Old Masters, New Interest

'Portrait of Baron de Robeck Riding a Bay Hunter' (1791), by George Stubbs; estimate: £2 million-£3 million.

Old Masters, New Interest

(Source Wallstreet Journal) Old master dealers and auctioneers have joined forces to launch Master Paintings Week (July 4-10), a new event on London's art-collecting calendar.

Some 23 of the city's top international galleries will stage special painting exhibitions. Auction houses will hold a series of sales featuring works of European art from the 14th to the mid-19th century.
Running parallel will be Master Drawings London, now in its ninth year, where international dealers will offer hundreds of years of art-on-paper up to the present day.

Seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting specialist Johnny Van Haeften says that old-master paintings have an image problem in that many people think of them as "dark and dreary, but in fact I think they would be surprised at just how vibrant and fascinating they can be." Among his offerings will be Jan Brueghel the Elder's "Still Life of Flowers in a Blue and White Vase," full of dancing blooms and priced in the region of $5 million.

Old Bond Street's Colnaghi Gallery will focus on the German Renaissance master Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), an artist who has had tremendous influence into the present day. His milk-white, virtuous-yet-dangerous nudes have inspired everything from German expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's colorful sirens to contemporary American artist John Currin's strangely twisted female portraits. Not least, Cranach's Garden-of-Eden painting "Temptation" became known to global TV viewers as the frontispiece for credit lines in the series "Desperate Housewives."

Among the highlights at Sotheby's evening sale on July 8 will be two major equestrian paintings: Goya's 1794 portrait of Spain's Duke of Alcudia seated on a prancing horse with a threatening sky in the background (estimate: £2.5 million-£3.5 million); and star British equestrian artist George Stubbs's delightful 1791 painting of Baron de Robeck on his proud hunter (estimate: £2 million-£3 million).
Another highlight at Sotheby's will be a portrait from 1628 by Dutch master Anthony Van Dyck of his friend Endymion Porter dressed in a rich, satin doublet and a flowing red cap. The work illustrates the artist's incredible ability to capture the essence of his sitter, and has never been offered at auction before (estimate: £1 million-£1.5 million).

A major Van Dyck at Christie's on July 7 will be a portrait of a richly dressed, pregnant "Mrs. Oliver St. John later Lady Poulett" (1636), which was last seen in public at a Detroit Institute of Fine Arts exhibition in 1929 (estimate: £800,000-£1.2 million).

Exhibition: 1609

1609

Friday, July 3, 2009 - Sunday, March 7, 2010
New York State Museum

Two worlds collided in 1609 when Henry Hudson and the Dutch sailed up the “great river” and met the Native People of New York. This exhibition
introduces visitors to information about Henry
Hudson, Native People of New York, and the Dutch period in New York state by dispelling some commonly held myths and showing the legacy these groups left to the residents of the state and the nation. The New York State Museum collaborated with the State Archives, State Library, and Office of Educational Television and Public Broadcasting on 1609, and these institutions provided additional expertise, documents, and artifacts for the exhibition. Archaeologist James Bradley, an expert on Native Americans, Russell Shorto, an authority on colonial Dutch history, and Steven Comer, a Mohican Indian living within the original territory of the Mohican people, consulted on the project. The exhibition also features paintings by Capital District historical artist L. F. Tantillo.