Displaying items by tag: vincent van gogh

A painting, which Spanish tax authorities claimed was Van Gogh’s Cypress, Sky and Country (1889), is in fact a terrible fake according to Alfred Weidinger, vice director of Vienna’s Belvedere. The painting was discovered during a raid of safe deposit boxes in Madrid. Speaking to Austrian daily, Die Presse, Weidinger says, “It is one of the worst fakes or, better yet, copies, that I have ever seen. An amateur must have done it based on a calendar shot of the original.”

According to Weidinger, that original from Van Gogh’s Cypress series was indeed painted in 1889 but hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum. He says that he spoke with an expert from the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam who was similarly shocked at just how bad the painting appears to be.

The final group of paintings, drawings and sculptures bequeathed to museums by Paul Mellon before his death in 1999 have at last begun to arrive. Hidden away for decades, many are rarities that had never been seen by curators.

The group includes more than 200 works — examples by such artists as van Gogh, Degas, Gauguin, Monet and Seurat — that were only recently removed from the walls of the Mellons’ many homes, where they were enjoyed by his widow, Rachel Lambert Mellon, who died in March at 103.

If you've ever wanted to wallpaper your living room with the work of the old masters, now's your chance. The Metropolitan Museum of Art this month released an astounding 394,000 high-resolution images to the public. Visitors to the Met’s website can sort images by artist, medium, location, and era, and freely download images that are generally at least 10 megapixels in size.

The Met’s collection is one of the most extensive in the world, with more than 500 Picassos available for download, along with dozens of paintings from Monet, Van Gogh, and Degas. Aside from European painters, the collection also includes photographs of Aztec stonework, Greek sculpture, and Chinese calligraphy. Looking for an image of a 200-year old spittoon from India? It's yours.

A billion pound collection of modern masterpieces which has languished in a storeroom bunker under Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran may finally see the light of day, under changes in the new government's policy. Paintings by Picasso, Miro, Calder, Bacon, Pollock, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Van Gogh and Monet have languished in a storeroom beneath the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art since the  Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The collection was put together in the 1960s and 1970s by Queen Farah Pahlavi, the wife of the last shah of Iran. Fearing that they would be destroyed by the religious turmoil that gripped the the country, the works were carefully packed up, crated and removed from public view.

Agents from the Agencia Tributaria—the Spanish IRS—announced the find of a priceless Van Gogh which disappeared from the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Vienna, Austria. Dated in 1889, the painting "Cypress, sky and field" was discovered in a safe deposit box that belonged to a Spanish fraudster.

According to El Mundo (in Spanish), the 13.7 x 12.6-inch (35 x 32-centimeter) unframed painting has been authenticated by two art experts from the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

Winslow Homers in the shadow of a defunct Beech-Nut baby food plant. A Rembrandt, Picasso, Rubens and Renoir up the hill from a paper mill. The founder of the Hudson River School vying for attention amid baseball memorabilia and old farm machinery.

There are plenty of treasures to be found among the collections of lesser-known, off-the-beaten-path art museums dotting upstate New York. But they're well worth the trek for anyone looking for great art in unexpected places, whether it's the rolling, bucolic countryside typical of many areas or the industrial grittiness of riverside mill towns.

The Portland Art Museum in Oregon has announced a monumental exhibition that will present masterpieces from the collection of Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen. “Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection” will feature approximately 40 paintings by Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, J.M.W. Turner, Vincent van Gogh, Gustav Klimt, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, and others.

The exhibition, which spans five centuries of European and American landscape painting, was organized by the Portland Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Allen Family Collection. It will debut at the Portland Art Museum in October 2015. It will then travel to The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the New Orleans Museum of Art before closing at the Seattle Art Museum in early 2017.

The exhibition explores the evolution of landscape painting from the early Impressionists’ direct observations of nature to the more subjective works of the Post-Impressionists and the individualized perspectives that 20th-century artists brought to traditional landscape subjects.

Brian Ferriso, the Marilyn H. and Dr. Robert B. Pamplin Jr. Director of the Portland Art Museum, said, “Paul Allen is one of the Northwest’s most significant art collectors and philanthropists. His willingness to share his landscape masterpieces with our visitors continues his exceptional generosity and is a wonderful opportunity to be inspired by works of art that reflect his personal vision.”

On April 7, the Fondation Vincent van Gogh opened a gallery in Arles, France, dedicated to continuously displaying the works of Vincent van Gogh. Despite the fact that Arles played a pivotal role in the artist’s personal life and career, the city has only hosted two temporary exhibitions of Van Gogh paintings -- one in 1951 and another in 1989.

The gallery’s inaugural exhibition, “Colours of the North, Colours of the South,” features nine paintings by van Gogh and 21 works by his contemporaries. One of the van Gogh paintings, a self-portrait from 1887, has been loaned to the gallery by Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, which has agreed to assist the Arles endeavor. The exhibition will remain on view through August 31 and the self-portrait will remain on loan until next spring.

The Arles project is being funded by Luc Hoffmann, heir to the Hoffmann-La Roche pharmaceutical company. Hoffmann donated €12m to convert a 15th-century mansion, which previously housed the Hôtel Léautaud de Donines, into the van Gogh gallery. He will also cover operating costs for the next five years. The city of Arles provided the building.

A federal judge has dismissed the claims of a Russian man who said that he was the rightful owner of Vincent van Gogh’s “The Night Cafe.” The painting, which was created in 1888, has been on display at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, for around 50 years.

Pierre Konowaloff, who claimed that the work was stolen from his family during the Russian revolution, asked Yale for the return of the painting or $120 million to $150 million in damages. Yale sued in 2009 to assert its ownership rights and to prevent Konowaloff from claiming the work. Judge Alvin Thompson sided with the University, citing the Act of State doctrine, which says that every sovereign state is bound to respect the independence of every other sovereign state, and that courts will not criticize another government’s acts done within its own territory.

Konowaloff claimed that his great-grandfather purchased “The Night Cafe” in 1908 and that his property was nationalized by Russia during the Communist revolution. The painting was later sold by the Soviet government.

Yale received the van Gogh painting through a bequest from alumnus Stephen Carlton Clark, who had purchased the painting from a New York City gallery in 1933 or 1934. 

The 27th edition of The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) opened to the public on March 14 in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The show, which is widely regarded as the world’s leading art fair, brings together 275 of the finest art and antiques dealers from around the globe. Offerings include everything from Old Master paintings and antiquities to 20th century design and contemporary art.

This year’s show began with a V.I.P preview on Thursday, March 13, which saw a number of big-ticket sales. Galerie Odermatt-Vedovi (Paris) sold a mobile by Alexander Calder to a European collector for around $2.6 million and Van de Weghe Fine Art (New York) sold Pablo Picasso’s “Tete couronnee” in black crayon on paper to a Belgian collector for $485,000.

A number of important works are being offered at this year’s fair including Vincent van Gogh’s “Moulin de la Galette,” which will be exhibited by Dickinson (New York/London); a double portrait of Sir George Villiers and Lady Catherine Manners as Adonis and Venus by Sir Anthony van Dyck, which is being shown by David Koetser Gallery (Zurich); and three works by Damien Hirst, which are being offered by Tomasso Brothers Fine Art (London/Leeds).

TEFAF runs through March 23.