Displaying items by tag: provenance

Jewish World Congress president Ronald Lauder has publicly threatened the Kunstmuseum Bern with an "avalanche" of lawsuits if the institution accepts the collection of approximately 1,300 artworks bequeathed to it by the late Cornelius Gurlitt - stated in an article published by German weekly "Der Spiegel." The museum is currently still in the process of making this delicate decision - whether or not to accept the collection - which includes works by Henri Matisse, Max Liebermann, Otto Dix, and Marc Chagall, among others famous artists.

Gurlitt died on May 6th of this year, leaving the entire collection to the Swiss museum - but nearly 600 works from the collection are suspected to be of questionable provenance, possibly Nazi loot.

The Badische Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe, Germany has announced that it has identified seven Nazi looted artworks within its collection. The discovery follows a four-year-long audit of the museum's entire collection, specifically looking for Nazi looted artworks, reported Die Welt.

The six paintings and one late Gothic sculpture had been kept in one of the museum's warehouses for over 70 years. The provenance researcher at the museum, Katharina Siefert, established that the works belonged to a Mannheim-based Jewish family.

Sotheby’s  “Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels” in Geneva will offer jewels with sought-after royal provenance along with other impressive gems such as a Kashmir sapphire weighing 27.54 carats (Est. $3.0-6.0 million) and the 8.62-carat “Graff Ruby” (Est. $6.8‑9.0 million), as well as exquisite vintage pieces by Cartier and Bulgari.

In total, the 470 assembled lots of the November 12 sale are expected to bring in excess of $62 million.

John Marciari first spotted the painting among hundreds of other works carefully filed in pullout racks in a soulless cube of a storage facility in New Haven, Connecticut. He was then, in 2004, a junior curator at Yale University’s renowned Art Gallery, reviewing holdings that had been warehoused during its expansion and renovation. In the midst of that task, he came upon an intriguing but damaged canvas, more than five feet tall and four feet wide, which depicted St. Anne teaching the young Virgin Mary to read. It was set aside, identified only as “Anonymous, Spanish School, seventeenth century.”

Detectives from the German Federal Criminal Police seized a trove of forged paintings; complete with forged provenance documents and receipts, as well as jewelery and other valuables in a coordinated raid across six German states last June - According to Der Hessische Rundfunk. Investigators into the illegal ring believe that the artworks were painted in forgery studios that were based in Russia and Israel and then shipped to Germany for sale. This information was obtained during two simultaneous raids in Switzerland and Israel.

Some 15 months after Police uncovered the international art forgery ring, German state prosecutors have officially charged two men with the crimes, "Der Spiegel" reported.

One of the last great Turner masterpieces remaining in private hands will be the highlight of Sotheby’s London Evening sale of Old Master on 3rd December 2014. Painted in 1835 by Britain’s most celebrated artist, Rome, from Mount Aventine is among Turner’s most subtle and atmospheric depictions of the Italian city, a subject that captivated Turner for over twenty years. The large-scale oil painting is further distinguished by its exceptional state of preservation, as well as a prestigious and unbroken provenance, having changed hands for the only time in 1878, when it was acquired by the 5th Earl of Rosebery, later Prime Minister of Great Britain. The picture has remained in the Rosebery collection ever since and will be offered for sale with an estimate of £15-20 million.

Discussing the forthcoming sale, Alex Bell, Joint International Head and Co-Chairman of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings Department said: “There are fewer than ten major Turners in private hands known today and this work must rank as one of the very finest.

A growing desire to understand and prove the provenance of goods in the fake-ridden Chinese antiques market has led to a boom in old auction and exhibition catalogues. This trade has been driven by China’s tens of thousands of art advisors, auction houses and dealers, who in recent years have been building private reference libraries for experts and clients. Book collectors and dealers in Hong Kong and Europe have been quietly doing a thriving business in catalogues for exhibitions and auctions of Chinese arts and antiques.

While China has always had a black market for imported art publications that cost a few dollars each, in-demand catalogues command prices in the thousands of dollars.

Phillips launches its Fall Photographs season with selections from The Art Institute of Chicago’s renowned collection that include superb works by many of the leading classic photographers. The Auction features 117 lots with a combined pre-sale low estimate of $1,148,200/ £688,085 / €857,154 and a pre-sale high estimate of $1,659,800/ £994,672 / €1,239,073.

“The sale of Photographs from the Collection of The Art Institute of Chicago presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for collectors to purchase a work with a most desirable provenance. The breadth and caliber of the collection is as much a celebration of the medium as it is of the Art Institute’s vision in building one of the foremost institutional collections of photography in the world.” Vanessa Kramer Hallett, Worldwide Head of Photographs and Senior Director, Photographs.

A government audit of 1,218 French museums has revealed that some 80% do not know the full contents of their collections, with many collections facing further serious hazards, Libération reported. The preliminary document, released Wednesday after eight months of research and ahead of a full report due at the end of the year, cites several shocking oversights; for example, the Louvre is critiqued for storing Classical sculptures in a subterranean chamber that could not be properly evacuated in the event of an overflow of the Seine river. Noting instances of theft, the report states that numerous collections are kept under insufficient security measures. Issues of provenance related to World War II looting continue to plague several institutions, the report adds, blaming inadequate resources for the incomplete cataloging and other issues.

Israel and Germany have agreed to conduct joint research in museums in both countries aimed at determining the original ownership of Jewish-owned art looted by Nazis, officials said.

Under an agreement signed Sunday by Israeli culture ministry director general Orly Froman and German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters, art experts from the two countries will undergo training and coordinate the formation of joint data bases.