David Taylor, Paintings and Sculptor Curator at the National Trust said: "The debate over whether this is or isn't a Rembrandt has been on-going for decades.

"The key element for me has been the cleaning.  The varnish was so yellow that it was difficult to see how beautifully the portrait had been painted. Now you can really see all the flesh tones and other colours, as well as the way in which the paint has been handled - it's now much easier to appreciate it as a Rembrandt.

"With the technical analysis backing up Ernst's claims, we are obviously very excited. Caring for the work of one of the great Dutch masters although in itself quite daunting, will also give us a great story to tell as we bring the mystery of its authorship to life for our visitors to enjoy."

Ernst van de Wetering visited the painting at the HKI just before it returned to Buckland Abbey.  He said: "Although I was pretty certain the painting was a Rembrandt when I saw it in 2013, I wanted to further examine it after cleaning and see the results from the technical analysis as this had never been done before. With all this additional scientific evidence, I am satisfied it is by Rembrandt".

There is nothing, I think, radical or outrageous in pointing out that connoisseurship has served to reinforce social difference and further material interests over history. There are numerous studies which testify to this. What would be absurd would be to claim that this has somehow abruptly stopped in the present age and that connoisseurship is now absolutely removed from struggles over cultural authority.

It's a yes from us!

On your presentation at Connoisseurship Now. HEAR  HEAR  !!!! 100%

Curators operate within a guild structure and are averse to others particularly dealers practicing art history. Curators needn't be connoisseurs and can rely on accepted authority. 

Dealers presented with fakes and copies and misatttributions have both their reputation and capital on the line and haven't luxury to ignore connoisseurship which examines the characteristics that distinguish the work of any particular artist.

If authorship is irrelevant then why do museums and collectors bother purchasing catalogues raissonne and squander their funds paying more for an important name when a school of painting might be just as good or better. Their behaviour belies their curators’ disingenuous arguments against connoisseurship.

Then why argue. First because connoisseurship is difficult and risky and the new art historians aren't trained or skilled in it.  Second because it is inapplicable to some contemporary art where technique (such as it is) is secondary to concept and Rothko or Newman can be convincingly imitated.

Because you're not one of the Eaton Hall Grosvenors, I imagined you would know how to write in English.  "The Art Newspaper asked both Martin and I to write a ....." 

What happened?

Very interesting, your post today. Needless to say, I'm on your side. As a matter of fact, though, you frequently aren't a suited dealer; the problem is that you don't dress down far enough.  I suggest more infrequent use of the razor, crumpled jackets and trousers, and - the master stroke - a change of name - perhaps Bob Grey?

I'm afraid I find the connoisseurship debate, albeit fascinating, somewhat predictable and without foreseeable resolution - and I did watch the available Mellon Centre discussion well past my bedtime, and am catching up with the articles in the Art Newspaper by Martin Myrone and your good self. Martin Myrone has agreed to come to the far-flung wastes of the 'Principality' [Wales] in October to talk about the Tate show and its contents. Our local museum/gallery has contributed two pub signs (one of which, The Four Alls, is featured on the Tate website) and some carved slates to the show - hardly High Art I know). Maybe we can get him to comment on a curator's approach to 'Folk Art'. (Incidentally, I found Hugo Chapman's talk most engaging - and revealing of the 'expert's' rewards and difficulties, in both trade and museum context).

Only you know why you write your blog. The judgments (and I have chosen the word carefully) that Mr Myrone makes, which are a product of his own perspective and interest, hardly matter. I can only say that what you do has made a very great difference to me, and I suspect to many others.  I knew nothing of art, or its history, and having happened upon a episode of Fake or Fortune, become intrigued and followed it to your website, a new world is opened to me. Every day I read your site, looking forward learning something new. Your work is serving the interest of art, and that can never be a bad thing, no matter how or why it is done. I don't really care what Mr Myrone thinks about your motives and reasons, and neither should you.

I am, by the way, completely agreeing with you on the connoisseurship debate. The interesting thing is that here in Sweden, I have had very good contact with the academy regarding these issues (all advanced students are sent to the auction house and to dealers to "learn the facts of life"). Actually, most professors agree with me that it is very strange that you can get a PhD without having the slightest idea how a painting looks from the back. I guess that it is more related to the fact that most students of art history are completely unhirable after only a BA or MA degree, so the universities here are trying to form connections to the art industry rather than dissociate themselves from it.

"We have rested much more on the idea of a canon of great masters, a Hogarth-to-Turner story. In a way we have overlooked the everyday more acutely than in Europe and in North America. it is a fairly narrow kind of canon. A select few artists have been elevated, but there is a whole world of making and physical production which is really exciting."

Part of the problem had been the founding principles of the Royal Academy, he said, which on its establishment in 1769 had declared that "no needlework, artificial flowers, cut paper, shell work, or any such baubles should be admitted".

Mr Myrone said: "It was attempting to draw a very firm line between high art and low art, between popular culture and elite culture. In a way, the great efforts made to prop up the Royal Academy and keep the artistic elite in their elite position has been one of the factors that has helped to marginalise other kinds of artists." [...]

"More generally, there's a sense that all of us who go to galleries now are probably more open-minded about what we can expect to see there. We are informed by contemporary art practice to expect the unexpected. We have moved on from the idea that galleries are about oil paintings on canvas".

Is it giving away some free then? No, thought not!

Time will tell whether 'Folk Art' is another of Tate Britain's turkey shows nobody visits. I suspect most people won't find pub signs 'really exciting', or believe in Tate's new theory that 'elite culture' is necessarily different, and less worth our attention and approval, to 'popular culture'.

£14.50 to get into that? It's free down the bric-a-brac shop.

Actually looking forward to seeing this. I like the quirkier end of art history.

I think you and your correspondents are a bit hard on "folk art" (which is, by the way, far from a new thing on my side of the Atlantic).  There may well be many "folk" (sorry) who find it interesting; I do myself -- as history, that is, or just as plain fun. The term "folk art" seems perfectly admissible; we don't have to restrict the word "art" to great art (remember medieval and renaissance cassoni!). 

However, you are not being too hard on grandiose pop-sociological claims for folk artworks as equivalent to any other art, or bad quasi-political analysis implying love for great art is elitist.  Let people see folk art; even let the Tate put on a show for fun; but don't let them get away with that sort of blather.

I visited the newly refurbished room A at the National Gallery today (didn't see you there Bendor). It's good to see it open again, better lighting, some seating & a more fitting place to see art in one of the world's great galleries. What's missing are many of the paintings...the tasteful hang means there are far fewer paintings, the rag bag hang of the old galleries did mean you could see the good the bad & the frankly ugly. There is something romantic about basement galleries with their unrecognised gems.

Until recently, the Neumeister auction house has always claimed its records of that era were destroyed in an air raid. But last year it said it had discovered annotated catalogues from the time in a basement filing cabinet.

And this week it has made the information from those catalogues freely available on the Internet – the first time any German art dealer has publicly released its records from the Nazi era.

Their publication is the initiative of Katrin Stoll, who took over the auction house in 2008, and has no connection to Mr Weinmüller.

“I feel very fortunate to have this difficult task,” she told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

What’s the issue?

It might initially appear rather dry and uninteresting, but the European Union’s Chemical Agency(ECHA) is considering severely restricting or even banning the use of all Cadmium pigments. It could be a significant reduction to the artists’ palette – arguably an even bigger change than the restrictions applied to the use of lead in artists’ colours. Whereas the risks associated with lead were undeniable and obvious, the premise on which the cadmium proposal is based appears both unconvincing and entirely unnecessary to many.

Why all the fuss now?

Pressure from one particular EU member state means that Cadmium pigments could be stripped of the protection they currently enjoy when used in the limited application of artists’ colours, and the changes could be introduced within a couple of years.

What is the objection?

Our understanding is that the objection to the continued use of heavy metal Cadmium pigments is based not on concern for the paint maker or artistic user, but to prevent such materials entering the water course, Essentially, one EU member maintains that by rinsing brushes in the sink, cadmium may enter the waste water treatment plants and end up in the sludge. When the sludge is spread on agricultural land, growing crops absorbs the cadmium and consequently this will lead to an increased exposure to humans via food.

You leave, however, reflecting that Tate Britain has a problem: not looking for civilization so much as searching for suitable subjects for shows. The truth is that there are a limited number of British artists worthy of a major exhibition. In the 14 years since the Tate spilt into Modern and British parts, almost all of these have been covered. It will be a few years before they can do Gainsborough or Hogarth once more, so in the meantime Tate Britain has a bit of a problem. Lordly as he was, Kenneth Clark wasn’t quite large enough a figure to plug that gap.

Applicants should have a love of paintings and share the Gallery's commitment to making its great collection freely accessible to the widest possible audience. Applicants will also be able to demonstrate excellent judgement and an ability to deal with strategic issues facing the Gallery, good communication skills and a commitment to support the Gallery's fundraising activities. 

In addition, for this vacancy, at least one of the following attributes is desirable:

• Senior academic experience, ideally an international standing and the ability to assist the Gallery with plans for developing a research centre or
• Senior financial experience and the ability to assist the Gallery with plans for developing self-generated income.

is it believable that he really was motivated initially by an obsession with this work of art?

Yes, it's believable. I can easily imagine being so obsessed with a painting that you feel compelled to steal it. Not this painting, though: I do not believe it to be an actual Rembrandt. But sure, I might be tempted by a real Rembrandt.

After all, the entire art world rests on its power to seduce and fascinate and obsess people, to make them covet it. Collectors are people who cannot bear to just see art in museums. They need it in their house. They get it (usually) in legal ways, by buying from galleries or at auction. Similarly, curators who work in public museums are driven to get physically close to art, to dedicate their working lives to being in close proximity to it. And writing about art is another way of taking possession of it.

On the other hand … writers share art with their readers. Curators care for it on the public's behalf. Only private collectors come close to the art thief in selfishness, yet even they bequeath works to museums or loan them to exhibitions.

I would happily steal The Guitar Player for a day.... Saw it last year at Vermeer and Music at the National Gallery, it sparkled and leapt off the wall.

Pretty much any Vermeer would do me.... Have never seen Girl With a Pearl Earring, could faint I think.

Been playing that game for a few years now with an Italian colleague. But its what would you like to steal and keep, not return after a day. 

So far I have Polynesia Air and Polynesia Sea by Matisse, an altarpiece by Rogier van der Weiden, Giorgione's Tempest, a small landscape by Patinir, assorted Roman glass from a cabinet at the Louvre, an etching and a drawing by Rembrandt (still making up my mind which ones), a photograph by Michael Kenna and an early 14th century Arabic Astrolabe built in Spain. I am currently thinking about acquiring an Anselm Kiefer piece.

That’s an almost impossible question, but I suspect I’d take Bellini’s portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan. The sense of calm and confidence the Doge has largely explains why it’s on the pinboard above my office desk.

Runner up probably goes to Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast, but my office is quite small…. 

Not sure I could deprive others of either of them for too long, though.

The Enchanted Castle by Claude, and the  Gerrit van Honthorst , Saint Sebastian, and the Lady Colin Campbell by Boldini,  if you needed to be beguiled by someone... late in the evening.

Taking a bit of time out in between running the current GCE & GCSE exams and musing through the AHN website – one painting I would steal every time and I wouldn’t give back is the Van Dyck of ‘Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart’.  I first saw this painting by accident years ago when the RA had a van Dyck and Soane exhibition and we had gone because my husband is an architecture freak.  I love the arrogance and the complete self-assurance of both boys and it is sad to think that in just a few years they were both killed.  I look at the boys wandering around outside the school gates (we are an all-girl school) and the way they strut and pose around the girls and 400 years on the young mean may dress differently but underneath they are all the same.  When I am in London I often pop into the NG just to take another quick look at it.

One more painting I like is in Upton House – Thomas  Hardy’s painting of the pirate William Augustus Bowles as an Indian chief.  Nice looking chap to pin up on my board but slightly spoilt by my husband gleefully telling me he was nicknamed ‘Billy Bow Legs’ – slightly ruins the image!

After all, it was precisely at this moment that the museum was beginning its transition from a site within the bourgeois public sphere where democratically formed subjects would encounter experience of the unconscious, to an institutional rallying point where all the forces of contestation and subversion, initially operative in the artistic practices of the avant-garde and the neo-avant-garde, could now be condensed and controlled under the mythical auspices of universal democratic accessibility in the enforced practices of consumption

Think it’s a rather ‘end of career’ cynical commentary that our museums etc. are nothing but extensions of 21st century rampant consumerism / that the 60’s have been and gone (and v. few people read Art Monthly any more) / that we all need to read David Marquand’s new book: 'Mammon’s Kingdom' ...

As far as I can tell (which isn't very far), I think Prof. Buchloh is saying "buy this picture".

I don't think it means anything. Difficult text is often difficult because the underlying ideas are hard and take some work to understand (Hegel). Or sometimes it's badly written but intelligible if you make the effort to untangle it (e.g. Roy Bhaskar). I think Buchloh is padding his text with literal nonsense. The give away for me was the term 'democratically formed subjects'. In that context he can't mean 'subject' in the sense of subordinate ('the Queen's subjects'), but rather subject as in 'active agent'. But 'subjects' are logically prior to democracy, not formed by democracy. You can of course make an argument that it's a dialectical process, but I don't see what relevance that would have for a catalogue entry on Richard Hamilton, or why it matters for that sentence. There seem to be lots of redundancies in the sentence, but that's an example of a redundancy that doesn't even make sense. 

 I think he's trying to say something like "At this time museums were changing from public spaces where people could be awed by art to more critical spaces that reflected the radicalism of avant garde art. But under the rubric of democracy and access, that radicalism was rather blunted by a consumerist ethos". Put that way, it raises lots of questions that are avoided by added verbiage (why does he need to qualify 'public sphere' as 'bourgois', for example?). But I can only guess at what he might mean. 

It's a nice balance to Alain de Botton - both writing drivel, one over-simplifying, one over-complicating, neither elucidating anything.

Buchloh clearly has picked up a set of cubes with art pseudo jargon (the sort reserved for petit bourgeois sushi parties) and let the roll of these dice assemble what you generously call a sentence.  As for meaning, that too is clear - Obfuscation can be a substitute for scholarship - at least at Harvard.  I prefer New Haven...

In the immortal words of the Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show: 'Bok, bok, bok...'

Unlike other London museums that store hundreds of works off-site, the National Gallery keeps its entire collection in its Trafalgar Square building and tries to offer the maximum possible access. But in practice this had not been working. Only researchers could really get much out of the old, obscure Gallery A. You had to know what you were looking for, or at least have the knowedge to make some sense of the dim aisles.

Now, a two-year refurbishment has transformed a dowdy labyrinth with state-of-the-art lighting, subtle wall colouring and a clever choice of paintings. This new take on the museum's collection is a wonder. The pictures that go on permanent view here this week as part of the free displays will be unfamiliar to most people although they are all in the gallery's permanent collection, and the majority have been since the Victorian age.

Some are considered to be "studio" creations, in which a famous artist let his apprentices do most of the work – such as the beautiful Botticellis that fill a wall. Others are perhaps a bit clumsily restored or were never quite up the master's best, or are painted sketches or copies. Some are by artists who are just not famous any more, such as the intense, chaotic oils of the 19th-century painter Adolphe Monticelli. In his lifetime this artist of nature was acclaimed as a visionary. He was revered by Vincent van Gogh, who thought he was imitating Monticelli when he painted the Sunflowers. Monticelli's strange daubs can now be compared with the Van Goghs upstairs.

Actually not so good news.  Room A, and several other linked subterranean galleies, used to display almost every painting the NG had that was not on display elsewhere.  Now, having done a quick check of some old favorites, it clearly doesn't do that.

In other words, and after all the expense and years in refurbishment - it does look pretty! - the public is worse off than before.  The Gallery now actually DOES have a reserve collection of works not on display.

I would agree that that old gallery was neither an ideal nor a pleasant place to view pictures but at least everything was on display and it was always a fascinating exercise sorting the wheat from the chaff in the cheek-by-jowl hanging.  Over the years I remember peering through darkened varnish at a number of works wondering about their status: why was Reni's Susannah thought to be a copy when it was clearly well painted under the yellow, and the lynx fur on the portrait of Fracastoro continully raised the interesting question that the work might actually be by Titian. And what yet is there to discover: the National's dirtiest painting is not hanging anywhere for people to make their mind up.

[A Private Grand Tour] takes readers through the iconic monuments and lesser-known treasures of Italy’s great art centers, including Milan, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Siena and more. For an unforgettable Italian excursion, here are just a few of his favorite sites:

Maser: In Palladio’s Villa Barbaro, with eight rooms and a nymphaeum frescoed by Paolo Veronese, the heartbeat of 16th-century patrician civilization can still be sensed. Almost miraculously the villa remains a private residence.

Cortona: Still largely confined within walls first built by the Etruscans, Cortona was the birthplace of a great artist, Luca Signorelli. However it is for the incomparable Annunciation by Fra Angelico that we return: one of the predella panels shows the little-changed view southwards towards Lake Trasimene.

Segesta: There are more well-preserved Greek temples in southern Italy than in Greece itself. None is more nobly sited than that of the late 5th century B.C. structure at Segesta in Sicily. Happily the setting remains as untrammelled as when Edward Lear painted it.

Monte San Giusto: Among the numerous small towns of the Marche many boast remarkable treasures. But none is more extraordinary that the Crucifixion of 1531 by Lorenzo Lotto that dominates the modest church of Santa Maria in Telusiano. The charged drama of the design owes much to Lotto’s genius as a colourist.

Atri: Many Italian cities testify to the artistic ambition of members of the princely dynasties that held these. Atri in the Abruzzi was ruled from 1395 until 1775 by the Acquaviva family, who employed a local artist with a taste for narrative, Andrea Delitio, to fresco the choir of the Cathedral in the mid-15th century.

Segesta is my favourite site in Sicily and returned there six years ago to find it still pristine with few visitors unlike the sites in Greece last week.

Every page a delight.

A note of caution regarding the fate of Poussin’s The Infant Moses trampling upon Pharaoh’s Crown. The lack of public campaign to save the painting (despite its undoubted quality and exceptional provenance) as compared to the highly effective appeal run by the Art Fund and The Fitzwilliam Museum for the same artist’s Extreme Unction 18 months ago suggests all does not bode well despite the painting’s continued deferral from export.  

Indeed, 2013/14 is turning out to be an annus horribilis for at risk paintings. Of the eleven paintings export stopped so far only the van Dyck self portrait has been secured for the nation. One other case remains outstanding (a Lusieri watercolour) but nine important paintings have gone abroad. The most recent loss is Le Brun’s Portrait of Everhard Jabach and his family which the Art Tribune describes as ‘exceptional for its quality’ and notes ‘the National Gallery in London…should have done everything in its power to keep it in England where it resided since the 18th century.’ Unfortunately, the National Gallery (or indeed other galleries across the UK) did not appear to share this view.

Her Majesty The Queen once commented in an interview regarding art that The Royal Collection was lacking a Poisson painting and appeared genuinely disturbed by the fact.  This one would be an excellent addition to Her collection.

It wasn’t the Queen as such, rather Prunella Scales as HM – I remember the comment from Alan Bennett’s Question of Attribution.

It looks terrible. How can they survive? But the boats were designed for this; the crew have practised. This is a homage to planning and experience. We should feel proud of humanity's competence and skill in the face of dreadful but awe-inspiring challenges. We're better able to cope than we might think.

The critics have been unrelenting. In the Dutch press, Bianca Stigter put it best when she said the Rijksmuseum was presenting art as cod liver oil: the nastier it tasted the more good it did you. Her colleague Wieteke van Zeil made the essential argument that the job of a gallery was to give people the space to think, not to tell them what to think.

The British press has been no less condemnatory. I am not disagreeing. The moral exhortations and cautionary tales the Rijksmuseum offers are historically ignorant, visually illiterate and brazenly propagandistic.

[...] after reading the book and seeing the show, I now know that the art world hates “Art as Therapy” because it’s just plain awful. I remain comfortable with its intention; its tone and execution, however, are all wrong.

At the AGO, de Botton appears in videos activated by the push of a button. The first is embedded in a science fair–like stand after the gallery’s entrance wickets. A quote by de Botton and Armstrong tells us that “an art gallery should not only be a place to learn about art [but also] should be a place where we can learn about ourselves.” Five themed sections, placed throughout the AGO on multiple floors, are then identified with a map. In these sections, permanent-collection works are curated by de Botton and Armstrong alongside instructive and interpretive panels.

In every video, one for each section, de Botton urges us to express our feelings via doodling or writing on iPads, the results of which are displayed on screens. In addition, throughout the building, we see aphorisms with the #artastherapy hashtag and symbol, an apothecary’s cross. One garbage can reads, “Art is advertising, for what is good.”

This encouragement to engage immediately appears suspect and ironic. In the videos, de Botton is remote and supercilious. He uses British diction such as “trolley” (instead of “shopping cart”) and jokey-cute, sugar-coated phrasing such as “the whole ticklish subject” (to speak of sex). (In the book, he even uses the term “the gentle sex.”) The tone, consonant with previous de Botton books but obnoxiously amplified in speech, is best described as dumbed-down-patrician. Despite de Botton’s sentiments of aesthetic-humanist magnanimity, he looks wan, uncomfortable, even hateful in the videos, hunching forward and speaking through a wince, his eyes squinting, his voice echoing through a generic gallery setting. One imagines him bound to a chair off-frame.