has been seeking for over two decades,” said Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “With its energetic composition, strong palette and diverse botanical elements, ‘Glass Vase with Flowers and Fruit’ will be the most consequential addition to our collection of northern Baroque paintings since we acquired ‘Rembrandt Laughing’ in 2013.”
Latest Burlington
April 2 2026
Picture: burlington.org.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
April's edition of The Burlington Magazine is dedicated to British Art.
Here is a list of the main articles featured within:
The Rainbow portrait of Queen Elizabeth I: new discoveries - By Nicole Ryder
An unpublished portrait of Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, by Godfrey Kneller - By Adam Busiakiewicz
‘On the Bowling Green at Oxford in ye year 1759’: a newly identified drawing by Marcellus Laroon the Younger - By Jay Robert Stiefel
Two paintings by Angelica Kauffman - By Yuriko Jackall
William Bell Scott’s ‘History of the art of pottery’ windows for the South Kensington Museum - By Emily Learmont
Observing the observers: ‘nature’s blue light’ over Windsor Castle, 1783 - Shorter notice by Ngaire Gardner
Finding Miss Gartside: the abstract visions of a pioneering colour theorist - Shorter notice by Alexandra Loske
Help Strawberry Hill House & Garden acquire Müntz
April 2 2026
Picture: Strawberry Hill House & Garden
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Strawberry Hill House & Garden have made an appeal for public donations to help them acquire Johann Heinrich Müntz's South East View of Strawberry Hill House. Painted between 1755-8, the view was commissioned by its owner Horace Walpole and shows the building 'at the very moment the Gothic Revival was being born.' Fortunately, two generous supporters have pledged to match donations to this appeal to raise £85,000 to acquire the work. Click on the link above for more details on how to donate.
Radical Genius Drawings at Christie's Paris
April 2 2026
Picture: Christie's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
There are some rather fine 19th century and later drawings coming up for sale in the Radical Genius: Works on Paper from A Distinguished Private Collection auction at Christie's Paris later this month. This includes watercolours by Turner, John Ruskin, Delacroix, Cezanne and Sargent. The sale will take place on 15th April 2026.
Chopped Artemisia Gentileschi up for sale in Vienna
April 1 2026
Picture: Dorotheum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Amongst the highlights of the upcoming Old Master auction at the Dorotheum in Vienna is this chopped fragment of Mary Magdalene by Artemisia Gentileschi.* The picture, which is an 'autograph replica' of a version in the Uffizi in Florence and had been exhibited in Milan in 2011-2012, may have been cut into its present state at some point during the war when the painting was in Berlin. What remains is up for sale carrying an estimate of €100,000 - €150,000.
The work was published by scholars Roberto Contini and Francesco Solinas as by the artist in full and also carries a recent endorsement by Riccardo Lattuada (according to the catalogue note). The auction will take place on 28th April 2026.
According to their catalogue note (again, not a hoax):
The fact that this painting is damaged should not diminish its significance within the artists oeuvre. It is highly unusual for, a work of art of this importance to come to auction with the central feature, in this case the head of the saint, summarily removed. More often it is the fragment itself which has been removed from a larger, damaged work which appears on the market. In the absence of the missing part of this painting, it could be argued that the very loss it has suffered imbues the painting with a sense of dramatic intensity, evoking a visceral response almost akin to the reaction experienced with certain contemporary works of art. Ricardo Lattuada draws parallels between the impact of the present painting in its damaged state, with the conceptual work of emilio Isgrò (b.1937) who is known for his use of creative erasure, a technique of removing words from books to turn absence into meaning.
* - Although today is 1st April, I can assure you this is not an April fools.
Bonhams Paris April Sale
March 28 2026
Picture: Bonhams
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Bonhams Paris have just uploaded their upcoming Old Master and 19th Century Paintings sale online. The auction will take place on 21st April 2026.
Sotheby's London April Sale
March 28 2026
Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Sotheby's London have uploaded their upcoming Old Master & 19th Century Paintings Online sale onto their website. Bidding for this online auction will close on 15th April 2026.
2,000 Posts Later.... and Trojan
March 27 2026
Picture: Warwick Shire Hall via ArtUK
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
As I've just passed my 2,000th post on AHN since my return in September 2023 (bringing my total number of posts to around 3,780 since April 2020), I wanted to thank readers for sticking with the blog. It continues to be a great pleasure keeping our small corner of the art world filled with daily news. Thank you especially to all of you who get in touch or even come to some of my in-person talks which is always a nice surprise. Ultimately, we must thank Bendor for his commitment to keeping AHN running for the past 15 years!
As an aside, here's a small bit of recent picture research which gave me the greatest satisfaction over the Spring. Whilst preparing for a tour of the painting collection in Warwick Shire Hall, to help raise funds to restore Ralph Sheldon's Henry VIII portrait, I decided to look into the history of this very large (127 cm. across) yet overlooked portrait of a fox hound called 'Trojan'. Having been without any attribution since it was acquired, I thought it was worth trying to work out the hand. It just so happens that Trojan was incredibly famous in late-18th century Warwickshire, with more biographical details known about his life and character than most Britons who lived during the 1780s. He was particularly good at leaping over walls, apparently, and was commemorated in poems and the lyrics of songs.
Trojan's owner, John Corbet of Sundorne Castle in Shropshire, loved his prized pet so much that he had him painted several times. This included another version of the following work, which I tracked down in an annal of the Warwickshire Hunt. This composition, showing Corbet's house in the background (the Shire Hall picture does not), was published in the Sporting Magazine in 1825 and was known to have been painted by 'Elmer'. Despite exhibiting enormous amounts of game still lifes at the Royal Academy, Stephen Elmer A.R.A (1717-1796) is almost as forgotten as Trojan. However, judging from his surviving work, I think the Shire Hall painting must be his second version of this once famous dog.
To quote the final part of Trojan's biographical entry:
...It was in the month of January, 1788, that after a most severe day in which he had distinguished himself, but had showed symptoms of nature having cried 'enough' that Mr. Corbet ordered that Trojan should never hunt again. He lived some years afterwards, and being fond of lying and basking himself under some fine old elms at Sundorne, Mr. Corbet had him buried there.
I'll spend my spare hours during the next months ruminating who might of painted Corbet's portrait, which proudly features his trusty friend alongside.
Michaelina Wautier at The Royal Academy
March 27 2026
Picture: Royal Academy
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The latest leg of the Michaelina Wautier exhibition opens at the Royal Academy in London today.
According to their website:
Active in Brussels in the middle of the 17th century, Michaelina Wautier challenged the limits imposed on female artists at the time by working on an unusually varied range of subjects: from flowers and portraits to grand history paintings – a format usually reserved for her male counterparts.
In her most famous painting, The Triumph of Bacchus, she painted herself as a pagan bacchante in monumental scale, looking squarely at the viewer and confidently asserting her position as the maker.
Although Wautier was hugely successful in her time, her breathtaking paintings and her place in art history were almost lost in the 18th century.
Goyas belong to the State and not Tobacco Company, says Spanish Court
March 27 2026
Picture: elespanol.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Spain that a court has ruled that pair of Goyas depicting Charles IV and Maria Luisa of Parma belong to the Spanish state and not the successor company of the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville who commissioned the paintings in 1789. This puts an end to nine years of litigation, which surrounded the complex question of legal ownership of the pair after a change in the tobacco monopoly in Spain in the late nineteenth century and a Royal decree of 1896. Click on the link above to read the full story.
Agostino Beltrano Pictures to be Restored and Returned to Pozzuoli Cathedral
March 27 2026
Picture: finestresullarte.info
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Italy that the Capodimonte Museums in Naples will be restoring and returning elements of a triptych by Agostino Beltrano back to Pozzuoli Cathedral. The wings which originally flanked Beltrano's Last Supper (pictured) ended up in the museum's stores at some point during the 20th century, possibly when the Cathedral was damaged by fire in the 1964. Click on the link above to see images of the other elements which appear to be rather damaged.
Velázquez, Technique and History (in Spanish)
March 27 2026
Video: Prado via YouTube
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Yet another fascinating sound lecture on the Prado YouTube channel (in Spanish) from a recent conference detailing the technical and stylistic evolution of Velázquez. The presentation is given by Jaime García-Máiquez of the museum's technical department.
Rediscovered Reynolds inspires Syracuse University Symposium
March 27 2026
Picture: Syracuse University Art Museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Syracuse University have been hosting a symposium yesterday and today entitled (In)Visible Faces: The Politics of Portraiture and Social Change, 1700—the Present. The event was inspired by the rediscovery in 2017 (although I don't think it was widely reported at the time) of a second version of Sir Joshua Reynolds' Tuccia, The Vestal Virgin in the university's art collection which was 'untraced' in the 2000 Mannings Reynolds catalogue. The painting has since been cleaned and displays those typical condition issue traits one sees with pictures by Sir Joshua (what on earth is going on with her arm?). Here's a recent blog which details the discovery.
Gaspar van Wittel Drawings Catalogue Raisonné
March 27 2026
Picture: dariocimorellieditore.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The works on paper collective Trois Crayons have pointed out that a new catalogue raisonné of the drawings of Gaspar van Wittel has just been published. Penned and edited by Carolina Trupiano Kowalczyk, the new volume contains 450 drawings, each individually catalogued including an all-important 'rejected' section.
As regular readers will know, such sterling efforts will win Carolina Trupiano Kowalczyk a place in the much coveted 'Heroes of Art History' section of this blog.
The End of Free Entry to Museums in the UK?
March 27 2026
Picture: gov.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The UK Government published a response to an independent review undertaken by Baroness Hodge of Barking regarding the reform of the Arts Council yesterday. Amongst the usual pledges to 'ensure the arts are no longer the preserve of the privileged few', the report also delves into questions of funding for museums (technically not a part of the Arts Council remit). The response to the report includes, as part of the long-term recommendations currently being explored by the government, the notion of introducing entry fees for international visitors at national museums (see the full quote in the image above). This measure was brought in by a previous Labour Government in 2001.
Click here to read Bendor's response in a thread published on 'X'.
