Miniature Mozart for sale
October 8 2014
Picture: Guardian/Sotheby's
A portrait miniature of Mozart is being offered by Sotheby's on 20th November, reports the Guardian. It may fetch up to £300,000, say Sotheby's.
Apologies (blame Rembrandt edition)
October 6 2014
Picture: Royal Academy of Arts, Sweden
Sorry for the lack of posts at the end of last week. I've been writing a piece on Rembrandt for the FT, as a preview for the National Gallery's forthcoming 'Late Rembrandt' show, and it has taken me longer than expected. I didn't fully realise until now how chaotic Rembrandt scholarship has become. Will Rembrandt's oeuvre ever recover from the art historical predations of the last half century? I doubt it, but here's hoping.
Anyway, the National Gallery has today announced a new, last-minute loan for their exhibition; Rembrandt's The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis (about 1661–2), which is being lent by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Sweden. It has never been seen in the UK before.
Here's the National's press release:
The unprecedented last minute loan of The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis (about 1661–2) to this landmark exhibition, sponsored by Shell, that opens in just 10 days time (15 October, runs until 18 January 2015) will be the first time the painting has ever been to the UK.
Owned by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Sweden, the painting has only left Sweden twice in that time, in 1925 and 1969 (on both occasions for showings at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).
Betsy Wieseman, Curator of Rembrandt: The Late Works, says, “The extraordinary circumstances of the commissioning and early history of this painting are perhaps the most eloquent statement of Rembrandt’s position in Amsterdam artistic circles in the early 1660s, one of the central questions addressed in the exhibition. That is just one reason why I am absolutely thrilled it is coming to London.”
Measuring an imposing 196 x 309 cm, The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis is the only surviving portion of a painting Rembrandt made for the Town Hall (now Royal Palace) in Amsterdam (“This may just be the most heartbreaking fragment in the entire history of painting“ – Simon Schama, The Power of Art). Begun in 1648, the Town Hall was a proud expression of the power and wealth of the city and its people. The interior decorations were chosen to illustrate noble virtues; the story of the Batavians’ struggle to overthrow their Roman oppressors was considered symbolic of the Dutch Republic’s recent liberation from Spanish rule.
Rembrandt’s monumental canvas was hanging in the Town Hall by the summer of 1662, but was removed in the autumn of that year and cut down to its present size, presumably by Rembrandt himself. Nothing further is known of the painting’s whereabouts until 1734, when it was sold at auction in Amsterdam to a merchant from Estonia. His descendant donated the painting to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Sweden, in 1798. It has been on display at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm since 1866.
Susanna Slöör, Permanent Secretary, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Sweden said “The Royal Academy is thrilled and very proud to contribute to the understanding of Rembrandt’s late works by a loan of Claudius Civilis, the most prominent painting in a Swedish collection, to be shown in this fabulous context to a world audience. We are very grateful for this cooperation and look forward to a lasting relation with the National Gallery to enhance knowledge and interest in this extraordinary painting.”
In Trafalgar Square, The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis will have a central position in the section of the exhibition devoted to Rembrandt’s extraordinary use of light. It will be shown together with Rembrandt’s sketch for the work (on loan from the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich), which is the only surviving record of the painting’s original composition and format.
Betsy Wieseman again “The raw savagery of the figures and the clandestine nature of their meeting are brilliantly expressed by means of Rembrandt’s broad brushwork, and the odd and dazzling effects of the light cast by the lamp hidden by the figure in the immediate foreground. The juxtaposition of the two works – drawing and painting - will enable the visitor to imagine how, in Rembrandt’s vision; the scene’s unearthly glow would have been dramatically amplified by situating the huddled conspirators within a dark and cavernous setting. We are extremely honoured that the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Sweden, has permitted us to include this important painting in our exhibition.”
PS - there's an important update to my post below on Leonardo's 'Lady with an Ermine'.
Update - this isn't the only overseas Rembrandt loan in London at the moment. A reader alerts me to the Rijksmuseum's loan of a c.1630 Rembrandt to Kenwood House: Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem. More details here.
Lord King to be new National Gallery chairman?
October 1 2014
Picture: Investmentinsider.eu
Interesting to note that the former Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has been appointed a trustee of the National Gallery. He has already served as a trustee once before, between 2005/9. Given that the NG is looking for a new chairman, I wonder if such a high-profile appointment means Lord King might fill that role. The post of chairman is elected from within the trustees themselves.
Earlier in the year, DCMS asked me to be on the interviewing panel for the appointment of a National Gallery trustee. I think I'd have said then that Lord King would be an excellent choice. Congratulations to him. Being a trustee gives you one of the great perks in British life - Freedom of the Gallery. This means you can go round the gallery any time you like, day or night, 365 days of the year.
'Secrets of Leonardo revealed'?
October 1 2014
Video: BBC. Images: Copyright Pascal Cotte
There was a slew of stories in the press yesterday on the 'secrets' revealed by new analysis of Leonardo's Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, better known as the 'Lady with an Ermine'. Above is the BBC news piece. Here is the Guardian's report. And here is the LA Times.
Pascal Cotte (seen below, with a model recreating Cecilia's pose), co-founder of Lumiere Technology in Paris, has analysed the picture using a 'layer amplification method', or 'LAM' which, he says, allows us to peel back the layers of Leonardo's painting to reveal how he made it.
Cotte says, in a new book 'Lumiere on the Lady with an Ermine' (available here on Amazon), that Leonardo painted the picture in three seperate stages. First, the portrait was made without an ermine, with the sitter's right hand as shown below.
Then the ermine was added, but with a more slender form:
And finally, the bulkier ermine was painted on top of the first ermine, and that is the picture we see today:
.jpg)
The famous Leonardo scholar Martin Kemp seems to accept the results wholeheartedly, and says that they:
[...] tell us a lot more about the way Leonardo’s mind worked when he was doing a painting.
“We know that he fiddled around a good deal at the beginning, but now we know that he kept fiddling around all the time and it helps explain why he had so much difficulty finishing paintings."
But unfortunately, it seems to me that this is yet another example of the over-interpretation of technical analysis, in this case mainly various forms of multi-spectral photography.* Regular readers will know that I have been sounding warning signs about this for some time (see an earlier example here over Rubens' portrait of Van Dyck). We must be wary of too much messing around with things like Photoshop.
First, I must state that Cotte's work is a valuable contribution to art history, and his technology can yield some fascinating results. He featured on an early episode of 'Fake or Fortune?', and his work with Professor Kemp on the so-called 'Bella Principessa' - the newly discovered drawing which Kemp attributed to Leonardo (but which has so far failed to find favour with the majority of other Leonardo scholars) - raised many interesting questions that were perhaps unfairly tarnished by Peter Paul Biro's 'Leonardo fingerprint' controversy (see the Cotte/Kemp Principessa book here, and further AHN on the matter here).
And Cotte's analysis in the case of 'Lady with an Ermine' does indeed reveal some interesting facts about Leonardo's approach to the painting. We can see in the image below, for example, that Leonardo made a number of changes to the dress, including in the detail on the sitter's left arm - the intricate scroll pattern appears beneath the red layer we see in the finished painting, and echoes that seen on her right arm.
Another interesting detail is the obvious change in the outline of the ermine, as seen below, which is a classic example of the sort of artistic change, or pentimento, we can now see easily with modern IR photography.
However, Cotte's central thesis, that the ermine was an after-thought, is not, it seems to me, actually evident in the images he has published. For example, Cotte says that the four ghostly shapes below are evidence that the sitter's right hand was originally perched on her left wrist, just below where the ermine sits in the finished picture:
In this image below he has highlighted the 'fingers' in purple:
But these shapes, noticeable only by enhancement, could really be anything; something in the make up of the panel, a variation in the application of ground layer, or a more minor change relating to another area, and so on. The shapes are not nearly obvious enough for us to deduce that it was once a hand.
In fact, here below is a zoomed out image of the same area - taken from another of Cotte's scans - and it seems to me that in fact a whole different shape can be seen there, just above the 'fingers' identified by Cotte. These too look like they could have been fingers - but Cotte makes nothing of them in relation to the hand, even though they appear to be the same consistency and type of form, and says instead they are part of the tail of the first ermine:
In the image below I have (very inexpertly) pointed out the area I'm talking about with a red arrow. Cotte's 'fingers' are pointed out with the purple arrow:
The point is, it's possible to look at scans like this and imagine all sorts of shapes and features, be they fingers or imagine tails. In any case, can we really believe that Leonardo, the master of almost lyrical anatomy, would ever have concieved such an awkward pose?
I am equally unpersuaded by the idea that there were two different ermines, one thinner and another that we see now. Again, there is not enough evidence to prove that the ermine was originally the oddly shaped creature Cotte claims it to be. I don't believe Leonardo would paint such a thing - it looks like one of those draught excluders you get in Poundland.
I am truly sorry to rain on Pascal Cotte's parade like this - especially after he has kindly shared his press images with me. Of course, you can all feel free to ignore everything I've said here. But there is an important point to be made about interpreting the technical analysis of paintings, which is a science in its relative infancy.
In these cases, I always mention the cautionary tale of the certain yellow pigment - I forget which - that scientists assured us was not invented till the 18th Century, leading to the rejection of a number of pictures as later copies. Only recently was it discovered that this pigment had in fact been around in the 17th Century, and that the rejected pictures weren't 'wrong' after all. The point is, those undertaking the technical analysis of pictures have not yet built up a deep enough body of evidence to enable to us to say with certainty, 'this pigment only dates to this date', or, 'this is what a Leonardo pentimento of a hand looks like'. To make such conclusions, we must first test far more paintings, so that we can build up a truly reliable database of yellow pigments, or scan every Leonardo painting to be sure what one of his hidden hand, if we can discern such things, really looks like. Leaping to conclusions from such a small sample size would not be acceptable in any other science.
We, that is the public, art historians and the media, are in danger of placing far too much faith in the analysis of difficult-to-read images by scientists who may not be familiar with all the vagaries of how artists worked. It's curious that while many art historians denigrate one form of connoisseurship - that is, the close analysis of a picture's surface to learn who painted what, when, and how - they seem happy to accept unquestioningly a different and far harder form of connoisseurship; the analysis of what lies beneath a painting. It's also curious that we seem happy to outsource this art historical analysis to scientists, who may be very qualified to take the sort of photos Cotte has taken, but are no more qualified to analyse them the man in the street. But then there is a general perception that science, being a binary discipline, must be right. I would argue that, when it comes to pictures, it isn't. At least, not yet.
Update - a reader writes:
To me the ghostly image you point out with the red arrow looks just like an eagle (in profile, looking right). Do you see it too?
Nope.
Another reader reminds me that Brian Sewell doubted whether Leonardo painted Lady with an Ermine.
Update II - And because I was quite pleased with it at the time, here, in case anyone's interested, is my review of the National Gallery's exhibition on Leonardo's Milan works, in which the Lady with an Ermine was shown.
Update III - another reader writes:
It is well established that Leonardo fiddled with his paintings and completed them slowly
The significant changes in the ermine were accompanied by changes in the dress and elsewhere and are logical to imply a robust duke. The x-ray and infrared images add to the understanding of his process and the scientific analysis reveals are some of these changes
But one must view the less clear images as suggestive and with the same uncertainty as unclear images of alien ships and imaginary creatures. They are subject to interpretation and the objects might exist but require further confirmation.
Update IV - Pascal Cotte has kindly been in touch. He has asked me to point out that I have not read his book, in which he goes into everything in great detail. I'm more than happy to do so.
He also makes the following points:
The L.A.M. technique provides images from deep inside the layers of paint. So it is easy - by comparison - to check if we are wrong or not. I can demonstrate easily if what we see exists or not, thus eliminating 90% of the risk of over-interpretation.
The risk of over-interpretation still exists but it is very limited. An incorrect assumption (e.g. over-interpretation, for example) cannot readily endure because it will clash with dozens of details that one can see in the other LAM images.
It is the strength of this technique that it does not give only one image, as do the infrared or X-rays, but thousands of them. You have failed to differentiate my method from older ones.
In other words, Cotte's own cameras and computers tell him that there is only a 10% chance he is wrong. Obviously, I disagree entirely. In fact, I'd say there is about a 10% chance he is right.
M. Cotte also says:
I agree with you that the 4 fingers are not enough on their own to demonstrate that there was no ermine at the beginning of the picture. The hypothesis is based not only on this picture, but on many many others elements, demonstrations, etc. developed in my book. I
n fact, in your article, without knowing it, you demonstrate that I'm right about the hypothesis without the ermine. You draw attention to the discoveries of the nice interlaces revealed by the L.A.M. and you write "We can see in the image below, for example, that Leonardo made a number of changes to the dress, including in the detail on the sitter's left arm - the intricate scroll pattern appears beneath the red layer we see in the finished painting, and echoes that seen on her right arm." These "scroll patterns" are interlaces. If you work with an expert in costume who knows precisely the fashion at this time (as I am working with Elisabetta Gnignera) you understand that the position of this interlaces involves putting her left arm in a very different position, which is totally incompatible with the presence of an ermine (or anything else) in the actual position.
This last statement, I'm afraid, makes no sense at all. The alteration to the dress in the sitter's left arm, is a cosmetic one - the 'interlaces' have been painted over. Perhaps Leonardo found them too visually distracting. This relatively minor alteration cannot then be interpreted as evidence that the arm cannot have originally held anything else, no matter what a costume historian might say.
To follow up this point, I asked M. Cotte if he had detected evidence of these 'interlaces' behind the ermine and behind the sitter's right hand. If the ermine was not originally included, and if the hand was in the lower position Cotte claims, then we should surely be able to see the 'interlaces' going all the way across the sitter's chest on the collar of her dress, and also all the way down the edge of her chest on the left hand side of the picture, as seen in the first reconstruction image above. Since M. Cotte's cameras detected evidence of the 'interlaces' underneath the (apparently quite thick) red paint on the sitter's left arm, we should expect to see them similarly revealed in other areas. But alas it appears that there is in fact no evidence of these 'interlaces'. Which seems to me pretty clear proof that the picture was not painted in the manner M. Cotte claims.
Finally, M. Cotte adds:
As mentioned in the beginning of my book I constituted a "Reading Committee" with 18 people, Conservators, Art Historians, Scientists, Restorers, Experts. Because doubt is the engine of all sciences. I approached this study with humility by seeking the advice and recommendations of many well informed experts. Each detail, each shape, each drawing, each pentimenti was analysed carefully by people who are highly experience in analytical techniques. Dr. Janusz Walek, the chief Conservator of the Lady with an Ermine in Krakow, who knows the painting better than anyone, totally agrees with my findings. Dr. David Bull who studied this painting in detail when it was exhibited in Washington and wrote the most serious scientific publication about it, has also agreed with the discoveries.
I'm a little alarmed that two such influential conservators, who one would expect to know their way around a painting, really believe all this.
* Note - not infra-red, as I mistakenly said earlier.
How much for an attribution?
October 1 2014
Picture: New York Times, a fake Pollock sold by Knoedler
Over on Apollo's site, there's a summary by Lily Le Brun of the Knoedler fakes story which has been rumbling on since 2011, with this intriguing fact I'd so far missed:
In April a lawsuit was filed against a former curator at the Beyeler Foundation in Switzerland for knowingly participating in the Knoedler fraud ‘either intentionally or with wilful blindness or reckless disregard for the truth’ – on the grounds that he was paid a $300,000 consulting fee by Knoedler to help sell a $7.2 million ‘Rothko’, and that he received $150,000 from the buyer.
That's a pretty extraordinary fee for authenticating a picture. Any curator or scholar who took that amount, or even a tenth of it, must know that it's nothing less than a bribe.
'Cameron's royal gaffe on the Queen's Van Dyck'
September 30 2014
Picture: Evening Standard
There's a story in the London Evening Standard today, which states that the David Cameron, made 'a gaffe' in revealing details of a conversation with the Queen at Chequers, the UK Prime Minister's country retreat. Says the Standard:
On Monday last week, Mr Cameron invited some 20 MPs to his country retreat, including some of his fiercest critics, to thrash out a plan for “English votes for English laws” following the referendum.
During a tour, he showed them Anthony van Dyck’s painting A Family Group, and recounted a conversation that took place when the Queen and Prince Philip made a visit to Chequers in February — their first in almost two decades.
According to Mr Cameron, Her Majesty commented that she had the original of the painting at Windsor Castle. But the Premier then told how, in a toe-curlingly awkward moment, the curator at Chequers interjected to correct the Queen, pointing out the version she was looking at was the original and that her painting at Windsor was the copy.
While the story delighted guests, it appears to once again breach protocol which demands private conversations with the Queen are not discussed.
Which is all very amusing, except for the fact that the Queen (who knows her art) was absolutely right. The two group portraits by Van Dyck that would match the description given here of 'A Family Group' are the so-called 'Great Piece' of Charles I and Henrietta Maria with Charles II and Princess Mary and The Five Eldest Children of Charles I, and both are in the Royal Collection. Chequers has a copy of part of the former (with just Henrietta Maria and Princess Mary) and a full-scale copy of the latter. These are both listed in the 2004 Van Dyck catalogue raisonné as copies.
You can see the Chequers copies on Your Paintings here and here. For some reason, the Your Paintings site incorrectly describes the portrait of Henrietta Maria and Princess Mary as by 'Van Dyck'.
If the curator at Chequers really did not know that Van Dyck's original was indeed in the Royal Collection, they should be sent to the Tower.
There are two genuine Van Dycks at Chequers, small head and shoulders portraits of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, which you can see on Your Paintings here and here.
Update - AHN's reaction to the Standard story has been picked up by the media, including the Telegraph here, the Express here and The Times here. But the PM has today given a barnstorming conference speech, with tax cuts to boot, so this Van Dyck business will be very swiftly forgotten.
Update II - a reader writes:
Would that Her Majesty still had the power to send a curator to The Tower and have a PM (who made him a Premier) exiled (to Scotland) for indiscretion.
Update III - a reader adds:
The Cameron Van Dyke story puts one in mind of Alan Bennett's "A Question of Attribution." Her Majesty likes facts.
Sargent exhibition at NPG London & Met, NY
September 30 2014
Picture: NPG
This looks exciting; the National Portrait Gallery, London, will have an exhibition on John Singer Sargent next year, which will then go onto the Met in New York. Guest curated by Richard Ormond CBE, who wrote the excellent four-volume Sargent catalogue raisonné, the show will:
[...] explore the artist as a painter at the forefront of contemporary movements in the arts, music, literature and theatre, revealing the depth of his appreciation of culture and his close friendships with many of the leading artists, actors and writers of the time.
The exhibition will be in London between 12 Feb - 25 May, and the at the Met in New York 29 June - 4 October. More details here.
What is 'prosopography'?
September 30 2014
Picture: Neil Jeffares/ National Archives
King of all things pastel, Neil Jeffares (consult his online Dictionary of pastellists before 1800 here) is a pre-eminent prosopographist, and explains what it is in this entry on his blog:
[..] archival research into the lives of the artists and the worlds they worked in.
You and I might think that's mainly what art history is all about, but no; as Neil explains, too many art historians are instead focused on:
the often dry theoretical discussions pursued in universities: these are characterised by abstract theories couched in ludicrous vocabulary, and are necessarily governed by the whimsical vogues that infect the institutions where such work is conducted.
Anyway, to see an important and indeed rather moving example of Neil's dedicated prosopography, I urge you to read his latest piece of research on the English seventeenth century pastellist Edmund Ashfield, here, in which he describes his quest to find out more about this previously elusive artist.
In this extract, Neil describes the eureka moment when he found a crucial line of text, above, hiding in an enormous document at the National Archives in Kew:
Unindexed, it consisted of twenty-five enormous sheets of vellum (double sided, each with up to 7–8000 words), folded to make photography impossible and so large that to read them (and comply with the National Archives handling rules) required bodily contortions that may have inspired Mats Ek’s choreography: at least Michelangelo had a scaffold. And try as I might I could find nowhere in the affidavit of her guardian’s son the statement I hoped to find. But as I was very close to giving up going through the rest of the bundle, I came across the statement made by the defendant, Sir Henry Goodricke, in which he does indeed refer to Eleanor’s first husband as “Mr Edmond Ashfield, the Plaintiff’s Father, who was by Trade a Painter…& had no visible Estate of his owne”.
Neil's main conclusion is that Ashfield died earlier than we thought, in 1679, and that therefore a group of c.1690 miniatures previously thought to be by him at the V&A (see one example here) must be by someone else.
'Invisible Art'
September 30 2014
Picture: CBC
This piece on CBC radio is a spoof. But I had to check.
Bargain Old Master prints
September 29 2014
Picture: Sotheby's
In the New York Times, Scott Reyburn says the market for Old Master prints, such as Rembrandt's sublime 'Three Trees' etching above, is changing:
In the past, the arcane technicalities of printmaking have intimidated potential clients, turning the field into a niche sector. But now, encouraged by the soaring prices of original art and the availability of images of these prints online, a new international crowd that doesn’t know the difference between etching and drypoint, or mezzotint and lithotint — and isn’t really that bothered — has entered the market.
“These sales have become image-driven,” said the London-based art adviser Patrick Legant, who attended both Sotheby’s auction, and the 192-lot print selection Christie’s offered the following day. “People are attracted by lovely things with art-historical gravitas that are reasonably priced,” he added.
Like Rembrandt, Albrecht Dürer has long been recognized as one of the greatest of all print-makers. Sotheby’s sale opened with 20 of his engravings and woodcuts, including some of his most famous compositions, many of which appeal to contemporary sensibilities. With its estimate of £4,000-£6,000, a posthumously printed “Melencolia I” wasn’t an example for the purists, but the sheer power of the image drew a telephone purchase at £25,000. Three-quarters of the Dürers sold, with a further £50,000 — double the low estimate — given for his 1515 woodcut, “The Rhinoceros.”
Cleaning Le Brun's 'Jabach' (ctd.)
September 29 2014
Picture: Met
Here, Michael Gallagher of the Metropolitan Museum has written about the next steps in their conservation of Le Brun's portrait of the collector Everhard Jabach and his family.
Penny on museum photography
September 28 2014
Picture: BG
National Gallery director Nicholas Penny gave a talk last week in London on 'Old Masters in a new age', in which he discussed how the NG is approaching new media, and the lifting of the photography ban. Sadly, despite the speech being part of something called 'Social Media Week', there was no streaming or video of Penny's turn, which seems more than a little contradictory. I learn from a few quotes on Twitter, however, that Nicholas admitted to 'a life long habit of illicit art photography'. If anyone was there, and can tell us anything else the great man said, do let me know.
De-accession time in Delaware (ctd.)
September 28 2014
Picture: DAM
The Delaware Art Museum's handling of their de-accessions goes from bad to worse. Not content with having sold their Holman Hunt 'Isabella with the Pot of Basil' for way under estimate earlier this year, they've now managed to handicap the potential sale of their next disposal, Winslow Homer's Milking Time.
I said back in August that it was inadvisable for the DAM to trail the fact that Milking Time would be offered privately before auction (at Sotheby's) in the autumn, for if the picture did appear at auction, people would know it had already failed to sell privately beforehand. They might thus sit on their hands at the sale, and be wary of any estimate (as happend with the Holman Hunt).
But here (at DelawareOnline) is the DAM's own chairman, Gerret Copeland, telling the world that Milking Time has already failed to sell, and "Basically, there's no interest in Homers." Which of course is phooey. According to DelawareOnline, Copeland is 'frustrated the art market decided not to cooperate'.
The DAM has now decided to raid its endowment to plug its debt hole, leaving it with half the funding it needs to be viable.
After Dark at Tate
September 28 2014
Picture: ES
Tate Britain recently made much of having robots go around its galleries at night, which you could control over the web. It wasn't very exciting when I looked at it; the image quality was pretty weak. Google's Art Poject does the job much better.
But recently, homeless man Raj Patel, managed to secure his own after hours private view by falling asleep in the gallery's toilets just before closing time, and then enjoyed a good wander around. He told the Evening Standard:
“I remember hearing someone open the door and shouting ‘security’, but I was half-asleep and they didn’t check the cubicle. When I woke up the entire place was in darkness.
“It was just a bit eerie, being there all alone. I wandered around for 10 minutes looking for a security guard to let me out.
“When I found one, they just let me go - they didn’t even ask for ID or even my name."
3%
September 28 2014
Picture: Deloitte
That's the number of collectors who buy art purely as an investment, according to a new report on art investment by Deloitte (read a summary of it here at ArtNet, and see the full report here). 21% of collectors said they bought art purely for the purposes of collecting, while 76% said they bought it partly with an investment view in mind.
That broadly reflects my experience when I was selling art in London. Most people buy something because they fall in love with it. (And you need to love a £50,000 picture before you shell out for it, as buying art usually comes way down the list of life's priorities, after paying off the mortgage, educating the kids, planning the pension, and dallying with the yacht.)
But many people often asked me if art, at least in the Old Master end of the market, was 'a good investment', and usually my answer had to be 'no', at least not in the short term. I always urged people to buy art on its own merits, and see any investment potential as a medium to long term proposition.
As a safe store of capital, Old Masters can represent good value. But the problem with using art purely as an investment vehicle is the transaction cost. Let's say you choose to buy and sell at auction; your buyer's premium start at 25% (plust Vat), and your seller's premium starts at 10% (again, plus Vat). So the average punter needs to be confident that the art has gone up by almost 40% before they can get their money back.
Now, there are many scenarios in which the margins don't need to be so frightening (auction houses are usually happy to negotiate down a seller's premium, for example) but you get the idea. In fact, I see that Christie's has now introduced a new 2% additional premium if they sell your picture for more than the higher estimate. And dealer margins can be just as high, if not higher.
Obviously, the question is a wholly different one at the modern and contemporary end of the art market, where we're dealing with a speculator's market in which quality has little to do with prices. Even here, however, you need to be prepared to wait a good while for price increases to wash out transaction costs; flip a Warhol too quickly, and you could end up losing big.
Update - a reader writes:
Regarding the 3 % this result says nothing about the amount of funds devoted to art investment rather only the percentage of collectors investing.
There is over one hundred billion us dollars of insured art value sitting in one storage facility in Switzerland to which one can add JFK and red hook in NYC and bank vaults from Wilmington Delaware to London.
Wealth managers mainly recommend art as a portable unregistered non monetary store of value in case the clients’ resident country or marriage falls apart rather than for near term return. And as Volpone recommended you can send it ahead.
In a true global emergency the value of art will shrink because the buyers will disappear but it might still be there when things normalize and it is valuable if the emergency is localized as with certain countries right now
Forecasting future value for an artist's work requires forecasting future tastes and future economic conditions but rather than a paying cash dividend or interest it has a carrying cost for insurance storage and ultimately conservation in addition to high transaction costs and an unregulated market.
Buy what you love if you can afford it and any financial gain is a reward for buying and selling well.
Or look for sleepers.
Italian Museums (ctd.)
September 28 2014
This subject is turning into quite a regular feature here on AHN. The latest curiousness from Italy's museum sector comes via The Art Newspaper, which reports that the head of Florence's museums is under investigation for not properly handling an EUR1.5m insurance contract when various pictures were leant to the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (above). More here.
Van Gogh still life to be auctioned
September 28 2014
Picture: FT
One of Van Gogh's final still life paintings is to be sold at Sotheby's in New York in November, where it is estimated to sell for up to $50m. More here in the FT.
National Gallery membership launched
September 25 2014
Video: National Gallery
The National Gallery in London has launched a new Membership scheme. Regular readers may remember that I first revealed this back in April 2014. The above feel-good video doesn't tell you what you get for your £50, but the 'exclusive benefits' promised are these:
Free exhibition entry Enjoy free, unlimited entry to all exhibitions
Exclusive events Experience the Gallery away from the crowds through our exciting programme of Members' events, including private views of exhibitions and talks with curators and experts
Special offers Take advantage of a range of discounts and offers available for Members in the Gallery shops, cafés and Dining Rooms
Members' website Browse your online Membership magazine featuring exclusive interviews, films and articles, and find out about forthcoming events and offers
Members' e-news Stay up to date with all that’s happening at the Gallery, along with the latest offers and events direct to your inbox.
Some news reports have said membership will allow you to 'beat the queues'. This isn't really the case, and you still have to get a timed ticket. You do though get a free bag. You can join here.
The National Gallery has also released details of its forthcoming exhibitions, which include:
Inventing Impressionism 4 March – 31 May 2015
Soundscapes: Listening to Paintings 8 July – 6 September 2015
Goya: The Portraits 7 October 2015 – 10 January 2016
I'll say it now; Goya is probably the most over-rated portraitist in the history of western art.
Update - a reader writes:
Whilst I am pleased that the NG now has a membership group, I am sorry that, like a numbe of other institutions, it has failed to institute a category of life membership. For the many people who are worried about the widely documented unreliability of Direct Debit, and the tiresomeness of annual renewal, this is surely the best option to support such an institution. Most others of comparable stature are willing to accept a lump sum to cover life membership; the fact that the NG is not suggest that they are not entirely serious about the whole enterprise.
Update II - another reader writes:
Oh, the ghost of Robert Hughes is going to come and haunt you for that dismissive opinion !!
Cleaning Leonardo's 'Adoration of the Magi'
September 24 2014
Pictures: Opficio delle Pietre Dure
The Art Newspaper alerts me to the conservation of Leonardo's unfinished work of 1481, The Adoration of the Magi. The picture, which is in the Uffizi in Florence, has been cleaned of some of its uppermost layers of dirt and old varnish by Florence's conservation institute, the Opficio delle Pietre Dure.
The picture already appears to have more depth to it, especially in the sky, trees and areas such as the archway underneath the stairs. As you can see in the picture above, a number of details are now more visible than before. Below is the picture pre-conservation (see a high-res version here).
Another gain is the presence of a blue wash in the sky, which had appeared yellow thanks to the old varnish.
The cleaning job is so far only partly done, as revealed by the (for now odd-looking) areas where the old surface layers are still visible. The image below shows the group of figures around the staircase seen in UV light. The darker greeny/blue areas are where the old varnish layers are still intact.
In the normally lit image below, you can see how murky the figures look compared with the crisp sharpness of the now-cleaned architecture. Cleaning the figures will be the hard part, as they'll be much more vulnerable to any solvents.
There's a good selection of photos of the cleaned areas on the OPD's website here.
Update - the website ArtTrav has an interview with one of the conservation team here.
Cleaning Elizabeth I
September 23 2014
Video: NPG
Great video here from the National Portrait Gallery, where conservator Sophie Plender discusses cleaning the 'Phoenix' portrait of Elizabeth I. The end result looks fantastic (you can see it in the new 'Real Tudors' exhibition I mentioned yesterday). Congratulations to Sophie and all involved.
