Old Masters

THIS unrecorded portrait by John Constable, estimated to make up to £80,000, was discovered by East Anglian auctioneer and fine art broker John Vost during a routine valuation at a house on the Suffolk/Norfolk border.

THE Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has just acquired an important oil sketch by Sir Peter Paul Rubens thanks to grants from the National Arts Collection Fund and the Resource V&A Purchase Fund.

Keen to maximise international interest, Christie’s sold the major portion of Dr Anton C.R. Dreesmann’s Old Master pictures in London on April 11.

THE relative strength of Old Master paintings in comparison to other sectors of the market has been noted at a number of recent auctions, but this new-found strength, it seems, is not just restricted to top-end sales in London and New York.

Sotheby’s July 11 Old Master sale will include the re-discovered Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) oil on panel The Massacre of the Innocents, pictured right.

Last summer Christie’s Old Master drawings expert Nicolas Schwed was sitting at his desk in Paris checking through his e-mails when he came across this 460-year-old face staring back at him from his computer screen.

MAYFAIR art dealers Agnew’s are hotly contesting claims for a £1.5m refund over an Old Master which is at the centre of a dispute over who painted it.

PARIS: A prestige series of auctions held by Tajan at the Hôtel George V just before Christmas (December 17-19) yielded just under £7m hammer.

The Tower of Babel was a popular subject with Flemish artists, and with the Louvain-born Lucas van Valkenborch (c.1530-97) in particular. He painted at least four versions, to be found in Munich, Mainz, the Louvre, and in the Beaussant-Lefèvre saleroom at Drouot on December 14, when an oil on panel Tower dated 1587, 28 x 35in (71 x 90cm), spiralled six times over estimate to Fr8.2m (£781,000), establishing an auction record for the artist.

BOUND to be a highlight at TEFAF Maastricht in March is Rembrandt’s painting of the goddess Minerva which will be offered by New York dealer Otto Naumann for $40m.

Rembrandt the Printmaker by Erik Hinterding, Ger Luijten and Martin Royalton, published by the British Museum Press in association with the Rijksmuseum ISBN 01714126268 £29.99 pb

THE Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is to be the new home for Federico Barocci’s £1.3m drawing Study for The Institution of the Eucharist.

KONRAD Bernheimer, the Munich and London-based Old Master Paintings dealer has confirmed that he is to acquire Colnaghi, the Old Master paintings and drawings dealership. The gallery will continue to operate under the Colnaghi name from the existing gallery at 15 Old Bond Street, London.

Dealers often complain about the way that private bidders get over-excited at auctions and pay ridiculously inflated prices they wouldn’t dream of giving in a gallery. But for once it looks - or rather looked – as if a major player in the trade had suffered a serious attack of auction fever following Jermyn Street agent Guy Morrison’s terse admission that he was now the happy owner of £9.4m Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) portrait.

A new world auction record for Sir Joshua Reynolds was achieved at Sotheby’s on November 29 when the oil on canvas Portrait of Omai sold for £9,400,500 (plus 20/15/10 per cent buyer’s premium).

Vermeer’s Camera: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces by Philip Steadman, published by the Oxford University Press. ISBN 019215967 £17.99hb

ARTS Minister Tessa Blackstone has placed a temporary bar on the export of an important drawing, Study for the Institution of the Eucharist, by Federico Barocci (1528-1612).

The rediscovery of a significant work by a major Old Master painter is always an event for the art trade, even if the work not obviously commercial. When Anthony Blunt wrote his monograph on Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665) this painting, right, of The Holy Family with St. John the Baptist, executed c.1627-28 when the young Poussin first worked in Rome, was only known from engravings.

Scottish painting is, as we know, one of the stronger sectors of the UK art market, but William Page Atkinson Wells (1872-1923) is not one of its better known names.

A ‘LOST’ painting by the great 17th century French painter Nicolas Poussin has come to light and will be offered for sale by Galerie Koller in Zurich on October 5.