ARTFIXdaily News Feed - Breaking News from the Art World

David Brega paintings 'Coming Home'

Metro West Daily News / November 25th, 2009

It’s not unusual to feel a bit bamboozled upon first glimpsing one of David Brega’s oil paintings. The wrinkled antiques magazine cover curls at the edges, ready to be lifted; the masking tape affixing George Washington’s portrait to a worn plank seems like it could be easily peeled away. Brega's ...

Blitzed Delaroche masterpiece found after 70 years

Times Online / November 24th, 2009

A German bomb devastated Bridgewater House, home of the Earls of Ellesmere and their magnificent art collection, on May 11, 1941. Torn in 200 places by shrapnel and thought to be ruined, a monumental French painting was rolled up for decades-long storage at the owner's country house. But experts ...

Actress reveals all for a museum cause

IMDb / November 24th, 2009

English-born actress Kim Catrall shed her clothes last year to recreate Titian's "Diana and Actaeon" in a bid to raise awareness of the British National Gallery's campaign to stop the artwork being sold off to a private foreign bidder. The sexy reenactment helped boost the £80 million needed to ...

Football player's collection of children's literature up for sale

ABC News / November 24th, 2009

A copy of "Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There" (est. $100,000-150,000) that belonged to the British girl who inspired author Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" will be offered by Los Angeles-based Profiles in History. The Dec. 16 auction also includes a Beatrix Potter-owned ...

Google to post Iraq's national museum collection online

Reuters / November 24th, 2009

Google is putting 14,000 images of ancient artifacts at Iraq's National Museum online, part of a U.S. bid to entice foreign firms to invest in Iraq, and to help document the collection after widespread looting. The Baghdad museum's millennia-old artifacts from Babylonian, Assyrian and Sumerian ...

David Hockney's biggest work given a big space at Tate Britain

Guardian / November 23rd, 2009

Under grey skies in London yesterday, David Hockney arrived at Tate Britain to see the gallery put on display his biggest work, Bigger Trees Near Warter (2007). The oil painting of a grey day in east Yorkshire, valued by the Tate at £10m, is undeniably huge, 15ft by 40ft. The artist said, "Once ...

Clark acquires a Barbizon beauty

Boston Herald / November 23rd, 2009

The Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has acquired a meticulously-rendered rural landscape by 19th-c. artist Pierre Etienne Theodore Rousseau, one of the key proponents of the Barbizon School. "Farm in the Landes" has until now been held in private collections and has not ...

Winslow Homer in the Met's "American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915"

MET podcast / November 23rd, 2009

In this podcast, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout shares her responses to "Eagle Head, Manchester, Massachusetts," with its "adolescent girls caged up too long," and "The Gale," depicting "a woman used to hard work," two of the Winslow Homer paintings in the Metropolitan's ...

Darwin book found in bathroom worth up to $100,000

Reuters / November 23rd, 2009

Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was first published 150 years ago today. Marking this introduction of the revolutionary theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest, Christie's London is selling a rare first edition this week. Expected to fetch 40-60,000 pounds ...

Piercing questions about Mary Todd Lincoln's earrings' history

Kentucky.com / November 22nd, 2009

There's no doubt that the pair of apparently gold-mounted black onyx pendant earrings are old. But there is doubt that they were ever owned by former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Yet the Kentucky Historical Society, as part of the state's Abraham Lincoln bicentennial celebration, has been ...

YSL/Berge auction doubles estimates

Artinfo / November 20th, 2009

 A pair of chairs featured in an Inca-themed ball at the Tuileries Gardens in 1812 ball reached €241,000, high above the estimate of €7–9,000, on the last day of the four-day auction of Yves Saint Laurent's collection. A 20th-century green enameled earthenware umbrella stand sold for ...

British royal heirlooms fetch $3.4 million at sale

Reuters / November 22nd, 2009

Pieces from the collection of Prince George Duke of Kent, son of King George V, and his wife Princess Marina, fetched 2.1 million pounds ($3.5 million) at a Christie's London auction Friday, nearly double pre-sale estimates. The top lot was a pair of George III mahogany hall benches, dating from ...

'Paris, 1889' recreated in Cleveland

News-Herald / November 22nd, 2009

When Paul Gauguin's work was rejected from the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, he was insulted. So he contacted Volpini, the owner of Cafe des Arts next to the Exposition grounds and organized a group exhibition there, a seminal point in Gauguin's career. The Cleveland Museum of Art is now ...

Patek Philippe pocket watch scores $5 million in Geneva

Luxist / November 19th, 2009

A Patek Philippe Yellow Gold Calibre 89 pocket watch, the world's most complex timepiece, just sold for a world record price of CHF 5,120,000, or $5.068 million at Antiquorum's 35th Anniversary Sale in Geneva. With a staggering 33 complications, the watch weighs nearly 2.5 lbs. and has an 18k ...

Jeanne-Claude, Christo's colorful collaborator, passes away

Bloomberg / November 19th, 2009

Like the projects she created over the decades with her husband, Christo, Jeanne-Claude is no longer here, but the memory of her will linger. The extroverted, red-haired Jeanne-Claude died at age 74. After a five-decade career, in 2005, one of the artist-couple's most ...

Diamonds dazzle investors concerned about hyperinflation

bloomberg / November 19th, 2009

Christie’s and Sotheby’s sold a combined $95 million in Geneva auctions of watches, gems and wine this week as the rich seek rare objects to hedge against inflation. Aleks Paul, a Russian gem dealer in New York, spent 13 million francs at Christie’s, hauling off a 62-carat flawless ...

The million-dollar penny

Wall Street Journal / November 19th, 2009

A 1795 reeded-edge U.S. penny, one of only seven known to exist, recently sold for nearly $1.3 million at auction—the first time a one-cent coin has cracked the million-dollar price barrier. The sale, at Beverly Hills,Calif -based Goldberg Coins & Collectibles, follows other hot sales of gold ...

Truth-telling Lincoln letter up for sale

Guardian / November 18th, 2009

George Patten, aged eight, boasted at school about having met Abraham Lincoln. The boy's friends thought he had made the story up, and bullied him. On 19 March 1861, Lincoln took the trouble to write to the boy's class: "To whom it may concern: I did see and talk with George Evans Patten, last ...

Clock runs out on father of Sydney's antique trade

Brisbane Times / November 18th, 2009

He would be remembered, colleagues said, as the father of the Sydney antique world. W.F. "Bill" Bradshaw, died yesterday at age 87. Just five months ago he sold his last piece, a fine English lacquer longcase clock. The former prime minister described him as ''simply the most knowledgeable ...

Stunning ruby suite, colored diamonds demand record prices

Bloomberg / November 18th, 2009

Sotheby’s set a record for a matching group of ruby jewelry with its sale of 19th-century ruby and diamond earrings and a necklace once owned by Mary, the Duchess of Roxburghe. The two lots were sold in Geneva yesterday for a combined price of 5.8 million Swiss francs ($5.77 million), ...