Displaying items by tag: Old Master

The former owner of a disputed Caravaggio has lost his battle for compensation from an auction house. Lancelot William Thwaytes sold "The Cardsharps" at Sotheby's in 2006 for £46,000 after being told it was by a follower of the Old Master.

The new owner subsequently insured the painting for millions - after a close friend, an art expert, claimed it was in fact an original Caravaggio. Sotheby's maintains the painting is not by the artist.

Mr. Thwaytes attempted to sue Sotheby's of London, for giving him negligent advice after the new owner had the artwork valued at £10m. Lawyers for Mr. Thwaytes accused Sotheby's of not consulting enough top experts or sufficiently testing the painting before the 2006 sale.

Christie’s announces the sale of two Italian private collections, the first from the Rome apartment of Principessa Ismene Chigi Della Rovere and the second from the palazzo of a Noble Genoese Family. Comprising over 225 lots this diverse sale offers collectors and decorators a wonderful insight into 20th century Italian style and glamour, presenting a rich and varied selection of Old Master pictures and decorative objects from around the world, which range from 18th century Italian and French furniture and Art Nouveau glass, to Chinese and Japanese works of art. Estimates range from £500 to £25,000 and the pre-sale viewing will be at Christie’s 85 Old Brompton Road from January 31 to February 3. The auction will be held on February 4, 2015 at Christie’s South Kensington and provides an opportunity to acquire exceptional antiques and works of art from two noble Italian families.

Christie's New York has announced that it will auction an extraordinarily rare, early Caravaggio entitled "Boy Peeling a Fruit" (1591) on January 28, as part of Old Masters Week, Art Daily reports.

The masterpiece, which depicts a young boy sitting at a table peeling an orange, has a pre-sale estimate of $3 to $5 million. "Boy Peeling a Fruit" is considered to be one of the earliest known paintings by Caravaggio, and it displays the artist's signature use of dramatic lighting contrasts.

If you are a fan of “Downton Abbey,” you won’t want to miss “Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House” at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor before it closes Jan. 18.

Built in Norfolk in the 1720s for England’s first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, Houghton Hall features grand rooms designed by architect William Kent to house Walpole’s Old Master paintings, elegant furniture (some designed by Kent to go with the rooms), elaborate tapestries and Roman antiquities. Many of these rooms are recreated at the Legion as settings for luxurious furniture, silver and china, and paintings by English artists Thomas Gainsborough and William Hogarth.

Sotheby’s January 2015 Old Master Week in New York will feature a select group of highly important paintings assembled by noted collector J.E. Safra. The choice offering of 17 paintings presents a wide range of styles and genres of the period including the Dutch Golden Age, as well as 18th century Italian and French. The vast majority of the works have been off the market for at least 20 years and together the group is estimated to bring $22/34 million. The paintings will go on public exhibition, alongside Sotheby’s Old Master Week sales, beginning January 24.

Leading a very strong group of Dutch works to be offered in Sotheby’s January 2015 sales is "Frozen River at Sunset," painted by Aert van der Neer in or shortly after 1660, a period that was a high point for Dutch landscape painting and for the artist himself (est. $4/6 million).

To celebrate her 100th birthday, the long-standing benefactor of Frankfurt's Städel Museum, Dagmar Westberg, has donated Jusepe de Ribera's "St. James the Greater" (ca. 1615/16) to the museum's old masters collection. The painting is one of the most valuable and significant works by the Spanish painter.

Ribera (1591-1652) is widely considered as one of the most important 17th century artists. His painting style united aspects of two major European artistic schools. Although Ribera was born in the Spanish province of Valencia, he spent most of his life working in the Italian cities of Rome and Naples. Consequently, he is thought of as not only one of the most influential Spanish artists, but also one of the most important Italian baroque painters.

Bonhams is to sell Lucas Cranach the Younger’s portraits of Prince Joachim Ernst von Anhalt and his first wife, Princess Agnes Gräfin von Barby at its Old Master Pictures sale in London on 3 December. The portraits are being sold as one lot, estimated at £80,000-120,000.

Joachim Ernst von Anhalt was born in 1536 in Dessau, in what is now the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. After an extensive education under the supervision of his father he was admitted to the University of Wittenberg at the age of just thirteen. The deaths successively of his father, uncle and brothers led to Joachim’s emergence in 1570 as the sole ruler of the Anhalt estates, the first time this had happened since their partition in 1252.

Frans Verbeeck's "The Mocking of Human Follies" (c.1560) was sold at auction last night in Vienna for a staggering £2.3 million. The sum is an all-time record for the artist. It also marks one of the highest selling prices ever achieved at an Austrian auction.

The auction of the masterpiece took place last night at the Viennese headquarters of the Dorotheum's auction house. The Verbeeck painting is said to have caused quite a stir at the auction house's Old Master Paintings sale. According to the Austrian newspaper "The Local," the painting had a presale estimate of between £709,000 to £945,000. It is reported that the work was sold to an unnamed Flemish bidder - after a hard-fought bidding war.

New York City will welcome nearly 30 of the world’s leading dealers in Master Drawings from January 24th through January 31st when the ninth edition of Master Drawings New York hosts themed exhibitions in more than two dozen Upper East Side galleries between East 63rd and 93rd Streets.

Founded in 2006 as a way to draw upon and buttress the presence of collectors and museum officials during the important January art-buying events, including the Old Master auctions and The Winter Antiques Show, Master Drawings New York has become an important part of the winter art scene in its own right, attracting the most influential dealers not only in New York but in England, France, Italy, Germany and Spain.