Old Master dealers have organized Master Painting Week in London beginning on July 4th. The idea is to ease access to dealers while the Old Master world descends on London for the auctions. Here’s a pdf of the catalgogue: Master Painting Week Catalogue

Meanwhile, The Economist gives some details on some of the central dealer’s wares buffed up for the event:

• Mr Bernheimer’s gallery, P&D Colnaghi, will have a show dedicated to Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), a master painter and printmaker of the German Renaissance who until recently has been under-rated in the Anglo-Saxon world, never quite attaining the fame or appeal of Albrecht Dürer or Hans Holbein. The centrepiece is Cranach’s “David and Bathsheba”, a delicate courtly warning, painted in 1534 about the dangers of human passion. The picture comes from a private German collection and is being offered for €5.5m ($7.7m).

• Mr Elwes has discovered two large landscapes by a French neo-classical artist, Hyacinthe Dunouy (1757-1841). He bought one from a private collector and the second at auction. […] Mention of the pictures is made in the inventory of Joseph Bonaparte’s belongings shortly before he left France for America in 1814. He took much of his important art collection with him to his new home at Point Breeze, New Jersey. Bonaparte died in 1844 and the Point Breeze collection, including this pair of landscapes, was dispersed. Most of it remains untraced, which is partly what makes these pictures such a find. Mr Elwes is offering them at €480,000.

• In January Mr van Haeften, one of London’s most knowledgeable dealers in paintings from the Dutch golden age, travelled to New York where he bought a pretty picture by Gerrit van Honthorst. It is of three small children feeding fruit to a spotted animal that could be a leopard or a cougar in a halter (pictured above). The painting, which had been bought by the American vendor’s father in the 1920s, was estimated to fetch $70,000-90,000. But Mr van Haeften, betting on his superior knowledge of the genre, bid up to $165,000 to secure the picture ($200,500 with commission and taxes). […] “An Allegory of Peace and Plenty”, celebrates the Dutch conquest of Brazil. The three youngsters are Frederick Henry’s children, Prince Willem and the little princesses, Louise Henriette and Henriette Amalia. The cat is a jaguar and the halter actually orange ribbons restraining it, symbolic of the taming of South America by the House of Orange, which is enjoying the fruits of its conquest. A royal commission gives the painting a provenance it never had before. Mr van Haeften had hoped to make his royal van Honthorst the star of his Master Paintings Week. Then he got a call from Het Loo in the Netherlands. Until recently a palace belonging to the Dutch royal family, Het Loo is now a museum to the House of Orange Nassau. The trustees would like to buy the picture, and please could they have a discount on the $575,000

Old Masters and Maestros (Economist.com)