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Displaying items by tag: Britain
This summer the Royal Collection will present Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of a Man, an exhibition that will place a selection of Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) anatomical drawings alongside modern 3D films as well as CT and MRI scans of the human body. Da Vinci worked tirelessly to gain an understanding of the inner workings of the human body, often dissecting corpses and recording his findings in comprehensive drawings. The Mechanics of a Man will illustrate how deeply the Renaissance master came to understand human anatomy through his exhaustive studies.
The drawings, which will go on view at the Queen’s Gallery Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, Scotland, are part of the Royal Collection and many have never been exhibited in Britain. The drawings were brought to England during the 17th century, bound into an album, and most likely purchased by King Charles II. The works, which include da Vinci’s Anatomical Manuscript A, 18 sheets crammed with 240 drawings and nearly 13,000 words of notes, have been in the Royal Collection since at least 1690.
Although da Vinci’s scientific findings were never published, he came extraordinarily close to discovering the role of the beating heart in circulating blood throughout the body. He also recorded accurately for the first time cirrhosis of the liver and narrowing of the arteries after dissecting a 100-year-old man in 1508. In 1510-1511, while working as a professor of anatomy, he created many multi-layered drawings portraying nearly every bone in the body, accurately depicting the spine for the first time as well as many of the major muscle groups.
The Mechanics of Man will present da Vinci’s famous drawing of a baby in a womb alongside a 3D ultrasound scan of a fetus. The exhibition will also place his drawings of a hand, which include the layers of bones, muscles, and tendons, beside a film of a dissected hand in high definition 3D. The exhibition will vividly illustrate just how groundbreaking da Vinci’s work was.
Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of a Man will be on view from August 2, 2013 through November 10, 2013.
The late German-born British painter, Lucian Freud (1922-2011), specified in his will that his private art collection was to be donated to British museums rather than burdening his family with an inheritance tax after his death. The bequest is part of a British law that allows “acceptance in lieu” of taxes for authors, artists, and collectors.
Considered one of Britain’s greatest painters best known for his portraits and figurative works, Freud owned a number of important masterpieces including Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot’s (1796-1875) Femme á la Manche Jaune (The Italian Woman or Woman with Yellow Sleeve) and three bronze sculptures by Edgar Degas (1834-1917). It has been determined that the Corot painting, which has not been on public view in over 60 years, will go to the National Gallery in London and the Degas sculptures, Horse Galloping on Right Foot, La Masseuse, and Portrait of a Woman Head Resting on One Hand, will go to Somerset House’s Courtauld Gallery.
The donation is a thank you of sorts from Freud to Britain. The grandson of Sigmund Freud, Lucian escaped Hitler’s wrath when he came to England as a child. He became a British citizen in 1939.
A painting by the Italian master Tiziano Vecellio (circa 1488/1490-1576), who is known in English as Titian, was recently discovered in London’s National Gallery. Located in Trafalgar Square, the museum houses the country’s collection of Western European paintings from the 13th to 19th centuries.
The portrait by Titian, a pivotal member of the 16th century Venetian school of painters, depicts Girolamo Fracastoro, a well-respected doctor at the time, draped in lynx fur. The National Gallery has owned the portrait of Fracastoro since 1924 but until recently attribution has been uncertain. The Fracastoro portrait underwent thorough restoration, revealing new information about the canvas and technique, prompting scholars and curators to uphold the attribution.
The painting is now being displayed as part of the National Gallery’s main collection. The portrait of Fracastoro is the third Titian painting to join the museum’s holdings since 2009 making the National Gallery’s Titian collection one of the finest in the world.
Scottish artist, Douglas Gordon, who won a Turner Prize in 1996 and represented Britain at the 1997 Venice Biennale, was told Wednesday, November 28, that his solid gold sculpture, The Left Hand and the Right Hand Have Abandoned One Another (2007), had gone missing from Christie’s London. Worth approximately $800,000, Christie’s was unable to tell Gordon when the piece had disappeared from their warehouse or where it had gone.
The piece had been part of an exhibition curated by Michael Hue Williams and organized in part by Christie’s. Though Gordon owns the work, it was out on consignment when it disappeared and Williams is being held responsible for any information surrounding its disappearance.
Disconcertingly, Christie’s failed to notify Gordon of the work’s disappearance until two weeks after they realized it had gone missing. Christie’s confirmed that the sculpture was returned to its vault on May 24. On August 14 the work was transferred to a small box from its vault and sometime after that, an art handler or technician noticed that the box had no weight. Christie’s reported the work missing to officials on November 8, but a proper investigation did not begin until November 12.
Composed of nearly 9 pounds of gold, Gordon believes that his work was melted down, as it would be easier to sell that way, although the value would decrease. The Left Hand and the Right Hand Have Abandoned One Another was supposed to be prominently featured at an upcoming exhibition of Gordon’s work at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
Sculptures by Henry Moore will be brought by crane into the heart of the Kremlin next Spring, while works by Antony Gormley will be shown at the Hermitage in St Petersburg, and there will be the first exhibition in Russia of work by the visionary poet and painter William Blake at the Pushkin museum.
The peace-making loans from the UK are announced Monday by the British Council to coincide with the visit of David Cameron. They represent a remarkable thaw in cultural diplomactic relations. They will mean major Russian exhibitions in Britain, including one on Catherine the Great, coming next year from the Hermitage to the newly expanded National Museum of Scotland.
Just four years ago the British Council was ordered to close its offices outside Moscow. The move was widely seen as having nothing to do with claim by the Russian authorities that the council was operating illegally in breach of tax regulations and everything to do with the collapse in relations between the two countries following the murder of Alexander Litvinenko and Britain's expulsion of Russian diplomats.
Now peace has broken out again. Martin Davidson, chief executive of the council, said: "I am delighted that the visit of the prime minister to Moscow has led to this initiative. The cultural and educational relationship with Russia matters – in both directions – and this agreement is a huge boost to collaboration between our two countries."
He added that cultural connections "build trust, and trust underpins trade".
The new warmth in relations has already borne fruit. When Andrea Rose, head of exhibitions at the council, met the head of the complex of museums within the medieval walled fortress of the Kremlin to discuss the Henry Moore exhibition, she commented on her unusal name. Elena Gagarina, director of the Kremlin museums, is indeed the daughter of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, and the outcome of their conversation was his statue which now stands outside the British Council offices on the Mall in London – a gift from the Russian Space Agency.
Sotheby’s auction sales for the first six months of the year reached $2.91 billion (£1.8 billion), a 35 per cent increase on last year, nearing its first six months record $2.95 billion in 2008. Christie’s auction sales figures are not yet available, but are thought to be close.
The figures were topped up by one of the most successful fortnights of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art auctions in London, which ended last Thursday, and realised £516.2 million, the third highest on record for such a series in London, just a fraction behind the £520 million achieved in February 2008. The Impressionist and modern art sales, which I reviewed last week, were dominated by the more modern art and realised close to £280 million, second only, in London, to the June 2008 series of £298 million.
Last week it was the turn of post-war and contemporary art, the area that was most hit by the recession. Having lagged far behind the Impressionist and modern art market during 2010, contemporary art is catching up again, and the sales last week brought just over £236 million, a 102 per cent increase on last summer. In spectacular fashion, Sotheby’s achieved the highest total for a single contemporary art auction outside New York of £109 million.
A couple of observations can be made. Painting, and predominantly figurative painting, though not necessarily in the conventional sense, was in the ascendant. Big prices were paid at Christie’s for a darkly ominous portrait by Francis Bacon (£18 million to a Russian buyer), a West Indian river scene by Peter Doig (£6.2 million to a US buyer), and a vertiginous view of a bull ring by the Spanish artist, Miquel Barcelo (£4 million to a European buyer). And at Sotheby’s records tumbled for the German new wave paintings of the 1960’s - satirical, expressive and fundamentally figurative - by Sigmar Polke (£5.7 million from a European buyer for ‘Jungle’, pictured), and Georg Baselitz (£3.2 million from the American trade for ‘Spekulatius’, pictured). European, and especially the German art from the collection of Count Duerkheim, eclipsed the American art on offer. Much of this, though classified as ‘contemporary’, was in fact historic, dating from the 50’s and 60’s, by artists now of the older generation, or no longer living.
BATH, UK – America, as it looks from the other side of the pond, is examined in contrasting exhibitions celebrating the 50th anniversary of the American Museum in Britain in Bath this year. The results may surprise you.
Monroe Mania
With the fiftieth anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death approaching in 2012, tributes are rolling in. “Marilyn – Hollywood Icon,” on view through October 30, satisfies public curiosity about the doomed diva while making a compelling argument for cinema as America’s greatest 20th century art form. The show has been a massive hit with visitors.
“Devotees are coming in great droves,” acknowledges the museum’s curator, Laura Beresford, who organized the display that showcases film costumes and personal gowns assembled by the Channel Islands collector David Gainsborough Roberts. The show includes two of Monroe’s hottest numbers, the “wiggle” dress that established her blonde-bombshell reputation in Niagara in 1952 and the red-sequined gown from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes of 1953. A brass figure of a dancer, a rare keepsake from M.M.’s orphanage days, joins original photographs and posters in the display.
“The girl who extolled the virtues of diamonds died $400,000 in debt. She owned very little. Most of her money was spent on a great circle of hangers on,” laments the curator.
Fabulous Folk Art
Monroe memorabilia contrasts with the folk art that is at the heart of the American Museum in Britain’s 15,000 object collection, the finest of its kind outside the United States. Most of it was acquired in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the museum’s founders, Dallas Pratt (1914-1994), an American psychiatrist and heir to a Standard Oil fortune, and John Judkyn (1913-1963), an English antiques dealer who became an American citizen. The partners established the museum with the goal of improving Anglo-American relations and heightening awareness of American folk art, not well understood outside of the United States.
“Here in Britain, the emphasis has been on the folk, not on the art. We have contextualized these pieces in a gallery setting,” Beresford says of the museum’s new Folk Art Gallery, installed in a recently renovated neoclassical picture gallery. In “Fab@50,” on view through October 30, fifty folk-art treasures, some rarely shown, are scattered throughout the period rooms at Claverton Manor, the Grade II stately house that is home to the American Museum in Britain.
Known for brokering the Gunn Collection to the New York State Historical Association, Southport, Ct., dealer Mary Allis advised Judkyn and Pratt on the their purchases for Claverton Manor. When Judkyn died in a road accident in France in 1963, Allis presented the museum with a penetrating portrait by the deaf-mute itinerant, John Brewster, Jr. Folk sculpture, including cigar store Indians and a ship’s figurehead, came from Helena Penrose, a Tarrytown, N.Y., dealer who supplied Henry F. DuPont, among others.
Museum highlights include a gilded copper Indian weathervane much like the one that New York collector Jerry Lauren bought for $5.8 million in 2006 and a Susan’s Tooth. Among the first pieces of American scrimshaw to be studied, Susan’s teeth, engraved by Frederick Myrick aboard the Susan of Nantucket in 1828 and 1829, enjoy iconic status among collectors. In August 2010, Cape Cod dealers Alan Granby and Janice Hyland paid $200,600, a record at auction, for one at Northeast Auctions in Portsmouth, N.H.
The itinerant painter Sturtevant J. Hamblen (1817-1844) is represented by the oil on canvas portrait of Emma Thompson. “He tried so hard but ended up selling gentlemen’s trousers,” the curator says of her favorite artist.
Written by Laura Beresford, Folk Art from the American Museum in Britain is an informative and lushly illustrated guide to the museum’s enviable holdings. It joins Classic Quilts: The American Museum in Britain, also by Beresford.
Judkyn, Pratt and their milieu will come into sharper focus later this year with the publication of A Kind of Archaeology: Collecting American Folk Art, 1876-1976 by Elizabeth Stillinger. A companion to her well-thumbed reference, The Antiquers, this exhaustive new volume from University of Massachusetts Press studies folk art’s most ardent enthusiasts, from the pioneers Henry C. Mercer and Edwin AtLee Barber to Jean Lipman and Mary Allis.
Write to Laura Beach at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
BATH, UK – America, as it looks from the other side of the pond, is examined in contrasting exhibitions celebrating the 50th anniversary of the American Museum in Britain in Bath this year. The results may surprise you.
Monroe Mania
With the fiftieth anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death approaching in 2012, tributes are rolling in. “Marilyn – Hollywood Icon,” on view through October 30, satisfies public curiosity about the doomed diva while making a compelling argument for cinema as America’s greatest 20th century art form. The show has been a massive hit with visitors.
“Devotees are coming in great droves,” acknowledges the museum’s curator, Laura Beresford, who organized the display that showcases film costumes and personal gowns assembled by the Channel Islands collector David Gainsborough Roberts. The show includes two of Monroe’s hottest numbers, the “wiggle” dress that established her blonde-bombshell reputation in Niagara in 1952 and the red-sequined gown from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes of 1953. A brass figure of a dancer, a rare keepsake from M.M.’s orphanage days, joins original photographs and posters in the display.
“The girl who extolled the virtues of diamonds died $400,000 in debt. She owned very little. Most of her money was spent on a great circle of hangers on,” laments the curator.
Fabulous Folk Art
Monroe memorabilia contrasts with the folk art that is at the heart of the American Museum in Britain’s 15,000 object collection, the finest of its kind outside the United States. Most of it was acquired in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the museum’s founders, Dallas Pratt (1914-1994), an American psychiatrist and heir to a Standard Oil fortune, and John Judkyn (1913-1963), an English antiques dealer who became an American citizen. The partners established the museum with the goal of improving Anglo-American relations and heightening awareness of American folk art, not well understood outside of the United States.
“Here in Britain, the emphasis has been on the folk, not on the art. We have contextualized these pieces in a gallery setting,” Beresford says of the museum’s new Folk Art Gallery, installed in a recently renovated neoclassical picture gallery. In “Fab@50,” on view through October 30, fifty folk-art treasures, some rarely shown, are scattered throughout the period rooms at Claverton Manor, the Grade II stately house that is home to the American Museum in Britain.
Known for brokering the Gunn Collection to the New York State Historical Association, Southport, Ct., dealer Mary Allis advised Judkyn and Pratt on the their purchases for Claverton Manor. When Judkyn died in a road accident in France in 1963, Allis presented the museum with a penetrating portrait by the deaf-mute itinerant, John Brewster, Jr. Folk sculpture, including cigar store Indians and a ship’s figurehead, came from Helena Penrose, a Tarrytown, N.Y., dealer who supplied Henry F. DuPont, among others.
Museum highlights include a gilded copper Indian weathervane much like the one that New York collector Jerry Lauren bought for $5.8 million in 2006 and a Susan’s Tooth. Among the first pieces of American scrimshaw to be studied, Susan’s teeth, engraved by Frederick Myrick aboard the Susan of Nantucket in 1828 and 1829, enjoy iconic status among collectors. In August 2010, Cape Cod dealers Alan Granby and Janice Hyland paid $200,600, a record at auction, for one at Northeast Auctions in Portsmouth, N.H.
The itinerant painter Sturtevant J. Hamblen (1817-1844) is represented by the oil on canvas portrait of Emma Thompson. “He tried so hard but ended up selling gentlemen’s trousers,” the curator says of her favorite artist.
Written by Laura Beresford, Folk Art from the American Museum in Britain is an informative and lushly illustrated guide to the museum’s enviable holdings. It joins Classic Quilts: The American Museum in Britain, also by Beresford.
Judkyn, Pratt and their milieu will come into sharper focus later this year with the publication of A Kind of Archaeology: Collecting American Folk Art, 1876-1976 by Elizabeth Stillinger. A companion to her well-thumbed reference, The Antiquers, this exhaustive new volume from University of Massachusetts Press studies folk art’s most ardent enthusiasts, from the pioneers Henry C. Mercer and Edwin AtLee Barber to Jean Lipman and Mary Allis.
Write to Laura Beach at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
China overtook Britain as the world's second largest art and antiques market last year, a new report showed, and British art officials voiced concern that an EU levy planned in 2012 would further undermine its position.
"The Global Art Market in 2010: Crisis and Recovery" underlined what auction houses and consigners had seen throughout last year -- a sharp rise in the number of wealthy Chinese buyers, and, with them, prices.
The report, commissioned by the European Fine Art Foundation, estimated the value of the global art and antiques market in 2010 at 43 billion euros ($60 billion), up 52 percent from 2009 when values slumped as a result of the financial crisis.
"The period from 2008 through 2010 has been one of crisis and recovery for the market for art and antiques," said the report, released on Monday.
"Luxury spending contracted sharply in many countries during 2009, however 2010 brought the first signs of economic recovery with a rebound in consumer confidence and with Chinese consumers driving growth in many luxury sectors."
The report highlighted concerns in Britain that an EU art tax due to be imposed in 2012 could further damage the country's ability to cope with increasing competition from abroad.
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