The page discusses Christie’s and Sotheby’s Old Master Week sales in New York during January 2010, highlighting Christie’s two-part Old Master & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings, and Watercolors sale and Sotheby’s Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture auction. Notable works and estimates mentioned include a Rembrandt portrait (1632) and Leonardo da Vinci’s La Belle Ferronnière, with various high-profile pieces from Cranach, Brueghel, Gainsborough, Gandolfi, Corot, Palmer, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Raphael, and Gandolfi. Estimated total sales are suggested to exceed $48 million, and individual pieces are discussed with prices and estimates in pounds and dollars.
Théodore Rousseau's La Ferme dans les Landes – La Maison du Garde (oil on canvas) at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, with dimensions 64.5 x 99.1 cm; 25.4 x 39 in. The work was acquired through Matthiesen Gallery and co-owner Mark Brady, and discussed alongside Rousseau’s related studies and other landscapes from his 1844 Landes travels.
Roedig painting Tulips, roses and other flowers in a classical urn overturned by a cat chasing a mouse with a statue of Flora beyond; and Peaches, grapes, pumpkins, a lemon, a pomegranate and other fruit and flowers in a wicker basket on a marble plinth, with a classical urn beyond – sold as a pair – achieved £1,196,000 against a pre-sale estimate of £700,000-900,000. Other highlights included Theobald Michau’s A winter landscape selling for £240,000, François Boucher’s Les caresses dangereuses at £228,000, and a Portrait of two children by the Anglo Dutch School at £132,000. Several works exceeded estimates, including Jacques de Rousseaux’s An elderly bearded man in prayer at £78,000 and Giovanni Ghisolfi’s Classical ruins before an Italianate lake landscape at £74,000.
The article discusses whether La Bella Principessa, a drawing bought for $21,850 in 1998 and resold for $19,000 in 2007, is by Leonardo da Vinci or not, amid claims of a fingerprint and expert opinions. Martin Kemp believes it is likely a Leonardo (perhaps Bianca Sforza); Klaus Albrecht Schröder and others doubt the attribution. The piece notes the drawing’s provenance and the ongoing attribution dispute in the art world.
Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, dedicated to mid 20th-century European modern art, opened January 2, 2010. The Bechtler collection includes works by Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miro, Jean Tinguely, Max Ernst, Andy Warhol, Le Corbusier, Sol LeWitt, Edgar Degas, Nicolas de Stael, Barbara Hepworth and Picasso, among others. The collection was previously private and is now committed to the city of Charlotte; the Bechtler is part of a public-private cultural campus on South Tryon Street.
The heirs of a German Jewish art owner settled their claims over three Pablo Picasso paintings. The paintings are Absinthe Drinker (Angel Fernandez de Soto) (1903), Boy Leading a Horse (1905), and Le Moulin de la Galette (1900). Ownership remains with current holders: Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, Museum of Modern Art, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation respectively. The settlement follows a ruling by Judge Jed S. Rakoff extending remedies under U.S. law for victims of Nazi persecution without proving Nazi theft.
The Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation, the charitable arm founded by Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, reached a confidential settlement over ownership of a £30m Picasso portrait with the heirs of Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy. The painting The Absinthe Drinker, dating from 1903, had been withdrawn from a planned New York auction after a claim that it had been sold under duress in 1934 by the Nazis.
The heirs of German Jewish banker Paul von Mendelssohn and the current owner of Picasso's Le buveur d’absinthe announced an agreement. In 2006 the heirs claimed ownership of the painting from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s foundation; the parties have now settled with terms confidential, and the heirs relinquish their ownership rights. In 2009 similar claims were made regarding two other Picasso works in New York museums, leading to court involvement; those cases also resulted in confidential settlements without the paintings leaving the museums.
The Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation reached a confidential settlement with descendants of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy over Pablo Picasso's painting The Absinthe Drinker (Portrait of Angel Fernández de Soto). The artwork, valued at 33 million pounds (about 52 million USD), will be sold for charitable purposes. The dispute involved Julius Schoeps seeking the work's return; Christie’s had previously removed it from auction. Picasso's Absinthe Drinker is from 1903, part of his Blue Period.
Article discusses an out-of-court settlement regarding the Picasso painting The Absinthe Drinker, with descendants of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and the Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation, and mentions prior settlements with the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum.
Picasso show marks Zurich gallery's 100th birthday. The article discusses Kunsthaus Zurich's centenary program, including a preview of Emil Buehrle's private collection and events related to Carl Moser's birth anniversary; it mentions the 2009 visitor count and a 2015 relocation of the Buehrle collection to a new wing designed by David Chipperfield.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art will present Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales, organized by the American Federation of Arts and National Museum Wales, from January 30 to April 30. The exhibition features more than 50 works by artists including Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Honoré Daumier, Augustus John, Edouard Manet, Jean-François Millet, J.M.W. Turner, Vincent van Gogh, Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet.
The article reports that a dispute with Yale centers on the taking of a Van Gogh painting, with the claimant asserting the work is worth up to $150 million. The piece is by John Christoffersen of the Associated Press, published January 23, 2010.
Christie’s New York Old Master & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings, and Watercolors sale features Le pont sur le torrent by Hubert Robert, among works by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Jan Brueghel II, Thomas Gainsborough, Gaetano Gandolfi, Louis Léopold Boilly, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, and Samuel Palmer; total sales are expected to exceed $48 million.
Maegis blog headline fields extracted from this blue-chip news page: The page discusses Hubert Robert’s Le pont sur le torrent, 1780s, and the Christie’s Old Master sale in New York with a large-format painting estimated at $2-3 million. It mentions the sale’s overall expected total of over $48 million.
The work, long disputed over its authorship, is reported to have sold for US$1.5 million in New York, with Sotheby’s noting another version of La Belle Ferronniere is in the Louvre and generally deemed by da Vinci or a pupil. The painting is linked to Lucrezia Crivelli, a mistress of Ludovico Sforza, and its authentication has been a focal point of connoisseurship and controversy.