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Getty Buys a Little-Seen & Sometimes-Doubted Watteau

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The Getty sent out this press release today:

The J. Paul Getty Museum announced today the acquisition of The Italian Comedians (ca. 1720) by Jean-Antoine Watteau (French, 1684–1721). The large oil painting (50 7/8” x 36 ¾“) was painted at the height of Watteau’s fame, shortly before his early death at age 36.

“This major, little-known painting is extraordinary. It shows Watteau at the height of his creative genius,” said James Cuno, President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust. “Not only will it enhance our paintings collection, but it complements the Museum’s collection of French decorative arts, which is amongst the finest in the world.”

The Italian Comedians joins 18th century French paintings already in the Getty Museum’s collection by artists such as Nicolas Lancret (1690 –1743), Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), and Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714–1789), all of which have been acquired in the last decade.

The Italian Comedians has been in private collections since the 18th century and has not been publicly exhibited since 1929. Over the last three centuries, its attribution has fluctuated. Until the late 19th century, the painting was attributed to Watteau. It was then assigned to Watteau’s pupil Jean-Baptiste Pater and subsequently to an anonymous painter in the circle of Watteau. Although the attribution has changed over time, the artwork has always been praised for its brilliant composition and emotional power and associated with Watteau’s psychologically profound depictions of the Italian Comedians.

“Although not all scholars agree about the attribution, they are all in accord that the canvas is brilliantly conceived, emotionally compelling, beautifully painted, and by an artist at the top of his form,” adds Schaefer. “We believe that the only artist able to rise to this level of accomplishment was Antoine Watteau, and that he executed the entire painting.”

No price was given for the acquisition. But the Los Angeles Times’s Mike Boehm did a little background work:

“The Italian Comedians” was last displayed publicly at a Paris museum in 1929. It resurfaced last April, in a major sale by heirs of Paul-Louis Weiller. [. . .] Experts for the auction house Gros & Delettrez billed “The Italian Comedians” as a work from around 1720 by the “French school … circle of Antoine Watteau.” Reporting on the auction last April, the International Herald Tribune said it had sold for 1.56 million euros — about $2 million — a price 20 times the auctioneer’s top estimate.

“La Surprise,” a Watteau painting of lovers embracing while a musician prepares to serenade them, fetched $24.4 million at a London auction in 2008, setting a record for an 18th century French artist.

Getty Buys What It Believes to Be a Watteau Painting (Los Angeles Times)

Getty Acquires Ansel Adams Museum Set from Vernon Family

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© 2012 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

The Getty issued a press release today covering the gift of a Ansel Adams’s 25 photograph Museum Set by Carol Vernon and her husband Robert Turbin in memory of Marjorie and Leonard Vernon.

In 1979, near the end of his seven decade career, Adams began to produce what he called “The Museum Set,” a project initiated with the help of Maggi Weston of Weston Gallery in Carmel, California. From over 2,500 of his negatives, Adams selected 75 images, which included photographs from as early as 1923 to as late as 1968. Collectors could purchase a “complete” set of 75 prints, or they could select their own set of 25 that Adams himself would print for purchase.

“The Museum Set” was purchased from Adams by Vernon’s parents, with the understanding that they would one day be donated to a museum. Having been in the same hands since their initial purchase, the photographs are in pristine condition, and greatly enhance the Getty’s existing collection of 40 photographs by Adams.

A large number of the prints feature two locations—Yosemite (nine prints) and the Sierra Nevadas (three prints). The collection also contains two prints from Alaska, three from Northern California, including an image of the “Golden Gate” in San Francisco Bay taken in 1932 before the bridge was constructed, and three from the Southwest, including Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1941), which once held the record for the highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction. Although the majority of the prints are landscapes, the set does include two portraits—Georgia O’Keeffe and Orville Cox at the Canyon de Chelly National Monument (1937), and a close up of the face of Jose Clemente Orozco, taken in New York City in 1933.

Timothy Potts to Lead Getty as Director

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Jori Finkel gives the Getty Museum’s new director a quick once over in the Los Angeles Times:

A Sydney native who early on ran the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, Potts, 53, is currently the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge in England. He is best known in the U.S. for running the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, from 1998 to 2007, which compares to the Getty Museum in the size of its acquisition budget. During his tenure at the Kimbell, he made several high-profile acquisitions, including Donatello, Michelozzo and Bernini sculptures

Potts’ expertise is in ancient Near Eastern art, or works from what would now be considered the Middle East. He received his doctorate in that field from the University of Oxford.

Getty Museum Hires Timothy Potts as New Director (Los Angeles Times)

Finkel: Gaehtgens for Getty Head

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Jori Finkel’s LA Times profile throws Thomas Gaehtgens hat into the ring over his own professed desire to remain a scholar at the Getty Research Institute:

“If you could imagine an ideal director for the GRI, Thomas would be it,” says Louis Marchesano, the institute’s curator of prints and drawings. “You would want someone with a wide range of scholarly interests and intellectual curiosity to deal with a collection of this scope and size.”

“He’s also a people person and a great administrator,” adds Marchesano. “The Getty is a big, complicated place and we have our own politics, so his ability to make allies and not enemies has been essential.”Continue Reading

Turner Blow by Blow

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Colin Gleadell gives the bidding details on the Getty’s new Turner:

In London last week, the bidding boiled down to a battle between two Americans. Mobile phone clasped to his ear, New Yorker David Benrimon, better known as a dealer in Impressionist and contemporary art, was acting for a private collector, and, he revealed later, he had set a limit of £25 million on his bids. Also in the room was Scott Schaefer, the senior curator of paintings at the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, who was letting John Morton Morris, director of London gallery Hazlitt Gooden and Fox, bid for him. As the bidding slowed down, and Benrimon eked out a couple of bids over his limit, Morris replied with little hesitation until the painting was won – knocked down for £26 million, or £29.7 million with the auctioneers’ commission charge to the buyer added.

Afterwards, the saleroom chat was that, even at that price, the painting was cheap. And perhaps, compared with a great Impressionist painting, with which the Turner would undoubtedly hold its own, it was.

In the months to come some, if not all, of these works are likely to come under the scrutiny of the Government’s export reviewing committee, which can delay exports to give British museums time to buy. It may be we already have enough Turners in this country

Stately Homes Sell the Silver (Telegraph)

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