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Sotheby’s Expects a ‘Great Deal of Excitement’ for Long Lost Canova

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Sotheby’s has announced the re-discovery of Antonio Canova’s Bust of Peace, of the late 18th and early 19th Century sculptor’s ideal heads. In this particular case, the figure of peace was given to Canova’s long-time British patron whose family owned it for generations. Eventually, the artist behind the bust and the subject were lost to family memory. The contents of the aristocratic house were sold in the 1960s. The work eventually found its way into the hands of the current owner whose risk and research has produced the new attribution.

Because carved Canova statues are very rare, Sotheby’s is being very conservative in estimating the statue’s value. The whisper number is more than £1 million. But even that number is quite conservative. Take this example, another Canova marble, ‘Bust of Murat’ was sold in November 2017 for EUR 4.3 million at auction. In pounds that’s £3.75m. And The Bust of Peace has an extraordinary provenance dating back all the way to its conception in 1814. It also has an idealized subject and historical significance. All that Sotheby’s, Director of European Sculpture and Works of Art, Christopher Mason, will say is, “we expect a great deal of excitement.”

The artist behind one of the most celebrated sculptures in Britain, The Three Graces, Antonio Canova (1757-1821) is as revered today as he was during his lifetime. Honoured in verse by Lord Byron, Canova was considered the preeminent sculptor of his time, recognised not only for his skills as a carver, but also as a diplomat and dignitary for the Papal court.

Now, on 4 July in London, Sotheby’s will offer one of the few autograph works by Canova ever
to come to auction. Long thought lost, the Bust of Peace has not been seen in public for over 200
years since it was shown for the first time at the Royal Academy summer exhibition of 1817.
The sculpture belongs to Canova’s celebrated series of Ideal Heads (Teste Ideale). Considered
among the artist’s most intimate works, the Ideal Heads embody Canova’s ideal of beauty, and
were developed with the express purpose of gifting them to friends and patrons. The Bust of Peace (1814) was carved for his first British patron and close friend John Campbell, Lord Cawdor, in thanks for his long term patronage and friendship, and in part for his help in repatriating art from Italy looted by the French armies during the Napoleonic Wars.

Having been passed down through five generations of the Cawdor family following John Campbell’s death in 1821, the sculpture was forgotten over time. By 1962, when the contents of the family house Stackpole Court in Pembrokeshire were sold at auction, the Bust of Peace was simply described in the catalogue as ‘a white marble bust of a lady wearing a diadem’.

Now, following extensive research by the present owner, who acquired the sculpture as an unattributed work, the bust has been identified as the long-lost Bust of Peace by Canova. The masterful work is a significant rediscovery, of seminal importance within Canova’s oeuvre, and has great historical resonance.

Rare Rembrandt Print at Christie’s London in July

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Christie’s has a Rembrandt print featured in its Old Master sales in London this July.

Christ Presented to The People (‘Ecce Homo’) is considered to be among Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn’s (1606-1669) most significant achievements in any medium (estimate on request: in the region of $3-5million). One of the world’s most versatile, innovative, and influential artists, Rembrandt is viewed by many as the greatest printmaker of any generation. Epitomizing an artist at the height of his powers, both artistically and technically, this extraordinary drypoint of 1655 dates from his third decade as a printmaker. Executed on a monumental scale, the present work is one of only eight known impressions of the celebrated first state of this print and is the last known example in private hands. The other seven known impressions of this state are in major museum collections: Kupferstichkabinett der Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, The British Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Ashmolean Museum, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Musée du Louvre (Rothschild Collection) and the Graphische Sammlung Albertina.

Offered from The Collection of the late Samuel Josefowitz, it is on public view at Christie’s New York until 5 May; going on view in Hong Kong from 24 to 28 May and then in London from 15 to 28 June and 30 June to 5 July, ahead of being offered for sale during Christie’s Classic Week in London, in the Old Masters Evening Sale on 5 July.

Titian Estimated at Fraction Salvator Mundi; 500 Years Ago It Was the Other Way Around

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Sotheby’s is selling a work by Titian once owned by King Charles I just as the Royal Academy is opening a reconstruction of executed monarch’s art collection. The religious picture, one of two versions with the other hanging in the Prado, is estimated at $2-3m and will sell in New York on February 1st:

Cromwell’s government wanted to both raise money for the state and pay off Charles’s debts as quickly as possible, selling an estimated 1,500 paintings and 500 sculptures.

One person owed money – £903 for various palace repairs – was John Embry, the royal plumber. A deal was offered whereby the state would give him £403 in cash and the rest could be made up with pictures. He chose 24, including the Titian, then called Margrett Afraid of a Monster, and valued at £100.

Bendor Grosvenor points out that the £100 valuation made the Titian more valuable than Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi from the same collection that had a £30 price tag at the time.

Titian painting given to Charles I’s plumber goes up for sale (The Guardian)

Drouot Discovers a €2.4m Artemisia Gentileschi 

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The Art Newspaper reports on another Old Master sleeper:

A previously unknown Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine by the Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi sold at Drouot in Paris on 19 December for an artist record of €2,360,600 (€1.850m at the hammer, against an estimate of €300,000-€400,000). The work, which dates from the same period (1614-16) as another Saint Catherine picture by the artist held by the Uffizi, was discovered by auctioneer Christophe Joron-Derem and presented in his sale of European paintings.

Newly discovered Artemisia Gentileschi painting sells for €2.4m at auction in Paris  (The Art Newspaper)

Re-discovered John Constable Painting at Sotheby’s in December

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Sotheby’s recently announced that it will be selling a re-discoved Constable painting in early December:

John Constable (1776-1837) is one of Britain’s best-loved and most significant landscape painters. A key figure in the British Romantic movement of the early 19th century, Constable, together with J.M.W. Turner, changed the course of European landscape painting forever. This winter, Sotheby’s London will present a recently rediscovered landscape by the British artist which is one of the most exciting and important additions to Constable’s oeuvre to have emerged in the last fifty years. Painted between 1814 and 1817, Dedham Vale with the River Stour in Flood belongs to a small group of Constable’s early Suffolk paintings remaining in private hands. The work will be offered in Sotheby’s Old Masters Evening sale on 6 December, with an estimate of £2-3 million.

Julian Gascoigne, Senior Specialist, British Paintings at Sotheby’s said: “Constable’s views of Dedham Vale and the Stour valley have become icons of British art and define for many everything that is quintessential about the English countryside. Dedham Vale with the River Stour in Flood  was long mistakenly thought to be by Ramsay Richard Reinagle (1775-1862), a friend and contemporary of Constable’s, but recent scientific analysis and up-to-date connoisseurship has unanimously returned the work to its rightful place among the canon of the great master’s work and established beyond doubt its true authorship. It is without question one of the most exciting and important additions to Constable’s oeuvre to have emerged in the last fifty years”.

The painting is thought to have been commissioned by Thomas Fitzhugh as a wedding present for his future wife, Philadelphia Godfrey, whose parents were neighbours and friends of Constable’s family. It is the view from the back garden of Philadelphia’s childhood home, and must have served as a perfect memento once settled into married life in London.

Old Master Collector Who Was Focus of Schadenfreude Over Recent Sale Losses Revealed as Getty Seller

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Coverage of the Old Master sales in London earlier this month fixated on the sales from a collector who had worked with Jean Luc Baroni to assemble his collection. At the time, insiders like Bendor Grosvenor were quick to point out that although the collector was unloading some works at a slight loss, his gains on works like the surprise sale of Govaert Flinck’s Old Man at a Casement more than made up for the losses. Besides, the flat sales were more an indication of an insufficient holding period than weakness in the Old Master market.

Now the Art Newspaper reveals the seller of a group of drawings and a Watteau painting to the Getty museum. Turns out, it is the same collector reporters were fixated upon. Getty sale, which Grosvenor points out, belies “the old cliché that museum quality Old Masters never come onto the market anymore is just not true.” Meanwhile, the New York Times speculates the Getty paid a substantial price further putting the recent off-loading at auction in better context.

Here’s The Art Newspaper on who pulled off this feat:Continue Reading

TEFAF Struggles with the Implications of Vetting

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Maastricht 8 maart 2016 TEFAF 2016 - Keuring kunstwerken Tefaf - Demonstratie van technieken die worden gebruikt bij vetting, het doorlichten, van de kunstwerken die worden aangeboden voor de Tefaf. Op de foto restaurator Robert van Langh - met baard - tijdens x-ray rontgenopname van een jezus-beeld voor de keuring. Photo: Harry Heuts

A Dutch news outlet confronts the change of play in the Old Masters market since the discovery of several exceptionally good forgeries that are roiling the private market. The unexpected twist is that Sotheby’s has stolen a march on the market and now threatens to overshadow the trust in dealers:

“Collectors are being given the impression that it’s safer to buy art at an auction house than at a fair: at least an auction house will pay compensation if it’s a forgery,” says one insider.

Today’s opening of TEFAF in Maastricht, the world’s leading Old Master fair, puts this in sharp relief. It also raises the issue of TEFAF’s vetting and whether the fair’s vetting protects buyers:Continue Reading

Old Masters Have No Constituency? Tell the Crowds Shutting Down the Louvre’s New Vermeer Show

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Vermeer v Metsu
Vermeer v Metsu

Last week, the Louvre opened a show of Vermeer putting him in context of his peers and showing the ways in which Dutch Golden Age genre painters influenced and competed with each other. From the opening day, the crowds have surprised and overwhelmed the Louvre to the point that demand shut down online ticketing.

Think about that. The world’s most-visited museum couldn’t handle the traffic and visitor interest. Here’s L’Express explaining:Continue Reading

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