Stolen Matisse statue is recovered
The Matisse statue now recovered after being stolen.
A bronze statue by Henri Matisse has been rediscovered after it was stolen nearly 30 years ago.
It was taken from a Swiss museum during a public holiday in the early 1990s and its whereabouts remained unknown until a French auction house reported it to the Art Loss Register in January.
Made in 1907, the bronze depicts Matisse’s daughter, Marguerite. It is an early work by the artist in this medium and has a unique edition number that enabled identification.
Dealer loses out in planning wrangle
A Pimlico Road antiques dealer is considering leaving after two decades following a court case over the redevelopment of a timber yard in the area. Humphrey-Carrasco is one of the tenants affected by landlord Grosvenor’s plan.
David Humphrey of Humphrey-Carrasco said: “Recent discussions at Westminster suggested protecting our designated areas of artistic/cultural distinction from future development. I think this policy can’t come soon enough. Sadly, for me, it is probably too late.”
Property firm Grosvenor plans to redevelop Newson’s Timber Yard, which is run by builders’ merchant Travis Perkins, after it received planning consent in October 2016.
Humphrey-Carrasco, interior design firm Coote Bernardi and Newson’s Timber Yard, which opened in 1845 and has been run by Travis Perkins since 1998, will also have to close and move to make way for the scheme. Travis Perkins applied for the judicial review of the planning consent in March in an attempt to stop the development. However, earlier this month a judge decided the original decision should be upheld.
UK buyer sought for Jonson book
Arts minister John Glen has placed a temporary export bar on a rare book by Ben Jonson (1572-1637).
An export licence for Workes, an annotated collection of writings, has temporarily been stopped to allow for fundraising in the hope a UK-based buyer can match the £48,000 price.
Old Master dealer Naumann retires
New York Old Master dealer Otto Naumann.
Old Master dealer Otto Naumann is retiring from his New York gallery and has consigned a selection of paintings and sculpture to auction.
The group will be offered in a dedicated sale at Sotheby’s New York on January 31. The overall estimate for the auction is $4m-6m.
It is the second time he has chosen the auction house to disperse a collection, having dispersed a group of Dutch and Flemish paintings and decorative arts via Sotheby’s in 2007.
Naumann’s decision to step down after almost four decades in the trade has been made in part to allow his son, Ambrose, to establish Ambrose Naumann Fine Arts as a new venture.
Naumann has not ruled out continuing in the art world either as an consultant or in another capacity.
Most read
The most clicked-on stories for week November 2-8 on antiquestradegazette.com
1 Video showing cleaning of early 17th century painting at Philip Mould goes viral
2 Elvis divorce papers and an Einstein thank you note head to auction in Wiltshire
3 Antiques dealer charged after death of seven-year-old girl in south-west London
4 Painting looted by Nazis and found on Lord Mayor of London’s wall returned to heir
5 Winter Art & Antiques Fair Olympia to cease in current format from 2018
‘Botticelli’ painting to be sold in Paris
Vièrge à la Grenade is estimated at €500,000-600,000 in the Drouot November 29 sale.
A painting attributed to Sandro Botticelli and his studio goes under the hammer at the Drouot auction centre in Paris.
Vièrge à la Grenade will be sold by the firm of Audap & Mirabaud on November 29 as part of a mixed discipline sale of drawings paintings, ceramics, furniture and works of art with a relatively cautious €500,000-600,000 estimate.
Antique dealer accused of attack
An antiques dealer has been charged with carrying out a fatal attack on his seven-year-old daughter at his home in Wimbledon.
Robert Peters, 55 of Raynes Park, an Asian art specialist working in the Kensington Church Street area with his twin brother, was arrested and appeared in court last week after his daughter, Sophia, was discovered with ‘critical injuries’ on November 3.
She died in hospital the next morning.
At the time ATG went to press he remained in custody and was due to appear at the Old Bailey.
America is first put on the world map
The trailblazing globe gores mentioning America on offer at Christie’s on December 9.
A previously unrecorded set of globe gores that name America for the first time will be offered at Christie’s in London on December 9.
Produced by Martin Waldseemüller in 1507, the printed segments or gores would have made up the first recorded printed globe, one that not only named America but also illustrated both South and North American continents and a separate Pacific Ocean for the first time.
Christie’s has estimated the lot, one of only five known copies of the gores, at £600,000-900,000.
In Numbers
99,000The number of retweets, as ATG went to press, that a Twitter post by Philip Mould had achieved for the video of the restoration of an early 17th century painting of a woman in a red dress. The video of the yellow varnish that had discoloured the Stuart painting being removed also received 252,000 ‘likes’.
