Giacometti, Picasso & Balla (yes Balla) lead Sotheby’s Fall 2013 Imp & Mod sale in NY – UPDATED WITH SALE RESULTS
Lot 15. ALBERTO GIACOMETTI, 1901 – 1966, GRANDE TÊTE MINCE (GRANDE TÊTE DE DIEGO)
Inscribed with the signature Alberto Giacometti, with the foundry mark Susse Fondeur Paris and numbered 6/6
Bronze, Height: 25 1/2 in., 65 cm
Conceived in 1954 and cast in bronze in 1955.
Estimate: $35 – 50 Million. This lot sold for a hammer price of $44.5 million ($50,005,000 with the buyer’s premium).
UPDATE: A far more lively evening at Sotheby’s with several lots soaring well past their high estimates. According to the New York Times, the evening’s top lot, a Giacometti bust (above) was sold to Acquavella Galleries via telephone bid, adding: “Desmond Corcoran, the London dealer, had owned the sculpture for more than 30 years.” Art advisor Nancy Whyte picked up the Balla and art dealer David Nahmad paid nearly $31 million for the crazy, late Picasso (below). Of the late Picasso, Judd Tuddy at Artinfo reported: “At least half a dozen bidders chased the 77-by-51-inch canvas, including underbidder Jose Mugrabi. It came to market from a private collector who bought the painting in 1988 from the late and noted Beverly Hills dealer Paul Cantor. Perhaps more importantly, it had been included in the storied “Avignon, Palais des Papes, Pablo Picasso: 1969-1970” exhibition in 1970.”
ORIGINAL POST: The “carpet bombing” of Giacometti’s during the Fall 2013 Impressionist and Modern art auctions continues November 6, 2013, with the Evening Sale at Sotheby’s. If the market hasn’t absorbed enough works by the artist at that point, then another $35 – 50 million could be laid out for the evening’s top lot, a sculptural portrait of Diego.
From the lot notes:
“To me,” Giacometti once stated, “sculpture is not an object of beauty but a way for me to try to understand a bit better what I see in a given head, to understand a bit better what appeals to me about it and what I admire in it” (reprinted in Alberto Giacometti, The Origin of Space [(exhibition catalogue), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg & Museum der Moderne Monchsberg, Salzburg, 2010-2011.
Lot 22. PABLO PICASSO, 1881 – 1973, TÊTE DE FEMME, Signed Picasso (lower left)
Oil on canvas: 25 5/8 by 21 3/8 in., 65 by 54 cm
Painted on March 12, 1935.
Estimate: $20 – 30 million. This lot sold for a hammer price of $35.5 million ($39,925,000 with the buyer’s premium).
From the lot notes:
Picasso’s radiant composition belongs to the extraordinary group of canvases depicting Marie-Thérèse Walter, his beloved mistress during the early 1930s. The present painting is one of the most geometrically complex renderings of his lover, depicted as a bust on a pedestal and reminiscent of the large plaster sculptures of her that he created nearly a decade earlier. Picasso completed this canvas at the height of the Surrealist movement in March 1935, when his palette was at its most vibrant and Freudian psycho-sexual symbolism played a defining role in the imagery of the avant-garde.
Lot 9. GIACOMO BALLA, 1871 – 1958, AUTOMOBILE IN CORSA, Signed Futur Balla (lower left); signed Futur Balla and titled on the reverse
Oil and ink on paper laid down on board: 29 by 41 in., 74 by 104 cm
Painted in 1913. This lot sold for a hammer price of $10.1 million ($11,477,000 with the buyer’s premium).
This is a painting to be excited about. From the lot notes:
Giacomo Balla’s remarkable images of racing automobiles emerged in 1913 in the wake of the artist’s “rebirth” as a Futurist. Although he had signed the “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting” in April 1910, his work did not respond to the manifesto’s demand for paintings that focused on modern dynamism, the triumphs of technology, or sensations of speed until late in 1911.
…
Racing Automobile is one of the series of paintings and large-scale works on paper that Balla executed in 1913 and 1914 … Poised between figuration and abstraction, the painting retains the repeated image of the Fiat Type 3, with a driver seated before its steering column and wheel as it speeds from right to left across the horizon, even as the rotating wheels and angular blasts of air expand in intersecting waves that eventually fly free of any descriptive purpose. Balla calls attention to his photographic prototype through a subtle palette of grays, blacks, and whites, as well as through the cropping of the image, which seems to explode beyond its rectangular limits.
Lot 29. PABLO PICASSO, 1881 – 1973
MOUSQUETAIRE À LA PIPE; Signed Picasso (upper left); dated 5.3.69 II on the reverse
Oil on canvas: 76 7/8 by 51 1/4 in., 195 by 130 cm
Painted on March 5, 1969.
Estimate: $12 – 18 million. This lot sold for a hammer price of $27.5 million ($30,965,000 with the buyer’s premium). Sold to dealer David Nahmad.
Heaven forfend. As mentioned in the previous posting about the Christie’s sale, if you’re fated to own a large, late and lugubrious Picasso, this might be the one for you. And, good luck to you.
Lot 13. JOAN MIRÓ, 1893 – 1983, BONHEUR D’AIMER MA BRUNE
Signed Miró and dated 1925 (lower right)
Oil on canvas: 28 3/4 by 36 1/4 in., 73 by 92 cm
Painted in 1925.
Estimate: $9 – 12 million. Bidding on this lot stopped at $5.25 million and it failed to sell.
From the lot notes:
Bonheur d’aimer ma brune belongs to a series of paintings from 1925 known as “poem-paintings,” in which poetic allusions, graphic signs, and painterly expression were presented within a single composition. His choice usage of imaginative titles, or in the case of the present work, colorful inscriptions, invested his pictures with a narrative that shaped the viewer’s understanding. With this tactic, Miró’s ambigious forms took shape in the imagination of his audience. In the present work, for example, the figures are understood to be a kissing couple, perhaps serenaded by the stringed instrument to their left.
“The discovery of Surrealism coincided for me with a crisis in my own painting and the decisive turning that … caused me to abandon realism for the imaginary,” Miró would later write. “I spent a great deal of time with poets, because I thought you had to go beyond the plastic thing to reach poetry. Surrealism freed the unconscious, exalted desire, endowed art with additional powers… I painted as if in a dream, with the most total freedom” (quoted in Joan Miró(exhibition catalogue), Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, 1993, pp. 180 and 194).
Lot 32. CLAUDE MONET, 1840 – 1926
GLAÇONS, EFFET BLANC, Signed and dated Claude Monet 94 (lower right)
Oil on canvas: 25 ¾ by 39 3/8 in., 65.5 by 100 cm
Painted in 1893.
Estimate: $9 – 14 million. This lot sold for a hammer price of $14,250,000 ($16,125,000 with the buyer’s premium).
Impressionism … remember that? Finding Impressionist works among the top estimated lots in these sales is getting increasingly rare.
Pricey Portraits Lead Christie’s 2013 Fall Impressionist & Modern art auction in New York – UPDATED WITH SALE RESULTS
Lot 9. Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966)
Diego en chemise écossaise
signed and dated ‘Alberto Giacometti 1954’ (lower right)
oil on canvas
31 7/8 x 25½ in. (81.1 x 64.9 cm.)
Painted in 1954
Estimate: $30 – 50 million. This lot sold for a hammer price of $29 million ($32,645,000 with the buyer’s premium).
UPDATE: Were it not for a third party guarantee on the evening’s highest estimated lot – the Giacometti above – the event would have been even gloomier. The Giacometti sold for a hammer price of $29 million ($32,645,000 with the buyer’s premium), but only barely. There was not bidding in the room. The Modigilani portrait Monsieur Baranowski bombed (estimate: $25-35 million) as did the giant, late Picasso (lot 31, below). Despite all this, the evening’s tally was $144,299,000 (results inclusive of buyers’ premiums), well below the low estimate of $188 million (a figure that does NOT include the buyers’ premiums), and there were a couple of battles for some lots, including Lot 16, a van Gogh drawing, and Lot 39, a Kandinsky painting. Complete results.
ORIGINAL POST: Portraits by Giacometti, Modigilani and Picasso lead Christie’s November 5, 2013 Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern art auction in New York, with an Alberto Giacometti oil on canvas portrait of his brother Diego poised by bring in an estimated $30 – 50 million. How high will that lead lot go? Hard to know, but it will sell. As Christie’s notes on its Web site: “On occasion, Christie’s has a direct financial interest in lots consigned for sale, which may include guaranteeing a minimum price or making an advance to the consignor that is secured solely by consigned property.”
With Giacometti sculptures setting record prices, it seems auction prices for the paintings could follow – the artist did want to be recognized equally for both his two dimensional and three dimensional works and auction prices are one determinant (though its critical value is questionable).
From the lot notes:
The present work which was executed in 1954 is, perhaps, one of the most fully worked and deeply realized of all Giacometti’s portraits. He knew Diego intimately; he knew him almost as well as he knew himself. He already captured him many times on canvas and he would continue to do so until the very end of his life but never before or after did Alberto paint Diego with quite the same energy or fervor as he did in the present work. The surface of the painting is deeply rich in texture showing how Alberto compulsively worked and re-worked his material. Moreover, the essentially monochromatic palette of blacks and grays and whites has been significantly enhanced in this portrait of Diego wearing a tartan shirt.
…
Color was not deliberately eliminated from Giacometti’s paintings although it does, however, play a subsidiary role to line.
Lot 19. Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920)
Monsieur Baranowski
signed ‘Modigliani’ (lower left)
oil on canvas
43¾ x 21 5/8 in. (112 x 56 cm.)
Painted in 1918
Estimate: $25 – 35 million. Bidding on this lot stopped at $19 million and it failed to sell.
This slender portrait is not quite the sinuous and iconic Modigliani painting I’d wish to own. There’s a certain clunkiness to the treatment of the figure and the painting’s lower half.
From the lot notes:
The portrait of [Pierre-Edouard] Baranowski [a Polish émigré to Montparnasse] takes its place in the peerless visual history of Left Bank culture that Modigliani produced during the second decade of the twentieth century. Werner Schmalenbach has written, “In his portraits, without ever setting out to be so, Modigliani was a chronicler of the vie bohème of Montparnasse, the district where in his time the artistic life of the French capital was being transformed. He painted so many people from this world that one is almost impelled to ask whom he did not paint. Modigliani was part of this bohème in a highly personal and indeed an exemplary way. In the eyes of his contemporaries, he was–as he has remained–its epitome” (Modigliani and the Artists of Montparnasse, exh. cat., Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, 2002, p. 33).
…
“Who was Monsieur Baranowski?” Alfred Werner has written. “One of the hundreds of artists and intellectuals who flocked to Paris from Eastern Europe, most of whose talents were to remain unrecognized, their dreams unfulfilled.”
Lot 31. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Le peintre et son modèle dans un paysage
signed ‘Picasso’ (lower right); dated ‘15.6.63. 24.7. 25.26.31. 7.8.63. 12.8. 19.8. 27. 19.9.63.’ (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
51 1/8 x 76¾ in. (130 x 194.8 cm.)
Painted on 15 June-19 September 1963
Estimate: $25 – 35 million. [click on image to enlarge] Bidding on this lot stopped at $23 million and it failed to sell.
Lot 11. Juan Gris (1887-1927)
Guitare sur une table
signed and dated ‘Juan Gris 1-1916’ (lower left)
oil on canvas
36¼ x 23 3/8 in. (92.1 x 59.4 cm.)
Painted in January 1916
Estimate: $10 – 15 million. This lot sold for a hammer price of $8 million ($9,125,000 with the buyer’s premium).
From the lot notes:
True to synthetic cubist practice, manifest here is Gris’ method of composing with tilted and angled translucent color planes, stacked one atop another like panes and shards of tinted glass, glowing with both brilliant and deeply resonant chroma. “The only technique,” Gris declared, “is a sort of flat, colored architecture” (quoted in D.-H. Kahnweiler, Juan Gris: His Life and Work, London, 1969, p. 197). In an otherwise darkened room, a shaft of light as if streaming through an opened door has struck the face of the guitar, also illuminating two sheets of staved music paper and a section of molding on the wall behind. Gris has dovetailed these various elements into a grandly conceived but entirely lucid composition–the poet-critic Apollinaire dubbed him “the demon of logic” (L.C. Breunig, ed., Apollinaire on Art, New York, 1972, p. 254). Here is a recent development in the artist’s painting, which commenced in his canvases during the spring 1915 and lasted about a year thereafter: Gris has contrasted imitation textures and solid color planes with passages of pointillist dots, stippled in regular rows, functioning by way of contrast with adjacent planar elements as if to aerate the geometry and lighten the density of his conception, while sensuously animating the overall effect of the composition.
Lot 5. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Femme au béret orange et au col de fourrure (Marie-Thérèse)
dated ‘4 D 37’ (upper right)
oil on canvas
24 1/8 x 18 1/8 in. (61.1 x 46 cm.)
Painted on 4 December 1937
Estimate: $8 – 12 million. This lot sold for a hammer price of $10.7 million $12,149,000 with the buyer’s premium).
From the lot notes:
The young blonde woman in this painting is unmistakably Marie-Thérèse Walter, since 1927 Picasso’s mostly hidden mistress and the mother of his second child, their daughter Maya, who was a toddler when this was painted in December 1937.
…
[O]n the evening of 8 January 1927 … Picasso walked up to Marie-Thérèse, then only seventeen-and-a-half years old, as she stood outside the Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris. “You have an interesting face. I would like to do a portrait of you,” he told her. “I feel we are going to do great things together.” It should have been the greatest pick-up line in the history of courtship when he then announced: “I am Picasso” (quoted in J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, New York, 2007, p. 323). She did not know who he was, however, and Picasso later took her to a bookstore and showed her a book with his name on the cover.
$35 Million Picasso Sculpture Starts 2013 Fall Impressionist & Modern Art Auctions in New York – UPDATED WITH SALE RESULTS
Lot. 21 Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Tête (Maquette pour la sculpture en plein air du Chicago Civic Center)
cut and welded steel
height: 41½ in. (105.5 cm.); width: 27½ in. (70 cm.); depth: 17¾ in. (45 cm.)
conceived in Mougins, 1962-1964 and executed in 1964; unique
Provenance
Estate of the artist.
Marina Picasso (by descent from the above).
Jan Krugier, acquired from the above.
Estimate: $25 – 35 million. Bidding on this lot stopped at $19 million and it failed to sell.
UPDATE: What a train wreck of a sale. The sale, subtitled “A Dialogue Through Art” was largely a one-way conversation with buyer’s frequently saying: “No thanks.” Exaggerated estimates for works, many of which have been on the market for a while according to the New York Times, resulted in a steep buy in rate for many of the top lots in the sale. The final result, $92,533,000 (including buyers’ premiums) was no where near the low estimate of $147 million (which does not include the buyers’ premiums). The complete list of results. According to Bloomberg News, “China’s richest man, Wang Jianlin, bought Picasso’s painting of his young children, Claude and Paloma, for $28.2 million” (below).
ORIGINAL POST: The 2103 Fall season of Impressionist and Modern art auctions in New York will kick off November 4, 2013 at Christie’s with the sale of works owned by art dealer Jan Krugier, and the top lot in the sale is a 41½ in. tall steel maquette for Picasso’s Tête in the Chicago Civic Center. According to the lot notes, this is one of two maquettes for the finished sculpture:
The completed freestanding sculpture measures 65 feet (20 m) in height, and occupies today, as it did when it was unveiled 15 August 1967, the plaza in front of the Civic Center building, since 1976 known as the Richard J. Daley Center in honor of the late mayor, in downtown Chicago. Picasso made a gift of the maquette sent to America to the Art Institute of Chicago. The present maquette remained in Picasso’s possession during his lifetime; following his death in 1973 the sculpture was bequeathed to his grand-daughter Marina, and subsequently entered the collection of Mr. Krugier.
Lot. 21 Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Tête (Maquette pour la sculpture en plein air du Chicago Civic Center)
Lot 41. Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Herbstlandschaft
signed and dated ‘KANDINSKY 1911.’ (lower right)
oil on canvas
28 1/8 x 39 1/8 in. (71.6 x 99.3 cm.)
painted on 31 January 1911
Provenance
Nierendorf Gallery, New York.
Mies van der Rohe, Chicago (acquired from the above, 1941).
Lora F. Marx, Chicago (gift from the above, circa 1942); sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 9 May 1989, lot 33.
Jan Krugier, acquired at the above sale.
Estimate: $20 – 25 million. Bidding on this lot stopped at $14 million and it failed to sell.
This Kandinsky was at one time owned by the architect Mies van der Rohe. From the lot notes:
According to Kandinsky’s personal handlist, he painted this canvas on 31 January 1911. Several weeks earlier, on 2 January, the artist attended in Munich a concert of the music of the Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg, to whom he wrote on the 18th: “what we are striving for and our whole manner of thought and feeling have so much in common… In your works you have realized what I have so greatly longed for in music” (quoted inSchoenberg, Kandinsky and the Blue Rider, exh. cat., The Jewish Museum, New York, 2003, p. 79).
Lot 45. Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966)
Femme de Venise I
signed and numbered ‘Alberto Giacometti 2/6’ (on the left side of the base); inscribed with foundry mark ‘SUSSE FONDEUR PARIS’ (on the back of the base)
bronze with dark brown patina
height: 41¼ in. (104.8 cm.)
conceived in 1956 and cast in 1957
Estimate: $9 – 12 million. Bidding on this lot stopped at $6.8 million and it failed to sell.
From the lot notes:
The sculptures known as the Femmes de Venise, a series comprising nine individual but closely related figures executed in plaster during 1956 and subsequently cast in bronze, are probably Giacometti’s best-known works, and are generally regarded as having significantly contributed to his reputation and fame as the most important sculptor of the postwar era. “The Women of Venice mark the halfway point in Giacometti’s mature work,” Christian Klemm has stated, “they bring together the different characteristics of his figures. The evocative name, which binds the individual figures into one group despite their differences, had an enhancing effect: as the figures became legendary, they came to be regarded as the epitome of his art. The extremely small, distant heads and the innovatively sloping pedestals, from which the over-size feet grow, still make them seem like revelatory, illusionistic visions. The tension in the mingling of goddess and concubine, of Egyptian cult image and decomposing corpse, is seen nowhere as vividly as in this group” (Alberto Giacometti, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2001, p. 218).
Lot 17. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Claude et Paloma
dated and inscribed ‘vendredi 20.1.50. Vallauris’ (on the reverse)
oil and ripolin on panel
45 5/8 x 35 in. (116 x 89 cm.)
painted in Vallauris, 20 January 1950
Estimate: $ 9 – 12 million. This lot sold for a hammer price of $25 million ($28,165,000 with the buyer’s premium).
From the lot notes:
Kirk Varnedoe has written, “Whether in recognition of a new age of permissive thinking about early childhood or out of a greater concern to absorb for himself some of the budding vitality of their youth, Picasso in the early 1950s doted on the childishness of Paloma and Claude; rather than imposing premature adulthood on them in his work, he often let their games, their toys, their own creations–as well as the mercurial intensity of their emotional life–inform his art” (Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1996, p. 160).
Lot 23. Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966)
Nu debout
signed and dated ‘Alberto Giacometti 1958’ (lower right)
oil on canvas
61 x 27½ in. (155 x 69.7 cm.)
painted in 1958
Estimate: $8 – 12 million. Bidding on this lot stopped at $4.8 million and it failed to sell.
From the lot notes:
Giacometti painted this large Nu debout in 1958, as he was consolidating his efforts following a crisis he had experienced in his painting while working, over a period of two years, on a portrait which the Japanese professor Isaku Yanaihara had commissioned from him. The artist had been previously painting to his satisfaction and with great success since the late 1940s, when he turned away from the visionary, attenuated and weightless figure sculptures that had won him world-wide acclaim. He thereafter decided to resume painting and to place this component in his work on an equal footing with his sculpture.
…
The 1958 series of painted standing nudes have as their immediate sculptural antecedents the celebrated Femmes de Venise of 1956, and they in turn prefigure the Grande femme debout sculptures that would occupy Giacometti during 1959-1960, after he received the nod to submit designs for monumental works to be installed at the Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza in lower Manhattan. Giacometti always desired that his achievement in painting should be recognized as commensurate with his reputation as a sculptor.
Lot 31. Joan Miró (1893-1983)
Peinture–L’Oiseau
signed and dated ‘Miró. 1926.’ (lower right); signed and dated again ‘Joan Miró 1926’ (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
28¾ x 36¼ in. (73.2 x 92.2 cm.)
painted in 1926
Estimate: $8 – 12 million. Bidding on this lot stopped at $6.2 million and it failed to sell.
The catalogue begins by saying: “Audaciously spare in its motifs … ” but not in its estimate. Then again, what might be called audacious now will be chump change in just a few years.
The Nerve! Art Thief May Sue Museum for Making Heist Too Easy – Says Museum is Negligent
Accused thief Radu Dogaru claims museum he allegedly robbed was negligent for having too “little security.”
msn
Artfix Daily has a story that is a new twist on “blaming the victim”:
Accused thief Radu Dogaru says he’s a victim in the $24-million art heist that he perpetrated. Dogaru says the crime was too easy and that the Kunsthal Museum should be sued for negligence .
Dogaru and six other Romanians stole paintings by Picasso, Monet, and Gauguin from Rotterdam’s Kunsthal museum in only three minutes last October.
“I could not imagine that a museum would exhibit such valuable works with so little security,” said Dogaru during a Tuesday court hearing.
Dogaru faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. He confessed his crime to the Dutch police.
His lawyer, Catalin Dancu, says the Kunsthal is responsible for the poor security given to the loaned artworks. If the museum is found guilty, contend Dogaru’s lawyers, it may have to pay some of the claims, the AFP reports. Dogaru’s mother stated that she burned the paintings, but later retracted her claim.
“We can clearly speak of negligence with serious consequences,” said Dancu. ”If we do not receive answers about who is guilty, we are considering hiring Dutch lawyers to start a legal case in The Netherlands or in Romania.”
Meadows Museum purchases Late Goya Portrait
![Lot 103. FRANCISCO JOSÉ DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES FUENDETODOS 1746 - 1828 BORDEAUX PORTRAIT OF MARIANO GOYA, THE ARTIST'S GRANDSON inscribed by the artist on the reverse: Goya á su/ nieto en 1827/ á/ los 81 de su/ edad [Goya, to his grandson, at 81 years old] oil on canvas: 20 1/2 by 16 1/4 in.; 52 by 41.2 cm. Estimate: $6-8 million](https://nordonart.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/103.jpg)
Lot 103. FRANCISCO JOSÉ DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES
FUENDETODOS 1746 – 1828 BORDEAUX
PORTRAIT OF MARIANO GOYA, THE ARTIST’S GRANDSON
inscribed by the artist on the reverse: Goya á su/ nieto en 1827/ á/ los 81 de su/ edad [Goya, to his grandson, at 81 years old]
oil on canvas: 20 1/2 by 16 1/4 in.; 52 by 41.2 cm.
Estimate: $6-8 million
The release continues:
The Meadows has one of the foremost collections of Spanish art in the world — spanning the 10th through 21st centuries — enabling the museum to present this masterwork within the context of the historic sweep of art from Spain. As a leader in research on the art of Spain, the Meadows will foster scholarship on the new Goya work and its significance.
…
“The Meadows Museum will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2015, and the acquisition of this extraordinary work by Goya is a wonderful way to begin that celebration,” said Mark A. Roglán, the Linda P. and William A. Custard Director of the Meadows Museum and Centennial Chair in the Meadows School of the Arts, SMU.
The Goya is a late portrait painted a year before the artist’s death in 1828; it depicts his grandson Mariano. According to the Sotheby’s auction catalogue lot notes:
Goya adored his grandson. In September 1823 he had given him the Quinta del Sordo, his house on the outskirts of Madrid, which was decorated with the celebrated Black Paintings. In Bordeaux he set aside a large portion of his pension in order to provide for Mariano and in 1827, on his brief visit to Madrid, he painted the present work, showing a remarkably handsome young man not yet twenty-one years old. As depicted by his grandfather, Mariano looks frank and straightforward, but unfortunately he did not live up to his portrait. He was a reckless and wasteful young man, who bought an aristocratic title to prop himself up and squandered the money his grandfather left him. Eventually he sold all the works by Goya that belonged to the family, although how and when this portrait left the collection remains undocumented. Fortunately Goya died in 1828 and so did not witness any of this.
The work went on view on October 9, 2013.
National Gallery of Art Acquires Four Elegant Still Life Paintings
Jacob van Hulsdonck (1582 – 1647)
Wild Strawberries and Carnation
in a Wan-Li Bowl, c. 1620
Oil on Copper – 28.3 × 36.2 cm
Washington, National Gallery of Art
The Art Tribune notes the acquisition of four still life paintings by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Two paintings were purchased, including one by the Flemish artist Jacob von Hulsdonck (above), which was Lot 32 at Sotheby’s Old Masters sale on December 5, 2012. The picture was estimate at £300,000-500,000 and sold for £361,250, inclusive of the buyer’s premium. About the painting, the Art Tribune notes:
The painter treats the color red depicting different kinds of fruit – cherries, redcurrants, strawberries – while the carnation occupies the upper portion of the composition. The porcelain provides a contrast as well as a visual reference, acting as a focal point on which the composition is centered, while the butterfly and the green leaves into which it blends in fact, bring life to the ensemble. The neutral background, the frontal disposition, the studied dispersion of the elements and the carefully wrought execution can be found in other paintings by the artist.
Van Hulsdonck trained in Middelburg where he was probably influenced by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, before returning to his hometown, Antwerp ; he became master of Saint Luke’s guild in 1608 and probably saw the works of Osias Beert. The motif of the strawberries in a porcelain bowl, accompanied by a flower and sometimes a butterfly can be seen in many artists, such as the Antwerp native Frans Snyders or Adriaen Coorte who was active in Middelburg from 1683 to 1707, as well as Sebastien Stoskopff.
Thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Clarice Smith, the Gallery received two works by Peter Binoit, a contemporary of Hulsdonck who was born in Cologne.
Peter Binoit (active around 1611-1627)
Still-life with Irises, 1623
Oil on Copper – 24.1 × 19 cm
Washington, National Gallery of Art
Peter Binoit (active around 1611-1627)
Still-life with Tulips, 1623
Oil on Copper – 24.1 × 19 cm
Washington, National Gallery of Art
Of the painter, the Tribune says:
The artist probably studied in Daniel Soreau’s studio in Hanau where Sebastien Stoskopff also trained, then married his master’s niece in 1627 and was active not only in Hanau but also in Frankfurt. Working in a decorative mode, the artist disposes the flowers on a neutral background, face on. These paintings also recall Beert’s manner, as well as that of Velvet Breughel.
Finally, “a still-life by François Desportes, purchased in 2012 from the Stair Sainty Ltd. gallery in London, represents dotted partridges, pheasants, racks of lamb, fruit and William’s pears.”
François Desportes (1661-1743)
Still-life with partridges, pheasants, racks
of lamb and William’s pears, 1734
Oil on Canvas – 121 x 95 cm
Washington, National Gallery of Art
The various pieces of game are wrapped in pork fat and are obviously ready for roasting. Dating from 1734, it was probably exhibited at the Salon of 1738. The scene repeats that in an oval painting from 1716 which Desportes produced for the Regent, at the Palais Royal, and which today resides at the Musée de la Chasse in Paris. Dezailler d’Argenville explains that this painting was intended for a particular kitchen, where the Regent amused himself by doing experimental cooking ; he thus commissioned three paintings from the artist and chose the subjects himself : one was to represent feathered game, another to depict different vegetables and the third meats ready to be put on a spit.
Unfortunately, until the US Government shut down is resolved, nothing inside the National Gallery of Art can be seen.
Must See Exhibition – The heritage of Rogier van der Weyden. Painting in Brussels 1450-1520.
Visitors look at “Triptych with the miracles of Christ” by early Flemish painter Rogier van der Weyden at the opening of the exhibition entitled “The heritage of Rogier van der Weyden” presenting his works at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels on October 10, 2013. AFP PHOTO/BELGA/BENOIT DOPPAGNE.
Here’s an exhibition that should be high on everyone’s list – The Heritage of Rogier van der Weyden now on view at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels through January 26, 2014.
The exhibition, according to the press release, is, “devoted to painting in Brussels in the period between the death of Rogier van der Weyden (1464) and the activity of Bernard van Orley (1515- 1541). The Web site devoted to the exhibition states:
When Van der Weyden died in 1464, he left a large studio in Brussels that must have employed several artists. None has been identified except for his son Pieter, to whom no work can be attributed. The presence of Hugo van der Goes at the priory of Rood Klooster from around 1475 until his death in 1482 also played an important role.
- A visitor looks at “Pieta” at the opening of the exhibition entitled “The heritage of Rogier van der Weyden” presenting the works of early Flemish painter Rogier van der Weyden at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels on October 10, 2013. AFP PHOTO/BELGA/BENOIT DOPPAGNE.
Many painters are mentioned in Brussels archives but, with the exception of Aert van den Bossche and Jacop Sourdiaus, no painting can be attributed to them. The great majority of the works conserved are anonymous. It is partly for this reason that, excluding the attention of specialists, little interest has been shown in them.
Nevertheless, through their individual contributions and their desire to pursue an esteemed tradition while also searching for new paths, the painters of Brussels at the end of the fifteenth century proposed original solutions in terms both of spatial organization and expressive and narrative development. In their fulfilment of the many commissions from the court, prelates, nobility, rich foreign merchants, clergy and patriciate who followed in the wake of the Dukes of Burgundy, the artists helped to spread the painting of Brussels far beyond the boundaries of the city, and opened the way to the renewal of the 1520s represented by the person of Bernard van Orley.
“The exhibition presents the results of a four-year research programme financed by the Politique Scientifique Fédérale under the presidency of Philippe Mettens. It is accompanied by a richly illustrated scientific book that presents the results of the research and contributions by a number of specialists.”
“The catalogue is only available in French and Dutch” – let’s hope there’s ultimately an English language version, too.
Lost Leonardo da Vinci painting found in Swiss Bank Vault
The painting appears to be a completed, painted version of a pencil sketch drawn by Leonardo da Vinci in Mantua in the Lombardy region of northern Italy in 1499.
The Guardian has an attention grabbing story about a newly discovered portrait of Isabella d’Este purportedly painted by Leonardo da Vinci that was found in a Swiss bank vault. This would be the fifth Leonardo discovered in the past two years – we’ve already seen an earlier version of the Mona Lisa, an ink and chalk image of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza’s illegitimate daughter Bianca, an unfinished Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist, and a portrait of Christ recently included in Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery in London. Of those four, only the last has been accepted as autograph.
According to the article:
Scientific tests suggest that the oil portrait is indeed the work of da Vinci, according to Carlo Pedretti, a professor emeritus of art history and an expert in Leonardo studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“There are no doubts that the portrait is the work of Leonardo,” Prof Pedretti, a recognised expert in authenticating disputed works by Da Vinci, told Corriere della Sera newspaper.
“I can immediately recognise Da Vinci’s handiwork, particularly in the woman’s face.”
However, another art historian has his doubts:
Martin Kemp, professor emeritus of the history of art at Trinity College, Oxford, and one of the world’s foremost experts on da Vinci, said if the find was authenticated it would be worth “tens of millions of pounds” because there are only 15 to 20 genuine da Vinci works in the world.
But he raised doubts about whether the painting was really the work of Leonardo.
The portrait found in Switzerland is painted on canvas, whereas Leonardo favoured wooden boards.
“Canvas was not used by Leonardo or anyone in his production line,” Prof Kemp told The Daily Telegraph. “Although with Leonardo, the one thing I have learnt is never to be surprised.”
There are further doubts – Leonardo gave away his original sketch to the marquesa, so he would not have been able to refer to it later in order to paint a full oil version.
There’s more in that bank vault – some 400 works, all owned by an Italian family. Let’s see what else shows up.
Van Gogh Painting Discovered in Norwegian Attic
“Sunset at Montmajour” by Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh is seen during a press conference at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday.
What’s in your attic? According to the Associated Press, a painting stashed in a Norwegian attic that had been declared not an authentic work by Vincent Van Gogh has just bee declared legit:
The Van Gogh Museum says it has identified a long-lost Vincent Van Gogh painting that spent years in a Norwegian attic and was believed to be by another painter. It is the first full-size canvas by the Dutch master discovered since 1928.
“Sunset at Montmajour” depicts trees, bushes and sky, painted with Van Gogh’s familiar thick brush strokes. It can be dated to the exact day it was painted because Vincent described it in a letter to his brother, Theo, and said he painted it the previous day — July 4, 1888.
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Museum experts said the painting was authenticated by letters, style and the physical materials used, and they had traced its history.
Museum director Axel Rueger described the discovery as a “once-in-a-lifetime experience” at an unveiling ceremony.
The museum said the painting now belongs to an unidentified private collector and will be on display at the museum from Sept. 24.
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Rueger said the museum had itself rejected the painting’s authenticity in the 1990s, in part because it was not signed. But new research techniques and a two-year investigation had convinced them.
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Rueger described “Sunset” as ambitious, because the canvas is relatively large, at 93.3 by 73.3 centimeters (36.7 by 28.9 inches).
Van Gogh referred to the work in two other letters in the same summer it was painted, but he said he considered it a failure in several respects.
The location it depicts can be identified: It is near Arles, France, where Van Gogh was living at the time, near Montmajour hill, and the ruins of an abbey of the same name. The ruins can be seen in the background of the work, on the left side.
Burmese Treasures Coming to New York
Melissa Chiu, center, museum director of the Asia Society, near a sculpture of Buddha descending from heaven at a museum in Bagan, Myanmar. Adam Dean for The New York Times.
A fascinating New York Times story gives insights into the delicate negotiations involved in bringing scores of Burmese treasures to New York for a 2015 exhibition at the Asia Society:
“The show will be a coming out for Burma,” said Melissa Chiu, museum director of the Asia Society. “The country has been closed off for so many years, we hope the show will assume a bigger significance, and shed new light on material not seen before. Buddhism is the state religion and plays such a major role in daily life.”
The curators searched in the former capital, Yangon; in the new capital, Naypyidaw; in Prome; and … in Bagan, which from the ninth century to the 13th century was the center of a royal kingdom where the creative energy was so intense that nearly 2,000 brick and gilded temples were built across a vast plain. In Bagan, a popular destination for tourists imagining the glory days among faded temples, farmers still unearth ancient gold jewelry.
The antiquities hunt has the support of President Thein Sein. During a visit to the United States last year, he approved the loan of dozens of artworks for the 2015 show, ensuring that the curators were welcomed in usually off-limits inner sanctums. Of the estimated 70 objects planned for the exhibit, about three-quarters will come from Myanmar and the remainder from collections in the United States, Ms. Chiu said.
In exchange for the right to borrow the art, the Asia Society has pledged to provide training in conservation techniques to Myanmar’s museum employees, who must make do with a scant $100,000 budget that leaves the nation’s museums with little electricity, poor air-conditioning and no money for acquisitions.
Nord on Art 
