Dali and Lempicka paintings stolen from museum 'found after seven years'

Dali's 1941 surrealist work "Adolescence" featuring the Catalan artist and his beloved nanny and Lempicka's sensual 1929 tableau "La Musicienne" have been tracked down, detective Arthur Brand said via his Twitter account.

THE HAGUE (AFP).- Two renowned paintings stolen from a Dutch museum seven years ago, one by Salvador Dali and the other by Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka, have been recovered, a specialist art detective said Wednesday. Dali's 1941 surrealist work "Adolescence" featuring the Catalan artist and his beloved nanny and Lempicka's sensual 1929 tableau "La Musicienne" have been tracked down, detective Arthur Brand said via his Twitter account. "We recovered the #Dali and the #DeLempicka, stolen in 2009 from Scheringa museum," he wrote in a Tweet, posting two pictures of himself with the paintings. The two works of art were snatched from the Scheringa Museum of Realist Art in the northern town of Spanbroek in a daylight armed robbery on May 1, 2009.

Several masked men threatened staff and visitors with a gun and then drove off in a car with the two tableaux, police told AFP at the time. Brand said the two paintings had then been given to a criminal gang in lieu of payment -- a transaction which is common among criminal groups. But "this organisation did not want to be found guilty of the destruction or resale of art works," Brand told the Dutch daily De Telegraaf, and had contacted him through a go-between. Brand said he had handed the paintings over to British police at Scotland Yard who are in contact with the rightful owners, whose identities have not been revealed.

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Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet paintings seized in Malaysia graft probe

A member of staff poses with a painting entitled 'Nympheas avec reflets de hautes herbes' by French artist Claude Monet at Sotheby's auction house in central London. AFP PHOTO / CARL COURT.

GENEVA (AFP).- Switzerland has seized a painting by Vincent Van Gogh and two others by Claude Monet as part of the global investigation into Malaysia's scandal-tainted sovereign wealth fund, an official said Friday. The works were seized following a request from the United States, one of several countries probing alleged massive fraud at the Malaysian state fund 1MDB, said Swiss justice ministry spokeswoman Ingrid Reyser. "The operation is over and we confiscated the three paintings," Reyser told AFP in an email. She declined to comment on where the paintings had been kept or the individuals involved.

Earlier this week, the US justice department filed lawsuits seeking to reclaim more than $1 billion in assets linked to stolen or laundered 1MDB funds. Artworks by Monet and Van Gogh were among the assets listed in the lawsuit filed at a California federal court. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is facing mounting pressure over the scandal. Authorities in the US, Switzerland and Singapore are probing claims that the prime minister, his relatives and associates syphoned off enormous sums of public money.

The assets targeted for US seizure include royalties from the 2013 financial crime caper "The Wolf of Wall Street" starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The film, directed by Martin Scorsese, was produced by a company owned by Najib's stepson Riza Aziz, using more than $100 million diverted from 1MDB, according to the US justice department. Both Najib and 1MDB have consistently dismissed allegations of wrongdoing as political attacks by his opponents.

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Masterpieces replaced by fakes in six national galleries in treasure hunt

Giles Coren and Rose Balston at Guildhall Art Gallery © PA / Doug Peters.

LONDON.- A top secret operation saw millions of pounds worth of priceless masterpieces removed from the collections of galleries and museums around the UK. In a further twist, the seven paintings – all by celebrated British artists – have been switched for copies.

The heist has been coordinated by Sky Arts, with permission from the galleries, to launch a month-long national art competition for a new TV series called Fake! The Great Masterpiece Challenge. Only the museum curators, the production team from IWC Media, and presenters Giles Coren and art historian Rose Balston, know which pictures are real and which have been replaced.

Throughout July, members of the public of all ages and experience are invited to use their detective skills to spot the seven copies hiding in plain sight on the walls of six galleries in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Liverpool, London and Manchester. All seven displays also are available for investigation online, via the competition website: skyartsfake.com

Those with a keen eye, who manage to correctly identify the ‘fakes’, stand the chance of being invited to take part in the series finale. The finalists will compete to win a specially commissioned copy of their very own.

“You don’t have to be an art historian to have a go at this,” says Phil Edgar-Jones, Director of Sky Arts, “all you need is a sense of curiosity and an eye for detail. We wanted to tell the story of British Art with a sense of fun, and in a way that would encourage us all to take a closer and more critical look at the works of great British Artists.”

Each programme in the series will shine a light on a particular period of British Art, featuring interviews with specialist curators from each gallery and the contemporary artists who have been commissioned to secretly recreate the masterpieces from scratch. During the competition, curator-led tours of these collections are available at each gallery.

• at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, the fake has been hidden in a display on ‘The Art of The Stuart Courts’, including portraits of Mary Queen of Scots, James I and Charles II.
• at the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, Wirral, the copy has been placed amid a collection of ‘Golden Age English Portraiture’ by the likes of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough and George Romney.
• at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, the copy has been hidden amongst paintings of ‘Animal and Sporting Art’ from the 18th and 19th centuries.
• at the National Museum Cardiff, the copy has been made of a ‘British Landscape’ amongst masters such as J.M.W Turner and Richard Wilson.
• at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London, the imposter hides amongst the collection of ‘Victorian Narrative Painting’
• Manchester Art Gallery’s popular display of ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ paintings with works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt hides one masterpiece which is not all that it seems
• Manchester Art Gallery also created a special display of paintings of the city by LS Lowry and Adolphe Valette; one of which is a copy
• the final of the television series will be hosted at the world’s oldest public museum, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where the competition will reach its climax

This is the first Sky television series to be presented by Giles Coren, award-winning critic and columnist for The Times, following his debut on Sky Arts in an episode of My Failed Novel. His other broadcast appearances involved the hit BBC Back in Time for... series and the landmark Supersizers series with Sue Perkins.

The series is the television debut for Rose Balston, an Edinburgh-educated art historian and writer who lectures for the V&A and founded her own company, Art History UK, to run bespoke guided tours of art and architecture both in Britain and abroad.

Fake! The Great Masterpiece Challenge will be recorded throughout July and August and screened on Sky Arts in the new year, when the identity of the seven ‘fakes’ and the artists who have been commissioned to copy them will be revealed. The seven originals paintings will return to the galleries once the competition has ended in August. http://artdaily.com/news/88819/Masterpieces-replaced-by-fakes-in-six-national-galleries-in--treasure-hunt#.V40T66LN6sk

Nazi-seized Degas drawing sells for 462,500 euros

The drawing was confiscated in August 1940 from the Paris home of Maurice Dreyfus, a doctor.

PARIS (AFP).- A drawing by Edgar Degas that was seized by Nazi Germany in 1940 and returned to its rightful owner in May fetched 462,500 euros ($511,000) at auction on Sunday, organisers said. An Italian collector purchased the 1898 drawing, titled "Trois Danseuses en Buste" by telephone, according to the Osenat auction house in Fontainebleau near Paris. The work had been valued at between 350,000 and 450,000 euros.

The drawing was confiscated in August 1940 from the Paris home of Maurice Dreyfus, a doctor. It was found in 1951 in a closet of the former German embassy in Paris, and given to the Louvre Museum before it was identified as the property of the Dreyfus family. "We received a gift from heaven when we learned that they found the Degas drawing," Dreyfus's daughter Viviane told AFP. "It's as if my father gave us a gift from beyond the grave. We are very moved."

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Three Irish paintings recovered in County Wicklow to be offered at Sotheby's London

Jack Butler Yeats, The Fern in the Area, oil on board. Painted in 1950. Estimate £20,000-30,000. Photo: Sotheby's.

LONDON.- This September, Sotheby’s will offer at auction three Irish paintings recovered in County Wicklow in 2015. The works – Jack Butler Yeats’ The Fern in the Area, Paul Henry’s Landscape with Cottage, and Sir John Lavery’s Portrait de femme au chapeau – come to sale following their theft from a house in Wicklow in 2014 and the subsequent transferral of ownership of the paintings to insurance company Chubb on their recovery last year. With a combined estimated of £47,000-70,000, they will be offered in Sotheby’s Irish Art sale in London on 13 September 2016.

Charlie Minter, Sotheby’s Irish Art Specialist, said: “The remarkable recovery of these paintings has ensured that their fate looks immeasurably brighter and we look forward to finding new homes for them. The Lavery and Henry passed through our doors fifteen years ago and we’re thrilled to be able to offer them at auction again.”

Jack Butler Yeats The Fern in the Area oil on board Painted in 1950 Estimate £20,000-30,000 The art of Jack B. Yeats, arguably the greatest Irish painter of the 20th century, is that of Ireland, and the two are irrevocably entwined. His mature style reached its fullest spate in the 1940s and 1950s, when he was at the height of his powers. The Fern in the Area was painted in 1950 when the artist, although nearing the end of his career, was also at his most prolific, producing some of his most expressive and energetic works. By this time, Yeats had discovered the possibilities of paint as an expressive medium in its own right; his handling was more loose and liquid, and his palette dramatically richer. When turning to pure landscapes without the inclusion of a figure, Yeats’ paintings were often pushed to their most abstract. Although the title hints at the subject – a fern seen by the lower edge – the other details, including the specific location, remain vague, and fused with a rhythm of colour and brushstroke. Such works show Yeats at his freest; rarely working from sketches, he preferred to paint directly and spontaneously onto the surface and to employ an adventurous use of colour, particularly with the primaries, as seen here in the blue, red and yellow.

Paul Henry Landscape with Cottage oil on board Dated 1929-34 on stylistic grounds Estimate £20,000-30,000 Landscape with Cottage dates to circa 1929-34 and exemplifies Henry’s atmospheric portrayal of the West of Ireland for which he is celebrated. A thatched white cottage sits nestled in the hills while voluminous cumulus clouds roll above. The compositional device of devoting the majority of the painting to the sky was a technique favoured by Henry, allowing him to evoke the sense of space and tempestuous weather that defines this rugged landscape. Landscape with Cottage demonstrates Henry’s skill in encapsulating the relationship between the Irish people and their land. The cottage points up the isolation of the rural communities, while their reliance on the land is signified by the turf stack in the foreground. During the late 1920s the artist’s output was dominated by the use of dark umbers and olive greens, colours that convey a sense of the landscape’s solidity. Distinctive of this work is the more varied palette, notably the variations of mauve and yellow, and the more heavily worked surface with strong passages of impasto.

Sir John Lavery Portrait de femme au chapeau oil on panel Estimate £7,000-10,000 Portrait de femme au chapeau dates from the late 1890s, a period when Lavery was travelling regularly to Germany to execute portrait commissions and exhibit at the Eduard Schulte Gallery in Berlin. During this time he would often dedicate and present small sketches to clients, and in some instances, these lively portrait studies were favoured over their more finished versions. As one of the most fashionable painters of the Edwardian and post-war beau monde, Lavery made his name and fortune with his elegant portraits. In this work –showing a sitter set against a dark background – the fluid, confident brushstrokes and subtle, understated colour modulations demonstrate an artist in masterful command of his medium.

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Looted Ancient Sarcophagus

Egyptian Museum staff present the bottom of a looted ancient sarcophagus lid during a ceremony after its repatriation from Israel on June 21, 2016 at the Egyptian Museum in the capital Cairo. Two sarcophagus lids -- one dated to between the 16th and 14th centuries BC and the other between the 10th and 8th -- were delivered to Egypt's ambassador to Israel on May 22, 2016 and returned to Egypt on June 21, 2016. Egypt said the ancient artifactshad have been illegally imported after they were smuggled out of their homeland through a third country.
MOHAMED EL-SHAHED / AFP

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'Argentine' splurges at Nazi relics auction: report

BERLIN (AFP).- A buyer who said he came from Argentina spent over 600,000 euros on Nazi memorabilia, including one of Adolf Hitler's uniform jackets, at a controversial auction in Germany, a report said Monday. The mystery buyer, dressed in dark clothes and wearing a baseball cap, spent 275,000 euros ($312,000) on the jacket alone and 3,000 euros for a set of Hermann Goering's silken underwear, among over 50 items he purchased, reported Bild daily. Using the number "888", the man outbid others on most items and dominated the Munich auction, reported Bild, which had sent an undercover reporter to the event that was formally closed to the press following a public outcry. The number evokes the neo-Nazi code "88" that marks the eighth letter of the alphabet and stands for the banned greeting "Heil Hitler".

Last week the Central Council of Jews in Germany had appealed to the auction house Hermann Historica to cancel the event, charging it was "scandalous and disgusting" to make money with Nazi relics in such an auction. Bild reported that the room was filled with "young couples, elderly men, and muscular guys with shaved heads and tribal tattoos". The top bidder also bought the brass container that Goering, the founder of the Gestapo secret police and air force chief, used to kill himself with hydrogen cyanide two hours before his scheduled execution in 1946 in Nuremberg.

When the Bild reporter asked the top bidder who he was, the man reportedly replied in Spanish-accented English that he came "from Argentina" and had bought the items "for a museum", but declined to give his name. The items -- sold under the theme "Hitler and the Nazi grandees - a look into the abyss of evil" -- were formerly owned by the late US army medic John K. Lattimer, who was in charge of monitoring the health of Nazi war criminals on trial in Nuremberg. German law prohibits the open display and distribution of Nazi objects, slogans and symbols, but not their purchase or ownership, for example by researchers and collectors.

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