Displaying items by tag: discovery

Artur Rosenauer, an art historian at the University of Vienna, has discovered a previously unknown painting by the Venetian painter Titian. Rosenauer revealed his findings in the October issue of Burlington Magazine, one of the foremost publications devoted to the fine and decorative arts.

The Risen Christ, which Rosenauer describes as having “brilliant use of colour and consummate command of composition,” once belonged to the von Bülow family, which included Bernhard Heinrich von Bülow, the chancellor of Germany during the early 20^th century. The painting currently resides in a private European collection.

Rosenauer, who deemed the painting “astonishingly well preserved,” dated The Risen Christ to around 1511 as it relates to other works by Titian from the same period.

Sunset at Montmajour, a recently discovered painting by Vincent van Gogh, is officially on public view at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Axel Ruger, the museum’s director, said, “We are pleased to be able to show this exceptional painting to our visitors, because a new discovery of this magnitude has never before occurred in the history of the Van Gogh Museum.” The work will be on view through January 12, 2014 as part of the exhibition Van Gogh at Work, which shows how in ten years’ time van Gogh developed into a unique artist with an impressive oeuvre.

On September 9, 2013 officials at the Van Gogh Museum announced that after extensive research, they were confident that Sunset at Montmajour was an authentic work by van Gogh. The canvas, which depicts a dry landscape in Van Gogh’s characteristically thick brushstrokes, had been stored for decades in the attic of a Norwegian home before becoming a research subject at the Van Gogh Museum. Scholars were able to trace the earliest history of the provenance of the painting while Oda Van Maanen, the museum’s restorer, used x-ray photos and computer analyses to determine the type of canvas and pigments used, which were consistent with the materials regularly used by Van Gogh. Museum officials had previously deemed Sunset at Montmajour as inauthentic because the artist had not signed it.

Along with Sunset at Montmajour, Van Gogh at Work includes some of the artist’s best-known works including Sunflowers and The Bedroom.

Staff members at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, Spain discovered an early portrait by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) while restoring a different work by the 20^th century Spanish artist. Workers removed the cardboard backing on Portrait of the Artist’s Mother (1896), which was executed by a 15-year-old Picasso, revealing a charcoal drawing of a man with a pipe.

Reyes Jimenez, head of restoration at the Picasso Museum, believes that the charcoal work is older than the portrait of the artist’s mother. The charcoal drawing is an important piece because it illustrates Picasso’s artistic tenacity as well as his mastery of challenging techniques from a young age. The newly discovered drawing suggests that Picasso’s early knowledge was greater than previously believed.

The Picasso Museum, which opened to the public in 1963, houses one of the most extensive collections of artworks by Picasso. It was the first museum dedicated solely to the work of Picasso and the only one created during the artist’s lifetime.  

A painting worth $1 million by the French artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was recovered in Essex, England. Stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm in 1987, the location of Le Jardin (1920) has remained a mystery for more than twenty years.

The discovery occurred when British art dealer Charles Roberts of Charles Fine Art was offered the Matisse painting by a Polish collector. Roberts ran a search on the Art Loss Register (ALR) database, a hub for information regarding stolen artworks, and found Le Jardin listed. Christopher A. Marinello, executive director and general counsel of the ALR, facilitated the painting’s recovery and it is currently being held in the organization’s office before being returned to Sweden in the coming weeks.

Le Jardin was the only artwork stolen during the 1987 burglary when thieves broke through the museum’s front entrance with a sledgehammer and unscrewed it from the wall. The burglars escaped just minutes before private guards arrived to investigate the scene. Following the robbery, the thieves made several attempts to sell the painting back to the museum for an exorbitant sum. Museum officials resisted, knowing that the Matisse painting was too well known to sell on the open market and that it would resurface eventually.

When Jane Cordery, an art teacher in Hampshire, England discovered a portrait of a white owl in her attic, she was struck by the painting’s sophisticated brushwork. Upon her unearthing, Cordery decided to email a photo of the work to Christie’s in London.

The auction house determined that the painting, titled The White Owl (1856) was the work of pre-Raphaelite artist William James Webbe (fluent 1953-1878) and valued the painting at $113,449. Further research proved that The White Owl had been exhibited at the United Kingdom’s Royal Society during the mid-nineteenth century. It was here that famed art critic, John Ruskin, viewed the work and remarked on its painstaking composition.

The Webbe painting headed to Christie’s Victorian art sale last week and sold for $951,050, exceeding its estimated price and setting the record for the artist at auction. An anonymous British dealer purchased The White Owl at the Christie’s sale. While Cordery claims she had never seen the painting before, her partner said that he received the work as a gift from his mother.