Displaying items by tag: claude monet

Christie’s announced that it will sell the late billionaire philanthropist Edgar M. Bronfman Sr.’s substantial art collection, which includes works by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Egon Schiele, Milton Avery, and Henri Matisse. A selection of works from the collection will be offered during the auction house’s Impressionist and modern art evening sale in New York on May 6. The remaining 230 items, including decorative objects, jewelry, and antiquities, will be sold this year during sales in London, Hong Kong, and New York. Bronfman’s collection is expected to fetch more than $34 million. 

Highlights from the collection include Picasso’s “Mangeuse de Pasteque et Homme Ecrivant,” which is expected to bring $7 million to $10 million; a seascape by Matisse titled “Femme Aupres de la Fenetre,” which is estimated to fetch between $3 million and $5 million; and Monet’s “L’Escalier,” which is expect to garner between $1.5 million and $2.5 million. Most of the works being offered at Christie’s once hung in Bronfman’s Manhattan penthouse, which is on the market for $65 million.

Bronfman, who passed away in December, helmed the Seagram Company for 23 years before retiring in 1994. He also led the World Jewish Congress and helped establish it as the world’s preeminent Jewish organization.

Cornelius Gurlitt, the German man who had been hoarding a trove of Nazi-looted artworks in his Munich apartment, has agreed to return the works to their rightful owners. Gurlitt's lawyers are currently working with the descendants of Paul Rosenberg, a French art dealer, to return Henri Matisse's "Seated Woman/Woman Sitting in Armchair."

In November 2013, it was reported that in 2012, more than 1,400 artworks were uncovered in Gurlitt's apartment. In February 2014, around 60 more works were found in an Austrian home owned by Gurlitt, including works by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Pablo Picasso.  Two subsequent visits turned up 178 more works.

Gurlitt, 81, is the son of the art dealer Hildebrandt Gurlitt, who reportedly acquired the works in the late 1930s and 1940s. Gurlitt's father had been put in charge of selling the stolen artworks abroad by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, but secretly hoarded many of them and later claimed that they were destroyed in the bombing of Dresden. Gurlitt sold a number of the paintings over the years and lived off of the profits.

In November 2013, Gurlitt announced that he would not negotiate the return of the works in his possession.

40 paintings by Claude Monet from the private Marmottan Monet Museum in Paris are on view in the basement of Shanghai’s K11 Art Mall, a collection of designer boutiques and cafes interspersed with art displays. The show, which is China’s largest exhibition of Monet paintings ever opened, features some of the artist’s most well-known masterpieces including works from his “Water Lilies” series.

The exhibition’s organizers are hoping that the show will attract between 200,000 and 300,000 visitors durings its three-month run. Due to security concerns, only 3,000 people will be allowed to view the exhibition per day. The show is part of a series of events aimed at celebrating the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties between France and China.

The paintings on display represent about half of the Marmottan Museum’s Monet holdings. The institution’s collection also includes works by Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

"Master of Impressionism -- Claude Monet" will be on view at the K11 Art Mall through June 15.

According to a plan announced on Wednesday, February 19, Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art could hand over its vast, 17,000-piece collection to the government-backed National Gallery of Art. Under the proposed plan, George Washington University would assume control of the Corcoran’s historic Beaux-Arts building as well as the Corcoran College of Art and Design.

The proposal aims to keep the Corcoran open to the public and its collection, which features works by Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Edward Hopper and Willem de Kooning, would remain in public institutions. The National Gallery would present exhibitions of modern and contemporary art in the Corcoran under the name Corcoran Contemporary, National Gallery of Art. It would also oversee the Corcoran Legacy Gallery, which would present a selection of works from the Corcoran’s collection.

The Corcoran, the largest privately supported art museum in the country, opened to the public in 1897. The museum has been struggling financially for years and is in need of considerable renovations.

A decision regarding the proposal is expected to be made in April.

Earlier this year, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston invited the public to choose works for a special Impressionist exhibition. Over 24 days, fans chose from a selection of fifty works from the MFA’s Impressionist collection, casting their votes through the museum’s website or Facebook page. After receiving 41,497 submissions, the MFA has opened “Boston Loves Impressionism,” its first crowdsourced exhibition.

Participants expressed particular adoration for Vincent van Gogh’s “Houses at Auvers,” Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies,” and Edgar Degas’ “Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer.” In addition to the 30 works from the MFA’s collection, the exhibit includes five loans from local collectors.

Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA, said, “While the museum’s popular European Impressionism Gallery is closed for renovation, we thought it would be exciting to let the public choose which of their favorite works would remain on view. This is the first time we’ve ever presented an exhibition selected by the public.”

“Boston Loves Impressionism” will remain on view in the MFA’s Lois and Michael Torf Gallery through May 26, 2014.

Nearly 60 more artworks have been found at the Austrian home of Cornelius Gurlitt, a German recluse whose art hoard is suspected to contain Nazi-looted works. In November, it was reported that in 2012, more than 1,400 artworks were uncovered in Gurlitt’s dilapidated Munich apartment. The latest pieces, including works by Monet, Renoir and Picasso, were found at his Salzburg property. An initial inspection indicates that there is no Nazi loot in the latest trove.

Gurlitt, 81, is the son of the art dealer Hildebrandt Gurlitt, who reportedly acquired the works in the late 1930s and 1940s. Gurlitt’s father had been put in charge of selling the stolen artworks abroad by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, but secretly hoarded many of them and later claimed that they were destroyed in the bombing of Dresden. Gurlitt sold a number of the paintings over the years and lived off of the profits.

The task force in charge of researching the origins of the nearly 1,400 works discovered in Munich, has said that approximately 590 of them are suspected to have been looted or extorted by the Nazis from Jewish collectors. Authorities are in the process of locating the works’ rightful owners and publishing images of the paintings on www.lostart.de.

Asher Edelman, the founder of the art finance company Art Assure, is suing Artmentum, a Swiss company that advises art sales and acquisitions, for breach of contract and fraud. Edelman, a former Wall Street shark who was the real-life inspiration for the character Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film, ‘Wall Street,’ filed a lawsuit along with eight other defendants, claiming that Artmentum tried to swindle Art Assure out of hundreds of millions of euros.    

According to Edelman’s complaint, Artmentum offered him a large collection of masterworks, including pieces by Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse and Claude Monet, said to be owned by Hiroshima Bank, which was described as being owned primarily by the Japanese government. Artmentum claimed that for confidentiality purposes, Art Assure would have to purchase the collection through them rather than from the Japanese government. The lot was being offered for the shockingly low price of 350 million euros with the intention of later re-selling the works to make a profit. According to Artmentum, they had arrived at the asking price after Sotheby’s offered the company 315 million euros for the collection. However, a letter of financial capability was never presented and the transaction failed to reach completion. According to the complaint, Sotheby’s had tried to circumvent Artmentum and acquire the works directly from Hiroshima Bank, but were told that the collection was not for sale.

While this raised some red flags, Art Assure and Artmentum had signed a binding memorandum that stated that the Swiss company had the exclusive right to sell the collection and that a number of third party buyers had signed on to purchase a portion of the works, while Art Assure would help finance the deal, quelling any concerns. According to the agreement, Art Assure would provide a formal letter of interest and confirmation of financial capability and then the two parties would enter into a working agreement that would lead to the introduction of prospective buyers. However, in order to transport the works from Japan to Switzerland, Art Assure was asked to deposit the full cost of the collection to a bank in Switzerland.

After Artmentum and Art Assure signed the memorandum, Artmentum failed to provide proof of its exclusive agreement to sell the works, never provided Art Assure with official authorizations related to the export of the collection, never initiated a working agreement related to the introduction of prospective buyers, and never permitted Art Assure to perform due diligence. In addition, although the signed agreement forbade Artmentum from entering into negotiations with other parties, the company allegedly approached another party, as well as Christie’s, with a letter proposing a similar offer as the one made to Art Assure.

Upon further investigation, Art Assure discovered that Hiroshima Bank did not own the collection, the works are not, in fact, for sale, and the Japanese government does not own a large stake in the bank, nor does it have the power to sell the collection. Edelman’s complaint claims that Artmentum never had the authority to sell the works and that the collection was never appraised by Sotheby’s. In addition, Art Assure discovered that no third parties had signed on to acquire the paintings from the company once the transaction was complete.

Art Assure is asking for $204 million in damages due to lost profits from the sale. The company also wants punitive damages, in an amount that will be determined by the court.

Since September 2013, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. has acquired a number of important works from the 15th through 20th centuries including tempera-and-gold drawings on vellum from the Middle Ages and works on paper by Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin. Earl A. Powell III, the director of the National Gallery of Art, said, “These acquisitions are masterworks from the Middle Ages to the current moment that represent the highest levels of creativity in media ranging from printmaking and manuscript illumination to easel painting and photography. We are delighted that they can be shared with the public as part of our permanent collection.”

Among the museum’s recent acquisitions are a woodcut-illustrated book of Giovanni Boccaccio’s ‘Seminal History of Famous Women’, the Gallery’s earliest German woodcut book; ‘Still Life with Peacock Pie,’ a banquet piece measuring more than four feet across by the Dutch Golden Age painter Pieter Claesz; one of Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s finest versions of ‘Avenue of Cypresses at Villa d’Este’; a watercolor by Cézanne titled ‘A Stand of Trees Along a River Bank’; an early drawing by Gauguin titled ‘Seated Nude Seen from Above’; a pastel of Waterloo Bridge by Monet; and Pop artist Jim Dine’s ‘Name Painting.’ The National Gallery of Art also received works by artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Marc Chagall, Jasper Johns and Robert Motherwell from the celebrated Herbert and Dorothy Vogel Collection. 

The National Gallery of Art was established in 1937 for the people of the United States by a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress. Financier and art collector, Andrew W. Mellon, donated a portion of his sizeable art collection to the museum, forming its core holdings. The National Gallery of Art’s collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures and decorative arts spans from the Middle Ages to the present and includes the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas as well as the largest mobile ever created by Alexander Calder.

This spring, Christie’s will sell approximately 400 items from the collection of Huguette Clark, a reclusive copper heiress. The auction house has revealed that the trove includes Claude Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’, which has not been exhibited publicly since 1926 and is expected to fetch between $25 million and $35 million, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s ‘Young Women Playing Badminton,’ which is expected to bring between $10 million and $15 million.

Clark’s collection also includes musical instruments, Gilded Age furniture and rare books. The trove will be divided among two sales -- one on May 6 that will include the Monet and Renoir paintings, and another on June 18. The entire collection is expected to fetch more than $50 million. Before the sales, highlights from Clark’s holdings will go on view at Christie’s London and then at various locations throughout Asia.

Clark was the daughter of U.S. senator and copper tycoon, William A. Clark. Beginning in 1930, she led a largely reclusive life and when she passed away in 2011, she left behind an estate worth nearly $300 million. The proceeds from the upcoming sales will go to the estate, which will most likely be distributed between art institutions and distant relatives.

DeBruyne Fine Art of Naples, Florida, will host its thirteenth solo exhibition by internationally acclaimed artist Jenness Cortez. On view January 30 through March 31, 2014, 'Homage to the Creative Spirit 2014' presents the next chapter in an enriching visual conversation between the artist and the viewer. Among the many themes raised by her new realist work is Cortez’s heartfelt conviction that iconic images, when seen in familiar domestic settings, can inspire each of us to rediscover and revalue our own creative potential. Each intricate Cortez painting challenges the viewers’ intellectual curiosity and celebrates the sheer pleasure of beautiful painting. In her new work, Cortez plays author, architect, visual journalist, art historian, curator and pundit to help open our eyes to what we might otherwise have overlooked or taken for granted. In part, this year’s body of work pays homage Albrecht Dürer, George Stubbs, Albert Bierstadt, Pablo Picasso, George Inness, Winslow Homer, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Johannes Vermeer and Vincent Van Gogh.