Von Klemperer Kokoschka stays in Ghent

In the Nazi-era restitution of art news corner, The Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent has decided not to return 'Portrait of Ludwig Adler' by Oskar Kokoschka to the heirs of Von Klemperer.
They argued that the Jewish banker and Dresdener art collector Victor Von Klemperer was forced to sell the piece under pressure in 1937 and they filed a case to recover the work on the grounds of historical circumstances and international treaties on the returning of looted jewish art.

The City of Ghent had an independent commision, chaired by former president of the Studiecommissie en de Commissie voor de schadeloosstelling van de Joodse Gemeenschap van België, look at the claims. According to them Von Klemperer was not pressured to sell the work.

On the basis of this advice the painting, which was acquired legally by the Museum in 1989 will not be returned.

Picture credit Zeldenrust.

Ensor drawing stolen in The Hague

News outlets are reporting the theft of an Ensor drawing The triumph of death (1887) from the Communal Museum in The Hague.
A spokesperson euphimistically described the work as 'missing' rather than 'robbed'. 'There are different possible scenario's. The case is now in the hands of the police'. The piece was found missing on Friday.

It is pretty embarrassing for them as the pencil on paper drawing (22,5 x 17 cm) was on loan from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp who purchased the work from Brussels art collector Marcel Mabille in 1952.

Police release images of MAS horn thief

Today police have released CCTV footage showing the thief who boldly stole a powder horn in the new Antwerp city museum MAS on May 26th. It seems art theft investigation looks very inefficient and slow and does not seem to be a priority. Two weeks after the theft took place pictures of the culprit are distributed and they are appealing to the public to identify two a man and a woman.
Also what puzzles me: the report in the paper mentions the thief walked up to the horn, removed it and then hides it under his jacket. He also had a back-pack. This begs the question, why are visitors not requested to leave their coats, bags etc. at the cloakroom?
Watch out for those OAP's, they could use their appearance to lull security guards into a false sense of security. This thieving eminence grise does not look like David Niven or Pierce Brosnan, but he's just as effective as the fictional characters they portray in features or Stéphane Breitwieser for that matter.

Theft from new MAS museum in Antwerp

The MAS museum in Antwerp has barely opened its doors and already a thief has been active on the premises. The theft of a power horn was reported yesterday afternoon by one of the guards. After the discovery they upped the security and 'searched the visitors'.
Qudos to the thief for nabbing that horn. It was child's play really. No alarm, not in a lockable display case. And apparently no guards around to see someone meddling with an artefact. Director Paul Depauw said: 'We now know what the critical points are and how we have to deal with the public. There will be extra camera's and also 'do not touch'-signs. Some of the objects will be moved behind plexiglass walls'.
Sorry to roll my eyes here, but I seem to recall an article that appeared in The Economist not two weeks ago where Depauw says: “if you don't take care of objects, who is going to tell us stories about the past?”

Yes, and who is responsible for taking care of the objects and telling stories?
How can you not notice the critical points before opening. Never heard of a risk assesment?
And the measures that will be taken; they're as useful as fitting an alarm to a house that has already been burgled. Or, to use Tom Flynn's expression: that will be as effective as installing an ashtray on a motorcycle. Or in Blackadder's: as useful as a cat flap in an elephant house.

Tragic as though it is, this goes to show (again) the sheer naieveté Belgian museums have concerning thefts from public musea. Putting up 'do not touch'-signs. Will you believe it.

Prado discovers lost Pieter Brueghel the Elder painting

It is always a thrilling time for scolars when a piece of art turns up that has been hidden (sic) in a private collection.
The owners sent it to the Museo del Prado for a cleaning. Experts have now attributed it to Pieter Brueghel the Elder.
The most fascinating bit of this is that it is a tuchlein. Tuchlein has for a great deal been ignored by scolars because of the rarety and lack of research to build upon.

I am always sceptical when it comes to linking pieces to 'the big names'. Especially when works are autographed.
The provenance of the work is always the trickiest bit. It is all too tempting to identify existing works with works mentioned in sources only on the grounds of an identical or related subject. Referring to old texts to make a pedigree more impressive and link a work to Brueghel are very very tempting.
We also know Breugel (the Elder) had the habit of painting the same subject a number of times in different versions. Different versions even were even part of the same collection. For instance, Jean Noiret owned two versions of the Wedding and Fair. Kaiser Rudolf II owned two versions of Calvary and Babel.

So I hope the Museo del Prado did their homework on this one.

They reference a painting in the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels [Inv. 10818, sold in Paris at the Petit Gallery on June 10, 1904 (sale Fontaine-Flament, no. 12, reprod. Bastelaer and Hulin de Loo, 1907, cat. A-32). In 1905 work was owned by Marie Croquison of Courtrai, who in 1933 donated it to his nephew Dr. Frans Heulens, which in turn donated it in 1988 at the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.] and another fragment in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (cat. 728 A, which is no longer attributed to Brueghel the Younger, and is mentioned in passing as not being completely watertight but could have been fashioned after a model -perhaps taken from this one, or used the same).

They do not mention a version of the Sint Maartensfeest painted by Pieter Balten (which is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp). There is mention of the same subject (drawing) in the Musée Atger, Montpellier. Or another copy in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (nr. 425). Engraved by N. Guerard (1648-1719).


Although I have my doubts about the attribution of the work to Balten (or indeed his workshop), because there is another version of the Feast in the Rijksmuseum also attributed to Balten, which does look entirely different.
The relationship between Balten and Brueghel is, however, more complicated. In 1551 they collaborated on an altarpiece (destr.) for the Mechelen Glovemakers. Balten's other works, for example the Ecce homo (Fine Arts Antwerp), reveal that the two artists were closely associated: a group from the Ecce homo reappears as an independent painting (Brussels, A. de Heuvel priv. col.) by Brueghel’s son and imitator Pieter Brueghel the younger.

It is also worth noting that the horseback figure on the Feast reappears several times in the Cavalry by Balten sold at Christie's in July 2005 (lot nr 7).

Comparing these compositions could yield even more information about a work we have thought to be lost for so long.
On a related note I would like to recommend The Bruegel enterprise (De firma Bruegel) catalog (Maastricht/Brussel 2001) on painstakingly comparing works from the workshop of Pieter Brueghel the Younger (and many others) which generated a lot of interesting information on the copying practice, shop organisation and sixteenth/seventeenth century markets.

Rubens, van Dyck, Jordaens @ Hamburg

Works by Jan Brueghel, Quellinus, Rubens, Van Dyck and Jordaens are being crated in the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp for the forthcoming exhibition in the Bucerius Kunst Forum in Hamburg which opens on Friday 11th June and runs until the 19th September 2010.

I must say I cringe slightly at the use of the words Antwerpener Schule in the exhibition text.
Even if they are between brackets.

The Armchair Detective

According to brusselnieuws André Garitte, curator of the Magritte museum in Jette, said in De Standaard newspaper the Brussels and Federal government are co-responsable for the theft of Olympia, stolen on Thursday. He repeatedly pleaded for support for his museum but his requests fell on deaf ears.
Although the picture was kept behind a glass door and guarded by a double alarm system, the thieves got hold of the painting and were out of the museum in just two minutes. How? Apparently, the alarm system is always switched off during the daytime and no security camera's were fitted.
The museum did receive subsidies but not enough to provide for an adequate security system according to Garitte. Is he fending off critics by pointing the finger at someone else? I get the impression he is trying to waver his responsability. I'm not entirely sure the people from the insurance company will agree with him. The Magritte museum in Jette is still a private initiative, thus the main sources of income depend on donations from patrons.

Yet again the long felt dismay about the new Magritte museum that opened in June of this year resurfaces after the high profile art theft.
The new museum dedicated to René Magritte attracted over 100.000 visitors in only two months time. Estimates in 2005, when there was talk of a new museum, were around 200.000 a year. The Jette museum only hails about 10.000 visitors a year.
In 2006 Garitte declared in an interview with Agenda the museum didn't plan on getting squashed by the new museum:
“We krijgen nu al telefoons van toeristen die verward zijn door de identieke naam. De naam van ons museum is beschermd, we gaan ons niet laten platdrukken”.

Well, the small museum will almost certainly get a piece of the publicity cake now. A robbery is the best thing that could have happened to it to get some extra press.
Hmm, I wonder if staging a robbery was the best way to go about it... In press reports Garitte was the first to insinuate it was a commissioned theft and not a ransom theft as the police and everyone else seem to think.

The alleged mutual antagonism between the René Magritte Museum (the one that got robbed) and the Musée Magritte Museum (the one with the 200+ works) was insinuated by Jean-Marie Binst in Brussel deze week. The Royal Fine Arts Museum issued a press release stating that the theft had nothing to do with them to avoid confusion. But Binst applies some of his infallible logic and came up with this: "Komt daarbij de onbegrijpelijke arrogantie van de Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, die volgend kort perscommuniqué rondstuurden:
“Wij betreuren het ten zeerste dat er bij de opening van het Magrittehuis op 24 september een werk van René Magritte op gewelddadige wijze werd ontvreemd. Dit museum, dat gesitueerd is in een Brusselse randgemeente, maakt geen deel uit van de Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België die het Musée Magritte Museum huisvesten.”
Voor alle duidelijkheid: met het Magrittehuis bedoelen ze het René Magritte Museum, dat zo niet genoemd mag worden; met een Brusselse randgemeente bedoelen ze Jette, en ‘geen diefstal bij ons’ insinueert dat een miljoenenschade door vochtontregeling in de reserves minder erg is dan een diefstal die nog kan worden opgelost."

What a strange conclusion Mr Binst has drawn from the press release. And the humidity thing he is referring to is the entirely unrelated Dalkia incident from Januari this year.
In light of his little profile blurb on the Prix des musées' site it is even more ridiculous: "...quelque chose que je ne considère pas comme une activité professionnelle mais comme un passe-temps passionnant. Cette passion me permet de rester objectivement attentif à l’attention portée ou non au patrimoine culturel à Bruxelles." Objectiveness? Hmmm. I fail to detect any in his 'objective' piece on the press release.

How much more surreal can this get? I'm sure Magritte would have looked upon this bickering with impish glee.

If it is a question of ransom theft, we'll probably never hear about it. Negotiations between thieves and owner are usually kept from the police, up until the picture magically resurfaces after a year or so. Which reminds me of a similar Magritte theft in London a couple of years ago when ‘Les Reflets du temps’ turned up.

Janpiet Callens, a former police art detective, who now runs his own consultancy firm, has been put in charge of the investigation for the insurance company.

Oh, and the police released the photo fits of the two robbers.