Turner exhibition at Petworth
December 9 2014
Picture: Tate/National Trust
They're having a Turner exhibition at Petworth House, where Turner stayed and painted, and where much of Mike Leigh's new film 'Mr Turner' was made. More here.
Agnews
December 9 2014
Picture: Agnews
Blouin Artinfo reports that Agnews, now under new ownership and run by Lord Anthony Crichton Stuart, has taken on the lease of a four storey townhouse in St James' in London, at 6 St James' place. It's good to see that the dealership, and the Agnews brand, is being revived.
All change for the CEOs... (ctd.)
December 9 2014
Picture: TAN
For what it's worth, the press seem to be pretty convinced that Christie's CEO Jim Murphy was fired. Here's Bloomberg, quoting 'people familiar with the company's plans':
Murphy, 60, was informed of the management change at a meeting with Pinault in late November, one of the people said. Christie’s and Murphy said Dec. 2 the decision was mutual.
Bloomberg also hints at significant re-structuring within the company, under the new CEO, Patricia Barbizet.
So one has to ask, what did owner Fnacois Pinault not like about Murphy's work? Some are looking towards 'profitability', especially in relation to the mega sales like the '$852m' modern and contemporary sale. Says the Financial Times:
Mr Murphy’s resignation raises questions about whether he paid too high a price for rapid growth in his four years at the helm, squeezing profits by expanding into India and China, while competing intensely for prestigious sales by offering guarantees and side deals to entice family estates and wealthy sellers. The irony of the art auction world is that the record-setting London and New York auctions for which they are best known can produce little, if any, profit.
“It has increasingly become the case that these types of sales — for both houses — are not centres of profitability in any way,” says Michael Plummer, co-founder of the New York-based advisory firm Artvest. “The competitive pressure gets worse every year, as do the amount of guarantees, and consequently the risks for both houses.“
Meanwhile ArtNet news wonders if those famous guarantees have anything to do with it:
According to auction house executives in Miami for Art Basel, multiple cases in which guarantees on major lots garnered heavy media attention but no profit for Christie's resulted in Murphy being pushed out from his post as CEO.
“You've got two CEOs who've been battling madly for market shares and their margins seem, by many accounts, to have got smaller and smaller," commented an industry insider who spoke to artnet News on the condition of anonymity. “So in one case, a slightly aggressive, disrupted board, and in the other case a company owner, appear to have said ‘enough is enough'."
“We are at a record time for the art market, but it seems these two have battled so hard they might not have turned that into record profits," she added.
Other reasons suggested might be the $50m sunk into a new online platform.
Anyway, we're unlikely to know what's really gone on, as Christie's is a private company.
6 Years
December 9 2014
Picture: IG/Express
The man who punched a hole in a Monet in the National Gallery of Ireland has been jailed for six years. He also had paint stripper on him at the time, but didn't get a chance to use it. When police raided his house, they found a large cache of stolen paintings. More here.
One has to say that this is a good deterrent sentence. It beats the two years given to the nut who defaced the Tate's Rothko.
Re-gilding the Paston Treasure
December 9 2014
Video: Art Fund
Here's a good cause - the Norwich Castle Museum is hoping to raise £14,500 to re-gild the wooden frame that surrounds their 'Paston Treasure', a large late 17th Century still life which records a number of treasures owned by the Paston family in Norfolk. At some point (we're not told when, perhaps at some trendy point in the '70s) the gilding was stripped from the original frame.
Here's the blurb on the Art Fund's 'Art Happens' website:
Research has shown that the ornately carved frame was in all likelihood made for the painting, but it would not have looked like this in the 17th century. It would have been gilded – the dazzling finishing touch to the depiction of a dazzling collection. Six years ago, we raised money to have the painting cleaned and conserved. Now we want to re-gild the frame and restore this masterpiece in its entirety to its former glory.
The museum hopes to raise the money in time for an exhibition in 2016, when they'll assemble many of the treasures depicted within the painting. The funding total is currently at 1% - can you help them out?
Update - a reader writes:
I'm all for having the 'Paston Treasure' re-gilded (and I might consider bunging them a few quid) but £14,500!!?? Is this the best quote they could get?!
I'm clearly in the wrong business.
Alas, gilding, I know from experience, is very, very expensive.
National Gallery chair announced
December 8 2014
Congratulations to Hannah Rothschild, who has been appointed chair of the National Gallery trustees. She replaces Mark Getty. This means - and quite right too - that the trustees have a new chair in place before making the appointment of the new director, which process is already well advanced.
Says the National Gallery press release:
The Trustees of the National Gallery are delighted to announce that Hannah Rothschild has been appointed by them as Chair of the Board.
Hannah Rothschild will take over as Chair from Mark Getty, who will step down from the role when his current term comes to an end on 10 August 2015.
Hannah Rothschild, a writer and filmmaker, has served on the Gallery’s Board since March 2009. She will be the first woman Chair of the National Gallery.
Speaking on her appointment, Hannah said “From a very young age, the National Gallery has been a source of inspiration and solace. It is a great honour to be elected as its Chair to succeed Mark Getty in August 2015 and to work with fellow trustees to ensure that the collection is protected, that general admission remains free and that the National Gallery’s exhibition, education, science, academic and conservation programmes continue to be internationally respected and challenging.”
Mark Getty said “Hannah Rothschild has been an outstanding Board member for more than 5 years and I am delighted that she is to succeed me as Chair. With her passion for and commitment to the National Gallery, she will work alongside the next Director to provide the leadership the Gallery needs in the years ahead.”
National Gallery Director, Dr Nicholas Penny said “Hannah Rothschild has defended the National Gallery interests and supported its ambitions with energy and imagination. She will be an exceptionally committed Chair.”
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Sajid Javid said “The National Gallery is one of this country’s most important and well-loved museums and galleries - a cultural success story with visitor numbers at unprecedented levels of over six million a year. So I welcome Hannah Rothschild's appointment as their next Chair. Her experience of the gallery will build on the successes achieved under the chairmanship of Mark Getty. I am confident that the National Gallery's development as a home of artistic, educational and research excellence will continue.”
Hannah Rothschild’s first term as Chair will last until March 2017 when she will be eligible to serve a further term, subject to the Prime Minister’s consideration at the appropriate time of any reappointment as a trustee.
This means that my earlier speculation that Lord King might get the nod was, er, wrong.
The Great Brian
December 8 2014
Picture: Sunday Times
I'm told Brian Sewell has resigned from the Evening Standard. This is very sad news indeed, and brings to an end one of the greatest art critic columns ever written.
Update - a reader writes:
This is very sad if unsurprising news.
Reading his column massively brightened the commute home and his writing was not only hugely entertaining but a great way into art. Proof, as he would say, that if you don't dumb down and underestimate your audience you will take them with you.
p.s. If you haven't read them, his memoirs include some gold standard anecdotes. The Salvidor Dali one takes some beating.
I have indeed read them, and splendidly written they are too, if, at times, a little eye opening...
Losing our marbles?
December 5 2014
Picture: Guardian
The British Museum has lent one of the Elgin Marbles to the Hermitage. What do we think of this AHN-ers? The Greeks are outraged, of course, but then they always are.
I can't personally see too much of a problem, culturally; I'm all in favour of letting other countries see what we have, if it means we might also get to see what they have. That said, politically, it does come at a moment when we're supposed to be being beastly to President Putin, on account of his expansionist jaunts.
Update - areader writes:
You asked for some thoughts on the British Museum’s loan of one of the Parthenon marbles to the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. In principle I’ve no objection to the BM lending one of the sculptures that it owns and as for the objections of the Greeks, or anyone else for that matter, they can go to hell. Their nationalist whining is sickening and only makes me more determined that they should never, ever have the Parthenon sculptures back in Athens!
I am, however, very concerned that the British Museum is so determined to lend its objects to any and every quarter of the globe while failing abjectly to provide comprehensive, public display of its collections at the main museum in Bloomsbury. For example, the Museum of Mankind closed in 1997 but the BM still has not opened displays of its collections of Central & South American cultures ( other than Mexico ), Australasia and Oceania: this despite galleries for these collections being in their development plans and then disappearing when the new exhibition building was mooted. How long, for instance, do those who want to visit and study the finest collection of Pacific art in existence have to wait before it is displayed in London?
Or take the Egyptian collection. Four exhibition rooms have “disappeared” since the late 1990s; three swallowed up by the Great Court. Is it any wonder then that the display of Egyptian culture at the BM is so piece-meal and arbitrary? Where can you see Egyptian pottery or Amarna sculpture at Bloomsbury , for example? You cannot: there is no chronological or coherent display at all as the galleries jump around from Early Dynasties to mummies to 18th Dynasty wall paintings. Rare and important objects such as the 6th Dynasty wooden statue of Meryrehashtep or the gold bracelets of Prince Nimlot are never exhibited at all in Bloomsbury these days ( but I saw the latter on loan to the Met the other month).
It seems that any old exhibition or museum can count on borrowing objects from the BM while the British visitor ( and tax payer ) and international visitors are deprived of wonderful collections and individual objects which they should be able to see, study and experience in London.
Another wonders:
The question is: having lent it are we going to get it back, given Lilyputin's demonstration of acquisitiveness in the Crimea?
Update II - in The Scotsman, Tiffany Jenkins thinks the loan a bad one, as does Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times, and the Grumpy Art Historian is having none of it.
Update III - another reader writes:
A few thoughts on the Marbles. Regarding lending them out, seems a good thing although this isn't part of an exhibition. Lending to Russia, less so but perhaps it's a victory for culture over aggression.
But on the wider Marbles debate which is not quite the issue at hand but as everyone else will mention it.
This issue gets caught up in Las Malvinas-esq nationalism but put simply, it would be better if the remaining marbles were on display together, in their original layout and in sight of the building which they not only adorned but were part of (which is why Elgin's men had such difficulty getting them). A building which UNESCO considers so important it uses it as it's logo. It would be interesting to hear someone claim a gloomy, grey room in Bloomsbury is a more appropriate setting.
Returning them would not be about giving in to Greek demands, it would be about reunifying two parts of a wider artistic whole. I cannot see how a lover of art would not be curious to see the remaining pieces, which are of such importance to Western culture, together again.
Would it not be a better scenario to have the originals in Athens and the casts in London? Thereby still allowing their impact on world culture to understood.
And no you can't restore all of them or indeed rebuild the Parthenon in the same way you can't undo Lord Duveen's 'cleaning' but no one is suggesting that and you should never let best become the enemy of better.
Achtung! Fake?
December 5 2014
Picture: br.de
Here's a story I've been looking into for a while; in southern Germany, state prosecutors have begun investigating the work of an art restorer, called Christian Goller (above), after it was alleged that he has been producing 'Old Master' pictures that have subsequently been sold as the real thing. He specialises, it is alleged (put 'it is alleged' after everything you read below), in German 16th Century paintings, especially Cranach. The prosecutors are looking into 40 paintings, which have apparently been sold for hundreds of thousands of euros, some in the London art market. Apart from being an exceptionally talented creator of 'old' paintings, Goller's best trick, it is said, is not to make exact copies of known Old Masters, but to make subtle variants. That is, he'll take a known composition, but alter it slightly, with the inclusion of a new detail, or a slight variation in a limb, pose, or background.
The allegations seem to come in main part from a German art historian who specialises in Cranach, Dr Michael Hofbauer. You can look at his Cranach online database here. The story first broke in Der Spiegel magazine (subscription required), and was then picked up by the wider German press (for example here and here).
The story has yet to travel any further. But it's possible this could end up being one of the greatest fake scandals of recent times - if some of the works attributed to Goller turn out to indeed be by him. He could potentially be one of the best art forgers ever. We must wait to see how the investigation proceeds.
However, Herr Goller has form in the fake line; one of his works was sold in 1974 to the Cleveland Museum of art as a Matthias Grunewald, for $1 million. Here's a link to that picture on their website. Above is an image of it, and below is an image of the back of the panel. It's hard to believe from the features and handling that anyone could really have thought the picture was by Grunewald. But as you can see from the crack in the panel and the 'damages' and woodworm holes in the back, this was no mere 'imitation', but an extremely cunning attempt to create something that looked 16th Century.
In this piece in the New York Times from 1991, Goller says that he paints only in the 'style' of Old Masters, and sells them as legitimate copies:
"Whoever calls me a forger," Mr. Goller insists, "is lying. I only paint in the style of the Old Masters. I add patina and crackle for decoration. You can't call that a forgery." He goes on: "I think copies make art accessible. Everybody can afford to hang a Grunewald in his house." Mr. Goller emphasizes that he does not add any artist's signature to what he calls his reconstructions, and he sells them for what they are. He says he is not responsible for the claims others make for them.
Of course, 'it wasn't me guv' is a line regularly trotted out by fakers.
One of the pictures identified by Michael Hofbauer as a 'Goller' fake happened to be coming up for sale in a recent Christie's Old Master sale in Amsterdam. The portrait (below) purported to be of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and was catalogued as 'Circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder', with an estimate of €25k-€35k. When I first saw it in the catalogue, before the fake story broke, I certainly didn't for a minute think it was fake, such was the craquelure and overall quality of the picture. But in light of Hofbauer's allegation, I looked again.
A few things then struck me as potentially unusual. First, it was not a known type of Charles V, and had never been published before; odd for an apparently unique portrait of such an important figure. Despite the presence of a Habsburg double eagle in his hat, the sitter was not wearing the Golden Fleece - which again is something unthinkable in a portrait of Charles V - and the sitter certainly looked like him, with that Habsburg jaw. The only provenance was from a 'copy' of an old certificate by a German art historian who saw the picture in the Munich area in the 1950s - I've forgotten his name, and the catalogue entry has now been taken off line. It was hard to see from the images, but in some parts substantial areas of paint seemed to go over the cracks. Perhaps it was later over-paint, perhaps it was evidence of fakery. The medium was described as 'oil on panel, laid onto canvas, laid onto panel'. That's not unheard of, but one of the key ways to date a panel painting is by dendrochronology, and if you make the main surface layer impossible to date (the original panel would have been shaved too thinly to date by dendrochronology), then that's one potential hurdle overcome.
There was, AHN-ers, only one way to find out if the picture was real or fake, and that was to see it. So, for your benefit dear readers, off I dashed on a flight to Amsterdam... only to find that the picture had been withdrawn. I wasn't under any circumstances allowed to look at it. The picture is 'under investigation', and so far I've heard nothing else. So I don't know what to make of the picture. Hofbauer said confidently it was a 'Goller', but he seems (from what I was told in Amsterdam) not to have actually seen it in person. In which case, it's a bold claim by Dr Hofbauer. Christie's are, or rather were, pretty adamant it was 16th Century. All I can say is that if it is a fake, then (from the photos) it's the best I've ever seen, and better than anything I'd ever have expected to see. It would be alarmingly good.
Some of Hofbauer's alleged 'Goller' fakes seem more obviously 'wrong'. For example, this picture (above) sold at Christie's in London as 'Circle of Cranach the Elder' (that is, as 16th Century) is most odd in the face (detail below) and the modelling of the body, which looks like it has come from a 1970s tattoo catalogue, and certainly not the 16th Century. That said, the overall 'age' of the picture, in the craquelure, does look more genuine. Therefore, if it is a fake, as Hofbauer says, then it tells that someone, somewhere has pretty much perfected the art of making a new panel painting look passably ancient.
The picture made £103,250 in December 2008. Which means that as of yesterday, it's outside the 6 year window in which Christie's would need to give a refund. Caveat emptor...
Update - a reader points out the similarities parts of Cranach's 'Justice' on the left (private collection, at the Musée du Luxenbourg), and his 'Lucretia' in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, on the right. I believe the technical term for this is a 'mash up'.
Update II - a reader tells me that the 'certificate', a copy of which was provided with the Charles V, was written by a German art historian called Alfred Stange. Wikipedia tells me he was a Nazi. The provenance of the 'Charles V' was 'Southern Germany' for 'the last 40 years'.
Update III - the provenance of the 'Justice' sold at Christie's in 2008 was listed as 'Andreas Seefellner, Obernzell, Bavaria'. Michael Hofbauer, however, says (in this article) that there was no such person, and that the only person who might have been this Seefellner who lived in Bavaria never owned a Cranach.
Update IV - a reader says of the Charles V Golden Fleece question:
The collar (ie chain) worn in the “Charles V” portrait is in fact that of the Order of the Golden Fleece but without the fleece badge (ie pendant) itself. Although I’m a bit of an anorak on such things, I don’t know if the collar was ever worn without the badge, though I suspect not.
It's certainly a very odd omission - one would expect a contemporary painter to have realised that the inclusion of the Golden Fleece was essential.
Update V - another reader comments on the collar:
The Emperor Charles V while not wearing the badge of the Order of the Golden Fleece is wearing the collar of the order. However, I have never seen the one without the other and since it was made of gold would not appear red!
Update VI - 16.1.26 I just noticed that the Charles V was reoffered at auction in Germany with a clean bill of health from the Gemaldegalerie in Munich. Lot 224 here.
UK government's £44.3m buying spree
December 5 2014
Picture: Arts Council
We're lucky in the UK to have something called the Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) scheme. This allows those with a bill for inheritance tax to offset some of that tax by allowing the government to acquire a work of art, or an item of cultural importance. This year's AIL report has just been published, and it's well worth a read, with interesting entries for each item, from portraits by Lawrence to Lucian Freud's collection of Auerbachs.
The figure for works acquired this year is £44.3m, which is a little down on the previous year's total of £49.4m, but still significantly higher than previous years, thanks to the Chancellor's decision raise the financial cap on acquisitions. The total includes works given to the government under the new Cultural Giving scheme, which works in the same way to AIL, but doesn't afford the donor a 100% tax write off - it's partly philanthropic.
Now, I don't like to make a habit of lauding the government, but in this respect they deserve considerable praise. You often read in the press of works acquired under AIL being 'given' or 'bequeathed' to the nation by their previous owners, but it is in fact no such thing. It's a straightforward purchase by the government, with an amount of tax foregone. This year, therefore, the government spent £44.3m funding acquisitions for our national and regional museums. So next time you hear of savage cuts in the arts and heritage sector, remember that, along with the changes to allow National Lottery good cause money to be spent on objects (rather than projects), this is one of the most generous times for acquisitions ever known.
The system works very efficiently. I've recently been asked to help assess a picture offered under the AIL scheme, and not only is each case rigorously judged to see if it is of 'pre-eminence' - that is, suitable for display in a museum - but there is then a thorough investigation of the object's value. Often, and perhaps understandably, those submitting a work under the AIL scheme hope to write off more tax than the government thinks the work might be worth.
Incidentally, I see from the report that Freud's Auerbachs have not yet been formally allocated. There was some debate here on AHN earlier about whether these should go to the Tate en masse, or be split up and given to more than one gallery. Given Tate's tendency to display on a fraction of their works, it seems to me a no brainer that the works should be more evenly distributed around the country.
Update - a reader writes:
I mentioned a while back that I thought certain collections seem to be favoured in the allocation of AIL items. A crunching of the numbers from the reports covering the last five years now provides some interesting results.
It should be borne in mind that the figures below only include entire cases where an allocation has been confirmed: it does not include cases which consist of groups of objects split between institutions, as individual valuations are not available.
Since 2009, tax written off in AIL cases amounts to £97.74 million. Of this total the following are the main beneficiaries:
1. The Ashmolean, Oxford £14.97 million (15.6%)
If one considers the University of Oxford as a whole, a further £1.17 million needs to be added to this total to cover The Bodlian.
2. The National Trust £13.63 million (14.2%)
Allocations include land. The amount is not surprising given the Trust previously accepted property without chattels and these are surrendered on a regular basis.
3. The Fitzwilliam, Cambridge £11.51 million (12%)
4. The National Gallery, London £5.60 million (5.9%)
5. The National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh £3.4 million (3.7%)
Probably these figures show that, as with anything concerning acquisitions, success mostly comes down to the enthusiasm and effort put in by the museum staff themselves. Whether it's buying outright or acquiring through a scheme like AIL, acquisitions take up a lot of time and paperwork, and sometimes (to be frank) this can be offputting for some museums. So, congrats to the Ashmolean for coming out top.
Art world bureaucracy
December 5 2014
A word of warning for any picture buyers out there; did you know that if you buy an 'old' painting in Spain, and want to export it, you need an export licence, even if it's worth just 1 Euro? It also doesn't matter if the picture has been in Spain for less than a week. If it's there, and 'old', you need an export licence.
I bought a picture at auction there in October, and am still waiting for the licence to come through. The picture in question can hardly be considered Spanish cultural heritage, since it only ended up there in the last decade or so, having been bought by the previous owner in London. But it's a nice job creation scheme for someone in the Spanish civil service. As a dealer also waiting for a licence said to me, you might as well pay someone to paint the grass green.
The varying export licences around the world make for interesting comparisons. In the US, there is no export licence system at all. In Italy, you're lucky to get anything out of the country, the effect of which, in practice, means that if you own a nice painting in Italy, it isn't worth much, unless you can smuggle it out, which happens. It seems to me that the UK's system - of only stopping works where a museum can make a case for its acquisition - is the fairest way to go. That said, it's always dependent on the resources available at that particular moment.
Update - a Spanish reader writes:
As a keen follower of your blog, I could not resist to write you about your experience with the Spanish export license. It is true you need such a license for everything older than 100 years (not 50 years as the in the EU rule) and that the evaluating committee meets only once every month. The system is slow, and the criteria are not entirely clear, but in general it works. Besides, it is free of taxes when you are exporting the work to another EU country.
Otherwise, there is an interesting, yet relatively unknown exception to this rule. As a way to encourage the import of art works, if you quickly report such an import to Spain, then the imported work gets an automatic 10 years exemption of the export license, meaning you do not need it to export it outside Spain. I think it is a good thing to do if you are a foreign dealer trying to sell something in Spain.
Bargain of the week?
December 4 2014
Picture: Sotheby's
So the Old Master sales are over, and I didn't buy a sausage. To be honest, there wasn't much in the sleeper line, at least nothing in my little niche of what some have been kind enough to call expertise.
I did have a go at the above picture, however, which was a bit off piste for me, in that it was Spanish. It was catalogued as 'After Goya'. Regular readers may know that I'm not exactly a Goya fan, at least not when it comes to his skills as a portraitist.
However, the picture seemed to me to be in with a very strong chance of being by Goya. It's a copy of Velasquez's celebrated portrait of Innocent X, the prime version of which is in the Doria collection in Rome. There was, though, a replica of the head by Velasquez in the Spanish Royal Collection, which Goya would have known, not least when he made his many engraved copies of Velasquezs in the Spanish Royal Collection. That picture is now in the Wellington Collection at Apsley House, below, it having been given to the 1st Duke of Wellington.
The picture on sale at Sotheby's had previously carried a (probably 19th Century) inscription attributing the work as a copy by Goya after Velasquez (below). It had been published in almost every Goya catalogue raisonné going as a work by Goya, including by the late José Gudiol, one of the more renowned Goya scholars. It was exhibited as recently as 1989 as a Goya. But the current crop of Goya specialists evidently doubted it,as did Sotheby's.
Now I'm not saying that just because a painting used to be attributed to one artist that it must still be. Of course, scholarship moves on. But in art history, or at least the art market's view of art history, there is a curious tendency to disregard the work and attributions of an art historian as soon as they're dead. So in this case, the opinion of Gudiol and all those others who'd accepted the attribution didn't matter, but the opinion of the current, living Goya scholars did, whether they've written as much as a catalogue raisonné or not. I don't think you'd get the same in other disciplines; Einstein has been dead for decades, but E still equals MC squared.
The picture at Sotheby's was in almost pristine condition, and at first sight looked in parts as if it wasn't 'period', that is, that it was painted later than the 18th Century. But I came to the conclusion that it was period, and that it was most likely by Goya on the basis not only of some of the handling, but of the very idiosyncratic characterisation. In other words, whoever painted the portrait made the sitter look not like Velasquez's Innocent X, but Goya's Innocent X. It wasn't a copy of the Velasquez in the conventional sense - there must be hundreds of those around - but more a portrait of a portrait, if that makes sense.
Often, portrait artists develop a way of 'drawing' faces which they use repeatedly for the basic construction of their sitte's heads, and it is sometimes very easy to identify; at one extreme, it's the reason why some say all of Lely's sitters look the same. For an idea of what I mean in relation to Goya, see Goya's early self portrait from the 1770s, the same period the Sotheby's picture used to be dated to, which seems to me to have a similar characterisation to the portrait at Sotheby's:
Anyway, I can't easily understand how any other artist would set out to make a copy of a Velazquez, but intentionally make it look like a Goya, and very convincingly, unless the picture at Sotheby's was a modern fake, which it wasn't. The Sotheby's catalogue implied that the picture was a copy after Goya's own, lost copy of the Velasquez. But in my view it was too spirited and animated to be the work of an imitator of Goya copying Goya's own copy after Velasquez.
Goya is known to have made a number of copies in oil after Velasquez, but the others are lost, so we don't have anything directly comparable to look at. All I could deduce in my research was that they appeared to be the same size as the Sotheby's picture. Maybe in time they'll be found, and maybe in time opinion on the Sotheby's picture will swing back to Goya again.
The picture sold for £37,500 against an estimate of £10,000-£15,000. You might ask why I didn't go further, if I was so sure it was by Goya, for a genuine Goya copy of a Velasquez should be very valuable indeed. Two Spanish greats for the price of one! But the picture represented a long term 'hold', and wasn't much of a commercial prospect in the short term. My expertise, such as it is, doesn't cover Goya at all, and I doubt anything I said could sway the opinion of Goya scholars any time soon. It's the sort of picture that will probably remain 'after Goya' for some time, no matter how unjustified that attribution is.
If you bought it, kudos, and good luck...
Update - a reader writes:
If Goya painted this copy of Velasquez's Pope Innocent X - quite a reasonable idea I think- Why did he first paint in the greyish beard and then apparently paint it out again with reddish flesh coloured paint? Did he, or whoever the copyist was want to imagine what the Pope would have looked like without a beard? If so why?
Not sure I noticed it quite like that myself.
Duke's Titian declared genuine
December 4 2014
Pictures: Museo Prado
The Times alerts me to the conservation and re-attribution of a picture by Titian, which belongs to the Duke of Wellington. The picture, a Danaë, was cleaned by the Prado, and proved to be the original painting that once belonged to Philip II of Spain. Painted in about 1551-3, it entered the Wellington collection when it was given to the 1st Duke, following his victories over the French in Spain. It was recently thought to be a copy, but it is in fact an autograph repetition of Titian's first Danaë, which was painted in 1544/5, but with the addition of the old woman on the right. The photo below shows the picture in its stripped down state.
More here on the Prado's website, including videos.
Sleeper alert?
December 4 2014
Picture: Sotheby's
This curious picture, of Icarus and Daedalus, made £332,500 at Sotheby's day sale, against an estimate of just £8,000-£12,000. Catalogued as '18th Century follower of Van Dyck' the picture was in fact a 17th Century work, and also the original of that composition, which is known in a number of copies. The subject was a very popular one in the 17th Century. The picture was engraved in the late 18th Century as by Van Dyck. The condition was disarmingly good, which may have led some to think it was a later copy. I had a good look at the picture on Monday. But I didn't bid on it. I'm not sure who it's by, but I don't think it's Van Dyck. It's someone good though, like a Willeboirts Bosschaert type figure, or one of the many talented figures just downstream of Van Dyck. Of course, I am always prepared to be wrong...
Why Penny will be missed
December 4 2014
Picture: Timothy Foster/Apollo
There's a good interview by Thomas Marks in The Apollo with National Gallery director Nicholas Penny, who has been named the magazine's 'Personality of the Year'. The article neatly distills his directorial philosophy, which I hope will in some way live on after his departure.
Do read the whole thing, but here are two key points. First, on the importance of thinking in a scholarly, even connoisseurial way, for the long term:
For Penny, the mandate of a public museum has meant working to a far longer time frame than a more impresario-minded director might allow for: ‘Museums and art galleries’, he says, ‘weren’t really established for “the public”, in the sense of today’s living people, they were always intended to be regarded from a far higher altitude in terms of time – they were for posterity.’ He continues: ‘People talk all the time about how it’s really important to get more young people in, which is perfectly good, but I really think it’s more important that people in my position should be thinking about what’s going to happen in 30 years’ time. If you do that, you’re keener to look after – and I don’t just mean protect, but actually research and think about – all the most unpopular art that happens to be in the National Gallery today.’
That means heeding less fashionable Old Masters, as well as the ‘tickety-boo’ paintings that bring so many tourists to the gallery each year. Penny points out the correlation between a moribund market for Old Masters and an alarming diminution in experts in the field: ‘When you look at old auction catalogues from 20 or 30 years ago, it’s quite dramatic. There were 10 times more museum-quality works. If museums aren’t buying in these areas, they won’t value having curators in them, and the auction houses will have fewer experts. You can actually see that some areas of connoisseurship are shrinking.’ It is a disquieting situation, but one that might be said to have spurred Penny on at the National Gallery: ‘A place like this has to make itself a centre for expert knowledge about the pictures we have. We can’t rely on university art history departments producing people who’ll help us decide whether a Gaudenzio Ferrari really is by Gaudenzio Ferrari. We have to be a centre for study and scholarship – I think I’ve done quite a lot for that at the National Gallery.
[...]
’Penny has not pushed building projects at the National Gallery; his interventions in this respect have been more delicate than grand. ‘The most important thing about the permanent collection in my time as director,’ he says, ‘is that by the time I leave, every single Victorian or Edwardian ceiling – with the original day-lit arrangements and plasterwork – will have been exposed and restored.’ Here, as elsewhere, Penny has looked to the past for examples. But this year has also seen a cluster of developments that will modernise visitor experience, including the introduction of Wi-Fi in the galleries; reversing the ban on photography; and the launch of the museum’s first membership scheme. ‘The gallery’s got to respond to what you might call the common expectation of a visitor. It will always change in that way.’ Even here, however, in thinking about what these policies might entail, the importance of precedent is palpable: ‘New forms of antisocial activity arise at different times. In the Ashmolean Museum in the 1920s, all the undergraduates started whistling and the curatorial staff were driven absolutely crazy. They thought there was nothing more important in the world than stopping whistling.’
Turner hits £30m
December 4 2014
Picture: Art Daily
Congratulations to Sotheby's for achieving a record price for Turner last night; £30.3m for 'Rome, from Mount Aventine'.
Regular readers will know why I've used the above photo.
Sotheby's sale total last night was £53.9m. So even without the Turner they'd have comfortably beaten Christie's total of £13.9m, by some £10m. Other strong results included: a Canaletto of St Mark's square, at £5.48m; a Pieter Brueghel the Younger village scene at £2.6m; and a still life by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder at £1.02m. This last picture has a relatively new attribution, having been previously attributed to Ludger tom Ring II. A large and interesting English landscape of c.1665 failed to sell at £400,000-£600,000.
Update - in The New York Times, Scott Reyburn has a good piece on the Turner price and the rest of the week's sales.
Mona Lisa theory no. 742
December 3 2014
Picture: BG
She was a chinese slave who was Leonardo's mother. Or something like that. More here.
Update - a reader writes:
Ah, but the individual numerals of 742 add to 13, which is the unlucky number of Christ and the apostles, including Judas, at the last Supper, and Leonardo's is the most famous painting of the Last Supper, so Mona Lisa theory number 742 must be true!!
O.
M.
G!
New Raeburns & Van Dyck for the Scottish Portrait Gallery
December 3 2014
Picture: AIL/SNPG
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery has acquired the above handsome portraits by Raeburn, of Lady Helen Montgomery (d.1828) and her father-in-law, Sir James Montgomery. The acquisition came through the UK government's Acceptance in Lieu scheme, and settled £210,000 worth of death duties. We are not told where the portraits came from; ie, what a nice irony it would be if, after the referendum, they were allocated to a Scottish gallery from an estate in England...
More details here, and a report on the frame here.
The Raeburns are not the SNPG's only AIL acquisition of late - the below portrait by Van Dyck, of the 2nd Earl of Haddington, was acquired in place of £400,000 of tax (cheap, in my view). This picture, however, remains 'in situ' at Mellerstain House in Berwickshire. Sometimes this 'in situ' arrangement works well, if, for example, a work of art hangs in an interior that was built around it. But in the present case I'm not so sure it does. The picture currently hangs in the small, side wing public entrance to Mellerstain, just opposite the cash till. There seems to me to be no compelling reason for the picture not to be on display in a more publicly accessible place, such as the SNPG itself. But it's not even on their website (hence the rubbish photo).
6,000 new 'Late Rembrandt' tickets
December 3 2014
Pictures: National Gallery / BG
6,000 new tickets have been released for Late Rembrandt at the National Gallery, and you can even go to the exhibition till 9pm on Sundays. More here.
I was amused to see how heavily they're pushing Rembrandt-esque gifts at the National Gallery's shop. There's a Rembrant plate (with his self-portrait on) for £40, a faux gold painted handbag, various furry things like cushions and scarves, a not very enticing small framed reproduction of a self-portrait, and...
... a Rembrandt brolly!
National Gallery buys newly discovered Wilkie (ctd.)
December 3 2014
Picture: BG
I dashed into the National Gallery on Monday to take a look at their new Wilkie acquisition, which was debated with some passion amongst AHN readers last week.
As you can see above, it's a little overwhelmed in its current place. The room it's in is dripping with sizeable masterpieces by Turner, Stubbs, Gainsborough and Hogarth. And then there's the Wilkie, which I can see is a fine picture, and an interesting acquisition in itself. But I must confess to being a little disappointed.
And yesterday I recieved the below comment from a reader who I shan't name, but whose opinion I respect utterly, and who speaks from a position of great authority in the UK's museum sector:
The concern of many commentators about the quality of the National Gallery's acquisitions in recent years is entirely justified. Many of us vividly remember, just over ten years ago, that Brian Sewell was outraged that they should spend half a million pounds on a remarkably ugly sketch by Polidoro da Caravaggio from the collection of Philip Pouncey, at one time a curator in the Gallery. Since then, a succession of generally small paintings has arrived in Trafalgar Square, by gift, bequest, and purchase, which have served no purpose but to dilute the quality of the Gallery's supremely rich holdings and hardly deserve display space. The Lawrence of Lady Emily Lamb is charming, but not important; nor is the new Wilkie, happy though it may be as a rediscovery. The responsibility must lie with curators, directors, and above all the trustees, who, in contrast to many museums, make decisions over every single acquisition. It comes as no surprise to find that, among current trustees, tha great majority have a financial background, that only one is an artist, and that not there is not a single art historian among them! One Trustee (currently Hannah Rothschild) acts as a Trustee for both the Tate and the National Gallery. Such a position, which some might consider unenviable, suggests that far greater co-operation between these two institutions is not only highly desirable, but possible. If the National Gallery wishes for greater representation of the British School, in particular, it would surely be sensible to arrange a long-term deposit of some of the pictures currently in the Tate's vast store in South London. Of course, there have also been triumphs in recent years, in particular in [...] the acquisition of the Duke of Sutherland's Titians; but far too many mistakes, the most expensive being the ridiculous Bellows, 'de-accessioned' by a U.S. museum (contrary to all N.G. principles) and snapped up at an enormous (some would say unjustifiable) price.
In order to restore faith in the Trustees and staff of the National Gallery, the Government must immediately appoint Trustees who are both distinguished art historians and connoisseurs. Without them, this great institution will continue to blunder into mistake after mistake.
On Monday, I congratulated the dealer who discovered and bought the Wilkie, and commiserated with the dealer who discovered and underbid it. You win some, you lose some...
I also bumped into a strong contender for director of the National Gallery. I wonder if a wee re-hang might be amongst the first things they do...
Update - a US based reader wrties:
I know the Wilkie well and think it is a brilliant acquisition of an artist who is very much unfashionable. I wish an American museum had been prescient enough to buy it instead of the 19th century Scandinavian & German oil-sketch daubs they are all wild about these days.
The problem with its current hang is that out belongs amongst early 19th century French pictures -Like Bonington and Delacroix’s ‘historical ‘ genre subjects it is very much a ‘troubadour’ picture.
While another disagrees about the trustees:
I think the answer is not to appoint art historians and connoisseurs as NG trustees, but to devolve decisions on acquisitions to a separate committee, comprised of them.
Years ago the NACF suffered from the opposite problem. The trustees were retired museum people, experts in their fields but unworldly. Their meetings were dominated by consideration of grant applications - museums that wanted the NACF's help to buy something would bring the object to the trustee meeting, where it would be debated. That was all well and good, for producing robust grant decisions. But they had no interest in the operation of the organisation itself - and why would they? For them, the glory was all in their power over major museum acquisitions, not in dull stuff like strategy, budgets, headcount, marketing, contracts, and so on.
Personally, I would like to see more art historian-like figures as trustees of the National. And that's not just because I want to be one. Honest.
