‘Monstruous figure’ re-emerges in Joshua Reynolds’s controversial painting

Conservation work carried out by the National Trust to mark the 300th anniversary of famed English artist Joshua Reynolds’s birth has revealed a “monstruous figure” in the background of a painting lurking beneath layers of overpaint and varnish. The painting is titled The Death of Cardinal Beaufort (1789) and depicts a scene from Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2 (first published in 1594), in which King Henry VI laments the death of the cardinal – his great-uncle – and exclaims, “O! beat away the busy, meddling fiend that lays siege unto this wretch’s soul.”

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Old paintings

New Holbein exhibition opens to rave reviews

The exhibition Holbein at the Tudor Court recently opened at Buckingham Palace’s Queen’s Gallery and includes some of the greatest works by famed Tudor court artist Hans Holbein the Younger, alongside paintings by his contemporaries. Holbein was a German artist who spent two long periods in London, and it is his records of the world of Henry VIII which have shaped the Tudor court in popular culture.

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Trailblazing journalist Barbara Walters’ impressive collection heads to auction

The collection of award-winning American journalist and broadcaster Barbara Walters, who died in 2022, is due to be sold at Bonhams auction house this week. Walters, who has been described as a “trailblazer who reshaped the media landscape, breaking barriers for women in journalism” lived on New York’s Upper East Side in a house which was listed for sale earlier this year for $19.75 million. She was the first female co-host of a US network news programme (NBC’s Today morning show) and subsequently the first female evening news anchor in America. But she is best remembered for the high-profile interviews she did of politicians, cultural figures, world leaders, and royalty, from Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor, to Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, and every American President and First Lady from Richard and Pat Nixon to Barack and Michelle Obama.

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Rare Rembrandt painting heads to auction

A painting by the Dutch seventeenth-century artist Rembrandt van Rijn is heading to auction this December and could make in the region of £15 million. The Adoration of the Kings was the subject of an extensive research project at Sotheby’s over the past 18 months after it was sold at Christie’s Amsterdam in 2021 as ‘Circle of Rembrandt’, where it carried a substantially lower estimate of only €10,000-15,000. This new research has led specialists to conclude that the painting was in fact by the artist himself and therefore worth considerably more money.

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