Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Collectors

What’s Really Happening at TEFAF – Maastricht

It’s not just great art that draws so many people to TEFAF Maastricht;  the fair is also popular because it’s fun — though not like the stay-up-all-night, get-plastered parties at Art Basel Miami Beach. (Maybe there’s some of that, but the only whiff I heard of it last week came from two art-history grad students, at the fair and in other European art sites on a class trip, who said they knew of other students who’d been drinking till 6 a.m. on the morning of Mar. 16.)

In Maastricht, much of the fun takes place at the fair in the MECC convention hall, starting at noon on Thursday with a “by-invitation” vernissage. Champagne and other drinks, plus coffee, flows all day long until 8 or 9 p.m., as does the food. Everywhere you turn, some is offering you something to eat or drink — though there are also sit-down cafes where the public can buy food and drink on later days. You’re always running into someone you know — museum directors and curators, collectors, dealers who don’t have booths, etc. It’s a gabfest, an artfest and a foodfest rolled into one. More than 10,000 people attend, and in one of those backward twists of fate, these people pay nothing to enter — they’re the big-spenders who are treated, while ordinary people, allowed in on Friday and until Mar. 25, pay €55 per person or €110 for a season ticket, both including the one catalogue.

Fashion makes an appearance at the vernissage now and then — people were talking about outlandishly high heels on some women this year — but mostly, I thought, people were well-dressed without being overly showy. I heard of one woman who came dressed in a bright orange ball gown (the color of the Dutch royal family), her hair elaborately fashioned in an evening style — but I didn’t see her.

The hall is beautifully transformed by tulips, magnolias and cherry blossoms (about 100,000, all told, TEFAF says).

And then the art. You can see the exhibitors here. Suffice it to say that the dealers all try to bring their best, but this year, masterpieces were few and far between. Take your pick of pickers: here’s Souren Melikian in the International Herald Tribune; here’s Faye Hirsch in Art in America, and here’s what Art Info had to say.

As for sales, Art Market Monitor has links to many stories, so I’m going to send you there.

But Paul Jeromack has the coup: he has reported for Artnet that Ned Johnson, of Fidelity Investments, laid out some $12 million to buy Mankind’s Eternal Dilemma – The Choice Between Virtue and Vice by Frans Francken for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Here’s the link, and this is what it looks like:

 

News Behind the Headline: Where That Rubens Crucifixion Is Headed — UPDATED

You know the headline: One of the most impressive works of art at TEFAF in Maastricht was Rubens’s Crucifixion, painted around 1618-1620. It was snapped up within the first hour of the fair by Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, collectors you know if you read RCA regularly (see here and here for example).

But I have the news about where the painting is going — and it is not their home. The van Otterloos think this dramatic work belongs in a museum and so there it will go. But which museum? Therein lies a tale.

First, let me paint the scene: I wandered into the Colnaghi booth on Thursday just in time to watch as the owner, Konrad O. Bernheimer, gave a little lecture on the piece to what was clearly a museum group, which turned out to be from the Hermitage, escorted by Michael Piotrowski, the director. Bernheimer pointed out the way Rubens had used four, not the traditional three, nails to affix Christ to the cross. Rubens also departed from other traditional depictions of the scene, painting a cross that looks more like a tree trunk (for the Tree of Life) than a plank and omitting Christ’s crown of thorns. The asking price was 3.5 million Euros, or about $4.6 million. Bernheimer brought it to Maastricht fresh and hadn’t shown it to anyone until the pictures vetting committee for TEFAF saw it two days before the fair opened.

Soon thereafter, another small crowd gathered around the picture, including the van Otterloos. They didn’t notice me at first, so I watched as Eijk said something about a little overpainting on the upper right, and Rose-Marie said that no painting from that period was perfect. Then they did see me, and Eijk said, “We just bought it.” They told me that they had never seen the work before, but had quickly agreed that they wanted it. Neither they nor Bernheimer would tell me the final price.

I asked Eijk where the painting would go, offering “to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston,” where they recently deposited about 40 of their treasures? No, he said, probably not — because of a Massachusetts law that would levy a use tax on the painting if they lent to to the MFA. I haven’t had time to research all the ins and outs of the dispute the couple has with Massachusetts, and whether they are residents of that state or Florida, where they also have a home.

But because of the dispute, the new Rubens will — Eijk says — probably be placed at the Currier Museum in Manchester, N.H., which he said also has a couple other works on display from their collection. Lucky New Hampshire.

UPDATE: The Currier says it’s displaying two paintings from the van Otterloo collection in connection with its coming show, Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt (September 29, 2012 – January 6, 2013): The Apulian Shepherd by Joachim Wtewael (1566–1638) and The Cardplayers by Jan Steen (c. 1625–1679.) “Hanging alongside the Currier’s paintings by Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan Molenaer and Balthasar van der Ast, the van Otterloo pictures provide visitors with a greater appreciation for the leading role Dutch artists played in developing the subjects of still life, landscape, narrative and genre painting,” says the spokeswoman, Vicky Jaffe.

Collectors, Lending Their Paintings To The MFA, Set A Welcome Standard — If Only

This Saturday, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston will open an exhibition that is, at least in one way, a model — because of the lenders’ behavior. It involves Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, about whom I have written a couple of times, most extensively in a 2009 article in The Art Newspaper.

Now, fresh back from a four-museum international tour that included about 60 of their stellar Dutch Golden Age paintings, 40 of the works will be shown at the MFA — and this is the key part — integrated with the MFA’s 17th century Dutch and Flemish paintings collection.

The exhibition is called Complementary Collections, Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and the MFA. The point of course is to allow comparisons and contrasts that will deepen visitors’ understanding of the work of these artists, including Rembrandt, Dou and Jacob van Ruisdael. In other instances, the van Otterloos will be lending works by artists, such as Aelbert Cuyp and Hendrick Avercamp, who are not represented at all in the MFA’s collection.

In the press release, not yet posted online, the MFA qualified that last phrase with “yet.” That’s an example of hopeful thinking, since the van Otterloos have not said where they will give their collection, though they have said they do intend to give it. As I have written before, it’s the MFA’s to lose. This is an excellent moment for the MFA to show how it would care for the pictures.

From where I sit, the van Otterloos have been excellent collectors not only for the careful and scholarly way they went about amassing their art, but also because they always seem to care more about the art than about themselves.

A short time ago, in an exchange on Facebook, members of an art group to which I belong were going over the case of the Linsky collection at the Metropolitan Museum.* According to the terms of the 1982 gift by Belle Linsky, the 380 objects she donated must always be segregated in galleries of their own, where they still remain. As a result, for example, the Met cannot hang two panels from the same altarpiece, acquired separately, near the piece given by the Linskys. That’s just one example of how such bequests mess up museums and art history. There are other examples at other museums (yes, I know, there’s also the Lehman wing at the Met). 

The van Otterloos don’t do that, thankfully. As a result, visitors to the MFA will see, for example, the museum’s Old Woman Cutting Bread (top) by Gerrit Dou right near the couple’s Self Portrait by Dou (1655 and 1665, respectively). They won’t have to chase from one to the other somewhere else in the museum, trying to remember as much as they can about the painting they just left. I, for one, am grateful.

The exhibition remains on view at the MFA until June 24.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met

Exposed: The van Otterloo Collection Set To Open At Peabody Essex

Very soon, you can see at a museum what I have been lucky enough to see in a home.

Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection opens next Saturday, Feb. 26, at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. It will include about 70 paintings, plus several pieces of 17th century Dutch furniture and decorative art.

orpheus-charming-the-animals.jpgReal Clear Arts readers with a long memory will recall that I interviewed the van Otterloos and wrote a long article about their collection and their collecting for The Art Newspaper, which was published in September, 2009 (item here, article here).

But because of Golden, the Wall Street Journal asked me to write a short “Backstory” piece about the van Otterloos, which is published in today’s paper.

I recently talked with the couple again, but much of our conversation did not make it into that very short WSJ piece. So… here it is: 

This time I discovered more about their background: Mr. van Otterloo, born in Amsterdam, had come to the U.S. in 1961 to attend Harvard Business School, then spent a little time in Paris, and returned to the U.S. when he could not find an investment banking position in the Netherlands. Later, he co-founded the investment firm of Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co.

Mrs. van Otterloo, born in a Belgian hamlet near Maastricht, came to the U.S. learn English in 1967 — she answered an ad for a nanny and spent 10 months doing that in Washington, D.C. before joining Merrill Lynch. And lucky we are, because odds are that the van Otterloos will bestow their collection on some lucky institution here, not in Europe.

view-of-the-westerkerk_-amsterdam.jpgAlso, it won’t surprise anyone to find out that the couple is still buying. At Sotheby’s last month, they purchased A Cavalier at His Toilet, by Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne, at Sotheby’s for $338,500 — it’s going right into the exhibit.

But they won’t be selling. Mr. van Otterloo still has lingering regret about selling 18 paintings several years ago to raise money to buy their marvelous Rembrandt. And, as Old Master dealer Otto Naumann told me the other day, “This collection can’t be culled again — it is so carefully integrated. They have put something together that fits as a group perfectly.” 

To have accomplished that, the van Otterloos said they needed to exercise discipline, and for that they seem to work as a team. “Once you start collecting,” Mr. van Otterloo said, “you start looking at everything, and there are many beautiful things that are outside your focus.” His wife helps him with that: “It’s really hard to keep Eijk focused — he likes everything.”  

Part of the van Otterloo collection — 44 paintings – was shown at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, from last November through January: the smaller works that fit well in those galleries. Not, for example, Aelbert Cuyp’s Orpheus Charming the Animals, shown above left, but like the Heda still life below.

  

heda_stilllif2.jpgMrs. van Otterloo said, “Every critic was fantastic and the Dutch public went wild” for the show. “There was not one negative comment,” she added. They received many letters and emails, some of thanks, some with stories. “They were heartwarming — they made me cry,” she said. One, for example, came from a woman who said she and her husband needed something to uplift them, without specifying their problems. After taking the train to see the exhibition, she wrote that it was “just what” their “souls needed.”

 

Mr. van Otterloo said he heard from people he attended high school with, and others that he had not been in contact with for decades.

 

“We hope the American public will be as enthusiastic as the Dutch,” said Mrs. van Otterloo.

 

After closing in Salem on June 18, the exhibit will travel to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and then to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

 

I’m going to give the penultimate word to Peter C. Sutton, director of the BruceMuseum in Greenwich, Ct. and the man who, then a curator at MFA, Boston, sparked the couple’s initial interest in Dutch Old Masters. “It is a staggeringly good collection,” he said.

 

And the last word here on the exhibition goes to Mrs. van Otterloo: “It’s much more exciting that I ever thought it would be, because we have had such wonderful feedback from everyone.”

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum

 

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