Another strike at the National Gallery
October 16 2014
Picture: Museums Journal
There was a strike by room wardens yesterday at the National Gallery, timed deliberately to coincide with the opening to the public of 'Late Rembrandt'. 40 out of 66 rooms had to be closed. But the Rembrandt show remained open, and the media paid little attention to the strike. So that's 1-0 to the National Gallery then.
Not that 'Late Rembrandt' was very busy. A reader who was there writes:
The crowds at the first afternoon of the Rembrandt exhibition were modest with rarely more than five or so people in front of each painting and fewer in front of the paper works.
As regular readers will know, it seems clear to me that the PCS Union's strategy at the National has been little short of disastrous. This latest action will only harden the NG's resolve to de-unionise their staff.
Update - there's some anti-National Gallery briefing in the Daily Mail:
The National Gallery’s ‘blockbuster’ new Rembrandt exhibition has been hailed a triumph by the critics, but visitors might be advised to keep a close eye on the masterpieces.
Some experienced security guards were replaced earlier this year by agency staff and sources claim the change is proving a disaster.
‘Five of them didn’t bother to turn up for training, while another has been sacked over a foul prank in a toilet,’ claims an insider.
‘When others were given a tour of the gallery, some showed little interest, texting away on their phones.
‘They have been spotted touching paintings and even caught on camera in the Rembrandt exhibition stroking works loaned to the gallery. They have apparently received warnings to stop, but this is really shocking.’
The gallery declines to discuss the claims. ‘We would never comment on matters relating to individual staff members as these are confidential between those involved and the National Gallery,’ a spokeswoman says.
However, she adds: ‘Safety and security are of paramount concern. CIS Security employees are vetted to the same level as existing staff; they will also undertake similar levels of training and assume identical responsibilities.’
When I went to the Rembrandt show on Tuesday, I thought the wardens, even if they were 'privatised' ones, were more zealous than ever. I was warned at least twice not to get too close to the pictures, or to point, and this was during a press preview, and in front of glazed pictures.
Sleeper alert!
October 15 2014
Picture: Tooveys
The above picture came up at an auction house in West Sussex the other day, catalogued as '19th Century Continental School, and estimated at £70-£100. It made £406,400. So, a nice surprise for the vendor.
More images here. Looks like a Greuze to me.
Update - a sleuthing reader writes:
The Greuze sketch was probably the one given by Greuze to the engraver Johann-Georg Willie on Nov 27th 1759. Willie describes it in his journal:
M. Greuze, this serious, solid painter, has just made me a present of one of his excellent drawings, a sign of true friendship. The drawing represents a kitchen maid stainding next to a cupboard, reading or calculating in her account book, after coming back from market, how she can best cheat her mistress. It is of great beauty, and boldly drawn.
Selfie!
October 15 2014
Picture: BG
Yesterday, I was in the National Gallery for the first time since they allowed photography. So I took a selfie (in front of Rembrandt's - or not, depending on your view - 'Old Man in an Armchair'). I didn't see anyone else taking selfies, and nor did I see any bad photography behaviour either. But I was in the quieter rooms, and I didn't stay for that long.
Anyway, I also got this email from a reader on the issue, who more or less hits the nail on the head:
I have been mulling over the photography issue over the last while and in the last 30 days (not to mention the London trip in July) I have visited numerous museums in Boston, Philadelphia (we saw a Vermeer on the its last day!) and Edinburgh – I really enjoyed the American Impressionists exhibition in Edinburgh - and taking photos is simply not an issue. I take a lot of photos and I exercise just the barest amount of restraint and wait until people have left a painting before stepping in to take my photo and it impacts no one. If it’s really crowded brush stroke aficionados then I simply return when it’s not so busy. My camera emits no sounds and with nobody in the vicinity it’s really a non-issue.
The real issue based on my experience is overcrowding and whether people are taking pictures or not it makes no difference if too many people are in a gallery. The National Gallery was the busiest by far and it was a different experience to the other galleries. If galleries want to increase traffic as seems to be the fashion of late they might want to consider set times as the Gardiner Museum in Boston does; it was busy but not over crowded (but they don’t allow photos).
The last two decades have seen, in the UK, a sustained attempt, driven by government policy, to significantly increase gallery visitor numbers. I think this was a good thing, and it has worked. The result is, though, some over-crowding at times. And the thing is, we're just going to have to get used to it.
Titian's toes
October 15 2014
Picture: Museo Prado
One of the reasons I go on about connoisseurship so much is that it's not just about working out who painted what, but knowing how they might have painted it. This is particularly important for conservators. Putting a damaged picture back together is not just a technical exercise in joining up the dots - that is, filling in the holes, retouching some abrasion - but having an insight into how a painter would have approached a certain area.
Here is an example of a work by Titian which has been ever so slightly misunderstood during conservation. Titian, like most of his Venetian colleagues, was an artist who liked to work quite freely on the canvas, and as a result you get a lot of changes, or as the arty lingo calls them, pentimenti, in his paintings.
In the picture above, we see a foot from his Danaeë receiving the Golden Rain in the Prado. Clearly, Titian would never have let such wonky toes leave his studio, even if they were painted by an assistant. So what's happened? As you can see from the image, there is a faint outline of an earlier, slightly lower position of the foot - it's that differently coloured 'halo' between the white sheet and the dark outline of the base of the foot. At some point in the past, the picture has been overcleaned, exposing this alteration, and the ends of the toes as they were originally drawn in. And then, probably at a later date, a conservator has got into a muddle as to where each of the toes should end. As a result, two toes look unnaturally long, and the foot looks out of balance. Small errors like this can then make us question the whole painting.
I recently went to see a conservator with a view to seeing if they could clean one of my pictures. But when I heard that they didn't know who painted a (reasonably well known) portrait they were already working on (which belonged to a museum), I made my excuses and left. Some conservators approach pictures as a purely technical exercise, with an identikit, one-size-fits-all approach. But of course different artists used different techniques, and it is essential to know these things when cleaning a picture - some pigments and techniques are much more vulnerable to solvents than others, for example. And as Titian's toes show us, there needs to be and element of artistry involved too, when it comes to re-touching.
'Spectacular Rubens'
October 15 2014
Picture: Getty
The Getty has a interesting new show, on Rubens and his Eucharist series of tapestries, called Spectacular Rubens. I'm a bit of a tapestry fan, so would love to see it. The show, says the museum:
[...] reunites several of Rubens's exuberant preparatory oil sketches for this commission with four of the corresponding tapestries from the Madrid church for which they were made. Vivid and dynamic, the Eucharist series reveals the enormous powers of invention of a brilliant artist who helped define the Baroque.
There are some good images here. The catalogue, available here, is co-edited by Alejandro Vergara, the Prado curator whose recent 'The Young Van Dyck' catalogue at the Prado was a model of good catalogue writing.
Update - a reader alerts me to these videos on the exhibition, made when it was on show at the Prado.
'Early Rembrandt'
October 15 2014
Picture: Getty
Martin Bailey in The Art Newspaper reports the excellent news that the Ashmolean will have an exhibition on early Rembrandt in 2018. It's being organised by the Ashmolean's recently retired director, and emminent Rembrandt scholar, Christopher Brown. More here.
'Late Rembrandt' - the catalogue
October 15 2014
Picture: NG
The catalogue for the 'Late Rembrandt' show (above) is not a traditional catalogue - that is, there are no entries for the individual pictures. Instead, it's a series of essays. I'm an old stick in the mud when it comes to these things, so I prefer in depth analysis of each picture.
More curious, though, is the fact that if you want to know the provenance of the exhibits, you need to download a seperate PDF from the National Gallery website, here. There's 'selected literature' available too, but only some of the entries have page numbers.
I think it's great that this information is freely available on the NG's website, but I'd have liked to have had it in the catalogue too. Perhaps it was considered necessary to save the cost of printing the extra 35 pages. Or is it just that not many people are interested in this kind of thing any more?
The Missing Rembrandt
October 15 2014
Picture: Six Collection
There's a missing picture in the National Gallery's 'Late Rembrandt' show. The catalogue calls Rembrandt's 'Portrait of Jan Six' (one of the finest he ever painted, I reckon) 'Catalogue Number 101'. But it isn't there. The catalogue states 'loan decision pending'. I wonder what happened. It's privately owned, by the Six family. In my experience, private owners are usually the most straightforward to deal with (except on this occasion).
Update - a reader writes:
How young you are! In 1984, Christopher White, one of the most distinguished scholars of Rembrandt, was refused permission by the owners of the portrait of Jan Six even to reproduce the painting in his Thames & Hudson monograph on Rembrandt. 30 years later, the trustees have probably changed, but their [...] unwillingness to lend the portrait to the National Gallery cannot therefore have been unexpected.
'Late Rembrandt' - the reviews
October 15 2014
Picture: National Gallery
The National Gallery's new show gets five starts from everyone so far, as well as dollops of over-exuberance. Jonathan Jones in The Guardian, here, says:
Rembrandt is so high in the ranking of great artists that our amassed reverence has sunk like syrup into the brown and gold surfaces of his paintings.
There he is in the first room of this startling exhibition, gazing back from his self-portraits, a sage and infinitely gentle soul: Rembrandt the master. Then the curators pull a hidden lever and the floor disappears.
This brilliant, brave blockbuster reveals the true Rembrandt – a man at the end of his tether. It is a shocking and cathartic journey through the tragedy of his fall. By exposing that, it reveals his ultimate triumph. It is like seeing a great actor play King Lear and Prospero as a double bill.
Ben Luke in The Evening Standard (does this mean no Brian Sewell? We hope not) says:
It opens with the artistic equivalent of a punch to the solar plexus. Spotlit in the gloom are a cluster of Rembrandt's self portraits, among the greatest portraits ever made — there's no pussyfooting around with context, just a room of Rembrandt's eyes meeting yours, in masterpieces of such moving humanity that it's enough to make you sink to your knees.
Mark Hudson in The Telegraph says:
This is an exhibition that makes you realise there is still validity in the old idea of the universal masterpiece. I counted 10, maybe 11, along with perhaps 20 paintings that are merely superb and a few more that look like generic Rembrandt. As to which paintings fall into which category, you can make your own mind up, because if you have any feeling for Rembrandt, for painting or for art of any sort, you must see this show. When it comes to the great themes of human existence, there is still no one above Rembrandt.
Karen Wright in The Independent gives it also gives the show 5 stars, though it's not clear if she's actually seen it.
Sooke on Rembrandt 'Selfies'
October 15 2014
Video: Telegraph
Good video here from Alistair Sooke on Rembrandt's Kenwood House Self-Portrait.
Update - a reader writes:
Excellent and interesting video from Alistair Sooke on the Kenwood House Rembrandt self-portrait but why on earth did we need the intensely irritating violin playing in the background? Is this an attempt to distract us from the greatness of the art in case it is too much for us?
Gurlitt hoard - Berne accepts
October 15 2014
Picture: Jewish Voice
The Jewish Voice reports that the Berne Art Museum, to which Cornelius Gurlitt left his entire collection, will accept the donation - but only for pieces for which restitution claims can be entirely ruled out. More details here.
Rembrandt takes a giant leap
October 10 2014
Pictures: Metropolitan Museum New York, above, National Gallery, London, below.
It's all kicking off for Rembrandt folks. First, we have the opening next week of the National Gallery's enticing-looking 'Late Rembrandt' show. And secondly, and perhaps most excitingly of all, on Wednesday we have the launch of Volume 6 of the Rembrandt Research Project's (RRP) catalogue raisonné, or 'Corpus', of his works.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing the final conclusions of Ernst van der Wetering (the great Rembrandt scholar de nos jours) in Volume 6, which will be the last publication from the RRP. News reports (see here in the Wall Street Journal) tell us he has re-attributed 70 works to Rembrandt, including the 'Auctioneer' (above) at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
Regular readers may remember (*boast alert*) that I've been keen on this picture before (for example here). I've never understood why it was downgraded. It's a perfectly fine, signed late Rembrandt, the only 'weakness' of which is that it has some condition issues (such as an old, vicious re-lining, which, in flattening all the impasto, has robbed the paint surface of some of its Rembrandtian joie de vivre).
Bizarrely, the Auctioneer was downgraded in the 1980s on the basis of x-rays, which, said some Met curators, revealed un-Rembrandt-ian strokes beneath the paint layers. Of course, there weren't that many Rembrandt x-rays to compare it with in those days; it was a good example of how people like to over-interpret things like x-ray and Infra-red.
Perhaps even more bizarrely, the Metropolitan Museum rejects van de Wetering's view, and maintains that the Auctioneer is not a Rembrandt. As regular readers will know, the National Gallery in London has also rejected van de Wetering's recent opinion that their 'Old Man in an Armchair' (below) is by Rembrandt (which, I believe, it is). So clearly these two major museums believe they know more about Rembrandt than van de Wetering.
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I'd say both pictures are a classic example of how Rembrandt scholarship has consumed itself with doubt over the last fifty years. Picture after picture has been wrongly rejected, until eventually nobody really knew what a Rembrandt looked like anymore. Since both the Auctioneer and Old Man in an Armchair will be entirely absent from the National Gallery's 'Late Rembrandt' exhibition - even, I presume, from the catalogue - we must wonder if we'll really be getting a complete view of Rembrandt's late career.
Anyway, if you want to know more about all this, I've written an article on the fluctuating number of Rembrandts for this weekend's Financial Times. You can read the piece online here (it's free, though you may need to register), or you can listen to my podcast here.
In other Rembrandt news, the publishers of the RRP have, brilliantly, and with the help of the venerable RKD in Holland, put volumes 1 to 5 online - you can read them here. How amazing is that? Volumes 1-3 were written before Ernst's palace coup (in 1993), and although they contain much valuable information, be wary that many of the attributions are wildly wrong. Such is the state of Rembrandt connoisseurship.
All this Rembrandt excitement was too much for me yesterday. I'd already filed my FT piece on Tuesday, and so had to hastily redo parts in light of van de Wetering's announcement that he was adding 70 pictures to Rembrandt's oeuvre. Fortunately, we just managed to stop the page going to press, and I had 25 minutes to do a quick re-write. Art history news doesn't usually move this fast...
We must wait till next week for the full list of new attributions, however. I'm hoping that 'Man with a Golden Helmet' [Berlin Gemaldegalerie] gets upgraded.
By the way, Van de Wetering's latest publication brings the RRP's total number of Rembrandts to 340. This is a significant increase on the less than 250 pictures the RRP in its earlier incarnation (before van de Wetering took over) said Rembrandt painted. But I still think it's too low.
'National Gallery - the Movie'
October 9 2014
Video: via YouTube
The US film maker Frederick Wiseman has made a three hour documentary about the National Gallery. No idea where it's on generally, but above is the trailer, and it's showing in London during the BFI London Film Festival. And here is the BBC's Tom Brook on the film.
'Rembrandt - the Late Works'
October 9 2014
Video: National Gallery
Here's the exhibition trailer. Do you agree with the conclusion: 'these really are the finest works of Rembrandt's career'?
The oldest art in the world?
October 9 2014
Video: Nature
The journal Nature says that new dating of some paintings in a cave in Indonesia reveals that they are in fact the oldest known art in the world. More here.
Meanwhile, in France...
October 8 2014
Video: France TV
A little off the beaten path this, but I learn from La Tribune de l'Art that in France they have actually rebuilt, on top of a well known and well preserved archaeological site, the Temple of Mercury at Puy de Dome. As you can see from the above video, they have used hundreds of tonnes of stone, used drills, concrete and JCBs. How could such vandalism ever have been allowed? C'est incroyable.
More images here. The site used to look like this:
It now looks like this:
Debate - 'What is Connoisseurship?'
October 8 2014
Picture: IoD
There's another connoisseurship debate coming up in London soon, at the annual Battle of Ideas run by the Institute of Ideas. It will take place at the Barbican Centre on Sunday 19th October at 10am - details here.
The speaker line up looks excellent: Prof. Martin Kemp, the great Leonardo scholar, Dr Martin Myrone, lead curator at Tate Britain, Dr. Michael Savage aka The Grumpy Art Historian (who is an investment banker), and Prof. Sarah Wilson, Historian of Modern and Contemporary Art from the Courtauld. The convenor is Angus Kennedy, who recently wrote Being Cultured: in defence of discrimination. I was asked to speak, but alas could not attend (I'm mostly changing nappies these days).
For a primer on the debate, see mine and Martin Myrone's articles on connoisseurship in The Art Newspaper here and here. There's also film of Martin and I discussing the wider issues at the recent Paul Mellon Centre conference on connoisseurship here (I'm amazed to see that over 2,700 people have now watched this).
It looks as if there will be videos up after the event.
Photography in the Uffizi
October 8 2014
Picture: ArtTrav.com
I learn from ArtTrav.com that photography is also allowed in the Uffizi gallery. For few examples see here. There are even - gasp - some selfies!
Update - a reader writes:
On the Uffizi photos, the government passed a law recently mandating that all museums allow photography. Exactly the kind of dirigiste authoritarian barbarism we've come to dread from the country that leaves Pompeii to crumble....
New owner for The Art Newspaper
October 8 2014
Picture: TAN
The indispensable Art Newspaper has a new owner - she is the Russian engineer and collector Inna Bazhenova, above, who has been publisher of the Russian version of TAN since 2012. The paper has been sold by Umberto Allemandi, who founded it 1983. Jane Morris will continue to be the editor. More here.
Disclaimer; I sometimes write for it!
38 Churchill paintings 'offered to the nation'
October 8 2014
Picture: BBC
38 paintings by Winston Churchill are being 'offered to the nation' after the recent death of the great man's daughter, Mary Soames. Most of them are on public display already, in places such as Chartwell and the Houses of Parliament. The story is here on the BBC.
Of course, 'offer' is a slightly misleading term, for the pictures are actually being offered to the government's through the Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) scheme. This allows a deceased's estate to in effect sell cultural works to the government in settlement of death duties. The scheme is an excellent one, and has safeguarded many treasures for the nation over the decades.
But there is no charitable element in operation here on behalf of the Soames estate. In fact, it could be argued that securing a bulk deal with the government represents better value for money for the Soames estate than selling them all at once at auction. I'm only pointing this out because it is unusual for an AIL offer to be made so publicly, when the decision to actually accept them is some considerable time away (next year it seems). This may though have something to do with the fact that Sotheby's are promoting a forthcoming sale of Churchill items also from Mary Soames' estate.
It will be for the Acceptance in Lieu advisory board to recommend whether all the pictures be taken as payment of death duties. Questions it might ask include, does the nation really require all 38 of the paintings? Is there an overwhelming sense that the 38 are part of a single cohesive group - ie, they were all painted at a particular time, or in a particular place - and should they be kept together, even though they are not currently on display together? We don't yet know the value the pictures are being offered to the AIL scheme at, but the key point here is that the scheme has a finite limit in the amount of tax it can write off in a single year. At the moment it is set at £40m, which includes the government's new Cultural Giving Scheme. So the AIL panel will need to weigh up whether they should acquire all the paintings, and then perhaps miss out on helping acquire other treasures during the year, or to perhaps only choose some. You can see here on Your Paintings that the nation already owns 190 paintings by Churchill.
