Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Artworks

Le Brun Masterpiece Discovered At The Ritz

Here’s another one of those you-can’t-make-this-up stories, which I received in a press release this morning:

A previously unrecorded painting by Charles Le Brun (1619-1690), official painter to the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV, has been discovered hanging in the Coco Chanel Suite at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris by the London-based fine art consultant Joseph Friedman. Formerly Curator of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s residence in Paris, Friedman was advising the hotel on its current €200 million renovation project when he came across the work. The painting, thought to depict The Sacrifice of Polyxena, will go on public view in New York at Christie’s from 26 to 29 January 2013 before being auctioned by Christie’s in Paris on 15 April 2013 (estimate €300,000-500,000).

LeBrunThe Ritz should be embarrassed, but it’s clearly not. Less than two  hours after I received that, Christie’s sent out its own release, noting “Occasionally, the biggest surprises are hiding in plain sight.” Then:

…it was not found in a dusty attic, but on prominent display in the heart of Paris, in the most opulent and celebrated hotel in the world, the legendary Hôtel Ritz.  The Ritz archives have not revealed how the painting came to the hotel or when it was first installed in the fabled ‘Coco Chanel Suite’, but it is possible that it was already in the townhouse (built 1705) when it was acquired by César Ritz in 1898.

The Sacrifice of Polyxena was painted soon after Le Brun returned to Paris from three years in Rome, where he studied the paintings of Raphael and came under the influence of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665). This work clearly shows Poussin’s influence.

Sue Bond’s press release, the first quoted above, has more — she represents Friedman. At left is how the painting looked in the Chanel suite and what it really looks like.

 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’s

The NYTimes Looks For The Light

Before too much time passes, I want to call more attention to the feature published by The New York Times last Friday headlined Reflections. It was highlighted on Page One with a picture of Edward Hopper’s Rooms by the Sea that was captioned Seeking Out the Bright to Battle the Cold?

Brooklyn_Museum_-_Saint_Joseph_and_the_Christ_Child_-_overallIn it, the Times devoted considerable space to art works chosen by its four main art critics in which the artists captured light, which somehow was intended to help readers take their mind off the cold, dark winter days and the “indoor time still to come.”

I am of two minds. I thought the idea was rather contrived and the execution a tad spotty. Much as I enjoy reading Holland Cotter’s criticism, I found his choice of an Islamic plate, an example of lusterware, to be a stretch. It might brighten my day, but not because of the light. So, too, his selection of Saint Joseph and the Christ Child by an unknown Cuzco school artist, pictured at right — I love the painting but don’t see any reason to single it out for special lighting effects.

The other critics mainly took their assignment more literally, chosing paintings by the likes of Georges de la Tour, Vermeer, Seurat, Hammershoi and Dan Flavin. You can’t quarrel with those calls. Some were “predictable,” but only to people who spend a lot of time with art.

On the other hand, I applaud the Times for devising an article that focused attention on museums’ permanent collections or just on artworks, period, as part of the culture-pages mix. I wish they and other papers looked for more occasions to run art works. Back in 2009, I praised the Nelson-Atkins Museum here for this:

On Dec. 15 — enough time for planning — the PR department sent out an email with the subject line “Need Christmas Art?” and attaching a PDF listing of all the nativity scenes it holds in its collection for which it had high-res images: a dozen in all. 

All of this, of course, is about getting art into the world outside of museums in a way that will encourage people to go see for themselves.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

 

 

 

Iwan Baan’s Path To Stardom, Courtesy of Hurricane Sandy

IWBA-0001-682x1024What’s that old line about making good by doing good? It applies to Iwan Baan, the Dutch photographer who the day after Hurricane Sandy hit New York City took what turned out to be an iconic image from the air. It showed Manhattan half in the dark, half in the light, crystallizing the line already in circulation that New York was a tale of two cities. New York Magazine commissioned the photo for its Nov. 12 cover.

Baan is an established architecture photographer who now, because of that image, called The City and the Storm, has made the leap into the art gallery world. He was picked up recently by Perry Rubenstein, and will have an exhibition at Rubenstein’s  Los Angeles space beginning Feb. 20.

But here’s the doing good part:

Baan has created an artwork based on this powerful image — a large format artwork (70-3/4 x 47-1/4 inches) in an edition of 10. It will be shown at the Rubenstein Gallery’s upcoming exhibition of Baan’s work titled The Way We Live. The edition will be sold for $100,000 each to benefit the Mayor’s Fund To Advance New York City in support of Hurricane Sandy relief efforts (nyc.gov/fund). And the Museum of Modern Art, in cooperation with Iwan Baan and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, has issued a poster of The City and the Storm, that will also support relief efforts. More information at MoMAstore.org.

Previously, Baan’s work had been shown in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement, and in the Carnegie Museum of Art’s, White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes, according to a press release from Rubenstein.

His generosity toward the city was noted by noneother than Mayor Bloomberg, who is quoted in the  release saying: “Iwan Baan’s powerful and now iconic image brought to life one of the many devastating effects our City experienced in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Baan’s first exhibition at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery will not only share his images but help support our City’s efforts to recover from this devastating storm through their generous contribution to the Mayor’s Fund.”

Baan doesn’t even live in New York.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Perry Rubenstein Gallery

 

 

Merry, Merry…

Dear Reader, I am taking the next few days off to celebrate Christmas. Back shortly thereafter. Meantime, here’s a beautiful nativity scene — new to me and maybe to you. The Holy Family was painted by Francesco Zaganelli da Cotignola.

Zaganelli

 

This painting was called to my attention by my colleague Paul Jeromack, who writes about Old Masters far more frequently than I do. He reports that it sold at Christies in Dec. 2011 — fetching $1,584,414, against a $156,200 – $234,300 presale estimate. London dealer Danny Katz bought it for his own collection. The lot notes said:

Francesco di Bosio Zaganelli was perhaps the most individual painter of his generation in the Romagna. Born at Cotignola, he may have been trained by Marco Palmezzano and in the first decade of the fifteenth century shared a bottega in his native town with his brother, Bernardino, whose only certain independent work is the signed Saint Bernardino of 1506 in the National Gallery, London.

By 1513 Francesco was based at Ravenna, but receiving commissions for towns in the area including Faenza, where he supplied the Baptism of 1514, now also in the National Gallery, for the Laderchi chapel at San Domenico. Zaganelli developed a highly individual style that assimilated influences from Ferrara, from the Bologna of Costa and Aspertini, and, less directly, from the Umbrians of the previous generation. As this Madonna demonstrates, he was an artist of considerable emotional range and equal expressive power: given the demand for pictures of the subject it is notable how varied Zaganelli’s interpretations of this are.

In this example, the Infant looks towards the spectator, while the Virgin and Saint Joseph, like the angel, the angle of whose head echoes the latter’s, bend down, their eyes almost closed, in silent devotion. This panel was dated to the mid-1520s by Roli (loc. cit), while Zama suggests a less specific chronology, 1518-30. The pose of the Child is related to the altarpiece of 1518 in the church of San Martino at Viadana, near Mantua, although it is arguably more successful in the deployment of the arms. A certain roundness in the types of both the Virgin and Saint Joseph also recalls the earlier works of Correggio which Zaganelli would no doubt have seen in 1519, when his altarpiece for the church of the Annunziata at Parma was completed and no doubt delivered.

Sold by what Christie’s descriped as an “important” European collector, it had an interesting provenance beforehand as well:

A seal with the Habsburg arms establishes that the picture was exported from Northern Italy, under Austrian control between 1815 and 1866.

Wilhelm von Bode, from whom acquired by Murray Marks, Florence, 1884.

Vieweg collection, Brunswick.

Sale, Lepke, Berlin, 18 March 1930, lot 24.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’s, with a little photoshoping to smooth the cracks by Paul

Bid Rejected: Leonardo Is Not Going To Dallas

Dallas has been a bit deflated. The Dallas Museum of Art’s bid to buy the newly discovered Leonardo, Salvator Mundi, has been rejected. The amount offered — which I have not been able to determine — was not high enough.

July11_leonardo200x289Since July (see my previous post), the painting has been in Dallas, and museum director Max Anderson has raised “tens of millions” of dollars to buy it. Anderson believed it would be a “destination painting,” driving attendance to the museum to see one of two Leonardo paintings in American public collections. One source said “Max worked tirelessly” to enlist museum donors and people who had not been donors in the past. Many were enthusiastic, but it’s unclear how many came through.

But the owners, still a mystery, were seeking some $200 million for it. And while the work is now almost universally accepted as being by the master, at least for the most part, some people did not see it as worth that much. Who knows? A painting is worth what someone will pay.

I have heard, too, that the owners did not hold out — that they wanted the picture to go to the Dallas museum, if possible. “Many accommodations were made,” a source says. In the end, there was a gap — how big, no one is telling me.

The museum has issued a statement saying, in part:

While the museum’s leadership was hopeful that the painting would be acquired for the benefit and enjoyment of the public, they are incredibly inspired by and grateful for the outpouring of community support for the campaign to acquire this work.

Anderson, according to the Dallas Morning News, said it “was a privilege to be responsible for the safekeeping of this masterwork as we assembled commitments towards its purchase. The fortunate few who saw it in person will not soon forget its beauty, power and majesty.”

The picture has left Dallas and is now back in New York, I’m told.