Displaying items by tag: landscape

Sometime after 1994, a former employee of Sweden’s National Library stole approximately 56 rare antique books once belonging to the country’s royal family. The thief, Anders Burius, eventually confessed to the theft, consigned the objects to the German auction house, Ketterer Kunst, and subsequently committed suicide.

In 1998, investigators were able to track 13 of the stolen volumes from Ketterer Kunst to the U.S. where Stephan Loewentheil, a Baltimore-based book dealer, bought two of the volumes, unaware that they were stolen. On Wednesday, July 24, 2013, the FBI were finally able to return the objects to the Swedish government, whereby officials honored Loewentheil for his assistance in recovering the books.

The recovered books include a 19^th century German volume about the Mississippi River by Henry Lewis and a 17^th century French book about the Louisiana territory by Louis Hennepin. The latter features the first published description of Niagara Falls and the first published landscape of the Louisiana Territory.

While Sweden and the National Library are thrilled to have the volumes back, a large portion of the works stolen by Burius are still missing.

On November 4, 2013, Christie’s will auction works from the private collection of the prominent art dealer Jan Kruiger. The sale, which will take place five year’s after Kruiger’s death, is expected to garner over $160 million. A consequent sale of works on paper and sculpture will likely bring around $15 million.

The sale at Christie’s will present a mere fraction of Kruiger’s personal collection. The remainder has either been sold privately or resides with his family. Highlights from the upcoming auction include Wassily Kandinsky’s landscape Herbstlandschaft, which carries an estimate of $6 million to $8 million, and Pablo Picasso’s sheet-iron sculpture Tete (Head), which is expected to fetch $25 million to $35 million.

While Christie’s and Sotheby’s were in close competition to helm the sale, Christie’s allegedly offered a more profitable financial package to Kruiger’s heirs, giving them a more significant percentage of the buyer’s premium.

Kruiger opened the Jan Kruiger Gallery of New York, which specialized in 19^th century, 20^th century and contemporary art, in 1967. It remained a fixture of the art world for decades.

The Fenimore Museum of Art in Cooperstown, NY is currently hosting the exhibition Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision. The show presents a number of important works by key figures in the movement including Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), Thomas Cole (1801-1848), Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), Jasper F. Cropsey (1823-1900) and Asher Durand (1796-1886). Nature and the American Vision was organized by the New-York Historical Society and made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts.

The exhibition aims to communicate the Hudson River School artists’ fascination with the American landscape. The mid-19^th century movement was influenced by romanticism and is defined by its paintings that celebrate nature’s sublimity and exude an almost ethereal quality. Many Hudson River School painters regarded nature as an indefinable manifestation of God, which strongly influenced the movement’s aesthetic qualities.

Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision will be on view at the Fenimore Museum of Art through September 29, 2013. The Fenimore, which is operated by the New York State Historical Association, specializes in American Folk Art, Indian art and artifacts, 19^th century genre painting and American photography.

Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale took place on June 18, 2013 in London. The sale garnered $100.4 million and sold 84% by lot and 87% by value. The top lot of the night was Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866-1944) Studie zu Improvisation 3 (1909), which sold for $21.1 million, a few million shy of its $24.7 million high estimate. The painting is from the artist’s renowned “Improvisation” series, which signaled his transition into abstraction. Many of Kandinsky’s works from this period reside in museum collections.

Other highlights from the sale include Amedeo Modigliani’s (1884-1920) portrait of the art dealer Paul Guillame (1916), which brought $10.6 million; Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Femme assise dans un fauteuil (1960), which sold for $9.5 million; Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) landscape painting Sainte-Adresse (1873), which garnered $4.4 million; and Auguste Rodin’s (1840-1917) iconic marble sculpture Eve après le péché (1900-1915), which earned $4.4 million. Records were set for Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) and Eugène Boudin (1824-1898).

Jay Vincze, International Director and Head of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s London, said, “There was great depth of bidding on works of high quality at all price levels, with strong participation from many new and existing collectors from both traditional and growth markets.”

Winslow Homer: Making Art, Making History is currently on view at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA. The exhibition presents the most comprehensive collection of Winslow Homer’s (1836-1910) works assembled by a single person since the American landscape painter’s death and one of the finest collections in any museum in the U.S. The first complete catalogue of the Clark’s Homer collection, which was authored by Marc Simpson, the show’s curator and a renowned Homer scholar, complements the exhibition.

Sterling Clark began collecting artworks by Homer in 1915 while living in Paris. He maintained a steady fascination with the artist throughout his collecting career, which eventually led to Clark’s acquisition of more than 250 works by Homer dating from 1857 to 1904. Winslow Homer: Making Art, Making History will feature Clark’s entire collection including 60 oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and etchings, 120 rarely seen wood engravings, and a selection of loaned works.

Highlights from the exhibition include Undertow (1886) along with six preparatory drawings for the painting, the well-known painting Two Guides (1877), and a selection of watercolors that are rarely shown.

Winslow Homer: Making Art, Making History will be on view at the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute of Art through September 8, 2013.

The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) filed papers in federal court this week arguing that a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), which was found in a Virginia flea market in 2012, legally belonged to the institution. On the Shore of the Seine (1879) a small landscape painting, had been stolen while it was on view as part of an exhibit at the museum in 1951. A Virginia woman later purchased the work from the flea market for $7, allegedly unaware of the work’s distinguished provenance.

The documents filed on Tuesday, June 4, 2013 in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, VA, claim that no one except the BMA can legally own the Renoir because it belonged to the institution before it was stolen. The buyer of On the Shore of the Seine, Martha Fuqua, has filed her own court papers stating that she deserves to hold on to the painting because she was unaware that the Renoir had been stolen and was subject to FBI forfeiture when she acquired it. Suspicions have surrounded Fuqua’s claim, as her mother is a painter who specializes in reproducing artworks and three friends of Fuqua have come forward saying that they remembered seeing the painting in her home and studio.

After the museum reported On the Shore of the Seine stolen, Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co. paid the institution a $2,500 claim. The company has assured the BMA that it will return the painting to the museum if a judge determines that they are the rightful owners.

A multimillion-dollar art collection built by poet T.S. Eliot’s widow, Valerie, will be sold at Christie’s London on November 20, 2013. The collection includes works by Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Lucian Freud (1922-2011), and J.M.W. Turner (1775-19851). Ms. Eliot, who passed away in November at the age of 86, amassed her collection using royalties from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music Cats, which was based on her husband’s whimsical poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Ms. Eliot’s collection, which resided in the London home she shared with her husband, is expected to garner around $7.6 million.

Highlights from the collection include drawings and watercolors by 18^th and 19^th century British artists including Turner, Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), and John Constable (1776-1837); a sculpture by Henry Moore (1898-1986); and a lush landscape titled The Cathedral, Hackwood Park by Winston Churchill (1874-1965). There will also be portrait miniatures from the 16^th through the 19^th centuries, furniture, and jewelry for sale.

Proceeds from the Christie’s auction will benefit the Old Possum’s Practical Trust, an arts charity created by Ms. Eliot.

Sotheby’s American Art auction, which took place today, May 22, 2013 in New York, garnered upward of $28 million, surpassing the sale’s high estimate of $24.4 million. Out of the 62 lots offered, 83.9% sold and 93.8% sold by value. This was the third consecutive American art sale at Sotheby’s to exceed its high estimate.

The auction’s top lot was the highly anticipated John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) painting Marionettes (1907), which achieved $5.2 million (estimate: $5 million-$7 million). Best known for his portraits of members of high society, Marionettes is a departure from Sargent’s usual subjects. The painting depicts men from Philadelphia’s large Italian American community performing Sicilian puppet theater at the turn of the 20^th century. When Sargent created the work, he was well established and considered to be the preeminent portrait painter of his time. The painting was part of Sargent’s personal collection for over 20 years and was passed down through the artist’s family to the owner who offered the work at Sotheby’s.

Proving the enduring strength of Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) in the American art market, six paintings by the artist sold together for $6.5 million, garnering double their overall high estimate of $3 million. Another work by Rockwell, He’s Going to Be Taller than Dad, was the object of seven bidders desire. The domestic scene of a young boy and his dog sold for $2.6 million, far exceeding its high estimate of $700,000.

At the sale, auction records were set for the modern painter Milton Avery (1885-1965), California landscape painter William Keith (1838-1911), and portraitist Irving Ramsey Wiles (1861-1948).

American art sales continue tomorrow, May 23, 2013 at Christie’s in New York.

Two permanent galleries dedicated to the work of the English sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986) opened on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at the Tate Britain in London. The museum presents a collection of approximately 30 works including film, photographs, maquettes, drawings, and large-scale sculptures. Moore’s Recumbent Figure (1938), which was the first of the artist’s works to join the Tate’s collection, is also on view.

Moore, who served as a trustee of the Tate for two terms from 1941-1956, worked closely with the institution. The first gallery of his works explores the artist’s relationship to the museum and how the Tate amassed its Moore collection. The artist made a number of generous donations to the institution during his life including a set of prints, which he gave to the Tate in 1976 and 36 sculptures, which he bequeathed to the museum in 1978. The Tate currently owns over 600 of Moore’s works ranging in date from 1921-1984.

The Tate’s second gallery focuses on Moore’s array of public commissions and the process he used to create them. During the 1950s and 1960s, Moore worked almost entirely in plaster, which was then cast in bronze. Most of his works from this period are figurative or centered on the landscape and the natural world. Moore’s large-scale sculptures set in a wide-ranging array of settings from this time are some of his best-known works. The sculptures in this gallery are complemented by drawings and maquettes as well as films and photographs of Moore at work in his studio.

A highly successful sculptor, Moore used the money he made from his work to endow the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and the promotion of the arts.

The 2013 Spring Show NYC opened to the public on Thursday, May 2, 2013 at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan. Organized by the Art and Antique Dealers League of America, this is the third edition of the Spring Show NYC, which features furniture, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, glass, decorative arts, and much more.

This year’s show includes over 60 international galleries. Highlights from the fair include Ammi Phillips’ (1788-1865) Portrait of a Child from Jeffrey Tillou Antiques, French landscape painter Eugene Louis Boudin’s (1824-1898) Village aux Environs de Dunkerque from Rehs Galleries, and a set of eight George II carved mahogany dining chairs from Clinton Howell Antiques.

The Spring Show NYC will be ongoing at the Armory through May 5, 2013. Tonight, the fair will host Arts Night Out, allowing 30 young patron groups from New York ‘s top cultural institutions to visit the show. Proceeds from the event will benefit the ASPCA.