Displaying items by tag: painter

Titian’s Saint John the Baptist entered Madrid’s Museo del Prado’s collection in 1872 but rather than being credited to the Italian painter of the 16^th century, it was said to be by an anonymous Madrid School artist of the 17^th century. Fourteen years later, the painting was sent to the parish church of Nuestra Senora del Carmen in Cantoria in the province of Almeria where it remained on loan until 2007.  

The Prado held an exhibition of Titian’s work in 2003 and published an accompanying catalogue in which Miguel Falomir, Head of the Department of Italian and French Paintings at the Museum and the exhibition’s curator, suggested that the painting in Cantoria was a copy of a long-lost Titian painting. In 2007 the Museum embarked on a study of the work only to find that the piece was not a copy but an original Titian painting. The work’s preparatory layer of white lead and calcium carbonate and the similarities between that painting and two other depictions of Saint John the Baptist done by the artist in the early 1550s helped researchers to date the painting and bolstered their decision to re-attribute the work to Titian.

The work arrived at the Prado in poor condition and underwent thorough restoration by Clara Quintanilla. The will be on display alongside the two other versions until February 10, 2013.

A portrait of Winston Churchill by Sir William Orpen, a renowned British portrait painter and war artist, will go on public display after years of hanging in the home of Churchill’s late grandson.

Dating back to 1916, the portrait was painted before Churchill became prime minister, but after he resigned from his post as First Lord of the Admiralty due to the failure of WWI’s Gallipoli campaign, the joint British and French operation that was mounted to capture the Ottoman capital of Constantinople and secure a sea route to Russia. Churchill had said that the portrait revealed his soul during one of his darkest hours.

The painting will go on display today at the National Portrait Gallery in London as part of a 10-year loan. The National Portrait Gallery said that Churchill regarded the emotionally revealing painting as the finest one of himself. The portrait was briefly on view at a 2005 exhibition at the Imperial War Museum but has otherwise remained out of public sight. Sandy Nairne, the National Portrait Gallery’s director said, “I am very pleased that the Churchill family has agreed that this outstanding portrait by William Orpen of Winston Churchill, the nation’s greatest 20^th century statesman, should now be on public display.”

The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles has acquired a number of 18^th and 19^th century prints by James Ensor (Belgian, 1860 – 1949) and Jean-Jacques de Boissieu (French, 1736 – 1810). An anonymous collector gifted the works to the museum. “Prints are a significant collecting priority for us,” said Marcia Reed, chief curator of special collections at the Getty. The gift will flesh out the museum’s already impressive Ensor holdings and will add a solid representation of Boissieu’s work.

Among the Ensor prints are three hand-colored etchings that are exceptional examples of his work from the 1890s, the period that is considered to be his artistic peak. Two of the three prints were inspired by Edgar Allen Poe stories and bear the skeletons, masks, and crowds of people that Ensor often included in his work. The Getty already has a compilation of Ensor’s correspondence and manuscripts including 100 signed postcards and letters, 16 prints, and his masterpiece, Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889 in its collection.

The gift of Boissieu’s work includes 23 etchings that span the artist’s career. Well-known as a painter and draftsman, Boissieu was also a renowned printmaker and was highly regarded for his work during the 18^th century. The collection includes several sheets of Boissieu’s studies of heads – both human and animal.

The Getty Museum plans to host a major, monographic exhibition of Ensor’s work in 2014. The show will include the prints gifted to the Research Institute.

Uzbekistan seems an unlikely venue for a rare Pablo Picasso exhibition, but Tashkent’s State Arts Museum currently has 12 “forgotten” ceramics by the artist on view. The works were first exhibited in Tashkent in the 1960s and have remained in storage since then. While it is not clear why the pieces have remained out of sight for so long, some suggest that they may have been forgotten.

Uzbekistan is known for its own pottery and ceramics industry and is well known for its art collection as it has long been used by wealthy Russians to house valuable artworks, many of which were taken there during World War II for safe keeping.

The French painter and close friend of Picasso, Fernand Leger, and his wife, Nadya, originally owned the 12 ceramic pieces. When Leger died in 1955, Nadya decided to donate the works to museums in the former Soviet Union.

While most people associate Picasso with his paintings and drawings, he produced more than 2,000 ceramic pieces between 1947 and 1948.

A curator at the Dallas Museum of Art discovered an unsigned painting likely created by the American landscape painter, George Inness. The work has been in the museum’s collection for more than 80 years but had been attributed to Asher B. Durand, one of the leading figures of the Hudson River School painters. The mid-19^th century art movement had a profound influence on Inness’ work.

After experts at the museum questioned In the Woods’ attribution, American art curator Sue Canterbury decided to do some research on the oil on canvas. Canterbury explored other artists whose work fit with In the Woods’ aesthetic and stumbled upon Michael Quick’s George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonne. Within the raisonne Canterbury found a pen and ink drawing that bore a striking resemblance to In the Woods. It was then that the museum decided to reattribute the painting to Inness.

The bucolic forest scene has been renamed Stream in the Mountains by curators and will be display at the museum. It is a significant work because it is from Inness’ early years and not many of his works from this era have survived.

Last week at Sotheby’s auction house in London, Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (809–4) sold to a telephone bidder for $34.2 million, the highest price paid for a living artist’s work at auction. Previously owned by musician and collector, Eric Clapton, the abstract painting was estimated to bring $14.1 million to $18.8 million.

Alex Branczik, Senior Director and Head of the Evening Auction of Contemporary Art, said, “The combination of outstanding provenance and gold-standard quality in this sublime work by this blue-chip artist made for an historic auction moment. Gerhard Richter’s international appeal as one of the hottest Contemporary artists was once again confirmed this evening.”

The German postwar painter, best known for his abstract and figurative works, was recently the subject of a critically acclaimed retrospective, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, at the Tate Modern in London, the Pompidou Center in Paris, and the Staatlichen Museum in Berlin. After the show, the prices of Richter’s works have continued to climb.

Friday’s sale beat out Jasper Johns’ Flag painting from the 1960s, which brought $28.6 million at Christie’s in 2010, for a living artist at auction. Richter, 80, lives in Cologne, Germany.

Sotheby’s hosted a number of sales in Hong Kong this past week. On October 7^th, the Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian paintings sale achieved $15.5 million, soaring past the pre-sale estimate of $5.8 million. The sale achieved the highest auction total for this category and the painting Fortune and Longevity by Lee Man Fong, an Indonesian modern master, set a record for any Southeast Asian painting when it sold for $4.4 million. The final price for the painting was almost three times the pre-sale estimate.

The Contemporary Asian Art sale totaled $15.1 million and Tiananmen No. 1 by Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter, Zhang Xiaogang, was the top lot at $2.69 million. Liu Wei’s Revolutionary Family Series – Invitation to Dinner was the second highest sale at $2.24 million, a world record price at auction for the Beijing-based artist who works in various mediums including video, installation, drawings, sculpture, and painting.

The 20^th Century Chinese Art sale brought in $24.6 million and sold 90% by lot. Works from Europe, the United States, and around Asian sold well and many were above their pre-sale estimates. The top lot was Potted Chrysanthemums by the Chinese modern art pioneer, Sanyu, which sold for $3.99 million.

The following day, the Fine Chinese Paintings sale totaled $53.2 million, the highest of the four art auctions. Offering many works from private collections, the total sale was more than double the pre-sale estimate and sold 97.2% by lot. The two top lots at the auction, Zhang Daqian’s Swiss Peaks; Calligraphy in Xingshu and Fu Baoshi’s Lady at the Pavillion, both sold for $2,974,278.

Last year China beat out the United States as the world’s largest art and antiques market and the autumn sales reflect that power swap. There was a bit of controversy when a 60-year-old Taiwanese Buddhist sister demanded that a $1.65 million sale be halted at the Fine Chinese Paintings auction. Sotheby’s canceled the sale of a painting by Zhang Daqian after Lu Chieh-chien requested a court hearing to prevent bidding on Riding in the Autumn Countryside (1950) which she claims was the property of her family and had been consigned without consent.

When Beth Feeback, an artist based in North Carolina, bought two paintings at her local thrift shop for just $9.99, she assumed they were a couple of outdated pieces from the 1970s. Feeback brought her purchases home and planned to cover the works with her signature oversized cat faces. Luckily, Feeback turned the paintings around before going to work on her feline creations.

A closer look at the thrift store finds revealed a label identifying Ilya Bolotowsky (1907–1981), a leading 20^th century abstract painter, as the artist of one of the works. The label also indicated that the painting had once been on display at the Weatherspoon Art Gallery at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. After a couple of Google searches, Feeback realized that she had something special on her hands.

The bidding began at Sotheby’s on September 21^st and the painting, identified as Vertical Diamond, sold for much more than expected. While the estimated auction price was set at $15,000 to $20,000, the painting ended up selling for $34,500. Feeback told ABC that her and her husband planned to renovate their home and pay down some debts with the sale’s proceeds. As an homage to Bolotowsky, Feeback will re-create Vertical Diamond, but with giant cat faces painted in the middle.

Concurrent Rockwell Kent (1882–1971) exhibitions will open at St. Lawrence’s University’s Richard F. Brush Art Gallery and Owen D. Young Library on October 15. An American painter, printmaker, illustrator, and writer, Kent spent most of his adult life living and working at Asgaard Farm in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. A prominent artist, author, activist, and adventurer, Kent was one of the most noted figures of his time.

The two St. Lawrence exhibitions will present key areas of Kent’s multi-faceted career as a painter and printmaker. A student of William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, Kent’s early paintings exhibit an impressionistic style and simple three-plane composition that anticipated his later, more modern inclinations to simplify his paintings’ compositions. A select group of books highlight Kent’s preeminence as one of the finest illustrators of his time. The prints and drawings on view show Kent’s mastery of chiaroscuro and his knack for reworking original imagery into everything from commercial greeting cards and advertisements to seals and pottery.

Rockwell Kent: The Once Most Popular Artist includes nearly 75 works spanning Kent’s entire artistic career as well as his varied endeavors into different mediums. Kent specialist, Scott R. Ferris, who will also give a lecture at the exhibitions opening on October 15, curated the show. The Once Most Popular Artist will be on view through December 14, 2012.

When painter Philip Pearlstein moved to Manhattan in 1949, he and his college pal Andy Warhol subletted an dingy eighth-floor walk-up on St. Marks Place and Avenue A.

“The bathtub was in the kitchen and it was usually full of roaches, incredible roaches,” Mr. Pearlstein once said of the apartment. Nor did their lot improve when they relocated to a West 23rd Street loft a few months later.