Nov 23rd, 2025 - A Renaissance painting found underneath a garage workbench has sold for more than half a million pounds at an auction house in Banbury. In a 15-minute bidding battle at JS Fine Art auctioneers, a painting depicting the Madonna and Child went for £685,000. The painting is believed to be by Renaissance painter Pietro Vannucci, known as Perugino (1450–1523). Joe Smith, founder and principal auctioneer at JS Fine Art, said: "It was one of those moments every auctioneer dreams of. We ...
Nov 20th, 2025 - A self-portrait by legendary Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold for $54.66 million in New York on Thursday, setting a new record for the price of a painting by a woman, the auction house Sotheby's said. The sale of Kahlo's 1940 artwork, titled "El sueno (la cama)" — which translates to "The dream (The bed)" — breaks the previous record in this category, set by American artist Georgia O'Keeffe, whose 1932 painting "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1," sold for $44.4 million in 2014. Kahlo's ...
Nov 19th, 2025 - A 1938 lecture given by the notoriously tight-lipped Surrealist can be heard as part of the exhibition "Magritte. La ligne de vie" Over 100 years after André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto , the art world remains more enchanted than ever by the genre-defying art movement. The book's 2024 anniversary spawned countless shows on Surrealism and its leading figures, including René Magritte, whose work has recently been exhibited from Houston, Texas, to Sydney, Australia. ...
Nov 19th, 2025 - Flattering visions of America are not exactly a dime a dozen these days, but " Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life " (on view through January 18, 2026) in London at the Courtauld Gallery provides one such respite from the present turmoil. The Californian artist (1920–2021) broke onto the scene in the 1960s with depictions of lavish Boston creme pies and cheerful gumball dispensers, refashioning what was worthy of being commemorated in paint. In fact, Thiebaud saw his work as being in ...
Nov 18th, 2025 - Gustav Klimt's portrait of Elisabeth Lederer is now the second-most-expensive work ever sold at auction. Another of the night's star lots, Maurizio Cattelan's solid gold toilet, elicited just one bid but still made a splash at $12.1m Gustav Klimt's six-foot-tall painting Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16) sold for $205m ($236.3m with fees) at its auction debut at Sotheby's in New York on Tuesday night (18 November). The painting is now the second-most valuable ...
Nov 17th, 2025 - Picture: Alte Nationalgalerie Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz: The Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin opened a new exhibition at the end of last month dedicated to works on loan from the Scharf Collection. According to their website: The Scharf Collection, one of the most significant private art collections in Germany, is being showcased in a large-scale exhibition for the very first time. The collection primarily consists of French art from the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as international ...
Nov 16th, 2025 - As af Klint's fame has grown, so have the questions—about what she believed, whom she worked with, and who should be allowed to speak in her name. Outside, it was cold and dark. Inside, brightly colored forms seemed to swirl and spread. It was February, 2013, the evening of the opening of "Hilma af Klint—A Pioneer of Abstraction" at Moderna Museet, in Stockholm. Among the attendees was Kurt Almqvist, a white-haired man in his mid-fifties. Though Almqvist considered himself ...
Nov 13th, 2025 - From the Mona Lisa to the American Gothic, these famous paintings don't just grace museum walls; they offer a glimpse into the past and define entire generations. Although most of these masterpieces are centuries old, they continue to fascinate art buffs and collectors alike, with each piece telling a captivating story. Whether they're on display for the whole world to see or hidden behind closed doors, these paintings prove that art has the power to create and sometimes, even change history. ...
Oct 18th, 2025 - Morgan Library & Museum, New York Famed impressionist painter's lesser-seen drawings are the focus of a major new exhibition that invites us into the stages of his artistic process is luminous colours and sensual brushwork adorn countless mugs, posters and tote bags as well as blockbuster exhibitions . But the commodification of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and his fellow impressionist painters has been missing something. Renoir was an accomplished draftsman who produced a distinguished but largely ...
May 14th, 2025 - If the prevailing art market mantra in recent months has been that, while buyers may be more selective, true quality will always sell, then what unfolded last night at Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction delivered a sobering counterpoint. The evening's centerpiece— Giacometti's bronze bust of his brother Diego , the only known hand-painted version and a highlight of the 1956 Venice Biennale—was a dramatic pass. Despite being billed as the star lot, Grande tête mince (Grande ...
Apr 11th, 2025 - Eugène Boudin at the Musée Marmottan Monet Video: Musée Marmottan Monet Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz: have just this week opened a new exhibition dedicated to Eugène Boudin (1824-1898) drawn in-part from a single private collection. According to their website: Collector Yann Guyonwarc'h has assembled a collection of works by Eugène Boudin (1824 – 1898) that is unrivalled in any museum in the world. Every facet of the artist's career is ...
Mar 19th, 2025 - His 'Sunflowers' painting does not make the list—and there are other surprises too Van Gogh's pictures only occasionally come onto the market and, not surprisingly, they fetch huge sums. The odd one is sold privately through a dealer, usually very discreetly—but in a typical year less than a handful are publicly auctioned. Here we record the ten most expensive Van Gogh paintings that have sold at auction, all at over $50m. 10. Fields near Les Alpilles , $52m, 2022 Fields near ...
Mar 14th, 2025 - Much attention has been paid recently to the life of the Italian Baroque master, Artemisia Gentileschi —specifically, her rape, her torture with thumb screws while testifying during the trial of her attacker and her representations of muscular women inflicting bodily damage on men . She's been the subject of novels, films, Broadway plays and operas, but no attention would be paid to her at all if she were not an artist of exquisite skill, bold vision and striking originality who painted ...
