Master Paintings Week London

Master Paintings Week, the exciting new event in London’s already impressive art calendar, takes place from Saturday 4 to Friday 10 July 2009. This special week of exhibitions and auctions held by twenty-three leading dealers and two auction houses will draw attention to the great paintings and unrivalled expertise to be found in London. Between them the participants will show a wonderful array of European paintings from all the major schools including masterpieces, works of art-historical interest, new discoveries and fine works that would enrich museum collections or the homes of private collectors.

Italian paintings will abound and Robilant & Voena’s exhibition promises to be a Florentine feast for the eye with a selection of beautiful 17th century works complementing their newly-discovered The Bath of Bathsheba, 1667, by Simone Pignoni (1611-98). The reclining figure of Bathsheba is skilfully painted in typical 17th century Florentine style. The Old Testament story of David sending Bathsheba’s husband Uriah the Hittite, one of his generals, to certain death in battle was a popular subject for 17th century painters, allowing them to exalt the female nude. According to one of Pignoni’s pupils, his propensity for painting beautiful young women was looked upon so severely by the priest who heard his confession that the frail old artist repented. The priest convinced him “to purge such errors with flames”, in other words to destroy his ‘immoral’ paintings to regain his health, so it is extremely fortunate that Pignoni saved this alluring and dramatically vivid work. This exhibition will also feature an idyllic View of the River Arno with the Ponte alle Grazie, Florence by the English artist Thomas Patch (1725-82) who went to Italy at the age of 22 on his Grand Tour and stayed, first in Rome and then in Florence, to pursue a career as a painter. Three other variants of this composition by Patch are recorded, one of which is in the collection of the Marquess of Cholmondeley at Houghton Hall, acquired by Horace Walpole in 1771.

Simon C. Dickinson Ltd will show an oil sketch (bozzetto) by the talented Neapolitan painter Luca Giordano (1634-1705), known as ‘Fa Presto’ (paints quickly). This is one of his most brilliant and virtuoso performances, a vigorous compositional study for the enormous fresco on the entrance wall of the church of the Gerolamini, Naples, showing Christ driving the merchants out of the temple. Painted in 1684, the canvas is in the same condition as when it left his easel with all the impasto remarkably intact and with the rare feature of the strip lining revealing the artist’s colour trials with his paint brush on the back. The gallery will also stage an exhibition of Three Centuries of plein-air Painting.

Italian paintings also feature at Moretti Fine Art with a selection of Tuscan works from the 14th to 16th centuries. This small but precious collection illustrates the gallery’s commitment to offering high quality pictures that are typical of strong and independent Tuscan painters. Central to this display will be an exquisite Adoration of the Shepherds, c.1425, by the Master of Borgo alla Collina, an artist active in the Florentine area in the first half of the 15th century.

French paintings will also feature in Master Paintings Week, notably at Derek Johns Ltd with the exhibition of Selected French Masters from the 17th and 18th centuries. Of particular interest will be an enchanting portrait of Alexandrine-Jeanne Le Normand d’Etiolles, the young daughter of the Marquise de Pompadour, by François Boucher (1703-70), painted in 1749 for Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV. The exhibition will also include a dramatic painting of Saint Paul by Simon Vouet (1590-1649), originally bought for the Principe della Rocca in Naples, and Moses and the Daughters of Jethro by Sebastien Bourdon (1616-71).

The Matthiesen Gallery will offer a wide variety of fine paintings ranging from Allegory of the Spanish Monarchy bestowing the Arts by Corrado Giaquinto (1690-1765), c.1753-54, included in the 2008 exhibition Goya and Italy held at the Museo de Zaragoza, to Campagne Romaine - Vallée rocheuse avec un troupeau de porcs by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), signed and dated 1843, which will appear in the forthcoming sixth supplement to Robault’s catalogue raisonné.

Sphinx Fine Art will stage an exhibition of 100 important works, dating from the 15th to the early 19th centuries. Director of the gallery Roy Bolton writes: “As Old Masters are proving to be the only safe port in the current turbulent seas of the art market, the expectations for the summer season in London have never been higher”. On show will be a wonderful still life of Peaches, grapes, a pear, and white currants in a Wan-li kraak porcelain dish, with shells, a lizard and a butterfly on a ledge, recently recognised as being by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Younger (1609-45). Another highlight will be a beautiful allegorical figure of a girl by Michele Tosini, called Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio (1503-77), a mannerist figure that stands out as one of the most accomplished and pleasing of all Tosini’s small-scale works. Other works of museum quality will be a large and rare oil of the artist’s childhood home East Bergholt House by John Constable (1776-1837) and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s drawing, Death of Seneca. There will be a fully researched catalogue to accompany the exhibition available on request.

Rafael Valls will stage a small but enchanting exhibition, Young Faces: Portraits of children from the 17th and 18th Centuries, featuring a delightful full-length portrait of a young boy in an embroidered dress and feathered hat with a spaniel by his side, signed and dated 1605, by Van Zelven (active early 17th century). Two very charming paintings will be on loan from the de Boer Foundation, a portrait of a mother and her children by Dirck Hals (1591-1656) and a rare early portrait of a boy attributed to the Habsburg court painter Jakob Seisenegger (1504-67). The gallery will also show a number of other fine works such as an amusing tromp l’oeil of hawking equipment including a glove, net and falconry hoods hanging on a wall by Christoffel Pierson (1631-1714).

John Mitchell Fine Paintings will show among other works a bucolic pair of paintings by one of the finest exponents of the Claudean style in England, George Smith of Chichester (1714-76): A country family picking their own hops; and Apple pickers by a stream, with the town of Chichester in the distance.

Fergus Hall Master Paintings will show Dutch and Flemish paintings from the Golden Age, as well as a selection of British Old Masters. Also on view will be a painting with an illustrious provenance, A young woman with her lapdog by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805). Dr Edgar Munhall has confirmed that it was formerly in the collection of Harry Payne Bingham, who together with his heirs donated numerous masterpieces to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York including works by Rubens, Goya, Gainsborough and Degas. Among the British Old Masters being shown by Hall will be a lovely and rather romantic portrait of a gentleman by Sir Thomas Lawrence and Studio, and a portrait of Colonel Edward Cornewall by Cornelius Johnson (1593-1661), signed and dated 1636.

All the galleries participating in Master Paintings Week are in the heart of London’s Mayfair and St James’s, a short walk from one another, and will be open on Monday to Friday 10 am to 6 pm, Saturday and Sunday 10 am to 5 pm. Further information can be found on www.masterpaintingsweek.co.uk.

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