Thu Jul 25,11:19 AM ET By The Associated Press
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) - The Marc Chagall painting stolen last year from New York City's Jewish Museum went back on display at its home at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. The 1914 work "Study for 'Over Vitebsk'" — valued at $1 million — had been on loan to the Jewish Museum as part of an exhibit, "Marc Chagall: Early Work From Russian Collections," when it was stolen sometime after a museum reception on June 7, 2001. Earlier this year, an undeliverable package was opened for identification at a postal center in Topeka, Kan. Workers there found the painting and called the FBI ( news - web sites) after noticing stickers from several museums on the back. Experts identified the painting in February, and its owner — an unidentified, private St. Petersburg collector — requested that it be returned to the Russian Museum, where it had been part of the collection since 1992. It was returned last week, and formally unveiled Wednesday. The 8-by-10-inch oil shows an old man floating over a village with a walking stick and beggar's sack. Also known as "Old Vitebsk," it was a study for a larger, similar piece called "Over Vitebsk" done the same year.
Chagall was born in Vitebsk, in what was then czarist Russia and is today independent Belarus, and returned briefly there at the end of World War I to create many of his key works.
Stolen Picasso recovered in France
LYON, France, July 26 (AFP) - An oil painting by Pablo Picasso that was stolen from a Geneva art gallery nearly 10 years ago was recovered this week in the central-eastern French town of Ecully, police said Friday. "Ace of Clubs", painted on cardboard by the Spanish surrealist in 1914, had an estimated value of USD 450,000 in 1993, according to police. The Picasso work, along with other paintings and dozens of drawings, were stolen from the Krugier gallery in Geneva in two thefts in 1993 and 1994. On Wednesday, police found the Picasso, along with several dozen drawings, in a building in Ecully and detained a 45-year-old man, who was not immediately named. The suspect was expected to be placed under investigation on Friday for possession of stolen goods. The thief was convicted in a Swiss court in 1995, French police said. http://www.expatica.com/
Top auction house faces investigation over £49m painting sale
AUCTION house Sotheby’s is facing a fraud investigation over a £49 million Rubens painting which was sold by an Austrian woman earlier this month. Public prosecutors in Austria launched an inquiry after they were handed a dossier from an anonymous source claiming the company had conspired with the painting’s owner to conceal the true identify of the Old Master. The alleged cover-up, it was claimed, enabled the painting to be shipped out of the country and sold for ten times the price it would have reached had it been auctioned in Austria. The investigation centres on the claim that Sotheby’s knew about the painting’s true origins when it applied for an export permit to the Austrian Cultural Heritage authorities, the Bundesdenkmalamt. The auctioneers said the painting was by the minor Rubens contemporary Jan van den Hoecke. But it was, in fact, The Massacre of the Innocents, a genuine original by the Flemish master.
The export permit was granted and it was only when the painting arrived in London that Sotheby’s announced it was a genuine Rubens. George Gordon, Sotheby’s Rubens expert, first viewed the painting at the Austrian monastery Stift Reichersberg, where it had been stored for more than 30 years. Mr Gordon admitted later that when he saw the painting he "couldn’t remember ever seeing a van den Hoecke that looked as good". Dr Helmut Kellner, from the Public Prosecutors office in Vienna, said he had studied the anonymous dossier in detail and decided there was enough merit in the claims to justify a police investigation. Dr Kellner confirmed he handed over all the information to detectives. The Austrian media said the investigation would include searches of the monastery and the offices of the auctioneers, and revealed that police would also attempt to interview the vendor.
Austrian authorities said the maximum sentence for any charges that may follow could be ten years in jail. But Andrea Jungmann, the head of Sotheby’s Austria, rejected the accusation and insisted the company was reputable and had not deceived the Austrian authorities in any way. She added: "These accusations are an incredible cheek.
"We only found out after the exportation to London that we were dealing with a Rubens painting, not a minute earlier. "A whole host of experts examined the painting who finally came to the realisation that the painting was not a van den Hoecke but was, in fact, a genuine Rubens. The painting’s vendor still remains anonymous and Sotheby’s have refused to disclose their details. Meanwhile, a US appeal court yesterday upheld the price-fixing conviction of the former Sotheby’s chairman, Alfred Taubman. Taubman, 78, was convicted of conspiring with his counterpart at a rival auction house, Christie’s, to fix the commissions charged to sellers of fine art, jewellery, rugs and furniture.
He was jailed for a year and fined £4.5 million. http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/ The Art Newspaper.com New interview with Kenny Schachter and Vito Acconci.
This week's top stories:
HOOGSTRATEN FACES LIFE FOR MANSLAUGHTER
LONDON. Nicholas van Hoogstraten, 57, the wealthy and controversial British property tycoon and avid collector, was found guilty by an Old Bailey jury of the manslaughter of his business rival, Mohammed Raja, 62, whom he caused to be killed by two henchmen. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9813
FORMER SECRETARY OF ROYAL ACADEMY BECOMES DIRECTOR OF MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM
MILWAUKEE. David Gordon, former Secretary of the Royal Academy, has been appointed director of the Milwaukee Art Museum. He will take up his post in October, heading a museum which faces financial challenges after last year’s opening of its $120 million extension designed by Santiago Calatrava. The Milwaukee appointment is a trans- Atlantic “swap”, since Mr Gordon’s successor at the Royal Academy (RA) is to be American banker Lawton Fitt. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9811
LIBYA IN HYDE PARK
LONDON. The Libyan revolution has come to a Royal Park, with the opening in London of an exhibition of antiquities and art. Set in a marquee in Hyde Park, it is approached along a green plastic carpet - the symbolic colour of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime, but also appropriate for the parkland setting. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9810
SUMMER SALES SURVEY: CONTEMPORARY ART, LONDON
LONDON. In the season’s final round of post-war and contemporary art auctions held in London on the consecutive evenings of Wednesday 26 and Thursday 27 June, five of the six most expensive lots were offered at Sotheby’s where an excellent set of results came within a whisker of matching the record tally of £14,201,000 earned at the height of the art market boom in 1990. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9796
REPLACING ONE STRAITJACKET WITH ANOTHER?
PARIS. It was not the Bastille Day, but almost. On 11 July last year, French auctioneers lost the monopoly they had enjoyed for the past 445 years and were faced with the cold blast of international competition from firms they still call “les anglo-saxons”, despite the fact that one, Christie’s, now belongs to a Frenchman. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9795
WHAT’S IN THE HERMITAGE’S TROPHY ART STORE?
ST PETERSBURG. On the top floor of the Hermitage is one of the museum’s so-called spetskhran, or “special storage areas”, where part of Russia’s World War II trophy art taken from Germany is kept. Until recently, it was only accessible to the museum’s director and the curator immediately responsible for the art. The Art Newspaper has been among the first publications granted access to this once top- secret cache. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9793
The first two volumes of John Richardson’s "Life of Picasso" have shown him to be the most qualified and thorough of biographers. His memoir, "The sorcerer’s apprentice," revealed a new side: a man of lively charm who—despite the giddy company he kept—maintained an ability to reflect, often poignantly, on his own life and milieu. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9791 Anna Somers Cocks, Editor
The Art Newspaper 70 South Lambeth Road London SW8 1RL UK tel +44(0)207 735 3331 fax +44(0)207 735 3332 http://www.theartnewspaper.com