A sketchbook of 65 drawings purported to be by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh has been dismissed by experts from the Van Gogh Museum as fake. The drawings were unveiled at a press conference in Paris yesterday (15 November) by art historian Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov but the Museum quickly released a statement declaring them inauthentic. Continue reading
Artworks from the private collection of the late musician David Bowie sold for £24.3 million (including buyer’s premium) at auction in London on Thursday, smashing their pre-sale estimate.
The first of the three-part sale “Bowie/Collector” at Sotheby’s opened with a selection of forty-seven works of Modern and Contemporary art, which had been expected to fetch £11.7 million. Not only did the evening attract the highest ever number of registered bidders at Sotheby’s for a London evening auction (720) but it also heralded a new record for a British artist at auction. Frank Auerbach’s ‘Head of Gerda Boehm’ (1965) sold for £3.8 million, seven times its high pre-sale estimate. According to the Sotheby’s catalogue, Bowie was said to have commented in relation to the painting: “My god, yeah! I want to sound like that looks”. The top lot of the evening was an acrylic and oilstick on canvas by Jean-Michel Basquiat entitled ‘Air Power’. Four bidders pushed the sale price up to £7.1 million. Continue reading
The sixth-time great grandson of an Indigenous Australian warrior is calling on the British Museum to repatriate a shield which belonged to his ancestor.
Warrior Cooman was fatally shot by members of Captain Cook’s crew when the HMS Endeavour landed on Australian shores in 1770. The voyagers opened fire on two tribesmen after they raised their spears in preparation to defend their land. The warriors managed to flee the musket fire but left their spears and Cooman’s Gweagal Shield behind them. Cook’s crew collected the artefacts and brought them back to the UK where they have remained a part of the British Museum’s collection ever since.
In an effort to negotiate the contested shield’s return to Australia Cooman’s great grandson Rodney Kelly has travelled with a delegation to London to meet with the deputy director of the British Museum. He has also presented the Museum with a formal letter signed on behalf of the Gweagal people urging its trustees to consider that ‘the healing power that this shield has for Australia is much greater than any value it can have as part of a collection in the British Museum’. The letter also suggests the shield could act as a ‘gateway’ to ‘to open the discourse on the tragic modern history of the Indigenous Australians under colonisation’
Sacred to the Gweagal people, the shield is considered the most important of the approximately 6000 Indigenous Australian objects currently forming part of the British Museum’s collections. The Museum recognises the shield’s significance for Indigenous Australians but according to Kelly his repatriation request was not well received at his first meeting with the deputy director. Instead, the Museum offered to lend the shield on a three-year loan agreement with the possibility of an extension.
Dissatisfied with anything less than the permanent return of the shield to Sydney Kelly has vowed to fight on and launch a legal battle if necessary. ‘In history, we are just the savages’ Kelly told The Guardian. ‘Rewriting our history is a big part of what has motivated me with this fight’.
The owner of the Cranach ‘Venus with a Veil’ at the centre of an international forgery scandal has turned up the heat on the debate surrounding the painting’s authenticity.
Doubts over the work’s attribution to Lucas Cranach the Elder prompted French authorities to seize it in March this year as part of a judicial investigation into a string of potential fake Old Master paintings. The Paris magistrate overseeing the investigation commissioned French technical experts to undertake a detailed examination and analysis of the contested painting. Now the Princely Collections of Liechtenstein which owns the ‘Venus’ has released a document online offering their own interpretation of the expert findings and dismissing the suggestion that it is a fake.
The document records a meeting which took place on 19 October 2016 at which the director and head of conservation of the Liechtenstein Collections presented their observations on the contested painting to the French expert committee. Their observations address various questions raised by the experts in relation to the work including the pigments used, the date of the oak panel and variation in the craquelé. While recognising the credibility of the scientific team’s research, the Liechtenstein Collections took a divergent view on the interpretation of the results. According to the online statement it ‘arrived at the clear conclusion that the present panel of “Venus” can by no means be considered a recent forgery’.
This latest contribution to the attribution debate contrasts with two recent expert analyses presented to the Liechtenstein Collections just over a fortnight ago. The first is a report by art historian Dieter Koepplin declaring the ‘Venus’ to be a forgery. The second is a statement given to French police in September this year by Cranach scholar Gunnar Heydenreich in which he reaches the same conclusion. Despite these findings, the Liechtenstein Collections are holding fast to their belief that the painting is an authentic Cranach.
Purchased by the Liechtenstein Collections from dealers Bernheimer/Colnaghi for €7 million (£6.24 million) in 2013, the disputed ‘Venus’ is one of several paintings currently under investigation by French authorities. Up to 25 forgeries of Old Master works including a Saint Jerome by Parmigianino and a portrait by Frans Hals may be in circulation.
It remains unclear when details of the French judicial investigation into the suspected forgeries will be revealed to the public. We will update you with any developments.
The countdown is on to source the £300,000 necessary to purchase an unfinished portrait of the Duke of Wellington for the United Kingdom.
London’s National Portrait Gallery has until the end of March 2017 to secure the balance of the £1.3 million price tag attached to the portrait painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence. It is being offered for sale by a private collector who purchased it at auction in 2013. Continue reading
Pablo Picasso’s electrician has been accused of attempting to smear his former employer’s reputation in an appeal court in France.
Pierre Le Guennec and his wife Danielle allege that the artist’s widow handed them a rubbish bag filled with works by Picasso following his death in an attempt to hide them from her stepson. Jacqueline Picasso is said to have asked Le Guennec to store between 15 and 17 rubbish bags containing 180 single pieces and a notebook of 91 drawings by Picasso including rare cubist collages and a work from his “blue period”. When she retrieved the bags from him some time later she gave Le Guennec one of them to keep in recognition of his devotion to the family. Le Guennec told the appeal court in Aix-en-Provence that Mrs Picasso had been having problems with her stepson Claude, and was perhaps attempting to prevent the works from being inventoried and subsequently inherited by him. Continue reading
On Monday 19 September 2016, Boodle Hatfield LLP was delighted to host a seminar presenting the Law Commission’s recommendations on reforming the law of loans secured on personal goods.
The Law Commission highlighted the Bills of Sale Act 1878 and the Bills of Sale Amendment Act 1882 as being archaic Victorian statutes which are wholly unsuited for modern credit arrangements. The calls for reform have stemmed from the logbook loan sector which uses Bills of Sales to secure loans and where sharp practices have been deemed disproportionate and unfair on borrowers. The proposed reforms will not only regulate the logbook loan market but will also have knock on effects on the more exclusive art and luxury asset lending sector. Continue reading
UK online fashion superstore ASOS has been forced to pay £20.2 million over alleged trademark infringements to two rival European retailers – cyclewear manufacturer ASSOS of Switzerland and German menswear retailer Anson’s Herrenhaus. Continue reading
The owner of the Cheltenham home featuring Banksy’s ‘Spy Booth’ mural told the BBC yesterday (23 August) that the £1 million work had been accidentally destroyed during repair works undertaken on the property. “I just want people to know that I wasn’t trying to sell it and it wasn’t taken off deliberately,” David Possee said.
Cheltenham Borough Council plans to investigate.
Read our original blog post on the mural’s disappearance here.
Banksy devotees in Cheltenham are mystified by the apparent removal of one of the graffiti artist’s murals from a local Grade II-listed house.
The only clue as to what might have happened to ‘Spy Booth’, which depicts three secret agents in trilbies and trenchcoats “snooping” on a man in a phone box with the aid of listening devices, came on Saturday (20 August). Pictures on social media appeared to show scaffolding and tarpaulins erected around the mural. The sound of machinery was also said to be heard and now all that remains is a pile of rubble beneath the wall of the house previously emblazoned with Banksy’s work. Continue reading
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