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NEWS All the latest WHAT’S GOING ON IN AUGUST Interior of Sir Michael Smurfit’s private residence, showing portraits by Sir William Orpen ANTIQUE news With many events on hold, there’s still a lot to discover this August. Keep up to date with all the latest at www.antique-collecting.co.uk Below left A hallway in Sir Michael Smurfit’s private residence, with portraits by Sir William Orpen IRISH EYES Irish businessman Michael Smurfit is to sell artwork estimated at £5.3m across a series of sales at Sotheby’s. Smurfit’s 30-year collection of international and Irish artworks includes pieces by Jack B Yeats, John Lavery and William Orpen. Some 19 works from the collection, with a combined low pre-sale estimate of £2.6m, will headline Sotheby’s Irish Art sale in London next month, preceded by a public exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin from August 27-20. In a recent interview with Sotheby’s about the collection, Smurfit said: “At the start I had little and knew even less. I hadn’t very much of a clue, then slowly but surely I became interested in art, primarily through my first wife (Norma Smurfit) and then the late Tony Ryan of Ryanair, who was a great friend. Tony had a superb eye for Irish art, and he got me interested in other Irish painters too.” The collection is headlined by Louis le Brocquy’s Travelling Woman with Newspaper, from the artist’s Tinker series, which represents one of the first modernist works of Irish art. Bottom left Louis le Brocquy, Travelling Woman with Newspaper, has an estimate of £700,000-£1m Below Sir John Lavery, Tennis under the Orange Trees, estimated at £300,000-£500,000 in next month’s sale Basque in glory The National Gallery has bought a portrait by one of Spain’s foremost Impressionists, which can been viewed online. It is the first painting by Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923) acquired by the gallery following its exhibition on the artist last year. The Drunkard, Zarauz (El Borracho, Zarauz), (1910) is a large-scale sketch, rapidly executed in situ as Sorolla trolled the taverns of Zarauz in the Basque Country. Born in Valencia in 1863, Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida became a world famous painter during his lifetime, thanks to a technique that merged traditional Spanish painting with the dazzling play of sunlight. Gallery director, Dr Gabriele Finaldi, said: “Sorolla’s brushstroke and the confident, sketch-like handling reveal him at his dazzling best.” Above Sorrola’s The Drunkard, Zarauz (El Borracho, Zarauz), (1910) 6 ANTIQUE COLLECTING
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1Extended run On March 18, three days after opening its once- in-a- exhibition Titian: Love, Desire, Death on, the National Gallery closed its doors. Now the groundbreaking exhibition has extended its run to October after the gallery reopened on July 8. The exhibition brings together the artist’s epic series of large-scale mythological paintings, known as the ‘poesie’, in its entirety for the first time since the late 16th centur y. From the original cycle of six paintings, the exhibition reunites Danaë (from the Wellington Collection, Apsley House); Venus and Adonis (from the Prado, Madrid); Diana and Callisto (jointly owned by the National Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland); and the recently-conserved The Rape of Europa from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. The exhibition can still be explored online, visit www.nationalgaller y.org.uk Right Before it closed the exhibition received 85,000 visitors in a month Far left Titian (ac. 1506, died 1576) The Rape of Europa, 1559–62, oil on canvas © Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston Above left Titian Diana and Callisto, 15569, oil on canvas, © The National Gallery London / The National Galleries of Scotland Left Titian, Danaë, about 1551–l, oil on canvas, Wellington Collection, Apsley House, London © Stratfield Saye Preservation Trust 3to see in AUGUST Right Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Narcissus, Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini Below left Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) The Spectacles Seller (Allegory of Sight), c. 1624, Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden Below Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) Self-portrait in a cap, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, 1630, Ashmolean Museum 2Baroque rolls With European galleries opening ahead of their UK counterparts there’s a chance to see some Baroque masterpieces at Rijksmuseum. The national museum of the Netherlands reopened to the public in June with its muchcelebrated exhibition Caravaggio-Bernini. Baroque in Rome, originally scheduled to close on 7 June, extended to September 13. The exhibition sees more than 70 masterpieces by Caravaggio, Bernini and their contemporaries on loan from museums and private collections around the world. In the first decades of the 17th century a new generation of artists, led by the Caravaggio and the sculptor Bernini, shook Rome from its classical slumber to introduce the dynamism of the groundbreaking baroque movement. Tickets must be bought in advance from the museum’s website www.rijksmuseum.nl Below Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Medusa, Rome, 1638–1640, Musei Capitolini, Palazzo dei Conservatori 3Youthfulendeavour Young Rembrandt, the first major UK exhibition to examine the artist’s early years, is set to reopen this month the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Looking at Rembrandt’s first decade of work, from 1624–34, the show charts his meteroric rise from his crude earliest known work, The Spectacles Seller to his first acknowledged masterpiece Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem just six years later. While an exact opening date is still to be set the exhibiton can be explored online at www.ashmolean.org Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem, 1630, oil on panel, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam ANTIQUE COLLECTING 7

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NEWS All the latest

WHAT’S GOING ON IN AUGUST

Interior of Sir Michael Smurfit’s private residence, showing portraits by Sir William Orpen

ANTIQUE news

With many events on hold, there’s still a lot to discover this August. Keep up to date with all the latest at www.antique-collecting.co.uk

Below left A hallway in Sir Michael Smurfit’s private residence, with portraits by Sir William Orpen

IRISH EYES Irish businessman Michael Smurfit is to sell artwork estimated at £5.3m across a series of sales at Sotheby’s.

Smurfit’s 30-year collection of international and Irish artworks includes pieces by Jack B Yeats, John Lavery and William Orpen. Some 19 works from the collection, with a combined low pre-sale estimate of £2.6m, will headline Sotheby’s Irish Art sale in London next month, preceded by a public exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin from August 27-20.

In a recent interview with Sotheby’s about the collection, Smurfit said: “At the start I had little and knew even less. I hadn’t very much of a clue, then slowly but surely I became interested in art, primarily through my first wife (Norma Smurfit) and then the late Tony Ryan of Ryanair, who was a great friend. Tony had a superb eye for Irish art, and he got me interested in other Irish painters too.”

The collection is headlined by Louis le Brocquy’s Travelling Woman with Newspaper, from the artist’s Tinker series, which represents one of the first modernist works of Irish art.

Bottom left Louis le Brocquy, Travelling Woman with Newspaper, has an estimate of £700,000-£1m

Below Sir John Lavery, Tennis under the Orange Trees, estimated at £300,000-£500,000 in next month’s sale

Basque in glory The National Gallery has bought a portrait by one of Spain’s foremost Impressionists, which can been viewed online.

It is the first painting by Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923) acquired by the gallery following its exhibition on the artist last year.

The Drunkard, Zarauz (El Borracho, Zarauz), (1910) is a large-scale sketch, rapidly executed in situ as Sorolla trolled the taverns of Zarauz in the Basque Country.

Born in Valencia in 1863, Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida became a world famous painter during his lifetime, thanks to a technique that merged traditional Spanish painting with the dazzling play of sunlight.

Gallery director, Dr Gabriele Finaldi, said: “Sorolla’s brushstroke and the confident, sketch-like handling reveal him at his dazzling best.”

Above Sorrola’s The Drunkard, Zarauz (El Borracho, Zarauz), (1910)

6 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

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