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Art Discoveries
| First $1 Million Find for 'Antiques Roadshow' |
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From Art Fortune, June 29, 2009
NEW YORK - A woman who inherited some Chinese carved jade from her father has scored the first $1 million appraisal from experts on the U.S. television program "Antiques Roadshow," the producers said on Monday.
In a record for the show, four pieces of Chinese carved jade and celadon from the Chien Lung Dynasty (1736-1795), including a large bowl crafted for the Emperor, were given a conservative auction estimate of up to $1.07 million.
"For 13 years, we've been hoping to feature a million-dollar appraisal on 'Antiques Roadshow;' it's been our 'Great White Whale,'" executive producer Marsha Bemko said. "We're thrilled that, despite this year's slow economy, 'Roadshow' finally captured this elusive trophy," she said in a statement released by Boston-based production company WGBH, which licensed the format from the British show of the same name produced by the BBC.
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Russian Art Finds More Success at Chrisite's
From Art Fortune, April 27, 2009
NEW YORK—With major impressionist and modern and postwar and contemporary sales less than three weeks away, the art world is anxiously waiting to see if new price levels will be established and recovery will commence. On Friday, Christie's Russian art sale provided hopes of such a possibility, as the 390-lot, two-session sale earned $13,225,125 (including buyer’s premiums), falling comfortably within the pre-sale estimate of $9.5–13.8 million.The diverse auction, which included 19th- and 20th-century paintings, icons, and Fabergé works, achieved sold rates of 69 percent by lot and 80 percent by value.
Mark Moehrke, Christie’s Russian senior specialist, credited sensible estimates and a variety of bidders for the success of the sale. “The market responded well to rare works of art and Fabergé at attractive estimates, and we witnessed very competitive bidding from a diverse international client base,” he said.
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Stolen Art Found in
Obscure Places
From ArtFortune February 19, 2008
(Newser Summary) – The four 19th-century paintings stolen from a Swiss museum have reportedly been found in an unlocked car parked outside a Zurich psychiatric hospital. Although police have not yet confirmed the find, Swiss media are reporting that the $168 million worth of loot—one work each by Cézanne, Degas, Monet, and van Gogh—has been recovered. The paintings were stolen by masked gunmen on February 10.
Because of their fame, the works would have been impossible to sell on the open market. Moreover, police presume that the paintings were not stolen to order, since the four canvases hung next to each other at the Emile Bührle Foundation, a private museum on the shore of Lake Zurich. One of the snatched works, Cézanne's Boy in the Red Vest, was the museum's most valuable piece.
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Russian Art Market To Face First Big Test Of 2009
April 21, 2009
Courtesy Sotheby'sIvan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, "Columbus Sailing from Palos" (1892). Est. $1–1.5 million.
NEW YORK—Collectors and art enthusiasts curious to see how Russian art fares in the current market will have a chance to find out this week as rival auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s host important sales in New York.
“It’s hard to predict where this sale will go,” said Karen Kettering, vice president and specialist in Russian works of art at Sotheby’s, which holds a two-session sale tomorrow. “The Russian art market is unprecedented — it didn’t exist 10 years ago.”
Sotheby's November sale of Russian art, which took place in London and was the last big auctio in the category, realized £25.2 million ($36.9 million), below its presale estimate of £30–43 million. The house's estimate for the sale on Wednesday is a less ambitious $12.6–17.5 million, for 310 lots.
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Rare Ancient Indian Art Found in Tenesse
From Art Fortune, January 22, 2009
Cory Holliday almost didn't see the stick figure painted on the sandstone. His first impression was that it was a clever fake.
A cave specialist for the Tennessee chapter of The Nature Conservancy, Holliday was searching for caves in a remote part of Fentress County on the Cumberland Plateau (Tennessee, USA) when discovered the foot-long painting of a dancing stick figure. The left leg appeared misshapen, and the right hand resembled a claw.
The rock shelter painting came as a complete surprise. "I knew that Native American rock art had been found in the area, but I didn't realize this was so significant," Holliday said. "My first impression was that someone had drawn it with charcoal." In fact, the artist most likely lived during the Mississippian Period between 1000 and 1600 CE and used a paint based on a prehistoric recipe whose main ingredient was pulverized clay. That's according to Jan Simek, a University of Tennessee anthropology professor who specializes in cave archaeology.
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Nazi Albums of Looted Art, Found in Attic, Reach U.S. Archives
From Art Fortune, June 18, 2009
Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- For decades they sat in the attic of an American home: two fraying albums that document Adolf Hitler's quest for supremacy of the art world.
Inside were black-and-white photographs of paintings by such French artists as Francois Boucher, Hubert Robert and Antoine Watteau. Before World War II, the paintings were owned by French Jews. During the German occupation of France, the Nazis seized the art and sent the albums for Hitler to review for the ``Fuhrer Museum'' he planned in his Austrian hometown, Linz.
Thirty-nine such albums were discovered after the war and used as evidence during the Nuremberg trials. But a U.S. soldier took two others from Hitler's home, the Berghof, in 1945.
Today those albums entered the collection of the National Archives in Washington -- joining the other 39.
``It's fair to say this is one of the most significant finds related to Hitler's premeditated theft of art and cultural treasures since the Nuremberg trials,'' Allen Weinstein, archivist of the U.S., said at a news conference.
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