Lost and Found in Russia

Sotheby’s Jo Vickery previews the Russian Art sales in London this week for Reuters with a tale of a long lost Isaak Brodsky painting:

“In Russian art, we’re still re-discovering works that were lost and are now coming to the market for the first time,” she told Reuters at Sotheby’s showrooms, where the works to be auctioned were on display. One such “discovery” is an oil painting by Isaak Brodsky dated 1912 and called “Nanny With Children.” It was acquired in the 1950s by a collector in Italy who believed he was buying a long-lost work by Claude Monet. He assumed the previous owners had disguised the work in order to take it out of post-revolutionary Russia, and had a strip of canvas added to make it conform to what he believed was more typical of the French Impressionist school. Sotheby’s helped to identify the picture’s true provenance, and the Brodsky is expected to raise 300-500,000 pounds.