Displaying items by tag: expert

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was one of the leading painters of his generation. His captivating portraits are universally admired for their insight into character, radiance of light and color, and painterly fluency and immediacy. "Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends," written by Richard Ormond, one of the foremost authorities on the artist, showcases Sargent’s cosmopolitan career in a new light—through his bold portraits of artists, writers, actors, and musicians, many of them his close friends—giving us a picture of the artist as an intellectual and connoisseur of the music, art, and literature of his day. Whether depicted in well-appointed interiors or en plein air, the cast of characters includes many famous subjects, among them Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin, Gabriel Fauré, W. B. Yeats, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Henry James. Because many of the sitters were his close friends, the artist was able to take a more informal, intimate approach to these portraits than in his formal commissions—and not only are the works penetrating studies of character, they are also records of friendships, allegiances, and influences.

Guy Bennett, a former auction house expert and dealer based in London has been tapped by Qatar Museums (formerly Qatar Museums Authority). According to Carol Vogel in the "New York Times," Qatar Museums announced this week that Bennett will become the institution's director of collections and acquisitions. A 13-year veteran of Christie's auction house, specializing in 20th-century art, Bennett left the company in 2009. Later that year, he formed Pelham Holdings, an art advisory firm.

The long-lost Caravaggio painting that the baroque master had with him when he died in 1610 has finally been identified, according to the world’s foremost authority on the artist.

Several copies of "Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy" are thought to exist. But now the Caravaggio scholar Mina Gregori has said she is confident of having made a “definitive” verification of the version that she has studied in a private European collection.

Bonhams is set to auction a rare pair of Brescian flintlock holster pistols, circa 1660–70, on November 26. The pistols, which will be sold in the antique arms and armor sale in Knightsbridge, London, are estimated to sell for £60,000–80,000 ($97,000–130,000).

Pietro Manani, who is listed by Brescian firearms expert Nolfo di Carpegna as “one of the most active craftsmen of his time," made the pistols. The length of his working life is unknown, and some speculate that the thirty-eight known examples of Manani's work may be the work of a father-son duo.

Last week, it was discovered that part of a fresco was missing from the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. It is believed that thieves broke into a closed-off section of the UNESCO World Heritage site and chiseled off a portion of the fresco bearing a depiction of the Greek goddess Artemis.

Police have launched an investigation into the disappearance of the eight-inch wide fragment. They will be reviewing surveillance footage from the perimeter of the site in hopes of identifying the thieves, but there are no security cameras within the ruins.

Professor Umberto Pappalardo, an archaeological expert at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University in Naples, told AFP he believes petty criminals were behind the theft, rather than art thieves aiming to sell the fragment on the international market. Pappalardo added, “Selling a stolen fresco from a site as well documented as Pompeii would be a very, very tall order. There would certainly not be any market for it in Italy.”    

In January, a fragment of fresco was taken from another part of Pompeii and sent to the curator’s office in an anonymous package. Pompeii, one of Italy's main tourist attractions, has become a symbol for decades of mismanagement of the country's cultural sites. Italy's new Culture Minister, Dario Franceschini, has promised to increase maintenance work at Pompeii. 

In 2000, the Denver Art Museum received a painting titled Venice: The Molo from the Bacino di S. Marco from the foundation of a deceased local collector. Covered in grime, the work was attributed to a student of the Italian 18^th century painter Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697-1768), better known as Canaletto, and placed in storage.

In 2007, Timothy Standring, the museum’s curator of painting and sculpture, noticed the canvas while doing routine inventory. Standring saw past the layers of discoloration to the masterful brushstrokes and detailed figures that lay beneath the grime. Intrigued, Standring embarked on a Canaletto-based research project that eventually brought him to London to meet with Charles Beddington, a renowned expert on the artist. After their meeting, during which Standring presented a photograph of the painting, Beddington agreed to visit the Denver Art Museum to examine the painting in person.

In January 2012, Beddington arrived in the United States and identified the work as an authentic Canaletto; he also dated the painting 1724, meaning it is one of the artist’s earliest undocumented works. The museum soon received a grant from the European Fine Art Fair Restoration Fund to restore the painting, a job that was delegated to James Squires, the institution’s associate conservator of paintings. Over 100 hours of restoration later, Squire’s uncovered the masterpiece that was there along. The painting, which features a brightly colored Venetian scene, is currently on view at the Denver Art Museum.

In 2006 The Cardsharps was sold to the late collector and scholar Sir Denis Mahon for just over $65,000 at an auction at Sotheby’s in London. At the time of the sale, Sotheby’s identified the work as being by a “follower” of the Italian master, Caravaggio (1571-1610). However, after his purchase, Mahon identified the work as a Caravaggio original and obtained an export license for the work that put its value at $15.5 million according to a claim filed at London’s High Court of Justice.

Due to their failure to identify The Cardsharps as an authentic Caravaggio painting, Sotheby’s is being sued by Lancelot William Thwaytes, who consigned the work to the 2006 auction. Thwaytes is now seeking unspecified damages, interest, and costs relating to the price difference between the painting’s 2006 selling price and what he believes it was actually worth on the open market that year had it been properly attributed to Caravaggio. Thwaytes claims that Sotheby’s was negligent in its research prior to the work’s sale, leading to its extraordinarily low selling price.

However, Sotheby’s stands behind its belief that the painting is a copy and not a work by Caravaggio’s hand, citing Caravaggio expert Professor Richard Spear and several other leading scholars. Sotheby’s added that their view was supported by the market’s reception to the painting when it was put up for auction.

Mahon, who passed away in 2011, donated 58 works from his collection worth around $155 million to various U.K. galleries.

British art collector, Douglas A.J. Latchford, has spent decades building his reputation as one of the foremost experts in Khmer antiquities. Latchford, a resident of Thailand, was knighted in 2008 by the Cambodian government for admirably returning 14^th-century Khmer artifacts.

In sharp contrast to his previous accolades, Latchford is currently the subject of a civil complaint files by the U.S. attorney’s office. Federal lawyers state that Latchford, referred to in proceedings as “the Collector,” bought a 10^th century Khmer warrior statue known as the Duryodhana in the 1970s knowing that it had been looted from a temple during the Cambodian civil war.

While Latchford denies ever having owned the work, court papers claim that he purchased the statue from a Thai dealer who acquired the work from an organized looting network. Allegedly, Latchford then helped get the piece into Britain by concealing what was actually being shipped. Upon its arrival to the U.K., the auction house Spink & Son sold the statue to a Belgian collector in 1975. The collector’s widow is the Duryodhana’s current owner.

The widow approached Sotheby’s New York in 2010, hoping to sell the 500-pound sandstone statue. However, the sale was put on hold because of objections from the Cambodian government. While lawyers are hoping to return the work to Cambodia, the auction house still plans on selling the treasure, stating that there is no evidence to prove that the statue was looted or that it is the property of the Cambodian government.

Latchford has been collecting Cambodian antiquities for over 55 years and has donated many works to well-known institutions, including the National Museum in Phnom Penh and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A judge is expected to rule on the Duryodhana case within the next few months.

Historian and American decorative arts expert, Wendell D. Garrett, died of natural causes on November 14 in Williston, Vermont. He was 83. Garrett was well known for his appearances as an appraiser on the PBS series, “Antiques Roadshow,” which launched in 1997. Garrett participated in every season of the program and will make a posthumous appearance on the show’s next season, which premieres January 7, 2013.

Prior to his work on “Antiques Roadshow,” Garrett served as the senior vice president in the American decorative arts department at Sotheby’s. He also wrote and edited a number of books on antiques including Victorian America: Classical Romanticism to Gilded Opulence (1993), Monticello and the Legacy of Thomas Jefferson (1994), and American Colonial: Puritan Simplicity to Georgian Grace (1995).

Born in Los Angeles in 1929, Garrett attended UCLA where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history. Subsequently, Garrett enrolled at the University of Delaware and received a master’s degree in early American culture from the school’s distinguished Winterthur program. He later earned another master’s degree in American history from Harvard.

Garrett joined the Adams Papers Project at the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1959 where he served as the assistant editor of the Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (1961), a four-volume set that starts with entries from 1755. Garrett is also credited with finding an even earlier Adams diary with entries beginning in 1753. The Earliest Diary of John Adams was published in 1966 with Garrett as associate editor.

Garrett’s three children, four grandchildren, and a brother survive him.

Last month the Edward Hopper House Art Center, located in the artist’s childhood home in Nyack, New York, dedicated one of its rooms to the late Reverend Arthayer R. Sanborn. A friend of the Hopper family, Sanborn led the First Baptist Church down the street from the Center and had lent the institution many works by Hopper his personal collection before his death in 2007. Sanborn also maintained the Hopper house when it fell vacant in the late 1960s.

Gail Levin, an art historian and foremost expert on Hopper, has stepped forward to object to Sanborn’s seemingly harmless recognition. Levin sent an e-mail to various news organization raising questions about how Sanborn came into his collection that included paintings, watercolors, and drawings by Hopper. Sanborn, who had eventually put more than 100 of works from his collection up for sale, claimed that Hopper and his wife, Josephine, had given many of the works to him. Levin rebutted this and said that during a conversation with Sanborn in the 1970s, he complained that Hopper had given him nothing, despite the fact that he was caring for him and his aging wife. Sanborn also claimed that he had purchased a number of works from the estate of Josephine Hopper, but under Mrs. Hopper’s will, it states that all of Hopper’s works were to go to the Whitney Museum of Art.

Officials at the Hopper House Center addressed Levin’s claims and said that the dispute was not of major concern as Sanborn has been deceased for the past five years, making her case difficult to pursue. The Center also values the Reverend’s contributions and isn’t looking to sever any ties with the Sanborn family.