“Small in scale, vast in scope” – the Glyptotek’s newly acquired Degas

Edgar Degas, Jockeys avant course, 26.1 x 38.5 cm.
Click on image to enlarge.

The Glyptotek in Copenhagen, Denmark, has acquired an Edgar Degas painting from a series the artist did about horse racing. This theme was explored in the 1998 National Gallery of Art exhibition Degas at the Races and the accompanying exhibition catalogue by Jean Sutherland Boggs.

According to the museum’s press Web site:

A major donation from the Ny Carlsberg Foundation and the Augustinus Foundation has enabled the Glyptotek to acquire a very important painting by the French artist Edgar Degas. This donation – of the paintingJockeys avant course – is one of the largest gifts ever made in the recent history of the Glyptotek, and the work constitutes a major addition to the already highly distinguished collection of French Impressionist art found at the museum.

…

The Ny Carlsberg Foundation and the Augustinus Foundation have jointly given the Glyptotek the gift of a small, but important painting by Edgar Degas (1834–1917). Not only does this donation further enhance the museum’s world-class collection of works by Degas; it also introduces a key aspect of the French master’s oeuvre to a Danish audience. Jockeys avant course (painted between 1886 and 1890) is the first painting in any Danish museum to depict one of Degas’s favourite – and most challenging – subjects: racehorses.

DIRECTOR FLEMMING FRIBORG SAYS:
“It is virtually impossible to find Degas paintings of this type and depicting this particular subject matter on the art market today. The two foundations not only acted with great celerity; they also generously secured a real gem of a Degas for the Glyptotek, a piece without peer on the Danish museum scene. At the same time the work features many of the elements that make Degas one of the most exciting innovators in the realm of painting – and one of the greatest figures in art history as such.”

CHAIRMAN OF NY CARLSBERG FOUNDATION, KARSTEN OHRT, SAYS:
“It gives the Ny Carlsberg Foundation great pleasure that we, together with the Augustinus Foundation, have been able to secure this unique Degas for Denmark and the Glyptotek. Here, it will further strengthen the museum’s splendid collection, and it will be permanently on display for present and future generations of museumgoers to enjoy.”

SMALL IN SCALE, VAST IN SCOPE
Here, as in his famous depictions of young ballet dancers, Degas is mainly interested in the point just before the main action commences. He often portrayed dancers warming up or rehearsing, and in Jockeys avant coursehe has conjured up a particular sense of intensity by capturing horses and their riders just before the race begins. In this small format (26.1 x 38.5 cm) Degas has condensed a narrative of frantic excitement and nerves, almost reaching a psychological snapping point.

Jockeys avant course – Detail.
Click on image to enlarge.

Jockeys avant course is filled to the brim with those characteristic features that make Degas a pioneering figure within modern painting: bold cropping of his chosen subject matter, vibrantly quivering tactile brushstrokes and an almost electric palette. Horse shapes have been turned and turned around like pieces of a puzzle until they form a dynamic outline across the surface, allowing the subject matter and the material properties of painting to merge in splendid synthesis.

THE MISFIT IMPRESSIONIST
The Glyptotek’s collection of Degas’s works now numbers five paintings and pastels by the artist as well as one of only four complete sets of his 74 sculptures in the world today – including his seminal La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (1880–81).

The new acquisition serves to accentuate Degas’s unique position within the Impressionist circle – an issue that was also one of the major themes of the ambitious, internationally acclaimed special exhibition Degas’s Method staged by the Glyptotek in 2013. Whereas fellow artists – and rivals – such as Monet and Renoir worked intensively with plein air painting and with depicting light and movement captured in a fleeting moment, Degas is interested in evoking a distinctive ‘now’ in his paintings, a moment where time has been suspended; these paintings merely use nature and what the artist sees as excuses. His subject matter was found in the outside world, true, but back at his studio an almost laboratory-like process began as Degas made extensive use of his own wax models to create exactly the right composition and narrative in his paintings. As he said: “You cannot turn live horses around to get the proper effects of light.”

Degas’s practice makes him a unique figure within the circle of Impressionists, and this painting is an excellent testament to his complicated experiments with colour, matter and compositions. Jockeys avant course encapsulates the full scope of the mature Degas’s endeavours in a single, scintillating moment – and demonstrates the range and reach of modern painting. Here, we are witnessing the point where Impressionism borders on Matisse, Picasso and the modern.

An intriguing panel by Bartolo di Fredi at Sotheby’s

Lot 305. Bartolo di Fredi SIENA 1330 (?) – 1410
SAINT ANTHONY ABBOT
tempera on panel, gold ground, a fragment: 38.5 by 33 cm.; 15 1/8 by 13 in.
Estimate: £40,000-60,000. This lot sold for a hammer price of £235,000 (£287,000 or $423,239 with the buyer’s premium).

UPDATE: The results confirm my interest and expectations – this panel nearly quadrupled it’s high estimate and hammered for a hefty £235,000 (£287,000 or $423,239 with the buyer’s premium), making it the second most expensive work in the sale.

ORIGINAL POST: Sotheby’s April 29 Old Masters sale in London is a jumble of low to mid-priced works, “school of” and “follower of” paintings, and career mishaps by some better know artists. And, the estimates reflect that – the low estimates range from £1,000 to £100,000.

Early in the sale, however, is Lot 305, an unframed and terrifically appealing panel given to Bartolo di Fredi, an artist of considerable import in Siena during the latter half of the 14th century. Saint Anthony Abbott is depicted with a furrowed brow and a delightful almost symmetrical bushy beard [the centerline like a sequence of tops of grey peacock feathers}.

Lot 305. Detail.
Click on image to enlarge.

The saint stares intently and with great determination. His roiling hair is a comic foil to his solemnity, and the punch work of the halo, exquisitely detailed and rich in ornamentation, adds to his ennobled aura.

Lot 305. Detail.
Click on image to enlarge.

The single line catalogue entry states: “Traditionally ascribed to Bartolo di Fredi, Professor Federico Zeri attributed the picture to Francesco di Vannuccio in 1969.”  I’m curious about this attribution to Francesco di Vannuccio, who was active in Siena at the same time as Bartolo and an intriguing artist whose works an extremely scarce.  Francesco’s only known signed and dated work, a double-sided processional from 1380 in the Gemäldegalerie, which is the basis for all other attributions.  A reliquary by him, which had been on long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was sold at Sotheby’s in New York on January 28, 2010.  A Crucifixion with the two afflicted, St. Francis and St. Guy was on offer from the Paris-based Galerie Giovanni Sarti at TEFAF in Maastricht in 2004 for slight more than €1 million. 

Both Bartolo and Francesco reflect the legacy of Simone Martini in their refinement and ornamentation, but I know only one work by Francesco with figuration of this scale that would suggest this attribution, a Crucifixion at Bob Jones University from 1370.  If this is by Francesco, it would be a significant addition to his known oeuvre, which is comprised mostly of small scale works.  It would also point to an unknown and significant commission, given the scale of the figure (in the catalogue essay for the Francesco owned by the Philadephia Museum of Art, the catalogue Italian Paintings 1250-1450, says of the artist: “In 1388 he was paid for painting an altarpiece for the company of Sant’Antonio Abate. Panels from this work might be identified with the Virgin and Child now in the church of San Giovannino in Pantaneto in Siena, and a fragmentary Saint Anthony Abbot in a private German collection” [the present lot at Sotheby’s]).

The panel, likely part of a polyptych and a cut down version of a full scale figure, does not appear in Patricia Harping’s The Sienese Trecento Painter Bartolo di Fredi and there are no other scholarly references listed in the catalogue entry.  It is, nevertheless, a wonderful picture deserving of more attention and study.

According to the condition report:

The panel is uncradled. It has a convex bow. The paint surface is dirty. There are small scattered retouchings, some of which have discoloured. The paint surface is not too worn. The decorative detail stamped into the gold around the border and halo is in good condition. There are tiny areas of exposed red bolus. Inspection under ultraviolet light shows the aforementioned small retouchings, particularly in the face, the back of the head and in the coat. There is also a circa. 2 cm. wide band of repair all along the upper margin, presumably over-painting to an area of exposed panel, incurred when the fragment was separated from its original context. this lot is offered without a frame.

Low performing Sotheby’s sale of Dutch and Flemish Paintings from the Weldon Collection

Lot 67. Adriaen Coorte MIDDELBURG (?) 1660 (?) – AFTER 1707 WILD STRAWBERRIES ON A LEDGE
signed and dated lower left: A Coorte/1704
oil on paper, laid down on panel: 5 3/8 by 6 1/2 in.; 13.5 by 16.5 cm.
Estimate: $800,000-1,200,000. This lot sold for a hammer price of $1.7 million ($2,050,000 with buyer’s fees).
Click on image to enlarge.

UPDATE: Ouch. After a promising start, which saw a small Averkamp winter scene hit it’s $1.5 million top estimate ($1,810,000 with fees), the rest of the sale was punctuated with torpor-inducing speed bumps. The top estimated lot by Sir Peter Paul Rubens Jan Breughel the Young failed to make it’s low estimate, hammering for $2.6 million ($3,130,000 with fees), a price matched by a Ludger tom Ring the Younger still life, and the Coorte shot up to $1.7 million ($2,050,000 with fees), but there was a fair bit of carnage, too.  The sale’s low estimate was $23,309,000 (which does not include the buyer’s fees) – the sale netted $18,218,000 – even with the addition of the buyer’s fees, the sale grossed $22,271,25.  The buy in rate was significant – 27 of 74 lots bombed, including a Frans Post Brazilian landscape (bidding stopped at $1.1 million, against an estimate of $1.5-2 million), while other lots sold well below estimate including a Jacob van Ruisdael Low Waterfall, which hammered at $750,000 (against an estimate of $1-1.5 million)

ORIGINAL POST: There are numerous gems in Sotheby’s April 22 single owner sale of mostly 17th Dutch and Flemish paintings from the Weldon Collection.  According to a Sotheby’s press announcement, the late Henry and June “Jimmy” Weldon built their collection over a period of several decades starting in the 1950s with the purchase of an early Willem van  painting,  Peaches, a Plum, and Grapes on a Ledge. They paid $16 dollars for it at a small auction in New York in 1951, today it’s estimated at $60,000-80,000.  The collection also includes works by Balthasar Van der Ast, Rachel Ruysch, Salomon van Ruysdael, Hendrick Avercamp and a joint work by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Breughel the Younger.  In a videotaped interview, George Wachter, Sotheby’s Co-Chairman, Old Master Paintings, discusses the Weldons and specific works, such as the Coorte still life (above) and the joint Rubens/Breughel the Younger painting (below).

One of the remarkable aspects of the collection is the diminutive size of several works, which nevertheless have great wall power.  Here’s a sampling:

Lot 6. Hendrick Avercamp AMSTERDAM 1585 – 1634 KAMPEN
A WINTER SCENE WITH A WINDMILL AND FIGURES ON A FROZEN RIVER
signed with the monogram lower left: HA (in ligature)
oil on panel: 9 1/4 by 12 1/4 in.; 23.5 by 31.2 cm.
Estimate: $1-1.5 million This lot sold for a hammer price of $1.5 million ($1,810,000 with fees).
Click on image to enlarge.

Lot 16. Adriaen Jansz. van Ostade HAARLEM 1610 – 1685
A MAN WITH PINCE-NEZ, READING NOTICES (THE SENSE OF SIGHT)
signed and dated lower left: AvOstade 16 (the last two digits of the date obscured)
oil on panel: 6 1/8 by 4 5/16 in.; 15.5 by 11 cm.
Estimate: $400,000-600,000. Bidding on this lot stopped at $320,000 and it failed to sell.

Lot 27. Jan Brueghel the Elder BRUSSELS 1568 – 1625 ANTWERP WOODLAND ROAD WITH WAGON AND TRAVELERS
signed and dated lower left: BRVEGHE[L]/160(9?)
oil on copper, mounted on panel: 3 5/8 by 5 7/8 in.; 9.2 by 14.9 cm.
Estimate: $500,000-700,000. This lot sold for a hammer price of $480,000 ($586,000 with fees).
Click on image to enlarge.

Lot 30. Sir Peter Paul Rubens Jan Breughel the Younger Siegen 1577 – 1640 Antwerp Antwerp 1601 – 1678
LANDSCAPE WITH PAN AND SYRINX
the reverse of the panel bears the brand of the Antwerp panel-makers’ guild and the maker’s mark of Michiel Vriendt (MV in monogram)
oil on panel: 23 by 37 1/4 in.; 58.2 by 94.6 cm.
Estimate: $3-5 million. This lot sold for a hammer price of $2.6 million ($3,130,000 with fees).
Click on image to enlarge.

Lot 57. Gerrit Dou LEIDEN 1613-1675 PORTRAIT OF A SCHOLAR
signed middle left: G. Dou
oil on oval panel: 9 1/2 by 7 3/4 in.; 24.1 x 19.7 cm.
Estimate: $500,000-700,000. This lot sold for a hammer price of $500,000 ($610,000 with fees).

Lot 71. Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder ANTWERP 1573 – 1621 THE HAGUE
STILL LIFE OF FLOWERS IN A WAN-LI VASE, INCLUDING TULIPS, NARCISSI, A SWEET-BRIAR, LIVER-LEAF, CYCLAMEN, WILD PANSY AND A ROSE, WITH A DRAGONFLY, BUMBLEBEE AND CATERPILLAR
signed on the ledge, lower left corner: AB (in ligature)
oil on copper: 6 1/4 by 4 1/2 in.; 15.6 by 11.3 cm.
Estimate: $800,000-1,200.000. This lot sold for a hammer price of $700,000 ($850,000 with fees).

Hopper painting estimated at $20 Million Hopper fails at Christie’s American Art Auction

Edward Hopper (1882-1967), Two Puritans, oil on canvas, painted in 1945.
Estimate: $20,000,000 – 30,000,000.
Click on image to enlarge.

UPDATE: Despite the bluster and hype, the Hopper failed to sell – a big disappointment that cut the results for Christie’s May 21 American Art sale be nearly 50% if not more.

ORIGINAL POST: Christie’s has just announced the star lot in their May 21 sale of American Art is Edward Hopper’s Two Puritans from 1945, which carries a $20-30 million estimate.

According to their release:

 Painted in 1945 at the height of Hopper’s career, Two Puritans, one of only three canvases by the artist of that year and the only one in private hands, is estimated to bring in excess of $20 million when it appears at auction for the first time this spring. The painting has been included in nearly every major exhibition and publication on the artist and, most recently was on view in Paris at the Grand Palais, where the Hopper exhibition broke attendance records, proving that the artist has arrived on an international stage.

…

Edward Hopper’s choice and earnest representation of commonplace subject matter in works such as Two Puritans set the artist apart from his contemporaries and allowed him to create a new and uniquely American iconography. In Two Puritans and throughout his career, Hopper painted aspects of America that few other artists addressed. He portrayed unromantic visions of life in a broad and increasingly modern style. While Hopper’s paintings have formal qualities in common with other Modernists, his art remained steadfastly realist.

In recent seasons, prices for Hopper’s paintings have soared at auction, driven by renewed demand for masterpiece-quality works. In October 2013, East Wind Over Weehawken sold for $40,485,000 setting a new world auction record for the artist and in November of 2012, October on Cape Cod sold via Christie’s LIVE™ for $9.6 million, setting the world record for an item sold online at any international auction house.

At TEFAF, the Rijksmuseum buys a Rare and Dramatic Dutch Old Master Painting

JAN ASSELIJN DIEPPE AFTER 1610 – 1652 AMSTERDAM
THE BREACH OF THE SINT ANTHONISDIJK ON THE NIGHT OF 5–6 MARCH 1651
dated and monogrammed lower right: 1651 / JA
oil on canvas: 85.5 by 108.2 cm.; 33 3/4 by 42 5/8 in.
Click on image to enlarge.

The European Fine Art Fair, also known as TEFAF, kicked off March 13 in Maastricht, the Netherlands, which last year drew more than 72,000 attendees to see a mix of Old and Modern Masters, antiquities, furniture, jewels and other art and artifacts.  It’s considered one the world’s finest art fairs and this year it features some 275 dealers from 20 countries.

TEFAF is known as the place art dealers bring their best material, and while the offerings cover a wide range of material, the fair is at its heart centered on Old Master paintings; it’s also the place where recently auctioned masterpieces show up following a fresh cleaning (and a bump in price).

Jan Asselijn’s The Breach of the Sint Antionisdijk on the Night of 5-6 March 1651, was sold at Sotheby’s December 3, 2014 Old Masters sale in London for £602,500 (£500,000 hammer price plus the buyer’s premium or $942,431), against an estimate of £300,000-400,000.  According to de Volkskrant, it was purchased by the Rijksmuseum at TEFAF from dealer Bob Habolt for €1.2 million, “an amount that was raised through the support of sponsor ING Turing Foundation, the Scato Gokkingafonds and a private benefactor.”

“It is a topical theme, depicted in dramatic fashion,” says museum director Wim Pijbes, “it makes the situation clear at once that we have always lived and Dutch still life under the sea.”

According to the Sotheby’s sale catalogue:

In the late winter of 1651, stormy weather and tidal surges caused extensive flooding in the Dutch province of North Holland, the areas exposed to the Diemerdijk east of Amsterdam being particularly affected. Finally, on the night of 5–6 March, strong north-westerly winds and a high spring tide caused the Sint Anthonisdijk to rupture in two places, flooding much of the city of Amsterdam. There were numerous eye-witness accounts of the tragedy, and as soon as the waters had subsided sufficiently, artists flooded out of Amsterdam and beyond to record the event. … Asselijn also painted the reconstruction of the Sint Anthonisdijk which took place in the summer of 1652, in a work in Berlin, although the two pictures are of different proportions and were probably not conceived as pendants. The Reconstruction is a rather more conventional painting by Asselijn, being bathed in a warm almost Italianate light and peopled by peasants familiar from his Bambocciate, although billowing clouds to the left allude to the disaster of the year before.

 

In ancient Nimrud – “A major crime against the entire world”

A relief of a mythological creature in the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II in Nimrud, Iraq. Militants used bulldozers and other vehicles to vandalize the site. Credit DeAgostini/Getty Images

The images are nauseating and the news beyond belief.  The destruction by ISIS of antiquities, artifacts, archaeological sites and monuments that collectively represent thousands of years of human history and civilization was accurately described by the Cairo-based Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s leading religious institution, as “a major crime against the entire world.”

Today’s New York Times has news of the destruction and the international outrage:

The top cultural official at the United Nations called the destruction a war crime that should be taken up by the International Criminal Court, and she vowed to do “whatever is needed” to stop the plundering by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL.

“This is yet another attack against the Iraqi people, reminding us that nothing is safe from the cultural cleansing underway in the country,” said the official, Irina Bokova, who is director general of Unesco, the United Nations organization for education, science and culture.

“It targets human lives, minorities, and is marked by the systematic destruction of humanity’s ancient heritage,” Ms. Bokova said in a statement on the Unesco website.

Iraq’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquitiesconfirmed on Thursday that Islamic State militants had used bulldozers and other heavy vehicles to vandalize an important archaeological site at Nimrud, about 18 miles southeast of Mosul, the northern Iraqi city seized by the group in June.

Nimrud was founded more than 3,300 years ago as a central city of the Assyrian empire, and today is considered one of the most important archaeological sites in the world. Its remaining statues, frescos and other works are widely revered.

“Every person on the planet should pause after yesterday’s violent attack on humanity’s heritage and understand ISIS’ intent not only to control the future of humankind but also to erase and rewrite our past,” said Deborah M. Lehr, chairwoman and co-founder of the Antiquities Coalition, a Washington-based archaeological advocacy group.

“We must unite with global intention to preserve our common heritage and resist ISIS’ effort to steal not only our future freedom but also our history, the very roots of our civilization,” she said in a statement on its website.

The Nimrud destruction came a week after Islamic State militants videotaped themselves marauding through Mosul’s museum, using sledgehammers and torches to destroy statues, artifacts and books. “They’re taking us back to the dark ages, those people,” said Mohamed Alhakim, Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations. “They are thugs.”

Stolen Italian Old Master Painting and Etruscan Statuette Returned by the FBI

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696 – 1770)
The Holy Trinity appearing to Saint Clement
Oil on canvas: 22.22 x 12.48 inches.

An oil sketch by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo stolen from a private home in Turin, Italy, in or about August 1982, and an ancient Etruscan statuette stolen from the Oliveriano Archeological Museum in Pesaro, Italy, in January 1964, were returned today to Italian officials by the FBI, according to a bureau press release: “Each artwork was returned to Warrant Officer Angelo Ragusa of the Rome Office of the Archaeological Section of the Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale, today at a repatriation ceremony at the United States Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.”

According to the release:

Following the theft, the painting’s whereabouts were unknown until it appeared for auction [at Christie’s Old Master Painting Sale] in New York in January 2014 [with an estimate of $500,000-700,000]. After being provided with evidence that the painting was the same piece previously reported stolen in 1982, the Tiepolo’s consignor agreed to its seizure by the FBI and its return to Italy. The United States Attorney’s Office submitted a proposed stipulation and order providing for the Tiepolo’s seizure and return, and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered that order on January 23, 2015. Italian authorities continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding the theft of the painting, including the circumstances of its importation into the United States.

(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer). An Etruscan bronze statuette depicting the Greek hero Herakles is displayed at a ceremony to return the statuette.

[The bronze statuette of Herakles dating from the 6th or 5th BC was stolen] along with several other items, including ivory tablets of the 9th and 13th centuries, early Christian glass artifacts from the Catacombs of Rome, and Italic and Roman statuettes. After its theft from the museum, the Statuette passed through several hands, and was eventually discovered by Italian and U.S. authorities when it was offered for sale by an auction house in Manhattan. After being provided with evidence that the Statuette was the same piece stolen from the museum, the consignor agreed to the FBI’s seizure of the Statuette for repatriation to Italy. The United States Attorney’s Office submitted a proposed stipulation and order providing for the Statuette’s seizure and return, and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered that order on October 2, 2014.

 

Jean-Luc Baroni Donates Long Lost “Allegory of Virtue” to the Uffizi

Jacopo Ligozzi – Verona circa 1547-1627 Florence
The Allegory of Virtue, Love Defending Virtue against Ignorance and Prejudice
Oil on canvas: 345 x 228 cms. (135 ½ x 89 ½ in.)
Click on image to enlarge.

The centerpiece of London-based Old Masters dealer Jean-Luc Baroni’s January 2014 exhibition/sale in New York was a massive painting by Jacopo Ligozzi, The Allegory of Virtue, Love Defending Virtue against Ignorance and Prejudice, which had originally been commissioned by Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany around 1580-85.  The painting had last been recorded in 1865 – Baroni purchased it from a private German collection.  At more than 11 feet tall, it overwhelmed and overpowered the ornate setting in which it was shown.  According to the Art Tribune, Baroni has recently donated the painting to the Uffizi in Florence, Italy – the bequest made in honor of his father.

The Ligozzi is the subject of an exceptional catalogue available free, online that outlines the artist’s biography, along with the painting’s dating, provenance and rich iconography – it begins with this delightful teaser:

Jacopo Ligozzi was one of the most original artistic personalities of the late 16th and early 17th century Florence.  He was of an anxious disposition and, tormented by a piety typical of the Counter-Reformation, he was obsessed with sin and death.

My kind of guy.

 

Did this Gauguin Painting Sell for nearly $300 Million?

“Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?)” by Paul Gauguin. Credit Artothek/Associated Press.
Click on image to enlarge.

A report out from Scott Reyburn and Doreen Carvajal at the New York Times says an 1892 oil painting by Paul Gauguin, “Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?),” has been sold to the Qatar Museums in Doha for nearly $300 million, which would make it one of the most expensive works of art ever sold (rumor of the sale was reported on Tuesday, February 3, by The Baer Faxt art newsletter).

According to the article:

The sale … was confirmed by the seller, Rudolf Staechelin, 62, a retired Sotheby’s executive living in Basel, Switzerland, who owns more than 20 works in a valuable collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, including the Gauguin, which has been on loan to the Kunstmuseum in Basel for nearly a half-century.

Two dealers with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be named because of concerns over client confidentiality, identified Qatar Museums, the emirate’s museum authority, as the buyer of the painting, but Mr. Staechelin declined to say whether the new owner was from that tiny, oil-rich country. “I don’t deny it and I don’t confirm it,” Mr. Staechelin said, also declining to disclose the price.

Qatar Museums in Doha did not respond to telephone calls and emails seeking comment.

Guy Morin, the mayor of Basel, was one of those who acknowledged news of the sale of the Gauguin, bemoaning its loss. On Tuesday, The Baer Faxt, an art world insiders’ newsletter, said Qatar was rumored to be the buyer of the Gauguin at $300 million, which would exceed the more than $250 million the emirate reportedly paid for Paul Cézanne’s “Card Players” in 2011. Todd Levin, a New York art adviser said, “I heard that this painting was in play late last year.” He added, “The price quoted to me at that time was in the high $200 millions, close to $300 million.”

In recent years the royal family of Qatar and Qatar Museums have been reported to be expansive buyers of trophy quality Western modern and contemporary art. The Art Newspaper said in May 2008 that Qatari buyers secured Mark Rothko’s “White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)” for $72.8 million at Sotheby’s New York in May 2007, and Damien Hirst’s 2002 pill cabinet, “Lullaby Spring,” for about $19 million at Sotheby’s in London in June 2007. Dealers have also identified Qatar as the buyer of the 1904 Cézanne landscape “La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue du Bosquet du Château Noir,” sold in a private transaction for $100 million by the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Detroit in 2013.

In a move that jolted Basel as news of the sale trickled out, Mr. Staechelin said that his family’s trust was ending its loan to the Kunstmuseum as a result of a dispute with the local canton. He said he was searching for a top museum to accept the Staechelin collection — which also includes works by van Gogh, Picasso and Pissarro — on loan, without a lending fee, with a promise to integrate those works into permanent exhibitions.

The paintings were amassed by his grandfather, a Swiss merchant also named Rudolf Staechelin, who befriended artists and purchased most of the works during and after World War I. In the postwar years, he advised the Kunstmuseum, which accepted the loan of his collection after his death in 1946.

His grandson, Mr. Staechelin, said the works had never been hung in his family’s home because they were too precious and that he saw them in a museum along with everyone else. Now, he added, he has decided to sell because it is the time in his life to diversify his assets. “In a way it’s sad,” he said, “but on the other hand it’s a fact of life. Private collections are like private persons. They don’t live forever.”

On the last few days before closing last weekend for renovations through 2016, the Kunstmuseum opened its doors for free and drew a record crowd of 7,500, many of whom caught the last glimpse of the Gauguin work in its longtime home.

The artist’s Tahiti-period paintings are among the most admired and coveted artworks of the Post-Impressionist period. This particular work, focusing on the enigmatic interplay between two young women in a Polynesian landscape, had been painted by the artist during the first of his two spells living in Tahiti.

The painting will still be on public display at a special Gauguin exhibition opening this month in Basel at the Beyeler Foundation and then will head with the rest of the collection for shows at the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid and the Phillips Collection in Washington through the rest of this year. The buyers will take ownership of the painting in January 2016, Mr. Staechelin said.

Local institutions in Basel, which learned definitively about the loss of the collection on Thursday morning, were still trying to come to grips with the news. The Kunstmuseum issued a brief statement about how the works would be sorely missed. “We are painfully reminded that permanent loans are still loans. The people of Basel do not own these, and they can be taken away at any moment,” the statement added.

Mr. Morin, the mayor, acknowledged that the Staechelin collection “will not return.” In his statement, he said the canton sought to persuade Mr. Staechelin to bring back the collection when the museum reopens in April 2016 with the construction of a new site linked to its existing building.

But for months, behind the scenes, the canton and the family trust squabbled over an existing loan contract for the works. Mr. Staechelin said that he had sought a new contract after the museum announced plans to shut down. He wanted to send the works on a tour to other countries. When canton officials failed to budge on a new contract, he said, he canceled the existing one because of a provision that requires that the artworks must be on public display.

“The real question is why only now?” Mr. Staechelin said of the Gauguin sale. “It’s mainly because we got a good offer. The market is very high and who knows what it will be in 10 years. I always tried to keep as much together as I could. There is no financial need to sell, but it is about diversification. Over 90 percent of our assets are paintings hanging for free in the museum. It’s not a healthy financial risk distribution.”

James Roundell, a director at the London dealership Simon Dickinson Fine Art, said, “A new category of ‘super trophy’ is emerging.” He added: “These items are generally in museums and they’re being sold privately, which explains the very high prices. If they were offered at auction, would there be competition at that level?”

With the passing of new generations, the family sold some paintings, including two Picasso works in 1967 that were purchased by the canton of Basel after voters agreed in a special referendum to pay for them. Picasso was so touched that he donated four more artworks to the canton.

In recent months, Mr. Staechelin said he fielded an offer from one museum that proposed to exhibit part of the collection. But he added that he preferred to find a new home for all the works. Buyers, he said, also contact him periodically about purchasing more works in the collection, but he is fending them off — for now.

“I have a lot of paintings and a little money,” Mr. Staechelin said. “I never saw these paintings as pure investments. It’s difficult if you look at a work and only see money because then something has gone terribly wrong. For me they are family history and art. But they are also security and investments.”

Are these Michelangelo’s only surviving bronzes?

Victoria Avery of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, said the project to attribute the bronzes, involving a team of experts from different fields, had been like a Renaissance whodunnit. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA – Click on image to enlarge.

If confirmed, this would be a major discovery – the only know surviving bronzes by the great Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo.  According to the Guardian, the two meter-high male nudes astride panthers (take that Katy Perry), which will be on view at Cambridge’s FitzWilliam Museum, have been the subject of years of investigation and testing.

According to the  Guardian: 

Crucial to the attribution of the bronzes, which belong to a private British owner, has been a tiny detail from a drawing by an apprentice of Michelangelo, now in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, France. The drawing shows in one corner a muscular youth riding a panther in a similar pose.

Unknown draughtsman, after Michelangelo: detail from ‘Sheet of studies with the Virgin embracing the Infant Jesus,’ c1508, pen and ink on paper.
Photograph: Musée Fabre de Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole.

Last autumn, Paul Joannides, professor of art history at Cambridge University, connected the sculptures to the drawing.

Further research included a neutron scan at a research institute in Switzerland, which placed the bronzes in the first decade of the 16th century. Investigations by clinical anatomist Professor Peter Abrahams, from the University of Warwick, suggested every detail in the bronzes was textbook perfect Michelangelo – from the six packs to the belly buttons, which are as artist portrayed them on his marble statue of David.

“Even a peroneal tendon is visible, as is the transverse arch of the foot,” Abrahams writes in the book that accompanies the discovery.

Nude bacchants riding panthers, c1506-08
Photograph: Michael Jones/The Fitzwilliam Museum.

The history of the sculptures is as fascinating as they are beautiful. They are named after their first recorded owner, Baron Adolphe de Rothschild, a grandson of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who founded the banking dynasty. It is possible that Rothschild bought them from one of the Bourbon kings of Naples and if so they may have come from the Villa Reale at Caserta where the Bourbon art treasures were displayed. After Rothschild’s death in 1900 the bronzes were inherited by Maurice de Rothschild. When he died in 1957 they went into a private French collection and were effectively forgotten about until they came to auction in 2002 and were bought by the current unnamed British owner.

They were sold at Sotheby’s where experts loosely associated them with the Florentine sculptor Cellini.

They began to interest academics once more and featured in an exhibition on Willem van Tetrode at the Frick Collection and then at the Royal Academy’s big Bronze show in 2012, where they were attributed to the circle of Michelangelo and dated towards the middle of the 16th century. Experts who saw them at the RA recognised them as Michelangelesque but were reluctant to assign them directly to the man himself.

The attribution is particular exciting because no other Michelangelo bronzes survive. A two-thirds size bronze David, known to have been made for a French grandee’s chateau, was lost during the French Revolution and a spectacular statue of Pope Julius II was melted down for artillery by rebellious Bolognese.