London’s National Gallery is contesting a claim that one of its premier Matisse paintings is former Nazi loot. Portrait of Greta Moll passed through several hands before purchase in 1979, at a time when provenance was not nearly as closely monitored or considered during acquisitions. The museum is calling for dismissal of the case over “jurisdictional issues.” (more…)
An exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris this year will reunite a collection of Modernist masterpieces compiled by Sergei Shchukin. The collection includes landmark works by Matisse and Picasso, and were split by the Soviet regime between various museums. The works will travel to Paris this fall in a joint effort by the State Hermitage Museum and the Pushkin Museum, which hold the works in their respective collections. “We are planning everything together and taking a number of steps together, and this is understandable, because we can’t live without the Hermitage, without its collection and our common historical past connected with this collection,” Marina Loshak, the director of the Pushkin says. “There are many projects that we are planning to do together outside of our museums.” (more…)
Henri Matisse’s Portrait of Greta Moll is the subject of a lawsuit in the UK, after the sitter’s descendants threatened to file a lawsuit over ownership of the work against the National Gallery. Moll’s heirs claim that the work was sold from her collection without permission, but the museum states it has no obligation to return it even if these allegations were true. “If it is true that the painting was stolen in 1947, then the family did suffer an injustice, but not at the hands of the National Gallery, who bought the painting in good faith over 30 years later,” a National Gallery spokesman said. (more…)
René Magritte’s Miroir Universel sells over estimate for$6,661,000, via Rae Wang for Art Observed
The November auctions are over, as Christie’s capped its final major evening sale of the year to strong results, with 13 lots going unsold out of the 62 offered, tallying a final of $145,545,000. (more…)
MoMA has announced that it will remain open all weekend, offering late night, discounted admission for the last weekend of the popular Matisse Cut-Outs exhibition. The show closes on Tuesday. (more…)
Henri Matisse, The Snail (1953), via Art Observed
There’s a moment at the end of Henri Matisse’s landmark exhibition of his late “cut-out” works, currently on view at MoMA in New York, when the viewer emerges into the last room to view Matisse’s final canvases, immense explosions of color and form that immediately arrest the viewer with their dynamic, minimal surfaces. (more…)
An Henri Matisse painting from the collection of Cornelius Gurlitt has been confirmed as Nazi loot, the Art Newspaper reports. A task-force has uncovered that the 1921 work Femme Assise was taken from the collection of the Paris-based dealer Paul Rosenberg. “Even though it could not be documented with absolute certainty how the work came into [Cornelius Gurlitt’s father] Hildebrand Gurlitt’s possession, the task force has concluded that the work is Nazi loot and was taken from its rightful owner Paul Rosenberg,” says researcher Ingeborg Berggreen Merkel. (more…)
Two of Russia’s most prominent museums, the Hermitage Museum and the Pushkin Museum, are currently embroiled in a dispute over the collections of Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin, which had been distributed between two institutions when Stalin shut down the State Museum in 1948. The debate was brought to light this year, when the Pushkin’s director, Irina Antonova, appealed to President Vladimir Putin on live television, asking him to recreate the institution in Moscow, raising ire over the rightful home of the works, which include pieces by Picasso and Matisse. “The expert advice seems to be all on the Hermitage side—but you never know,” says Geraldine Norman, an advisor at The Hermitage. (more…)
The Tate Modern in London has announced its plans for a show of the final works completed by Henri Matisse. Slated for Spring of 2014, the show will feature 120 pieces by the artist, primarily using his large-scale, cut-out technique, including his famous Blue Nudes. “They are more like installations or environments than paintings; and they seem very contemporary now. Part of the point of the show is to reconsider them in this light,” said Tate curator Nicholas Cullinan. “They were a way of collapsing line and colour; at the same time they were a kind of sculpture – carving into pure colour.” (more…)
The family of late Paris gallery owner Paul Rosenberg has demanded that the Henie Onstand Arts Center in Oslo return a number of paintings seized from him during the German occupation of Paris during World War II . While the family has provided documents claiming a number of works, including Matisse’s Woman in Blue in Front of Fireplace, the Norwegian museum claims it had no indication that the work was plundered when it was purchased 60 years ago, and that the painting is now the property of the museum under Norwegian law. “We need to investigate this matter properly,” Says museum director Tone Hansen. “It is too early to draw any conclusions. We are in dialogue with the family and will continue to be so. This case has other aspects than pure legal aspects that have to be taken into consideration.” (more…)
Matisse: In Search of True Painting, (Installation View),via The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City opened the exhibition “Matisse: In Search of True Painting” on December 4th 2012. Dedicated to Henri Matisse’s painting process, and highlighting his tendency to “repeat compositions in order to compare effects,” the exhibition includes forty-nine works, emphasizing the artist’s lifelong work with pairs, trios, and series, and exploring his artistic exercise of variance to discover the true essence of an image.
The French government has validated claims to seven works of art taken from Jewish owners during World War II, and has promised to return them. The works include Henri Matisse’s Le Mur Rose, de l’Hôpital d’Ajaccio, and will be returned to Tom Seldorff, the 82-year old grandson of original owner Richard Neumann. This is incredibly rare. It’s the largest number of paintings we’ve been able to give back to Jewish families in over a decade,” said Bruno Saunier of the National Museums Agency. (more…)
Romanian authorities have arrested three men suspected of the theft of seven paintings by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Gaugin, and others from a Rotterdam museum. The paintings were stolen last October in an overnight break-in. While the works have yet to be recovered, police believe that they are hidden in an undisclosed location in Romania. (more…)
Henri Matisse’s Le Jardin, which has been missing for over 20 years and is currently valued at $1 million, has been recovered from a dealer in Essex. The oil painting was stolen from Stockholm’s Museum of Modern Art in 1987, and its journey from Stockholm to Essex remains somewhat of a mystery. “Stolen artworks that are recognisable change hands often so there is no knowing where it has been in the intervening two decades.” Says Christopher A. Marinello, executive director and general counsel at the Art Loss Register (more…)
New York art dealers R. Scott Cook and his wife Sousanna A.E. Cook have been ordered to pay $17.96 million in damages to collector George Ball after allegedly fleeing the country with 11 of his works, including pieces by Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Henri Matisse. Ball claims that the couple had agreed to sell his pieces at Christie’s on his behalf, but instead left the country for France without ever listing the works.
Two exhibitions will celebrate the seminal Armory Show of 1913 this year, “The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory Show, 1913”, which opens at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey on the exact day of the centennial anniversary; and “The Armory Show at 100”, at the New York Historical Society in the fall. The original show, organized by Walt Kuhn and Arthur B. Davies, was so shocking to American audiences that “…in Chicago, art students felt so threatened that they burned Brancusi and Matisse in effigy, a scene that a German expressionist might have done justice to – except that there was no German expressionism in the show.” (more…)
Rotterdam Kunsthal, photo Peter Dejong AP
The Kunsthal Rotterdam in the Netherlands suffered the loss of several valuable paintings in a theft around 3:00 a.m. on October 16th, among them Picasso, Monet, Gauguin, Matisse and Lucian Freud. The paintings were part of an exhibition of 150 works in the Triton Foundation’s collection as part of the museum’s 20th anniversary celebration. The burglars set off an alarm at a security agency and authorities responded within 5 minutes, but not in time to catch the suspects.
Picasso Harlequin Head, 1971 courtesy Businessweek
Breaking: Several valuable artworks were stolen from the The Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam on October 15th or 16th, including paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Gauguin and Freud. Police said the robbery happened on Monday night or early on Tuesday morning. They are reviewing surveillance video and asking any witnesses to come forward. The museum is showing works from the Triton Foundation in a 20th anniversary celebration. (more…)
Paul Cezanne, Jouer de cartes (1892–96). Image courtesy of Christie’s.
Last night’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale at Christie’s began this season’s auctions in New York. Christie’s overall sales totaled $117 million—well over their low estimate of $90.5 million. According to Christie’s, they achieved a sell-through rate of 96% by value and 90% by lot. In a post-auction press conference, Christie’s Head of the Department, Brooke Lampley, said that the results were exactly what they had expected, given that they had tailored their sale to match what the market was looking for.
View of the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale at Christie’s. Photo by Aubrey Roemer for Art Observed.
Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1895). Photo by Aubrey Roemer for Art Observed.
Today marks the beginning of a two week flurry of art sales in the New York auction houses. This week is focused entirely on Impressionist and Modern Art, with next week centered on Post War and Contemporary Art. Chances are that you have already been bombarded with the numerous and impressive highlights that both houses have to offer, as the many of the lots from both houses are iconic, impressive, and will quite possibly break world records left and right.
‪‬The New York Times surveys the behind-the-scenes legal policies of the art authentication and insurance world, using the Knoedler Gallery’s forgery of Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Willem de Koonig, the deterioration of Matisse’s colors, an elbow accident with a private Picasso, and the re-appropriation lawsuit against Richard Prince to examine how to best protect a collection from fraud or damage.
[AO Newslink]
Gustav Klimt, Litzlberg am Attersee, 1914-15 (est. in excess of $25 million, realized $40.4 million) via Sothebys.com
The Impressionist and Modern art evening auction at Sotheby’s New York on Wednesday night realized $200 million for 57 of 70 lots sold. Business proceeded as usual within the auction house despite the deafening cacophony from protesters stationed outside the building’s main entrance (Sotheby’s has been feuding with their art handlers for months). Earlier today the auction house announced that one of the evening’s top lots – one of Matisse‘s bronze Nu De Dos sculptures estimated to bring $20-30 million- had been withdrawn from the sale after having been sold privately yesterday afternoon (along with the other three in the series, which also belonged to the Burnett Foundation, and which were slated to sell at auction over the next year). Excluding the Matisse, the sale carried estimates of $168-230 million. The $200 million total fell comfortably within expectations and bested Christie’s comparable sale on Tuesday evening. At the press conference Sotheby’s noted that last night’s results at Christie’s were “sobering” and that they did take the opportunity today to talk to consignors and in some cases lower reserves.
Edgar Degas, Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans, executed in wax c. 1879-1881 and cast later (est. $25-35 million), via Christies.com
The November sales will be inaugurated at Christie’s on Tuesday night with a 75-lot Impressionist & Modern auction at their Rockefeller Center location in New York. Seventy-one lots will be offered at Sotheby’s New York on Wednesday evening, and the two sales are expected to fetch close to $400 million. This round of auctions follows closely on the heels of the Frieze Art Fair and the concurrent and comparatively smaller sales of Contemporary art in mid-October. Little has changed between then and now to make buyer’s less anxious about the financial markets, but the auction houses managed to secure a handful of top-tier consignments that may bolster the results of their sales.
