Andrew Brownsword, a greetings card millionaire and hotelier, buys Sisley’s View of the Thames: Charing Cross Bridge for a charity that lends to public collections. The painting is shown at the National Gallery for three years. Brownsword’s Andrew Brownsword Art Foundation has previously acquired Gainsborough, Lowry, and John Brett works for public loan or charity purposes, and was involved as a underbidder at Sotheby’s for Spencer’s Christ preaching at Cookham Regatta.
The article reports Skinner’s auction of fine musical instruments, highlighting world record prices for American guitars by John D’Angelico and James D’Aquisto, a Spanish guitar by Ignacio Fleta, and a rare American keyed bugle by E.G. Wright. It mentions a Gaetano Gadda violoncello and a Stefano Scarampella violin achieving world record prices, with details on the 12-keyed presentation bugle related to Chandler’s Band of Portland, Maine.
Amedeo Modigliani's Garçon à la Veste Bleu sold for more than £6m at Sotheby's in London, contributing to a total of over £61m raised across 60 lots featuring Picasso, Renoir, Monet and Vincent van Gogh. Other notable results included Van Gogh's Deux Crabes and Egon Schiele's Liebespaar; Renoir's Portrait de Rapha Mantre was withdrawn before sale.
A descendant of the original owners of the Picasso painting Boy with a Pipe, 1904, is consulting lawyers to determine how ownership was lost; the work commanded $104 million as the world’s most expensive painting last month, and questions the 1949 sale despite a will aimed at keeping it in the Berlin family.
The New York Post reports on 18-year-old violinist Claude Giampietro from New Haven, who, after a remission from testicular cancer and through the Make-a-Wish Foundation, earned a chance to audition for and perform with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall. Giampietro played Prokofiev with the orchestra after an audition and rehearsal, following encouragement from Philharmonic musicians.
The case concerns six Klimt paintings seized or coerced from Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's estate during Austria's annexation by Nazi Germany. The American heir sued Austria and the Austrian Gallery to recover the paintings, invoking the FSIA's expropriation exception. The Supreme Court held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act applies to conduct that occurred before its enactment, allowing the case to proceed on the expropriation-exception theory.