Sotheby's Mid-Season Sale
March 27 2025
Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Sotheby's London have uploaded their upcoming Old Master & 19th Century Paintings sale online. Bidding for this auction will take place between 2nd - 9th April 2025.
As usual with mid-season sales, I won't point out what may or may not be interesting.
Not Caravaggio, says the Prado in Court Case
March 27 2025
Picture: elconfidencial.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Spanish Press (spotted via @Boro_RR) have reported on news from a court case regarding the following painting. It was sold by an art dealer to a businessman as by Caravaggio for 275,000 EUR in 2023, however, a court case which had consulted experts at the Prado has rightly concluded that it is not (nor by any other hand such as Valdés Leal or Ribalta). Click on the link above to read the full story.
Lavinia Fontana discovery at Musée de la Chartreuse
March 27 2025
Picture: Smithsonian Magazine
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I'm a little slow to news that the Musée de la Chartreuse in France has rediscovered a work by Lavinia Fontana in their collection. Here's the write up from the Smithsonian Magazine website, which explains the picture will soon be undergoing a full restoration project before being redisplayed to the public.
Vanitas Sleeper!
March 27 2025
Picture: Il Ponte
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News on social media (from @Michael27553834 and @auctionradar) of this picture catalogued as 'Castilian School of the First Half of the 17th Century' which realised 200,000 EUR over its 25k - 35k estimate at Il Ponte in Milan.
Conserve Pictures at the NPG
March 26 2025
Picture: NPG
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Portrait Gallery in London are hiring a Paintings Conservator (part time).
According to the job description:
Key Accountabilities:
-Expertly assess and treat paintings, provide advice and guidance on all aspects of care, treatment, and suitability for loan and display to key stakeholders.
-Undertake a wide range of paintings treatments, confidently using and interpreting a range of specialist analytical and imaging techniques.
-Digitally document condition assessments and treatments.
-Help develop and maintain clear and consistent conservation policies and procedures.
-Excellent understand of Health & Safety and COSHH guidelines applicable to painting conservation treatments and activities.
-Help develop research, technical examination, and treatment initiatives that improve academic understanding and presentation of the Gallery’s paintings collection.
-Actively participate in professional networks for benefit of paintings collection, and to contribute to wider sector knowledge and development.
-Act as an advocate for painting conservation, supporting talks and studio tours, and training of future conservators.
-Support development of low carbon conservation and collections care initiatives.
The part-time role comes with a salary of £14,529.84, based on the full time equivalent of £36,324.60, and applications must be in by 14th April 2025.
Good luck if you're applying!
Jean Honoré Fragonard & Marguerite Gérard at Galerie Hubert Duchemin
March 26 2025
Picture: Galerie Hubert Duchemin
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
For those in Paris this week for Salon du Dessin, the dealers Galerie Hubert Duchemin have an interesting small exhibition focusing on seven works by Jean Honoré Fragonard & Marguerite Gérard. Their display is also accompanied by this rather thorough-looking catalogue too (via the link above), in case you're not in Paris currently.
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Please do let me know if any other members of the Paris art trade are putting on things this week, happy to plug anything interesting!
Funded PhD Studying Portraiture and the East India Company, c.1757–1857
March 26 2025
Picture: courtauld.ac.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Courtauld Institute & Tate are inviting applications for an AHRC doctoral studentship studying Imperial Intimacies: Portraiture and the East India Company, c.1757–1857.
According to their website:
This studentship will explore portraiture produced in connection with the East India Company between 1757 and 1857, to uncover new stories about the individuals impacted by, or involved in, British imperialism in South Asia, and to rethink the role of portraiture within ‘British’ art histories.
This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Tom Young, the Courtauld, and Dr Alice Insley, Tate, and the student will be expected to spend time at both the Courtauld and Tate, as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP funded students across the UK.
The Studentship comes with a stipend of £20,780 plus London Weighting of £2000/year. Applications must be in by 6th April 2025.
Good luck if you're applying!
Upcoming Release: Josefa de Óbidos
March 25 2025
Picture: Lund Humphries
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The publishers Lund Humphries will be releasing a new volume on the Portuguese female artist Josefa de Óbidos (1630-1684) by Professor Carmen Ripollés (Portland State University) in September 2025.
According to their website:
The first monograph on the artist to be published in English, this book provides a long-overdue introduction to the life and work of Portuguese painter Josefa de Ayala, known as Josefa de Óbidos (1630-1684). One of the best known and most celebrated artists of the Portuguese baroque, she is the only early modern female artist to be credited with representing the art of a whole period and a geographical area. Her paintings encompass a diversity of religious and secular subjects in a variety of formats, from portraits to still lifes; small oils on copper to large church altarpieces; seemingly ‘feminine’ themes revolving around the Virgin Mary and female saints to gruesome portrayals of the Passion of Christ. Her oeuvre also includes engravings.
Salon du Dessin opens tomorrow
March 25 2025
Picture: salondudessin.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Parisian works on paper fair Salon du Dessin opens at the Palais Brongniart tomorrow. As usual, there are plenty of fascinating works to see from '39 exhibitors and a significant proportion of foreign galleries (19 from 8 different countries)' and a whole host of events and talks to attend.
Nicolas-Guy Brenet at the Musée de la Chartreuse
March 25 2025
Picture: douaisis-agglo-tourisme.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Musée de la Chartreuse in Douai have just opened a new exhibition exploring the life and career of Nicolas-Guy Brenet (1728-1792). As a painter of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, Brenet undertook allegorical paintings for the city's courthouse and other works in the surrounding areas. The show will run until 23rd June 2025.
The British Art Journal is Back!
March 25 2025
Picture: britishartjournal.co.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Exciting news to report that The British Art Journal is returning in a new digital format with long-time editor Robin Simon continuing at the helm. Volume XXV, which includes the story about the Van Dyck thief I posted about here last week, is already free and available to read online! Many happy hours of reading ahead, it seems clear!
Funded PhD Studying WWI Prints & Lithographs
March 25 2025
Picture: warwick.ac.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The University of Warwick and the Imperial War Museums are advertising an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) studentship in Lithographs of the First World War: printmaking, propaganda and mobilisation.
According to the university's website:
IWM holds a fascinating but under-researched collection of European fine and popular prints gathered by John Crichton-Stewart, the 4th Marquess of Bute, when he was a diplomat in Paris during the First World War and donated to the museum in the early 1950s. It contains around 3,600 predominantly French prints, representing all aspects of French patriotic print production of the period, most of them lithographs, as well as relief and intaglio prints, and some drawings. It is envisaged that the PhD project will focus on this collection, as well as the museum’s collection of British lithographs of the period, mainly instigated by the government’s War Propaganda Bureau / Department of Information. These include the 1917 series Britain’s Efforts and Ideals by various artists and the work of soldier-artist Gerald Spencer Pryse.
The proposed investigation of these collections will fill in a curiously outstanding gap in the field. Both scholars of France and art historians have paid relatively little attention to lithography. Moreover, in both Britain and France, the cultural history of the conflict has often underplayed the specificities of artistic production in wartime.
The studentship comes with an annual Doctoral Stipend for 2025/2026 of about £20,780 plus London Weighting of £1000/year. Applications must be in by 3rd June 2025.
Good luck if you're applying!
Stolen Picture Returned to Italian Church
March 25 2025
Picture: Hampel
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Italian press have reported on news that a painting by Claudio Ridolfi of the Presentation of the Virgin has been returned to the chiesa di Passera in Stresa (on Lake Maggiore), where it was stolen from in 2009. The picture was discovered by police when it was put up for sale at the auction house Hampel in 2023, where it was swiftly seized by the German authorities and returned to Italy. The canvas has since been restored and will be redisplayed in the church shortly.
Joseph Wright of Derby at the National Gallery in Autumn 2025
March 25 2025
Picture: Derby Museums
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Gallery and Derby Museums are collaborating on a new exhibition focusing on Joseph Wright of Derby's candlelight scenes for Autumn 2025.
According to the NG's press release:
In the autumn of 2025, the National Gallery will present Wright of Derby: From the Shadows, the first exhibition dedicated to Joseph Wright ‘of Derby’ (1734–1797) at the National Gallery, and the first exhibition to focus on his ‘candlelight’ series. The exhibition is organised in partnership with Derby Museums where it will travel in 2026.
Following on from recent exhibitions such as Turner on Tour (2022) and Discover Constable & The Hay Wain (2024), this exhibition will put the spotlight on a well-known British artist in the National Gallery Collection whose work has come to symbolise an era. Traditionally, Wright of Derby has been viewed as a figurehead of the Enlightenment, a period of scientific, philosophical and artistic development in the 17th and 18th century. Challenging this conventional view, the exhibition contributes to the ongoing re-evaluation of the artist, portraying him not merely as a ‘painter of light’ but as one who deliberately explores the night-time to engage with deeper and more sombre themes, including death, melancholy, morality, scepticism and the sublime.
The show will run at the National Gallery from 7th November 2025 until 10th May 2026.
Prado cleans Caterina Cherubini Saint
March 21 2025
Picture: Prado
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Spanish art account @Boro_RR on 'X' has shared news that the Prado in Madrid have conserved this rather nice oil on copper of St Agnes by Caterina Cherubini (1730-1811) presumably for display in the very near future.
Rediscovering Edith MacDonald-Brown at the MSVU Art Gallery
March 21 2025
Picture: MSVU Art Gallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Interesting news from Canada that the MSVU Art Gallery in Halifax, connected to Mount Saint Vincent University, opened an exhibition last month dedicated to Edith MacDonald-Brown (1886-1954). Believed to be Canada's first black female artist, Edith was born in Africville, a historic African Nova Scotian enclave in Halifax, and produced many of her paintings throughout her teenage years. The show will run in Halifax until 26th April 2025 and click on the link above to read more about her life and career.
Upcoming: Pietro Bellotti at the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia
March 21 2025
Picture: gallerieaccademia.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia will be opening a large monographic exhibition dedicated to Pietro Bellotti (1625-1700) this September. The show has coincided with the Accademia's acquisition of two works by the artist, including a Self-Portrait as an Allegory of Amazement and another genre scene set in Venice. Supported by loans from major European museums, this is the first exhibition on the artist in Venice since 1959.
It will run from 19th September 2025 until 18th January 2026.
New Release: Works in Collaboration - Frans Snijders and Other Masters
March 20 2025
Picture: brepols.net
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The latest volume of the Corpus Rubenianum has just been released, this time focusing on Works in Collaboration - Frans Snijders and Other Masters.
According to the volume's blurb (worth reproducing in full, I think):
Peter Paul Rubens already had assistants working for him in his studio when he first gained admission to the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1598. At this period too he began to co-operate with other masters, such as Jan Brueghel the Elder; a separate volume, dedicated to that collaboration, was published in 2016 (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XXVII (1): Jan Brueghel I & II). On his return from Italy in 1609, not only did Rubens’s studio assistants increase in number, so too did the co-operative projects that the artist undertook. Rubens continued to work with Jan Brueghel the Elder until 1621. When Brueghel died in 1625, his son Jan continued the partnership with Rubens until the latter’s death in 1640.
Similarly productive was the collaboration between Rubens and the still life and animal painter Frans Snijders. It began shortly after Rubens's return to Antwerp and is reflected in various large-format works for the courts of Brussels and Madrid [?], but also in smaller ‘cabinet’ paintings, some of which were executed by members of the respective workshops of the two masters. The collaboration soon extended to the studio of the animal painter Paul de Vos, whose sister Margriete had married Snijders in 1611. One such joint painting was still in Rubens’s possession at the time of his death and was listed in the 1640 catalogue of the works for sale from the artist’s estate. This document also reveals that, among the paintings by other masters that he owned, Rubens possessed a surprisingly large quantity by the Dutch landscape and genre painter Cornelis Saftleven. Rubens had worked with Saftleven during his stay in Antwerp at the beginning of the 1630s, and evidently appreciated his talent, even if this collaboration can be represented only by a single painting.
The present is devoted to Rubens’s fruitful partnership with Frans Snijders, as well as to his collaborations with Paul de Vos and Cornelis Saftleven. It thus contributes not only to the documentation of Rubens’s oeuvre, but also to the understanding of workshop practices and the lives and social networks of painters in the city of Antwerp.
Adriana Verelst, not Maria Verelst
March 20 2025
Picture: Oud Holland
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Readers of this blog might remember me posting (perhaps a bit too boastfully) about a newly discovered work by Maria Verelst a few weeks ago, which I happened to spot on ArtUK belonging to a museum in Wales (more on that picture another time). Well, very kindly Richard Stephens, editor of the Journal for the Walpole Society - the go-to journal for primary source materials relating to British Art, has drawn my attention to a fascinating article published in Oud Holland last year by Peter Hancox (who happens to be a computer scientist) on the Verelst family. The paper draws on some rather in-depth research, mostly focusing on archival and primary-source material, and makes a rather strong case that 'Maria Verelst' never existed. In fact, records show that the daughter of Herman Verelst and his wife Cecilia Fend was a Adriana Verelst, not Maria (a mistake which appears to be found in a publication dating to as late as 1816).
Overall, the paper points out how little is known of this complex family of artists (in fact, this is generally the case for lots of painters and female artists of the period), and where many confusions have arisen. I had consulted R.W. Goulding's notes on Maria and the family at the NPG, which was compiled over a century ago now. There are apparently some signed and dated works with this same face pattern and type, including on a painting of Lady Mary Howard last recorded in the collection of the Earl of Haddington's collection, however, these often plainly record Mdme or Mrs Verelst and not her Christian name.
More news on the Welsh picture in due course.
Introducing Classic Art London
March 20 2025
Picture: classicartlondon.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I'm glad to report that a new organisation has been formed by members of the London art trade entitled Classic Art London. Regular readers will remember the closing of London Art Week last December, so it's wonderful that a new grouping has appeared with such speed.
According to their press release:
A new collegial event launches this summer joining together leading dealers in old and modern master paintings, drawings, sculpture and works of art under the umbrella of Classic Art London from 23 June to 4 July. At the height of the capital’s Summer Season, galleries will stage important selling exhibitions that coincide with sales at the major auction houses and a wide range of antiques and art events such as the RA’s Summer Exhibition, Treasure House Fair and Trois Crayons.
Classic Art London will focus international attention on London’s pre-contemporary art market and features specialist dealers centred mainly around St. James’s and Mayfair. A robust talks programme has been devised to discuss academic and engaging subjects of interest to museum curators, collectors and aficionados as well as the public. Classic Art London pinpoints the capital as an exciting destination for buyers of art from all periods, ancient to twentieth century.
