Sep 30th, 2020 - Newly detailed high-resolution scans show traces of a charcoal underdrawing Known for her smoky eyes and taunting smile, the Mona Lisa is one of the most famous paintings in the world. Now, after taking a closer look at the beloved Renaissance masterpiece, researchers have found evidence that Leonardo da Vinci actually relied on a charcoal underdrawing to render the sitter’s mysterious features. As Sarah Cascone reports for artnet News , scientist Pascal Cotte —who detailed his findings in a recent issue of the Journal of Cultural Heritage —started studying the Mona Lisa in 2004, when ...

Sep 29th, 2020 - A graduate student found magazines with instructions on how to reproduce works of art that match the artist's teenage efforts. How did the acclaimed American artist Edward Hopper  learn to paint? By copying other artists’ work out of instructional art magazines, it appears. A graduate student at the Courtauld Institute in London has discovered that at least three early oil paintings by Hopper were actually copies of work created by other artists. The paintings were previously thought to be scenes Hopper made in his hometown of Nyack, New York. Louis Shadwick published his findings in  ...

Sep 29th, 2020 - If you're new to the world of digital art, take a look at these expert-approved books and get learning.   Traditionally, digital art was denied the right to be taken seriously, let alone to be considered an integral part of our culture. However, the 21st century made the question of whether digital art is ‘true’ art rather obsolete.  Dozens of digital art museums and galleries are popping up across the world. Digital technology has had a major impact on art, transforming its traditional forms with new techniques and media. This has lead to the emergence of entirely new forms. If ...

Sep 28th, 2020 - push a traveling Philip Guston retrospective to 2024 . The exhibition—which was slated to open this year, and is expected to go on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and Tate Modern in London—was to survey the late artist’s career in a contemporary context. It is to include the artist’s famed paintings and drawings featuring hooded Ku Klux Klan figures, which leaders at the institutions feared might be misunderstood by audiences. "The irony is that, if ever there was a poignant time to have these ...

Sep 28th, 2020 - The Art Newspaper’s Book Club shines a light on art books in their myriad forms and brings you exclusive extracts, interviews, picture galleries and recommendations from leading art world figures. Sign up to our newsletter (👆top right) and follow us on social media using #TANbookclub An expert’s guide to Artemisia Gentileschi: five must-read books on the Italian artist All you ever wanted to know about Artemisia, from the best biographies to a book about her place in early modern feminism—selected by Italian painting specialist Letizia Treves The Italian Baroque painter Artemisia ...

Sep 25th, 2020 - Luckily, today, we can enjoy a taste of authentic Italy without ever getting on a plane. Y ears ago, I decided that the greatest need in our country was art… We were a very young country and had very few opportunities of seeing beautiful things, works of art… So, I determined to make it my life’s work. --Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) It’s amazing to realize that most of the priceless Italian Renaissance masterpieces in American museum collections result from the efforts of just a handful of individuals. Starting in the mid-1800s, American art enthusiasts began to seek out ...

Sep 24th, 2020 - The painting, to be offered at Sotheby's New York in January, is estimated to sell for 100 times more than the owner paid for it in 1982 A portrait of a Young man holding a roundel (around 1470-80) by Sandro Botticelli is to be auctioned in New York in January, when it is estimated to sell for in excess of $80m during Sotheby's Masters Week series of sales. “I’ve been selling Old Master paintings for three decades and it’s unusual to get a picture that is so evocative and in such exquisite condition,” says Christopher Apostle, the head of Sotheby’s Old Master paintings department, ...

Aug 31st, 2020 - New analysis confirms the famed Dutch painter’s studio—and perhaps even the artist himself—created "Head of a Bearded Man" Since the 1980s, a postcard-sized painting has sat out of sight in the storeroom of the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum . Titled Head of a Bearded Man, the portrait was donated to the museum in 1951 and displayed as an original work by revered Dutch master Rembrandt . But after a group of investigators deemed the painting inauthentic in 1981, curators decided to move it into storage. "[N]o one wanted to talk about [it] because it was this fake Rembrandt," ...

Jul 30th, 2020 - Arts and Entertainment Doubting Gauguin An amateur detective takes on the National Gallery, and the art world Fabrice Fourmanoir, an art dealer, poses for a portrait in Sayulita, Nayarit, Mexico, on June 15. (César Rodríguez for The Washington Post) By July 30, 2020 It’s the nude that bothers Fabrice Fourmanoir. The way she’s painted is “unsightly” and “vulgar,” quite unlike the Polynesian women of his mind’s eye. Nor does he like the way she’s artificially inserted on the canvas, part of what he calls an “uninventive assemblage” with no coherent symbolism. Yet there she ...

Jul 2nd, 2020 - Sotheby’s will auction 1931 charcoal drawing that shines light on artist’s affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter A tender and largely unseen portrait by Picasso of his lover and muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, which the artist personally kept until his death, is to appear at auction for the first time. The 1931 charcoal drawing shines light on one of the great love affairs of the 20th century and was made by Picasso when his affair with Walter was still a closely guarded secret. It is “an absolute gem, it is so exquisitely beautiful,” said Helena Newman, worldwide head of Sotheby’s ...

Jun 18th, 2020 - On Tuesday, the Drouot auction house in Paris sold a letter dually written by the artists Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin to the painter Émile Bernard for a head-turning sum of $237,000. The document, bought by the Vincent van Gogh Foundation, is the only known letter to have been written by both van Gogh and Gauguin. It contains a treasure trove of insight into the exploits of the two blossoming masters, including van Gogh’s account of the pair’s visits to brothels, both for recreational and work-related reasons. "We’ve made some excursions in the brothels, and it’s likely that ...