[lit-ideas] Re: NYTimes.com Article: Long Suspect, a Vermeer Is Vindicated by $30 Million Sale
- From: "Steven G. Cameron" <stevecam@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 10:28:00 -0400
**There is some controversy -- the number is usually either 35 or 36.
TC,
/Steve Cameron, NJ
carolkir@xxxxxxxx wrote:
> The article below from NYTimes.com
> has been sent to you by carolkir@xxxxxxxxx
>
>
> Wow--there are only 34 paintings by Vermeer in the world?!
>
>>ck
>
>
> carolkir@xxxxxxxx
>
>
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> Long Suspect, a Vermeer Is Vindicated by $30 Million Sale
>
> July 8, 2004
> By CAROL VOGEL
>
>
>
>
>
> LONDON, July 7 - The first painting by the Dutch master
> Johannes Vermeer to come to auction in more than 80 years -
> and one that for decades has been suspected of being fake -
> sold for $30 million Wednesday night at Sotheby's here.
>
> The overflowing salesroom burst into applause when George
> Gordon, an expert in the Sotheby's old-master paintings
> department, took the winning bid by telephone. While the
> auction house is not saying who the buyer was, it is
> believed to be Stephen A. Wynn, the Las Vegas casino owner.
>
>
> For years Mr. Wynn has collected trophy paintings by the
> great masters: Rembrandt, Rubens, Cézanne, Renoir, Picasso
> and Sargent.
>
> Other possible buyers, experts say, could have been the J.
> Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. (Scott J. Schaefer, its
> chief curator, was in the audience) and Lord Thomson of
> Fleet, one of the richest men in Canada.
>
> Still, most experts in the room thought the buyer was Mr.
> Wynn. If it was, he was one of seven determined bidders.
> Robert Noortman, an old-master paintings dealer based in
> Maastricht, the Netherlands, also tried hard to buy the
> painting. He stopped bidding at $25.7 million. Mr.
> Noortman, who was sitting in the front row, said before the
> auction that he wanted to buy it for his inventory.
>
> "Whoever bought the picture outbid one of the most
> experienced dealers in the business," said Rachel Mauro, a
> Manhattan art dealer who was at the sale. "As a Vermeer -
> and I happen to believe it really is a Vermeer - the price
> isn't that crazy. If it did go to Las Vegas, it would
> certainly look good there."
>
> The sale price of the painting includes Sotheby's
> commission: 20 percent of the first $100,000 and 12 percent
> of the rest.
>
> "We were extremely pleased," said Alexander Bell, head of
> Sotheby's old-master paintings department in London. "It is
> unlikely that a painting by Vermeer will ever come to the
> market again."
>
> When Sotheby's first announced the sale in March, auction
> house officials estimated it would bring $5.4 million, a
> price far lower than what a second-rate Impressionist
> painting might fetch at auction.
>
> They were obviously nervous. For decades the authenticity
> of the painting, "Young Woman Seated at the Virginal," has
> been in dispute. But after 10 years of study and testing by
> a group of scholars, museum curators, painting
> conservators, costume experts, paint analysts and auction
> house experts, Sotheby's said it was confident it was
> genuine.
>
> Sotheby's promoted the auction vigorously with advertising,
> hoping to attract collectors from around the world.
> Vermeer's popularity has been fueled in recent months by
> the best-selling novel "Girl With a Pearl Earring" and the
> 2003 movie based on it.
>
> The painting, which served as the cover image on the
> old-master sales catalog this year, has an entry that is 22
> pages long and includes an extensive history as well as
> pictures of color pigment tests.
>
> The canvas is small - 10 by 8 inches - and dates from
> around 1670. It shows an intimate scene of a young woman
> seated at a virginal, a type of harpsichord, with her eyes
> gazing directly at the viewer. It is the last genre scene
> by this artist in private hands apart from one owned by
> Queen Elizabeth II. The last Vermeer to appear at auction
> was "The Little Street" (1658-1660), which was included in
> a sale in Amsterdam in 1921. It failed to sell and was
> later bought by a collector who donated it to the
> Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
>
> While technical evidence had supported the theory that
> "Young Woman Seated at the Virginal" was by Vermeer, it was
> not until the process of cleaning the canvas was completed
> about six months ago in the Netherlands by Martin Bijl, the
> former head of painting conservation at the Rijksmuseum,
> that the majority of experts and scholars endorsed the
> painting.
>
> Until now only 34 paintings have been fully accepted as by
> Vermeer, who was not a prolific artist and who died young,
> at 43, in 1675.
>
> Nobody had disagreed with the attribution until Han van
> Meegeren, a master forger, revealed a half-century ago that
> between 1927 and 1943 he had sold fake Vermeers to
> unsuspecting museums and collectors. The art scholar A. B.
> de Vries then excluded this painting from an important
> monograph.
>
> For much of the 20th century the painting languished in
> near obscurity. From the description in a 17th-century
> sales catalog, the painting once belonged to Pieter van
> Ruijven, Vermeer's most important patron. By the early 19th
> century, it was owned by Wessel Ryers, a Dutch collector.
> By 1904 it was documented as a Vermeer in the collection of
> Sir Alfred Beit, a collector in Ireland, who also owned the
> artist's famous "Lady Writing a Letter to Her Maid." In
> 1960 the painting was sold to Baron Freddy Rolin, a Belgian
> dealer, who died in 2001. It is his family who sold the
> painting now.
>
> Experts at Sotheby's compared it to two larger Vermeers at
> the National Gallery in London, "A Lady Standing at the
> Virginal" and another portrait of a lady seated at a
> virginal, both also late paintings by the artist.
>
> The auction house and Baron Rolin also consulted Libby
> Sheldon, who runs the paintings analysis unit at University
> College in London. She analyzed the pigments and was able
> to find corresponding ones used by the artist in
> authenticated works.
>
> Ms. Sheldon also studied the painting's canvas and
> discovered that it matched the one used in "The Lacemaker,"
> which is in the Louvre. "The two are so similar," Ms.
> Sheldon said, "they could have been cut from the same bolt
> of cloth."
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/arts/design/08VERM.html?ex=1090243902&ei=1&en=6a67654de302ffb9
>
>
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