Displaying items by tag: anthony van dyck

A selection of oil paintings from Russia’s Hermitage Museum will be on view at Houghton Hall in England from May 17, 2013 through September 29, 2013. Great Britain’s first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, assembled the collection during the first half of the 18^th century and built Houghton Hall to house the works. Paintings from Russian and American collections will complement the works, which are returning to England for the first time in 230 years.

Walpole built Houghton Hall, which now belongs to Lord Cholmondeley, one of his direct descendants, between 1722 and 1735. In 1779,When Walpole’s grandson was in need of money, he sold the majority of his grandfather’s collection to Catherine the Great for nearly $61,500. Approximately 75 of the sold works are returning to Houghton Hall for the exhibition including paintings by Rembrandt (1606-1669), Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), and Diego Velázquez (1599-1660).

While a handful of the paintings have been on view in England since their sale in the 18^th century, none of them have returned to Houghton Hall. Designed by the foremost architects of Walpole’s time, James Gibbs and Colen Campbell, Houghton Hall’s lavish interior was decorated by the eminent architect and furniture designer William Kent. Walpole spared no expense and Houghton Hall remains as one of the finest examples of Palladian architecture in England.

On May 8, 2013, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston unveiled a number of transformed galleries including a new Dutch and Flemish gallery, which has opened to the public after almost a year of renovations. The Art of the Netherlands in the 17^th Century Gallery features seven paintings by Rembrandt (1606-1669) and other works by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), and Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682). There are approximately thirty paintings in the gallery including landscapes, genre scenes, portraits, and religious works. The paintings are accompanied by a collection of Dutch furniture, decorative art objects, silver, and Delft pottery.

A companion gallery of 30 works, the Leo and Phyllis Beranek Gallery, also opened this week. Besides their respective collections, the Beranek and the Art of the Netherlands galleries highlight loans from important collections such as the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo collection, a renowned grouping of Dutch and Flemish paintings.

Two 18^th century rooms from Great Britain have been reinstalled at the MFA as part of the Alan and Simone Hartman Galleries. A gallery for British Art, 1560-1830 complements the Newland House Drawing Room, which has been on view at the MFA since the 1970s, and the Hamilton Palace Dining Room, which features the Hartman Collection’s silver holdings. The Hartman Galleries feature British paintings, furniture, silver, ceramics, and works on paper.    

A painting by the 17^th century Flemish Baroque artist, Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), was discovered in a storage room belonging to the Bowes Museum in England. Portrait of Olive Boteler Porter was purchased by the Bowes Museum’s founders, John and Josephine Bowes, in 1866 and has been in the institution’s collection since it opened to the public in 1892.

The painting’s poor condition led museum officials to record it in files as ‘School of van Dyck’ rather than an original van Dyck masterpiece. Relegated to a storage room, the work was discovered when it was photographed earlier this year for a project committed to putting all of the UK’s publically owned oil paintings on a single website. Art historian and dealer, Dr. Bendor Grosvenor, who is working on the digital venture, recognized the wrongly identified painting as an original Van Dyck.

The oil on canvas painting features the expert drapery and coloring often present in van Dyck’s female portraits from the 1630s. Originally thought to be a painting of Queen Henrietta Maria, additional research identified the sitter as Olive Boteler Porter, the queen’s lady-in-waiting and the wife of van Dyck’s friend and patron Endymion Porter.

After being examined by various van Dyck scholars, the painting has been authenticated. The recently restored masterpiece is now on view at the Bowes Museum.

The London gallery Agnews announced that it will be closing its doors on April 30, 2013 after nearly 200 years in business. One of the world’s oldest art dealers, Agnews, which specializes in Old Master paintings, will make a final appearance at the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht (March 15- 24, 2013).

Business for Agnews has been cooling off since chairman, Julian Agnew, sold the gallery’s historic Bond street location for a reported $39 and moved to a smaller space. Agnew attempted to sell the business last year, but negotiations with a prospective buyer failed. The privately owned firm, which has 16 family shareholders, revealed a loss of almost $3 million in records dating back to 2011.

Agnews has been selling off its stock, which once included Old Master works by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), and Rembrandt (1606-1669) as well as watercolors and British paintings. Whatever is left in the gallery will be taken care of in due time. Agnew will continue to work as an advisor to clients and will keep the company’s family name.

On January 23, 2013, a three-judge federal appellate court in California heard arguments from the heirs and relatives of a prominent Hungarian art collector. The lead plaintiff, David de Csepel, is the great-grandson of Jewish banker Baron Mór Lipót Herzog whose legendary art collection once included works by El Greco (1541-1614), Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), and Claude Monet (1840-1926).

The case, which could be the last major art restitution case relating to the Holocaust, involves 40 artworks valued at $100 million that were seized by Nazis during World War II. Csepel argued that Hungarian courts acted unjustly as they have never returned the stolen paintings nor paid restitution to Herzog’s relatives. In fact, a number of paintings once belonging to Herzog remain in the collections of Hungarian museums.

The lawsuit is attempting to use U.S. courts to press charges against the Hungarian government, three of the country’s museums, and a university. However, the Hungarian government’s lawyers argue that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction on foreign soil, pushing to have the case played out in Hungarian courts or the International Court of Justice. The plantiff’s attorney, Michael Shuster, claims that the case is relevant for U.S. courts because most of the living heirs involved in the case are U.S. citizens and that Hungarian courts can be problematic.

There was a time when Anthony Van Dyck’s Isabella, Lady de La Warr was considered one of the most important paintings at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Purchased in 1930 for $121,440 by the MFA donor, Mrs. Frederick T. Bradbury, the work went on view in the Hamilton Palace period room. It wasn’t until the 1980s when the painting went into storage that Isabella’s future started to look bleak.

When Malcolm Rogers rediscovered Isabella not long after he took over as the MFA’s director in 1994, he found the painting’s surface was discolored from protective varnishes and shoddy retouching had left the work with mismatched paint. Painted by the Flemish artist in 1638 during a stay in England, Rogers knew that Isabella could be recovered. A technical examination in 2011 reinforced Rogers’ belief.

The painting underwent nearly a year of restoration by the MFA’s paintings conservator, Rhona MacBeth and has just been installed in the MFA’s newly renovated Koch Gallery. Depicting an elegant woman, the wife of Lord Henry who served as a diplomat and treasurer of one of Van Dyck’s most famous subjects, England’s King Charles I, the painting is an excellent example of aristocratic portraiture that was in high demand by American collectors during the first few decades of the 20^th century.