Read the rest...]]> When wildlife agents infiltrated the home of a small-town Alaska couple suspected of dealing illegal animal parts, they didn’t expect to find fine art among the couple’s loot. But amid the machine guns and illegal ivory, the pot and coca plants, sat five pricey Victorian paintings pilfered from a New England woman’s home in 2005.

Now that the Glennallen residents targeted in the investigation are behind bars, the government is trying to reunite the paintings with their rightful owner.

Jesse Leboeuf and his longtime companion Loretta Sternbach pleaded guilty in July 2011 to selling hundreds of pounds of illegal walrus ivory, at least two polar bear hides and two illegal machine guns. The plea agreement put the couple in prison, and the five paintings landed in the custody of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“That’s a rarity,’’ said Fish and Wildlife spokesman Bruce Woods. “I’m not aware that we’ve ever seized artwork, other than handicraft, you know, illegal animal products used in artwork.’’

In a court filing Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office started the process of returning the artwork to its rightful owner. That’s probably an insurance company.

The court papers filed this week are just the latest chapter in the tale of the stolen paintings, which include highly sought after works from Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Mildred Anne Butler, among others.

“They were great paintings. They’d been in museums,’’ said Nicolette Wernick, the formerly wealthy widow from Connecticut from whom the paintings were allegedly stolen. “I always suspected the movers, but I never got any proof.’’

Wernick said she was moving from Massachusetts to a remodeled condominium in Bloomfield, Conn., in 2005. According to Bloomfield police, Wernick’s belongings were packaged to be sent to a moving company’s warehouse for about six months, then to the new condo. It was during this time that the paintings went missing, either snatched during the move, from the warehouse or from Wernick’s home, according to the local police.

It wasn’t until Wernick ventured into the basement of her condo that she realized the paintings were missing, she said. Court papers say she reported the theft in October 2005.

“I wept. I was terribly upset. I loved those paintings,’’ Wernick said. “I mourned them for years, and then I sort of got over it.’’

At the time of the theft, though, Wernick was tenacious about getting the paintings back, said Bloomfield police Lt. Mark Samsel, who led the theft investigation and is now the spokesman at the department, which serves a community of about 21,000.

“Mrs. Wernick is a pistol. She’s quite the woman,’’ Samsel said.

An insurance company paid Wernick’s claim on the stolen works, about $400,000, she said. The paintings are worth twice as much, she said.

Wernick, born in London and a longtime art lover, is hoping to get them back: The five paintings represent the last few pieces of a vast collection she assembled and was forced to sell after she was ensnared in the world’s most infamous Ponzi scheme.

“I lost all my money with (Bernie) Madoff, and I had to sell that condo and moved in with my boyfriend,’’ Wernick said. “I also had to sell all my paintings.’’

Despite the efforts of Lt. Samsel and his detectives, the stolen paintings were never recovered, Samsel said. Because of the transient nature of moving companies and their employees — they travel from one new city to another and change employers often, Samsel said — the investigation turned up no specific suspects.

“The bottom line was the list of potential suspects was 100-plus,’’ Samsel said. “That left all kinds of loopholes for the who and the when.’’

The investigation was fully stalled after about 10 or 12 months, Samsel said. Even now, with new information about the potential suspects, the statute of limitations on prosecuting the theft has run out, so it would be impossible to charge someone, he said.

“It’s a unique case. We don’t handle high-end art very often,’’ Samsel said. “I’ve been playing this game a long time, and this is one of those cases I never stopped wondering about.’’

The wondering ended when a federal prosecutor in Alaska contacted Samsel in late 2011 to tell him the paintings were recovered as part of an investigation of illegal animal parts sales.

It’s unclear exactly who first nabbed the artwork or when. But a wildlife investigator, who worked on the case and asked not to be named because of his work, said Leboeuf told him his half-brother and some cousins grabbed the paintings during a party with the original thieves, who stole them from Wernick.

According to the Tuesday federal court filing in Alaska, Leboeuf told undercover agents in 2010 he bought the paintings from the half-brother, a man named Mario Murphy, for $100,000 worth of gold and silver at some point in 2006.

The court papers say Leboeuf first mentioned the paintings in a 2010 conversation with undercover federal agents, to whom he was plotting to sell illegal ivory from walrus taken at Saint Lawrence Island. The agents spent the night at the Glennallen home on several occasions, the court filing says.

The investigator said Leboeuf’s rambling about the paintings seemed hard to believe— at first.

“He’d be doing what he does, sitting in his chair carving ivory, partaking in the fruits of what he grew upstairs, and he liked to tell stories,’’ the investigator said. “Keep in mind, these stories are endless and go on and on in the haze of the smoke in his living room,’’ the investigator said.

Leboeuf showed the agents pictures of the paintings and claimed the artwork’s value at $30 million. He said he was willing to take $1 million, and if the undercover agents could find a buyer, they’d get a finder’s fee, too, the court papers say. Leboeuf later showed them two of the paintings: “Milton,’’ by Lucien Pissarro, and “Cattle And Figures in a Farmland,’’ by William Payne.

Instead of selling the paintings for Leboeuf, federal agents raided his house in April 2011 after a nine-month investigation. They arrested him and Sternbach and found 20 guns, 30 marijuana plants, some coca plants intended for cocaine production, and an unregistered, fully automatic machine gun, according to court documents filed by prosecutors.

In the plea deal, Leboeuf was sentenced to nine years in prison, and Sternbach to 31/2 years.

While the paintings remain with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a federal attorney has filed a motion to have the artwork placed in the custody of the insurance company that paid the theft claim. That could be completed within a week or two, but the forfeiture process to determine the final ownership of each painting could take more than a year, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Wernick says all five once belonged to her, and she hopes to own them again.

“I’d spent 30 years collecting this art,’’ she said. “Maybe I’ll get them back. I’d love that.’’

Re-posted from Boston.com.

Read the rest...]]> David J. Goldberg, the New Orleans appraiser who has gained a reputation for uncovering valuable oil paintings, recently helped a Louisiana family realize $300,000 for a regional oil painting with a $75 original price tag on the rear!

The painting, by William H. Buck, a prominent 19th Century painter of Louisiana landscapes, was identified when Goldberg was called in to evaluate an aged parent’s art collection for insurance purposes.

“Sometimes, families who fail to call in for advice from a knowledgeable and honest appraiser never realize that they are in possession of a valuable work of art. That’s exactly what happened with this Tchefuncte River William H. Buck.”

Fortunately, in this case, Goldberg was called in for an insurance appraisal. “Can you imagine if they had sold the painting to some ‘generous’ person who offered them $25,000, for example”. The family would have been a quarter of a million dollar poorer!

The William H. Buck painting is a regional painting from the third quarter of the 19th century, when the introduction of photography and a poor economic climate contributed to the diminished prominence of portraits. Artists like William H. Buck turned to the landscape for worthy subject matter. In essence, Buck created a catalog of oil paintings of Louisiana bayous and countryside. In the case of this work, it depicts the area on the northern side of Lake Pontchartrain along the Tchefuncte River.

Born in Norway, Buck settled in New Orleans around 1860. His works are in the collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Historic New Orleans Collection, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. They are also in the Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas and the Washington Country Museum of Fine Art in Hagerstown, Md.

After identifying the valuable oil painting, Goldberg was able to tap a network of professionals, one of whom knew the largest private collector in Louisiana for works by William H. Buck. Within weeks, the two collaborated and the painting passed from the estate to the collector for $300,000.

In 2010, David J. Goldberg identified an Albert Bierstadt painting entitled “Above the Timberline” that the owner thought was worth $2,000. Goldberg estimated the fair market value at more than $100,000. The Bierstadt eventually sold at auction for that owner in excess of that amount.

Re-posted from ArtFixDaily.

Read the rest...]]> Most people buy art because they love to look at it, but there’s always the hope that the payoff will go beyond aesthetics. The prices of photographer Cindy Sherman’s works have risen 11-fold in 15 years, according to Artnet, while Gerhard Richter’s paintings are 37 times more expensive. Damien Hirst’s works are up 22-fold, while works by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol have both risen 19-fold.

Investing in the right artist, however, can be a crapshoot, and owning artwork can involve substantial hassles. Many collectors must worry about insurance premiums, art dealers, thieves, taxes and most of all, the fickleness of the art world.

Dorit Straus knows all about these complications from three decades working with collectors at the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, where she is now the insurer’s worldwide fine art manager. Bloomberg.com’s Ben Steverman spoke with Straus, an archaeologist by training, about the challenges of owning art. Edited excerpts of their interview follow.

Q: Is art an asset class like stocks and bonds?

A: There is some merit to that line of thought. A lot of people have a large portion of their assets in their art collections and they may not know it. It’s certainly important for financial planners to discuss this issue.

There are lots of downsides to art as investment. There are costs of maintaining art. The physical condition of your stock or fund doesn’t matter, but you have to make sure your work of art is in pristine condition, particularly in today’s economy.

My advice to most people: Art is not a commodity. It’s an aesthetic object. If it turns out that you have made money on your initial investment, that’s great, but the most important thing is your appreciation of the art. I know that’s kind of corny.

Q: I imagine it’s difficult to predict which artworks are going to increase in value.

A: Correct, because there’s no one art market. It’s a question of fashion. That’s not to say people haven’t made a lot of money on art. I see it every day looking at the collections we insure.

Whether you’re buying for investment or aesthetic purposes, I recommend people get the advice of art advisers. The art market is capricious and you have to find the right buyer at the right time. A lot of our clients — major collectors — put works up for sale and they don’t sell. These are good works of art.

Art advisers and art dealers do establish a market. I don’t know about the idea that people, on their own, are discovering new artists in the hope those artists will turn into the next Damien Hirst. You may not be able to unload it at all.

Q: What do art collectors need to know when it comes to protecting their works?

A: Insurance is not all about price. It’s about terms and conditions. Look at the financial strength of the companies. What is the track record of that insurance company and how do they pay claims?

The insurance company can be very helpful to you. We have as much of an interest in protecting the art as the owner. It’s good for the client to have the company come in and look at how the art is protected in your home.

Also, when you’re moving art between homes or selling it, improper packing can result in damage. We’d rather help you deal with that by directing people to the right packers and shippers.

[Chubb and other insurers sell special art policies because basic homeowners' insurance usually covers just $1,000 to $2,000 in art, with added coverage available for up to $200,000 per item, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Homeowners' policies generally won't provide extra services offered in special policies, including advice on storage, coverage of appreciation or loss in value of the art, and damage caused by earthquakes, floods and transportation of pieces.]

Water damage is something most people don’t think of. You read a lot about heists. What you don’t read in the paper is when a penthouse roof is inundated with water, which seeps into the walls and a beautiful painting is turned into mush. You have all sorts of situations involving weather. The climate has changed. Fires are a big cause of loss. We have a special program for wildfire protection.

Q: How have the economic disruptions of the last few years affected the art market?

A: In 2009 and most of 2010, people were not buying and selling in the open market. People were afraid to put things up for auction because if it didn’t sell, it would mar the salability of the item. A lot of these deals were done more privately.

Eventually things did turn around. The contemporary art market is rebounding at the top level. You’ve had an international influx of people with a lot of money — the Russians, the Chinese and other Far Eastern people.

There are still a lot of things that are not selling. The middle and lower market is still tough.

Q: Owning art can complicate estate planning. Do you have any advice?

A: I would suggest a really good inventory. Bring in an outside expert like an appraiser. Valuations may fluctuate. You may have three children that have gotten paintings of unequal value, and that might create a dispute within the family.

The tax implications are definitely something to think about. Art is not taxed at the [low] 15 percent capital gains rate, so I’d suggest one find an estate attorney that knows about tax rules and art. See whether it’s important to set up some sort of foundation or trust.

The other thing to think about is whether any philanthropy should be included in the estate planning. Understand that every cultural institution has a different mission. Your painting may not be what that institution wants.

Image:”Untitled” (1981) by Cindy Sherman sold for $3.9 million at Christie’s in New York in 2011. Photograph: Metro Pictures via Bloomberg
Re-posted from Bloomberg.

Read the rest...]]> MONTREAL — Two archaeological pieces worth hundreds of thousands of dollars have been stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

A Persian bas-relief and a marble head dating from the Roman Empire were taken from the Mediterranean archeological exhibit room on the first floor of the Hornstein Pavilion during opening hours around Oct. 26, officials said. The theft was not made public until now so as not to compromise the investigation.

All Montreal police would say Tuesday is that the investigation is active and ongoing.

One suspect, said to be in his 30s and about five-foot-seven, can be seen in surveillance video made public earlier this week.

The Persian piece is worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” and the second piece, “tens of thousands,” according to specialized fine-art loss adjuster Mark Dalrymple of Tyler & Co., a company representing AXA Art, an international insurance company that is insuring the items for the Montreal museum.

Danielle Champagne, a spokeswoman for the MMFA, said security has been tightened in some areas of the museum since the theft.

The insurance company is offering a “substantial” reward for the return of the objects and a $10,000 reward for anyone who can identify the individual caught on video.

Re-posted from The Montreal Gazette.

Read the rest...]]> A square medieval silver coin, minted as emergency currency by Viennese officials as Ottoman Empire troops laid siege to the city in 1529 – during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I – was among the valuable pieces of vintage money stolen from a Colorado museum in 2007.

Last week an alleged Martinez man pleaded guilty in federal court to stealing rare coinage under his administration as a collections manager at the American Numismatic Association’s (ANA) Edward C. Rochette Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Wyatt Yeager, 33, admitted to stealing approximately 300 historic coins and other numismatic – a term used to describe coins, paper currency and medals – items from the museum while he was collections manager from Jan. to March, 2007.

The purloined items were worth just under a million collectively. According to U.S. Attorney Charles M. Oberly, III, Yeager allegedly sold one extremely rare coin, a “Holey” Australian dollar minted in 1813, at an Australian auction for $155,755 in July 2007.

ANA President Tom Hallenbeck said in a press release issued last Thursday that coins were discovered to be missing in October 2007, and museum officials quietly called in the FBI.

As the covert federal investigation expanded, Yeager relocated to Ireland and continued to sell off the coins he had stolen in Colorado at various international auctions.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not specify when Yeager was apprehended, but he was charged with a felony violation of Section 668 of the U.S. criminal code’s Title 18 – Theft of Major Artwork.

“The embezzlement of such a large number of rare coins is a significant crime. Aggravating the seriousness of the offense is the fact that the coins are cultural property, a part of our history,” said Oberly in a DOJ case report.

Yeager faces ten years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. He will also be placed on supervised release after serving his prison time.

ANA spokesperson Jay Beeton described in a press release how, after discovering the theft, the association hired renowned private investigator Robert Wittman, whose consulting company specializes in recovering stolen art and collectibles to track down the missing money. Wittman is credited with founding the FBI’s National Art Crime Team.

“As a result of the theft, the ANA has embarked on an upgrade to its security systems and further modified its internal security procedures. In addition, many of the ANA’s important coins are being encapsulated by [Numismatic Guaranty Corporation] to allow better inventory control through modern bar coding technology, photography and other enhanced security procedures,” explained Beeton.

“The FBI will continue to pursue those who misappropriate rare items such as the coins embezzled by Yeager and appreciates the District of Delaware’s commitment to prosecute this significant crime,” stated Denver-based FBI Special Agent in Charge James Yacone.

“I want to reassure our members – and hobbyists everywhere – that the ANA is committed to improving the security of its collection, which is a true national treasure. As new technologies are developed, we will continually assess our security needs. Unfortunately, about 90 percent of museum thefts have some insider component,” said Hallenbeck in a written statement. “Many of the stolen items were desirable and historically significant. The ANA maintains theft insurance for its numismatic collections, but no amount of insurance can adequately replace these coins – or the loss of trust or sense of helplessness that we all feel following such a theft.”

Other coins stolen from the museum by Yeager and sold at a German auction in 2007 include a “Holey Dollar” five shillings coin and a “Dump” fifteen pence coin, both minted in Australia in 1813; silver and gold Mexican reales and escudo coins minted between 1732 and 1799; English crowns, groats, farthings and pence coins minted between 1652 and 1665, a silver 1557 ‘teston’ coin authorized by Mary Queen of Scots and a silver crown minted in 1551 under English ruler Edward VI.

The ANA is a congressionally-chartered, non-profit organization.

As the ANA states, the Edward C. Rochette Money Museum opened in 1967 and houses a collection of 275,000 items, including “money from its earliest uses 2,600 years ago to individual coins worth millions of dollars and modern issues, as well as paper money, coins, tokens and medals from throughout the world.”

Re-posted from Martinez News Gazette.

Read the rest...]]> In a spacious, luxury apartment perched on the leafy hills of Hong Kong, Kai-Yin Lo browses through a trove of Chinese art acquired over several decades, reflecting how her niche, scholarly pursuit has now hit the mainstream.

Despite giddy Chinese art prices showing some strain from global economic uncertainty, collectors like to think values will continue to rise due to limited supply and continued strong demand as Asian collectors become more affluent.

“As East and West get into more of a confluence in taste and in the market place, it will still go up,” said Lo, a Cambridge-educated writer and jewelry designer, a slim, elegant woman famously known for wearing mis-matched designer shoes.

She is one of Hong Kong’s leading art collectors — her home is stacked with rare Chinese furniture, stone carvings and paintings, including an inkbrush panorama of the Grand Canyon by Chinese 20th century master Wu Guanzhong.

“These days art investment has entered into the mainstream of investment, especially for younger people. You cannot divorce love of the piece from what lies behind, the value of it.”

Hong Kong has played a key role in Asia’s art market boom. Its auction market turnover — anchored by Sotheby’s and Christie’s — skyrocketed 300 percent from 2009 to 2010, powered by a wave of Chinese millionaires buying art with avid fervour.

“Hong Kong has became the sales centre of the world,” said Patti Wong, chairman of Sotheby’s Asia, with revenue in the former British colony on par with New York and London.

Despite the art market’s vulnerability to shocks, including the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse, when unrealistic estimates left scores of unsold lots amid tepid bidding even in the red-hot Chinese ceramics market, Asia’s rapid wealth accumulation will likely see more and more money flow into art and alternative investments such as wine.

Asia’s wealth management and private banking industry remains a sparkling growth area for many struggling banks, with an estimated 3.3 million high net worth individuals worth more than $1 million, according to Capgemini and Merrill Lynch’s latest annual World Wealth report.

With a combined wealth of $10.7 trillion, Asia’s wealthy have even eclipsed the $10.2 trillion held by Europe’s generational millionaires.

“The exponential growth in the number of emerging market (millionaires) … is expanding the global market for investments of passion,” the report said.

SAFE HAVEN?

While art often comes straddled with hefty commission, storage and insurance costs, it can serve as a fun portfolio diversifier, mixing decent returns with aesthetic pleasure.

Even as the euro zone debt crisis rages and buffets regional stock markets, the Mei Moses Global Art Index, a widely tracked art indicator, showed an 11.8 percent rise in 2011 to November.

“It may not be a good time for sellers but it’s an excellent time for buyers. During late 2008 and 2009, I highly advised clients to buy,” said Bobby Mohseni, director of MFA Asia, an art consultancy. “With Chinese contemporary art, some prices have gone exceptionally high and that’s just over a decade … so it’s best to look at upcoming or mid-tier artists.”

While stocks on the S&P 500 have outperformed Western art over the past 25 years, according to Mei Moses data, top Chinese and Asian art is still comparatively cheap compared with Western impressionists or American contemporary art. A Mei Moses index for traditional Chinese art showed a 24 percent jump in the first three quarters this year.

“The confidence in the Chinese contemporary art market remains high despite art market confidence dropping sharply in the U.S. and European contemporary market,” Anders Petterson, head of art research consultancy ArtTactic, told Reuters.

Even for those with less purchasing muscle, experts say bargains can still be had in less spotlighted categories, including modern Filipino and Indonesian painters, as well as photography, and Chinese snuff bottles, to name a few.

“Collect what other people aren’t collecting,” said Tony Miller, a former top Hong Kong government official and long-standing collector of scholars’ objects and Chinese art. “If you can’t afford Qi Baishi paintings and they’re going at HK$2 million a throw, well, go for prints.”

Qi is one of the masters of inkbrush paintings and his pieces sell for millions of dollars.

Owners of Hong Kong’s art galleries, many of them crammed along the winding Hollywood Road in the Central district, say timing is the key.

“If you get good works of art, then without any question it is (a safe haven) but it doesn’t have the liquidity. That’s the difficulty,” said Sundaram Tagore, whose galleries in Hong Kong and the United States feature a stable of culture-bridging artists.

“If you’re trying to sell at the wrong time it becomes part of the distressed market but if you’re selling at the right time then you could make 100 times more, maybe more than property or any bonds can provide you.”

The search by Asian investors for alternative assets has extended beyond art into wine, gems, watches, postage stamps and other memorabilia — the rarer and more exclusive, the better.

With about two-thirds of the world’s stamp collectors in Asia, the stamps and collectibles market has surged, says Geoff Anandappa of stamp and memorabilia retailer Stanley Gibbons.

Hong Kong-based InterAsia Auctions — which specializes in Asian stamps — broke world records for Chinese stamps in September, raking in $12.6 million over four days. A 1941 Dr Sun Yat-Sen inverted centre stamp fetched $221,000, up 66 percent from a similar sale a year ago.

Chinese and Asian buyers have cornered the fine wine market, with a Hong Kong Acker Merrall & Condit wine auction in December bringing in $9 million, including a single superlot of 55 Romanee Conti vintages that fetched a record-breaking $813,000.

Similarly, Asian buying is behind the boom for diamonds and gems. China is on course to become the world’s top diamond buyer and retailers in Hong Kong report a rise in the number of men coming to buy loose diamonds for investments.

A Hong Kong jewelry retailer recently raised $2 billion in one of the city’s biggest initial public offerings this year to fund expansion in the region.

“It’s not the old days of ‘safe as houses’, put your money in the bank and that will sort you out,” said Jon Reade of the Art Futures Group, a Hong Kong-based art investment firm.

“Those are the days probably of my parents’ generation … people are getting more creative with their money.”

Re-posted from Reuters.

Read the rest...]]> France has laid claim to a 17th Century painting currently being displayed by a London gallery at an art fair in Paris.

The Carrying of the Cross by the French master Nicolas Tournier was bought last year for 400,000 euros ($550,000) by the Weiss Gallery of London.

But the French government says it is stolen property and that its whereabouts had been a mystery for nearly 200 years.

France has put an export ban on the work to prevent it leaving the country.

Tournier’s life-sized study of Christ carrying the cross once hung in the chapel of the Company of the Black Penitents in the southern French city of Toulouse.

It measures 2.2m by 1.21m (7.2ft by 3.96ft) and was painted around 1632.

During the French Revolution, the painting was confiscated by the state and put on display in a museum, but in 1818 it disappeared.

Nothing was heard of the work for nearly 200 years, but two years ago in resurfaced in Italy during the sale of an estate of a wealthy Florence art collector.

Today the picture belongs to the Weiss Gallery of London which bought it at the 2010 Maastricht art fair.

The Weiss Gallery had brought the painting to the French capital for Paris Tableau, a small art fair devoted to Old Masters.

But the French Culture Ministry is demanding the return of this long-lost work of art and has slapped an export ban on it to give it time to press its claim.

“This was the property of the French state that was deposited at the Augustins Museum in Toulouse and was stolen in 1818. It is a non-transferable work,” the ministry said in a statement.

“We are claiming this painting as the property of the state and it will not leave the country,” the ministry said.

A Weiss company representative declined to comment on the culture ministry’s statement.

Re-posted from BBC News.

Read the rest...]]> Taxpayers will face a staggering £1.5 billion bill if the nine Leonardo da Vinci paintings on display in the National Gallery this week are damaged or stolen, it emerged today.

The Gallery in London has had to nearly double its total indemnity to £3.3 billion with extra insurance from the Government should anything go wrong.

Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, will show nine of the 15 surviving works da Vinci painted from November 9 to February 5.

The display is expected to attract record numbers of visitors so late-night openings and an opening on New Year’s Day have been planned to cope with demand.

Each da Vinci will be hung behind specially reinforced glass cases to provide maximum protection from theft, vandals or accident-prone visitors.

A spokesman for the Gallery told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘We have sold an unprecedented number of tickets for Leonardo – more than for any previous exhibition in the Gallery’s history.’

The show will focus on the artist’s 18-year career as a court painter in Milan, working for the city’s ruler Ludovico Maria Sforza during the 1480s and 1490s.

THE £45 LEONARDO

Probably the most controversial painting on show is the newly-identified Christ as Salvator Mundi (The Saviour of the World), valued at £126 million.

The painting, which was presumed lost or destroyed, was named as a da Vinci in America earlier this year after being attributed for centuries to Boltraffio, a student of the artist.

It was sold in 1958 for just £45, bought by an anonymous American consortium in 2005, then attributed to the master this year as recent restoration and conservation convinced many scholars it is da Vinci’s original work, though some art historians remain unconvinced.

Critics say that including it in the exhibition dramatically increases its value if it were to be sold, as it gives it the gallery’s seal of approval as a Leonardo.

Da Vinci’s greatest works include the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, which are not included in the exhibition.

However, the Gallery’s exhibition will be the largest ever collection of the old master’s works seen together and includes some pieces shrouded in controversy.

They include two versions of the same work, The Madonna of the Yarnwinder, put on display side-by-side for the first time for more than a century.

In 1898 the two versions of the work, known as the Buccleuch Madonna and the Landsdowne Madonna, were shown at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London.

One was believed to be a real da Vinci and the other a fake, although the art world was split on which one was which.

New research by the University of Oxford has uncovered evidence da Vinci may have painted them both in his studio at the same time.

Eight are on loan from abroad, and the majority have never been seen before in the UK.

Art historian Tim Marlow said: ‘To be able to see these paintings together is a once in a lifetime moment.

‘Leonardo was undisputedly a great visionary and certainly we are unaware, in the history of art and thought, of another human being who seemed to know so much about the world in which he lived.’

-Re-posted from Daily Mail.

Read the rest...]]> U.S. authorities are set to return the painting “A Fisherman’s Daughter / Mending the Nets” by noted French realist Jules Breton to the city of Douai, France, on Thursday. In a ceremony at the French Embassy in Washington, the painting, which was stolen from Douai’s Chartreuse Museum by a German soldier in 1918, will be repatriated.

New York’s Daphne Alazraki Fine Art Gallery, the most recent owner of the work, assisted with the painting’s return as well as U.S. Customs and Interpol.

Alazraki is returning the work at no cost to the museum. The insurance value is 140,000 euros.

The painting was commissioned from the artist by the City of Douai in 1875. Around September 15th, 1918, the German army vacated the city, taking with it about 180 important works of art, including this painting.

After decades of searching, the museum was notified in the early 2000s that the Breton was appearing in a Sotheby’s auction. It was withdrawn from auction, and after some legal wrangling, returned to an American collector. Subsequently, the painting was shipped to Maastricht and then to Cologne, Germany, for sale. A collector notified the museum of its whereabouts in Germany last year. Various galleries have handled the work over the years.

Re-posted from ARTFIXdaily.

Read the rest...]]> When Tony Greenberg, a 35-year-old retail real estate developer, moved with his family into a 7,000 square-foot house in Westport, Conn. in 2008, he started to fill their new home with art. On display today are op-art pieces that his grandmother collected in the 60s (rescued from his mom’s basement), and more than a dozen other works he bought for between $300 and $10,000 that form the beginnings of a collection of pop surrealist art. These include limited edition prints by surrealist figurative artists Lori Early and Mark Ryden and three plastic “dissected companion” sculptures by street artist KAWS. His showstopper piece that burst the $10,000 mark is a 5 x 6.5 foot painting, “Flower Hairpins,” of an Asian waif all dolled up by Thai artist Sung from the Greenberg van Duren Gallery (no relation) in New York City. “We had to splurge on that one,” says Greenberg. “I look at it as part of our alternative investments allocation.”

Whether you’re young and have moved into a new house with a lot of walls to fill or you’re an empty nester looking for art for your new condo, the search for art can be fun, and with a little extra thought, your purchases can turn into a collection, and perhaps an investment. Here are some tips for new collectors, including upcoming sales and art fairs to stop by.

Check Out The Fall Pre-Season Auctions

The lure of buying at auction is that you can get an interesting piece for what it would sell for below retail, but the danger is that depending on who else is bidding, it could spike and go for a higher price. With original fine art, you’ll probably want to see the piece in person, so start with a local auction house in your region like Doyle New York that handles mostly “fresh-to-market” estate property or Wright in Chicago that specializes in contemporary art and design. You can buy long-distance by getting condition reports and then bidding online or by phone. Keep in mind added shipping and insurance charges.

New collectors might look for lesser works by major names, works by once-forgotten artists that are part of a revival, or artists who were hot in the 1980s but whose works are now selling for less than they left the gallery for, says Harold Porcher, director, Modern & Contemporary Art for Doyle New York. “It doesn’t make sense to buy decoration when you can buy fine art,” he says.

Even if you’re on a low budget, try to buy the best you can afford. “The bargain mentality can be a mistake,” says Elaine Banks Stainton, executive director at Doyle. One client who owned an insurance company insisted on buying the cheapest thing he could find and after 20 years of bottom feeding has a collection of odds and ends. Instead, find a period that speaks to you and try to buy a collection that has some continuity. Don’t just focus on one artist; rather, sprinkle money into various artists and that way, potentially one or two of them might take off. Porcher had a client who only bought American abstract works on paper from 1927 to 1945, and now at the end of his life, has exhibited his collection at a museum.

Don’t be afraid to go to the top art venues. “There’s an issue with art being perceived as very exclusive,” admits Jonathan Laib, head of sales for postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s in New York City. But he insists that even Christie’s, which sold a 1964 Lichtenstein for $42.6 million for casino developer Steve Wynn last year, is accommodating to folks with lesser art budgets. Christie’s “off-season” sales include the Sept. 21st First Open sale of contemporary and post-war art with star lots in the six figures but a good number of works where bidding will start below $20,000.

Christie’s Interiors sales, which include fine arts as well as decorative arts and furniture, are haunted by decorators but individual buyers can find hidden gems at these too. In the August Interiors sale, an impressionist cypress tree in a landscape by a Russian-American painter, Mischa Askenazy, estimated to bring $1,000 to $1,500, fetched $4,375, while a still life of a colorful bouquet of flowers by a French painter, Pierre Lemarchand, estimated to sell for $800 to $1,200 went for just $675. (It was without reserve, meaning the highest bidder gets it no matter how low the bid).

Attend An Art Fair

Art fairs can be the best place to go for collectors looking for something new and intriguing at lower price points. There are typically dozens of galleries, a few hundred artists, all under one roof. You can get a wealth of information by talking to the gallery owners and sometimes the artists themselves. In New York, there’s the Affordable Art Fair, being held Sept. 21 to 25, and billing itself as “shaking up the dusty model of art as an elite pastime.” All artworks at the fair are in the $100 to $10,000 range, with three-quarters of the works selling for under $5,000 (the old top limit). For a look at exhibitors, with links to art for sale, click here. There will be an L.A. edition of the fair Jan. 18 to 22 next year.

If you’re a little more adventurous and live in, or plan to visit, the New York area, there’s an art fair held every weekend in September on Governors Island. There are more than 100 invited artists, most not yet represented by a gallery. Each gets a room or attic space in the old officer’s housing buildings to exhibit his or her work. Warning: this isn’t a bunch of still lifes. Sculptures of bats by Deborah Simon hang in one attic room and swoop through a stairwell; there are Juliette Conroy’s eerie photographs of dust, and Elisa Arroyo’s meticulous folded etchings grouped into 3-D boxes. Artists pay no fee to participate, opening the door to undiscovered talent.

(As an added bonus, on your way to the fair you can meander through an outdoor exhibit of Mark di Suvero’s abstract sculptures on the island in a show put on by Storm King Art Center).

Almost every major city has its own art fair. The Houston Fine Art Fair runs Sept. 16 to 18; Art San Diego just wrapped up; Art Chicago on the pier is in March 2012. For ogling the crème de la crème, there’s Art Basel Miami Beach (December 1-4), the sister event of Switzerland’s Art Basel, held in June. Or head back to New York to the Art Dealers Association of America’s long-running fair, The Art Show (March 7-11, 2012 at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City).

Go Gallery Hopping

The reality is that the vast majority of art depreciates when you bring it home, so you should buy works that you love and want to see every day. If you buy work from emerging or even established living artists, there may or may not be a secondary market, warns Julie Mussafer, founder of Jules Place, a Boston gallery that deals in contemporary artists. “You need to think what appeals to you from an aesthetic standpoint not an investment standpoint,” she says. Some galleries have a quiet policy for reselling work, but you should buy works you’re pretty sure you’ll want to hang on to.

If you have a particular spot to fill and find an artist you like but the painting doesn’t fit, consider commissioning a piece. Mussafar says a lot of her artists work in series and will paint something similar in a different size for a 10% to 20% surcharge. She’s brokering a piece by St. Louis minimalist painter Michael Hoffman whose works sell in the $3,000 to $5,000 range for an investment banker client who is looking for something dramatic to place on a 10-foot wide space above a front entry door. While Jules Place is in the South End, that same client also shops at the tonier Newberry Street galleries. Most galleries have monthly openings, just ask to be added to their mailing lists. They’ll also alert you to special neighborhood gallery happenings.

Don’t be put off if you go to a gallery and the prices of the works on exhibit seem out of your league. Besides the show on the walls, there are lesser-priced works kept in the back by the artist on view as well as by a whole stable of artists the gallery represents. For example, Dorsey Waxter, executive director of the Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, showed Sung’s large-scale paintings in the 2009 show when the Westport, Conn. collector Tony Greenberg bought his painting; now she has a series of Sung’s smaller paintings that sell for $18,000 and watercolors that sell for $6,000.

Support Your Local Museum Or Art School

Joining your local museum gets you free entry into exhibits and a host of other perks that can help you grow as a collector. For example, a patron of the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Conn. can tour top private collections, brown bag it with emerging artists, and visit New York galleries with the museum’s executive director (disclosure: I’m a member). There’s often also the opportunity to buy art. Greenberg, a patron of the Aldrich, picked up a few pieces at the last bi-annual Aldrich Undercover event, where 200 artists (past artists include Sol Le Witt, Roz Chast, KAWS) who have shown at the museum create original art for $300 a piece sold to benefit the museum. Kirsten Pitts, an Aldrich member who lives in Greenwich, Conn. bought a piece by street artist Michael De Feo at the event last year. She’s also bought at an annual benefit for the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, N.Y., which has silent and live auction items. Her pick: a naturalistic painting by Julie Langsam of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoie set in an empty landscape.

Art schools are another place to look for art by current students, and sometimes by graduates. In Los Angeles, Ryman Arts will host An Affair of the Art on Sept. 24 (Herbert Ryman, the school’s founder, did the initial sketch for Disneyland). For a preview of works for sale, click here.

No matter where you buy or what you end up buying, Greenberg has these trite but so true words: “It’s about trusting your gut and finding something that speaks to you.”

Re-posted from Forbes.