Displaying items by tag: Portrait

Its death sentence came down in a public courtroom, but the priceless estate of the Corcoran Gallery of Art is being divvied up under a cloak of secrecy.

Museum-goers who grew up with Rembrandt Peale’s portrait of George Washington and George Inness’s landscapes don’t know if these and other treasures from the city’s oldest private museum will hang on the walls of the National Gallery of Art or at one of the Smithsonian museums — or if they will be consigned to a storage facility.

A new cache of Pablo Picasso works from the personal collection of his granddaughter, Marina Picasso, said to be worth $290 million, are about to hit the market, reports the New York Post's Page Six.

Among the seven pieces allegedly for sale is a 1923 portrait of Marina's grandmother, Picasso's first wife, Olga Khokhlova. Titled "Portrait de femme (Olga)," it is thought to be worth $60 million. Dating from 1905 through 1965, the works being offered are also thought to include "Maternité" (1921), valued at about $54 million, and "Femme a la Mandoline (Mademoiselle Leonie assie)" 1911, worth roughly $60 million.

She looks off to the right, staring out into the middle distance, her mouth shut tight, her dainty nose directed ever so slightly downward. Her right hand rests upon a bare wooden table, while her left hand, decorated with a wedding ring, clutches a folded fan. Her hair is twisted up, away from her shoulders – which are bare save for two straps, somewhat unconvincingly holding up her cinched, classical black gown. On her head is a little diamond tiara, but other than that and the ring she wears no jewelry. Between her long neck and the plunging, heart-shaped neckline of her dress lie acres of flesh, as cold and pale as ice milk.

John Singer Sargent’s portrait of the so-called ‘Madame X’, painted in 1884 and now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has attracted and repelled generations of gallery-goers.

A portrait of a younger Mona Lisa, which its owners claim was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci before his more famous version, has gone on display. The painting is being exhibited in public for the first time in Singapore.

Its owners say expert tests and analysis confirm Da Vinci painted it 10 years before the better-known version. But its authenticity is disputed. Da Vinci expert Martin Kemp said it was "just another copy of the Mona Lisa, an unfinished one, and no more than that."

The Clark Art Institute recently received the gift of a significant, rare commissioned portrait by Winslow Homer.

"Charles Prentice Howland" (1878), an oil painting that has never been publicly exhibited, was donated to the Clark by the sitter's granddaughter, Susan Montgomery Howell. The painting, which had remained with the family since 1878, is on view at the Clark.

"We are grateful to Susan Montgomery Howell and her family for giving the Clark this important, little-known painting, which will now be enjoyed by the public. I have long known Charles Prentice Howland's namesake, C.P. Howland, so it is a true delight that this wonderful connection has brought us together," said Clark Director Michael Conforti.

The Andy Warhol Foundation's recent lawsuit to block the $20 million sale of an allegedly stolen Elizabeth Taylor portrait has sent shockwaves through the Pop-Art icon's family.

Though the foundation says their namesake's former bodyguard, Agusto Bugarin, stole "Liz" and then waited decades to sell it as potential challengers died off, two of Warhol's nephews came to Bugarin's defense in exclusive interviews with Courthouse News.

Like the rest of Andy's family, James and George Warhola have kept their Slovakian surname intact. Unlike their cousin, Donald Warhola, however, James and George have no association with the foundation. Four years ago, Donald took over for his late father, John, as trustee of an arts organization created in Warhol's will.

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery today unveiled a new acquisition, "Portrait of Lady Montgomery" by Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823). This elegant and impressive full-length portrait was allocated to the SNPG through the Acceptance in Lieu of Tax scheme early this year.

It is a major work by Sir Henry Raeburn, the leading Scottish portrait painter of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Full-length portraits from Raeburn’s late career are rare, and this imposing yet sensitively modelled work is the only example of a female sitter depicted by the artist in this format in the SNPG’s collection. Raeburn’s handling of Lady Montgomery’s features and clothes is at once vivid and yet highly subtle. She appears to gently smile at the viewer, while posed before a dramatic skyscape.

Christie’s auction on Tuesday 2nd December 2014 will be 'Old Master & British Paintings Evening Sale', in London; will feature a remarkable portrait by Sir Anthony van Dyck of the musician Hendrick Liberti. The work was in the collection of King Charles I at Whitehall by 1639; the piece has not been seen for almost a century, since its sale at Christie’s by the 8th Duke of Grafton in 1923.

The auction at Christie's will present a selection of 36 high quality works that have been curated with the aim of being new to the market and attractively priced.

The first thing you see in “Sturtevant: Double Trouble,” the Museum of Modern Art’s taut and feisty retrospective of the American artist Elaine Sturtevant, is work by artists far better known than Ms. Sturtevant herself.

Right at the start is the familiar 1972 photographic portrait of the German Conceptualist Joseph Beuys, in his porkpie hat and flak jacket, striding toward the camera. A bit farther on you’ll find Jasper Johns’s 1955 “Target With Four Faces,” a combination of painting, collage and sculpture and a MoMA treasure. Near it is Eliot Elisofon’s classic 1952 time-lapse photograph of Marcel Duchamp descending a staircase.

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.