A sleeper Alessandro Allori!

Herbette, from France, sells on 17 June 2018 a "French School, 18th century" portrait of a lady, estimated at 1,300 to 1,800 Euro.

At first I tweeted about it, as I thought it looked better and older than the description and estimate indicated, but I couldn't immediately find the right artist or period. But looking further and further first led me to the 16th century, then to Italy, and finally to Alessandro Allori (1535-1607).

I was first searching for French paintings of princesses or noble ladies, but I couldn't match the striking (and truly beautiful) fashion displayed in this painting with any works I encountered. A brief excursion to Elizabethan works confirmed that the work was probably from that period, but again the fashion didn't really match. Which led me to Italy, and a painting of Isabella de' Medici (1542-1576) from the Uffizi was the first match, both in clothing and by sheer luck also in style of painting.

This lead me to look further at Allori paintings, which share the same dress style, same way of painting faces (the eyes especially, but also the pale skin, the small mouth, the eyebrows, ...). Most of them are slightly turned sideways, but a few look directly at the viewer, and these are to me the best. The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna houses this portrait (either Maria de' Medici or Eleonora di Toledo).

And ultimately I came across an Allori portrait from the Fogg Museum (or Harvard Art Museum). It is slightly larger than the current work (64 by 47 cm instead of 56 by 43 cm), and depicts the same woman, in the same dress and necklace, but with a different posture and a different hair jewel. And, most importantly, the work for sale is a lot better than this one (the reverse of what I usually have to say in my blog posts).

Comparing the head and the collar clearly shows the much more refined finish of the work for sale, the attention to detail in the lace (or whatever the cloth is), the much more realistic look of the face (no matter how much it still resembles a porcelain doll), ... The yellowing of the Fogg version is partly to blame for it, but even ignoring this you get in their version a lifeless, flat cloth, painted with skill but without real vigour, real splendour. It is a very good depiction of somptuous clothing, but it is not life-like.

The Fogg version is given as by Allori on ther website,  but the Fondazione Zeri (a catalogie of Italian painting comparable to the RKD website for Dutch and Flemish painting) has catalogued it as "School of Allori", which may be correct as the quality is not there compared to the best of his own works.

While I can't give any guarantees, being a generalist art historian who has based the above on images from the Internet, not on handling the actual painting or on a thorough knowledge of the works of Allori, to me this is almost certainl to be a real work by Alessandro Allori. Herbette indicates that it has been relined and has some repainted areas, and gives no provenance on their website.

So what's it worth then? At least 50,000 Euro. And sometimes these good sleepers in unsuspecting auctions go way beyond that, surpassing what the same painting would fetch in a major auction house even, so who knows? 

"Melchers" is a nice Gari Melchers with good provenance

Herbette, from France, sells on 17 June 2018 a "Melchers" signed and dated (1900) portrait of a man, estimated at 400 to 600 Euro.

It is unclear why they haven't made the connection to Gari Melchers (1860-1932, "Gari" is short for Garibaldi!). An important American artist from the turn of the century, he also worked many years in the Netherlands, France and especially Germany.

The current painting not only is signed and dated, but it has on the back a label of the "Grosse berliner Kunst-Ausstellung", the Big Berlin Art Exhibition of 1900. And sure enough, in the catalogue of that exhibition we find more than 30 paintings by "Gari Melchers, Paris", including a "Männlicher Studienkopf", a study of a male head (well, there are two of those, but the other is a pastel).

Finally, the frame of the painting is very striking, and it turns out that Melchers has used the same type of frame for other works as well.

Now, it is possible that someone found an unsigned turn-of-the-century painting of a man's head and added a frame, signature, and label on the back which all fit together, but that seems rather unlikely, so I guess the logical conclusion is that this is a genuine Melchers from his best period (his paintings after the first World War are less interesting in my opinion).

The value? One painting fetched nearly $1 million in 200, but most are around the $10,000 mark, and this is only a study. The estimate, up to about $1,000, may be about right (the exhibition provenance should help). But the seller and auction hosue would surely have a better chance of getting this target if they clearly advertised this for what it is, surely?

"Resurrection" may be close to Frans Floris

Audap Mirabaud, part from the Drouot Group from France, sells on 22 June 2018 a "Flemish School, circa 1580" Resurrection of Christ, estimated at 6,000 to 8,000 Euro.

They seem to have tried to sell it before, without success. It is a rather interesting and good painting though.

I haven't found another copy of this composition (which is rather unusual for a good, well-composed painting from this period). Some elements point to specific artists though.

The central Christ is very reminiscent of the one in the Resurrection by Hendrick De Clerck, from the National Museum in Warsaw. Even though the body is reversed left-right, but the arms aren't, it still seems to be based on the same model, with Christ sitting, with the feet crossed in the same way, the right arm raised in a similar way, and so on.

But the general style reminds me most of Frans Floris (1516-1570). On the one hand we have the above engraving, from the Art Institute of Chicago, which has a similar position for the soldier on the right (back to us, same sword, same style); and on the other hand we have paintings like "The awakening of the arts", which shows his typical and quite unusual use of manysplotches of pink (mainly pink clothing) throughout the work, which is also an eye-catching aspect of the work for sale (the pink boots of the soldier on the right especially).

The work probably isn't really by Frans Floris, there are some quality issues in some faces, but on the other hand e.g. the main soldier is beautifully painted. Perhaps it has been copied with great care from an unidentified engraving, but if it is an original work, then it has been done by a fairly good painter. The current estimate in any case seems very reasonable.

UPDATE: apparently not sold, again for sale at same auction house on 28 November 2018 with an estimate of 3,000 to 5,000 Euro.  No idea why this painting has such trouble finding a buyer.

UPDATE 2: now again for sale at Hampel (28 March 2019), either same painting cleaned or a different version of the same dimensions, and nearly identical in all details except the colour of the central figure. Estimate 7,000 to 9,000 Euro, attributed to Joachim Wtewael this time.

A very small copy after Jan Brueghel

Castor Hara, from France (part of the Drouot group), sells on 8 June 2018 a "Flemish School, 18th century" very small (5,5 by 7 cm!) watercolour of the Danse of the Children, estimated at 150 to 250 Euro.

It is, considering the scale, a very good copy of a painting I already discussed in October last year. The original is by Jan Brueghel, and many copies exist of the charming scene.

The copy is very well painted for such a small scale, and the estimate seems low for this work (which may well be 17th century). I would expect this to go for 600 to 800 Euro instead.

I'm offering a highly realistic modern work at auction.

Bernaerts, from Belgium, sells on 19 June 2018 a "Ross Rossin" Egyptian Gardens, a large (120 by 120cm) oil on canvas estimated at 1500 to 1800 Euro.

And it is offered by me 😄

Ross Rossin is born in Bulgaria in 1964, studied at the National Academy of his country, and started working as a portrait painter, first in Japan and later all over Europe. While he then already started on his career as the portrait painter for the rich, the famous, and the important, he also created other works, often somewhat mysterious ones featuring nude women.

By 1999, he moved to the US and settled in Atlanta, and devoted himself uniquely to photo-realistic portrait painting on large (and very large) scales.

Rossin in front of his portraits of Jackie Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln

His portraits are included in the National Portrait Gallery (the American version, part of the Smithsonian), American universities (including Harvard Law School), State Capitol buildings, museums, and a Presidential Library; but also in the collections of companies and many private collections.

But they appear on the market only very rarely: people who acquire one of his portraits apparently want to hold on to it for a very long time.

His portrait of Maya Angelou (famous American poet) was used for a US Stamp, which became legendary. Not for the very good portrait on it, but because it has been taken out of circulation after it became clear that the US Postal Office put the wrong quote on it!

I have found evidence of only one sale of a work by him: at a charity auction for the Rotary Club, his portrait of the Rotary founder was sold for a whopping $170,000!

The present painting (which has kindly been confirmed by the artist as being an authentic work by him) dates to 1996, a year when he had an exhibition in Brussels (according to his Wikipedia page), and represents a crucial moment in his development as an artist. While he would mostly abandon painting anything but portraits soon afterwards, it is in this period that he perfected his photo-realistic style.

Even in 1995, just one year earlier, his works are still much less detailed and refined, and the compositions are a lot more boring and repetitive. This work though shows a perfection of the ideas and the style he had toyed around with for a few years, and while he would abandon most of the ideas afterwards, the style he had developed in the work for sale would bring him to the success he now enjoys.

Comparing a detail from these older works to similar details from the work for sale (which has the same dimensions) shows the difference, and the quality of the current one. The general composition is also a lot more complex, not a simple displacement of the basic image all over the canvas but an interaction of the three depictions of the same model.

What's it worth? Well, I'm obviously not objective, and the lack of previous sales makes it harder as well. But it's a popular subject (goodlooking female nudes), in a great format (large enough to be impressive, but small enough to fit in every home), by a well-established artist with a rich clientèle (reselling this in the States may be an interesting prospect if you don't want to own it for yourself) but with more than enough scarcity to make it something special. Bernaerts is, together with De Vuyst, one of the two leading art auction houses in Flanders. The 1,500 lower estimate seems to me a very, very cautious approach...

All images on this page are "copyright" Ross Rossin.

A pair of interesting 17th century portraits from Bruges

Carlo Bonte, from Belgium, sells on 13 June 2018 two "17th century, unsigned" portraits, estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 Euro.

The portraits are rather good, and the sitters are identified by the text on the reverse of the paintings, which seems plausible in this case (too often the text on the back promises more than the front can deliver).

The man is Abraham van Susteren, brother to Hendrik, the Bishop of Bruges. He died in 1699. His wife, Joanna Margarita de Berault de Villetart was a noble lady from a minor house who lived until 1733. From the biography of the bishop of Bruges, we learn that his parents were married in 1657, placing this portrait in the 1680s at the earliest, and 1699 at the latest of course.

However, according to the Bossche Encyclopedia (the online encyclopedia of 's Hertogenbosch, famous as the city of Hieronymus Bosch, and the origin of the Van Susteren family), Abraham was the uncle of Hendrik, the son of his elder brother Gisberto. According to this source, Abraham was already born in 1628, and married Anna de Berault de Villeterre in 1667. This would date his (and presumably her) portrait anywhere between 1667 and 1699, but he doesn't look like a man of 60 years or older, so it presumably dates to the late 1660s or to the 1670s, and may well have been painted at the time of the engagement or marriage.

More information about Abraham and Joanna Margarita can be found in an old article in "De Biekorf" from 1969, which confirms the Bossche Encyclopedia information. It adds that he came to Bruges ca. 1665, that the family of Marguerite (aka Anne or Joanna Margarita) de Berault de Villeterre objected to her marrying a commoner (even though he was a rich merchant), that his maternal grandfather died at the famous battle of Leckerbeetje (subject of many paintings by Sebastian Vrancx and others).

I haven't been able to find any information about this portrait of Van Susteren, but while searching I found out that he was responsible for the shipping of Flemish paintings to Spain, where one or two of his sons lived as representatives of his company. He worked together with Antwerp art dealer Matthijs Musson (1598-1675).

For these portraits, I looked at portrait painters active in Bruges in 1667 or a bit later. The only candidates I find from this period who has the skill displayed in these works (skills which would have been common in Antwerp or in some parts of the Northern Netherlands, but not in every city or town) were Jacob Van Oost (1603-1671) and Jacob Van Oost II (1639-1713), father and son, and Jan Baptist Herregouts (1646-1721), who only moved to Bruges in 1677 and became a Master there in 1684, and Hendrik Herregouts, his brother.

Jacob Van Oost the Elder seems a better painter than what we have here (probably the best painter in Bruges in this period, together with the more highly specialized cityscape painter Jan Baptist van Meunincxhove, who had a nice work for sale at Vanderkindere  on 29 May). The two Herregouts are probably just too late to be candidates for these works, and their style doesn't really match the more fleshy, baroque style of the portraits for sale.

Which leaves us with Jacob Van Oost the Younger. While the portrait of a man, from the Boston Museum, seems at first sight better than the one for sale, it has on closer inspection the same slightly featureless face. 

And the Boston work is the best one I could find, most paintings are less richly detailed and closer to the portraits for sale. The RKD lists for example a portrait sold in 1990 in Brussels, a work sold by Hargesheimer in 2016, and one sold at Hampel in 2011.

 

There are also some portraits of women we can compare with. These include one sold at Hagels in 1994, and a very nice portrait offered in 1984 by Chaucer Fine Arts.

Whether the two portraits really are by Jacob Van Oost II is hard to decide, his known work varies rather wildly in quality. But for anyone interested in more provincial painting in 17th century Flanders for a reasonable price, these two offer a good opportunity.

17th century "Martyrdom of a saint" is related to Simon de Vos and Frans Francken

Carlo Bonte, from Belgium, sells on 13 June 2018 a "17th century, unsigned" Martyrdom of a saint, estimated at 600 to 800 Euro.

This rather lage (55 by 72 cm) oil on copper is probably a depiction of the beheading of Saint Paul, and seems to be the work of Simon de Vos or someone from his circle. His depiction of the same story, now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, shows many similarities, especially in the way the executioner is shown. The white horse with yellow decoration is also a typical De Vos element.

While the composition reminds me most of Simn de Vos, the style of painting is closer to the Francken family. The above poor picture shows a martyrdom of Saint Catherine which is attributed to Frans Francken II, and where the position of the executioner and the horse are similar to the work for sale (although the genral posture is closer to the Simon de Vos actually, but the clothing is more like the Bonte work).

Even as an anonymous Flemish work, this one should fetch 2,000 to 3,000 Euro.