Christie’s International PLC said it sold $3.5 billion of fine and decorative art in the first half, up 7.7% from the same period last year and up 56% from two years ago, indicating that the art market is healthy even as collectors of new art pull back after a five-year shopping spree. Sotheby’s won’t release [...]
It is not rare for people to dream of calling a real Rembrandt their own, because the Dutch painter has attained mythical status the world over. But his fellow countryman George Kremer is one of the very few who has actually realised this “boy`s dream”. Rembrandt’s “Bust of an Old Man with Turban” is one [...]
Inspired by the possibilities of painting in nature, rather than in the studio, artists traveled to the rugged Forest of Fontainebleau near Paris from the early 1820s to the mid-1870s forging innovations in art that would resonate for generations to follow. There, among the rural villages and the vast and varied wilderness, they laid the [...]
A portable altar from the 17th century. “Art of the Royal Court: Treasures of Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe” is a stealth blockbuster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A sumptuous sprawl of 170 objects borrowed from palaces and museums all over Europe, it is the first in-depth survey of the arts and [...]
A recently rediscovered masterpiece by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) sold at Christie’s auction of Important Old Master and British Pictures this evening for £12,361,250 / $24,376,385 / €15,513,369, a world record price for any French Old Master painting sold at auction. La Surprise had been missing for almost 200 years, presumed to have been destroyed, and [...]
The Fondation Cartier will present a major exhibition of the work of French sculptor César on the tenth anniversary of his death. Jean Nouvel —the Fondation Cartier’s architect and a close friend of the artist—has been invited to select the works as well as design their presentation, thus offering a fresh perspective on the work [...]
“Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps” by artist Joseph William Mallord Turner The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “J.M.W. Turner” is a beast of a show. With nearly 150 works in oil and watercolor spanning more than half a century, it will either win you over or wear you out. Or it will [...]