BRANFORD — The old, nautical painting, donated to the James Blackstone Memorial Library many years ago by one of the town’s old families, sat for decades in storage. Then, during library renovations a few years back, it was rediscovered. The library brought in an expert to clean and restore the painting and research its origin. As it turns out, the painting proved to be a rare view of New York Harbor around 1884 by Danish-American painter Mathias Jakob Frederik Lutken, who lived from 1841 to 1905, spent the last 25 years of his life in this country and specialized in painting maritime scenes.
Now it’s being offered up to the world. It will be auctioned off Tuesday as part of a major auction of maritime art and antiques by Bonhams & Butterfield, which bills itself as “the world’s oldest and largest auctioneer of fine art and antiques still in British ownership. ”Proceeds from the sale — which Bonhams, as it is known, estimates is likely to bring $8,000 to $12,000 — will help support the libary. Douglas Armistead of The Frame Gallery in North Branford, who cleaned and restored the painting, called it “ an unusually large and impressive waterscape.
“It’s a major work by this artist,” said Armistead, who donated his services to clean and restore the painting, but will be paid a percentage upon its sale. “No one’s seen one this big — most of the other works that we know about are much smaller. This one is 31 by 49 without the frame, which is very large.”
“Anyone who is interested in the history of sail would be interested in this,” Armistead said.
“This particular view is really a time capsule because it shows four different types of watercraft: the main one is a barkentine, second is a schooner-pilot boat, the third is a cat boat, and the fourth is a sidewheeler steamboat ferry,” which “speaks to the age of steam” and sets the painting in time, he said.
The view “appears to be off the Battery, looking south toward Governor’s Island,” with “boats ... rounding the tip of Manhattan,” Armistead said. “A storm has just cleared and the water is just beautiful.”
The painting can be viewed and bid on online by navigating fromhttp://www.bonhams.com. Look for marine paintings and decorative arts under “Sales This Week.”
According to Armistead, who often works with the Branford Historical Society, the L�tken painting was one of 15 to 20 “that had accumulated over many years” in the Blackstone Library. “Most were sold off earlier.”
“This one, they couldn’t really tell what it was,” Armistead said. “It was so dirty and the varnish was so dark that you needed a halogen light to see it at all.”
When Library Director Kathy Reiger called Armistead in through Jane Bouley of the Branford Historical Society, “they said they wanted to do something with it. They wanted to move it along,” he said.
“I really have no idea how the library ended up with it,” said Library Director Kathy Rieger, who has been with the library for six years. “It had been in storage for many years.”
She said that proceeds from the sale would most likely go into the library’s endowment fund, although she had no idea how much it really might fetch. Initially, “we were in an area of the auction world where things had slowed down considerably,” said Armistead. But then, “we found that things had opened up a little” and he found someone interested in selling it in Gregg Dietrich, an auction house veteran and authority on maritime paintings who was putting together Tuesday’s maritime auction for Bonhams.
Dietrich said he thinks the painting has a good chance of selling. “First of all, I think it’s a beautful painting.,” he said. “While very dark, it’s beautifully painted.” The subject, New York Harbor, “always draws a lot of interest, regardless of who the painter is...because a lot of these older paintings document details” of things that no longer exist, but which still interest people, Dietrich said. Lutken “is well-known,” he said. “He has quite a few different sales records.”
But “based on the square inch, it’s a very good value ... and we have had a fair amount of interest in it,” Dietrich said. “We do have a couple of (absentee) bids on it already.”
Monday, January 25, 2010
EXPO ON PAINTINGS OF MYSORE'S HERITAGE BUILDINGS
Putty, dedicated to her father Raghothama Putty, an accomplished artist, was inaugurated by
Dr. R. Gopal, Director of Archaeology, at Prathima Gallery opposite Zoo in city yesterday.
Speaking on the occasion, he suggested that a University must be set up in city exclusively for
The three-day exhibition displays most of the heritage buildings of Mysore depicted in colourful
paintings, 47 in all. The expo will be open to public from 10 am to 7 pm till Jan. 26.
identifying and developing drawing and painting skills among the art enthusiasts.
"Despite being called as a cultural capital of Karnataka, Mysore does not have an adequate
(art) gallery," regretted Dr. Gopal and suggested that the land near Chamundi Vihar Stadium
could be used for the proposed art gallery for which there was ample funds with Archaeology
Department. He suggested that a committee be constituted for the project.
Van Gogh Painting in $150M Court Dispute
For MT
“The Night Cafe” was painted in Arles, France in 1888 by Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh, who once described it as “one of the ugliest pictures I have done.”
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut — A Van Gogh painting at the center of a dispute between Yale University and a man who believes that the artwork was stolen from his family during the Russian Revolution is worth $120 million to $150 million, the man's attorney said.
The evaluation is the first public estimate of the painting's value, and the lawyer, Allan Gerson, said Friday that it comes from a top auction firm.
Gerson represents Pierre Konowaloff, the purported great-grandson of industrialist and aristocrat Ivan Morozov, who bought "The Night Cafe" in 1908. Russia nationalized Morozov's property during the Communist revolution, and the Soviet government later sold the painting.
The artwork, which shows the inside of a nearly empty cafe with a few customers seated at tables along the walls, has been hanging in the Yale University Art Gallery for almost 50 years.
A Yale spokesman said the university could not offer a value of the 1888 painting, saying the goal is to have it on public display for perpetuity.
Yale filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court in March to assert its ownership rights over "The Night Cafe" and to block Konowaloff from claiming it.
Yale claims that the ownership of tens of billions of dollars of art and other goods could be thrown into doubt if Konowaloff is allowed to take the painting. Any federal court invalidation of Russian nationalization decrees from the early 20th century would also create tensions between the United States and Russia, Yale argues.
The university says former owners have challenged titles to other property seized from them in Russia, but their claims were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court and state, federal and foreign courts.
"Yale is confident that the court will see through Konowaloff's latest rhetoric and recognize that he is asking a U.S. court to turn back the clock 90 years and undo the Russian Revolution," Yale said Friday.
Gerson said in court papers Thursday that Yale was engaging in "scare tactics." He said neither Russia nor the United States expressed any concerns about the case and that any ruling would not affect Russian paintings.
Gerson says the trend by U.S. courts has been to
invalidate confiscations of art. He said in court papers that Yale's argument amounted to compelling U.S. courts to "rubber-stamp good title on any dictator's plunder."
Yale received the painting through a bequest from Yale alumnus Stephen Carlton Clark. The school says Clark bought the painting from a gallery in New York City in 1933 or 1934.
Konowaloff has filed court papers calling Yale's
acquisition "art laundering." He argues that Russian
authorities unlawfully confiscated the painting and that the United States deemed the theft a violation of international law.
Mona Lisa mystery: Is da Vinci painting of bearded man?
The Mona Lisa's mysterious smile may hide an uncomfortable secret - that she's really a bearded MAN.
Some scientists believe the world's most famous painting could be a disguised self-portrait of artist Leonardo da Vinci.
And now they want to test their amazing theory by getting permission to exhume the remains of Leonardo and study his skull.
Anthropologist Giorgio Gruppioni said the project could throw new light on Leonardo's famed work, explaining: "If we find his skull, we could rebuild Leonardo's face and compare it with the Mona Lisa."
The identity of the Mona Lisa has been debated for centuries, with speculation ranging from Leonardo's mother to Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine merchant.
Some scholars have suggested that Leonardo's presumed homosexuality and love of riddles led him to paint himself as a woman.
American expert Lillian Schwartz drew on computer studies to highlight apparent similarities between the features of the Mona Lisa and those of a self-portrait by the artist. A team from Italy's National Committee for Cultural Heritage , a leading association of scientists and art historians, has now asked to open his tomb.
The Renaissance painter is buried at Amboise castle, in France's Loire valley, where he died in 1519, aged 67.
After talks with French cultural officials and the owners of the chateau the Italians hope to receive the go-ahead this summer.
Silvano Vincenti, head of the team, said its first step would be to verify the remains are those of Leonardo by using carbon dating and comparing DNA from the bones with that from known relatives.
The tests could also reveal if he died of a disease such as syphilis or tuberculosis.
Bone tests may also establish whether Leonardo suffered lead poisoning due to toxic pigments in paint.
But the plans are going down like a lead balloon with some scholars.
Nicholas Turner, a former curator of drawings at the Getty Museum, said: "It sounds a bit fanciful, slightly mad, as if the Leonardo bug has taken hold too firmly in the minds of these people.
"We know Mona Lisa was a specific person, she existed and it's her portrait. If Leonardo heard about all this, he would have a good chuckle."
Picasso painting ripped by New York woman's fall
The painting should be repaired in time for an April exhibition
A woman who was taking an art class at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has accidentally fallen into a Picasso painting and damaged it. The painting called The Actor sustained a vertical tear of about six inches (15cm) in the lower right-hand corner. But the damage did not affect the "focal point of the composition" and should be repaired for an exhibition later this year, the museum said. The work from the Rose period was painted in the winter of 1904-1905. The repair should be completed in time for the Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, which will feature some 250 works from the museum's collection and is due to open at the end of April. The unusually large canvas, measuring 6ft by 4ft (1.8m by 1.2m) and which depicts an acrobat posed against an abstracted backdrop, was damaged on Friday |
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