Master Paintings Week London

Exciting Discoveries Made by London Dealers – 4 to 10 July 2009

The spotlight will fall on master paintings in London from Saturday 4 to Friday 10 July 2009 when twenty-three of London’s top dealers join forces with Sotheby’s and Christie’s to stage Master Paintings Week. The exhibitions and auctions taking place that week of European paintings dating from the 15th to 19th centuries will highlight the strength and depth of expertise in the field to be found in London, unrivalled by any other city in the world, emphasised by the fact that a number of major dealers from other European cities have chosen to open galleries here.

The timing of this new event is fortuitous. During the current economic downturn, as has happened in the past, collectors are turning to more traditional areas of collecting and the market in master paintings, particularly Old Masters, showed its fundamental strength at the auctions that took place in New York earlier in the year and at The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht in March.

All the dealers participating in Master Paintings Week have established international reputations and each will stage a special exhibition or event in their gallery. They are eager to show visitors how accessible such paintings can be and how collecting in this field is still exciting, with all the possibilities of discovery. Indeed, among the many beautiful works to be seen will be an astonishing number of new discoveries, both in terms of attribution and provenance, a further indication of the scholarship to be found amongst London dealers.

Agnew’s has a very beautiful and sensitive depiction of the Holy Family by the Modena painter Bartolomeo Schedone (1578-1615), recognised only last year when it was in Chile, and on view in London now for the first time. A concert scene by the Dutch painter Dirck van Baburen (1594/5-1624) at Verner Ǻmell is an important discovery, now identified as a smaller and perhaps the prime version of a work in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. It has a fascinating provenance having been owned by Prince Rohan, Vienna, who gave it to Dr Alajos Paikert, the Royal Court Physician, Budapest. Charles Beddington has discovered a grisaille portrait by the French court portraitist Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743) of the renowned sculptor Martin Desjardins (1640-94), the latter undertook many commissions at Versailles for Louis XIV. This is a unique survival of a preparatory sketch by the artist. Ben Elwes Fine Art will be exhibiting a pair of views of Joseph Bonaparte’s estate at the Chậteau de Mortefontaine with a fascinating newly-found ‘Napoleonic’ provenance of great trans-Atlantic significance. The pair was commissioned from the French artist Hyacinthe Dunouy (1757-1843) by Napoleon’s brother Joseph, King of Naples and later also King of Spain. On Napoleon’s downfall, Joseph was forced to abdicate the Spanish throne and moved to the United States, taking much of his important art collection, which has subsequently been dispersed, to his new home at Point Breeze, New Jersey.

Michael Tollemache Fine Art has a particularly exciting new discovery, Village Festival by David Teniers (1610-90), which recently emerged from a provincial collection in France. On the back was the magnificent wax seal of the famous Russian family of the Counts Couchelev-Besborodko. Further research has revealed that the painting originally belonged to Prince Alexander Besborodko, the celebrated successor of Potemkin as Catherine the Great’s chancellor, whose collection was divided between his palace in St Petersburg (open to the public today) and his heirs.

Moatti Fine Art has the recently discovered flower piece of 1826 by the great still life painter Jan Frans Van Dael (1764-1840) whose work was prized by Parisian society, in particular by Marie Antoinette and Josephine Bonaparte, while Johnny van Haeften has another newly discovered still life of flowers by Jan Breughel the Elder (1568-1625). Richard Green will highlight two paintings from 17th century Flanders: Frans Snyder’s (1579-1657) vivid Gamedealer, painted c.1610-14, and an exuberant St George’s kermis with the dance around the maypole, 1627, by Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564/5-1637/8). William Thuillier will show recently discovered works by Sir Peter Lely, Claude Lefebvre and Sir Godfrey Kneller while The Weiss Gallery will show a magnificent Elizabethan portrait, the sitter only recently identified as Dorothy, Lady Dormer.

Other important works to be found in the galleries include two paintings by the German Renaissance master Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), David and Bathsheba, dated 1524, and Madonna with grapes and standing Christ child, dated 1534, offered by Colnaghi. Philip Mould Ltd will be exhibiting a collection of early works by Thomas Gainsborough, as well as a fascinating self-portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA (1723-92). In this portrait Reynolds, aged around fifty years old, portrayed himself in a pose consciously reminiscent of Rembrandt. Major works from the 19th century include at Agnew’s one of the most famous Victorian images by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896), My First Sermon, commissioned from the artist for £180 by Agnew’s in August 1863 and showing Effie, his five year old daughter, sitting in church listening intently.

One of the most important examples will be found at Trafalgar Galleries who have discovered that The Emperor Claudius I mounted on a white charger by Giulio Romano (?1499-1546) was formerly in the collection of Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, c.1537, and was later acquired by King Charles I. Coincidentally, Whitfield Fine Art has another painting that may have belonged to Charles I, a newly-attributed Portrait of a Bearded Man by Sir Anthony Van Dyck which has not been on the market for forty years and corresponds directly to a Van Dyck described in Charles I’s inventory.

There will also be major sales of master paintings at London’s two leading auction houses. Christie’s will stage a series of five auctions of Old Masters and 19th century art starting on the evening of Tuesday 7 July, marking the launch of a single category of Old Masters and 19th century art and bringing together for the first time paintings and works on paper created in the great European classical tradition. Among the highlights will be a wonderful still life by Willem Claesz Heda (1594-1640) (estimate £300,000/£500,000). Sotheby’s will stage a series of four sales of Old Master paintings on 8 and 9 July including Renaissance and Baroque Masterworks from The Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection, a highlight of which will be a startling depiction of Prometheus by Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652) (estimate £800,000/£1,200,000).

With such a distinguished roll-call of specialist dealers and auction houses, Master Paintings Week promises to become a major event in the art world this summer. Dr Nicholas Penny, Director of the National Gallery, has written the foreword to the catalogue accompanying the event in which he states: “The stimulus given to the interest in Old Master paintings by the initiative of Master Paintings Week is something we welcome very warmly and our doors are open together with those of all commercial galleries collaborating in the venture.” All the participating galleries are in London’s Mayfair and St James’s areas, a short walk from one another, and will be open during Master Paintings Week on Monday to Friday 10 am to 6 pm, Saturday and Sunday 11 am to 4 pm. A website has been set up for the event, www.masterpaintingsweek.co.uk, which has full details about all the participants, their exhibitions and events.

For further information, detailed gallery guide and images, please contact:

Sue Bond Public Relations
Hollow Lane Farmhouse, Thurston, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk IP31 3RQ, UK
Tel. +44 (0)1359 271085
Fax. +44 (0)1359 271934
info@suebond.co.uk
www.suebond.co.uk