Joan Miró works from the Banco Português de Negócios collection, totaling 85 paintings, were approved by a Portuguese judge to be sold abroad, despite previous rulings that they'd be cultural heritage objects. The paintings, valued north of €36.4 million ($50.6 million), were originally set for Christie’s February sale but were pulled amid public outcry; later plans moved to Christie’s June sale in London before export was again blocked by a Lisbon judge. The Portuguese state, burdened by debt, hopes proceeds will bolster coffers.
Henri Matisse Profil Bleu Devant la Cheminée (Woman in Blue in Front of a Fireplace) from 1937, once owned by Paul Rosenberg, was looted by the Nazis in 1941 and later returned to Rosenberg’s heirs after negotiations led by Christopher A. Marinello of Art Recovery Group; the painting is valued at about $20 million.
The Argus reports that two men tricked an 87-year-old woman in Clapham, Arun district, into allowing them to inspect her cellos, then stole a French cello, a fine English cello, two Roy Collins bows, and two cello cases valued at more than £10,000.
Paul Gauguin’s 1892 painting Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?) was sold from a Swiss private collection for close to $300 million. The sale was reportedly to a Qatari buyer, with Rudolf Staechelin, who owns the work, declining to confirm the price. The painting has been on loan to the Kunstmuseum Basel for decades.
Banksy’s Mobile Lovers (2014) was sold from Bristol’s Broad Plain Boys’ Club for £403,000 (roughly $670,000). The sale was brokered by MM Contemporary Arts; the buyer is a private philanthropist. The work was loaned to the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery display from April 14 to August 26, 2014, and the sale funds will support the youth club.
The Violin Channel reports that Maxim Vengerov is set to perform the original scoring of the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra during its 2015 season, making him one of a handful of violinists granted permission to perform the work. The article notes the original version’s history, including revisions by Sibelius, a 1991 permission for a live performance and recording by Leonidas Kavakos, and mentions other related performances.
Nathan Benning, 14, the son of Eric Benning and grandson of Hans and Nancy Benning, completes his first violin at the Bennings’ Studio City shop. The instrument, modeled after a Stradivarius, was crafted under his father and grandparents and will be played by Nathan himself.
Patrice Motsepe, a South African mining billionaire, paid $1 million for a Pablo Picasso drawing at Leonardo DiCaprio's foundation gala in Saint-Tropez; the event also featured a Damien Hirst sculpture sold for $6 million to Len Blavatnik and other notable sales.
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation is appealing a Florida judge’s $24.6 million award to three friends of the artist who oversaw his estate. The foundation’s chairman, Christopher Rauschenberg, said the notice to appeal was filed on August 13, and emphasized advancing the foundation’s charitable mission.
Leon Black discussed acquiring online art seller Artspace through his Phaidon business, per a Bloomberg report cited by Katya Kazakina. The article notes Black’s activity in online art markets alongside Paddle8, Artsy, Amazon Art, and Auctionata.
Benjamin Sutton reports that Maximo Caminero, the Miami artist who smashed Ai Weiwei’s vase at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, pleaded guilty to criminal mischief and will pay $10,000 in restitution. He will also receive 18 months of probation and complete 100 hours of community service. The vase was part of Ai Weiwei’s Colored Vases (2007–10) within the installation in the traveling retrospective According to What?
The article reports Vadim Repin performing Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto in A minor without a conductor, with the Novosibirsk Academic Symphony Orchestra, described as the world’s first conductorless performance. The premiere took place during the Trans Siberian Arts Festival in Novosibirsk, recorded on April 14, 2014, and notes conductor Valery Gergiev’s last-minute cancellation.
Karl Wilhelm Geck reports that a three-movement Violin Concerto in E minor discovered in Schrank II manuscripts Mus.2364-O-7 and Mus.2364-O-9 is a pasticcio: the middle movement is the Adagio from Antonio Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in B-flat major RV 366 (Il Carbonelli), transposed from D minor to E minor, likely linked to Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli.
The article profiles 14-year-old Nathan Benning, who crafted a violin 14 months in the making and has become the fourth generation in the Benning family to build premium violins at Studio City Music in Studio City, California. It describes his family lineage of instrument makers, including his father Eric Benning and grandfather Hans Benning, and notes the family's long history dating back to 1901 with Carl Becker Sr. and Paul Toenniges.
Sotheby’s reported a 24 percent increase in net auction sales to $2.7 billion for the first half of 2014, led by Hong Kong and London, with an 18 percent rise in auction commission revenues to $403 million. The top lot was Claude Monet’s Nympheas (1906) sold in London for £31.7 million ($54 million), followed by Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for Portrait of George Dyer (1964) at £26.7 million ($45.4 million); the Meiyintang Chicken Cup sold for $36.3 million in Hong Kong.
Adriaen van Ostade, Francisco Goya, and Honoré Daumier drawings were involved in a restitution dispute over artworks seized by the American army in Austria at the end of World War II. France’s Conseil d’État ruled that the foreign affairs ministry was correct to deny the restitution claim, noting the artworks’ status as Guardian objects under Musées Nationaux Récupération and their accessibility requirements. The case, pursued by two Austrian collectors’ heirs, ended with a final verdict supporting the rejection of the claim.
€200,000 is stated as the approximate value of Carlos Cruz-Diez's Colonne Chromointerférente, a six meter high work from 1972, which was scrapped by local authorities in La Roche-sur-Yon. The piece was attributed to Carlos Cruz-Diez, and the value was cited as being around €200,000 ($295,279).
Two Johannesburg sisters are heirs to a valuable art collection and will receive a R49-million painting believed to be by Vincent van Gogh from the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne; the work, titled Head of a Man (1886), was part of a Nazi-era forced sale linked to Richard Semmel, and the gallery agreed to restitute it following a December claim by the sisters’ Zurich-based lawyer Olaf Ossmann.
Charles M. Russell’s artwork sells for millions at Reno auction. The article reports that 30 Russell works sold for millions at the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction in Reno, including a painting about the railroad’s impact on American Indians that brought in $1.9 million and another depicting a Native American chief that brought in $1.1 million. Other top prices included a Frederic Remington painting of a group of Indians for $1.7 million and a Thomas Moran painting of an Arizona gulch for $1.5 million.