Displaying items by tag: attributed

Johannes Vermeer’s (1632-1675) iconic and entrancing Girl with a Pearl Earring is currently on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta as part of the exhibition Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis. The show, which includes works by other Dutch Golden Age masters such as Rembrandt (1606-1669), Frans Hals (1580-1666) and Jan Steen (1629-1679), marks the first time the painting has been on view in the Southeastern United States. The exhibition’s 35 works are on loan from The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of only about three-dozen paintings attributed to Vermeer. The last time the painting visited the U.S. was during a retrospective of the artist’s work at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. in 1996. Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis debuted at the de Young Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco earlier this year and later traveled to the Frick Collection in New York. The High Museum has allotted Vermeer’s masterpiece its own gallery.

Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis will be on view at the High Museum of Art through September 29, 2013.

Beyond the Bed: The American Quilt Evolution, which is on view at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York, traces the evolution of the North American quilt from the early 19^th century to the present day. The exhibition is guest curated by Jean M. Burke of Vermont’s Shelburne Museum and explores how the form, fashion and, function of quilts have changed over the centuries.

Beyond the Bed presents a wide variety of objects from bed coverings, wall decorations, and clothing to three-dimensional sculptures and furniture accessories. While, some of the quilts on view are traditional in pattern and construction, others are more progressive.

Highlights include a rare pincushion quilt attributed to a member of the Vanderbilt family; Ella B. Chase’s (unknown-1919) Pickwick Papers Crazy Quilt depicting characters from Charles Dickens’ Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club; a tromp l’oeil quilt carved by Fraser Smith (b. 1971) from a 200-pound block of wood; and a free-standing quilted sculpture by Dominique Ehrmann.

Beyond the Bed: The American Quilt Evolution will be on view through June 16, 2013.

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.

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.