Masterpiece and Sitter: Sargent as well as the Sitwells

                                                        Sir George Sitwell

(father with the famous writer Dame Edith Sitwell) would be a very bizarre man in many ways. He was obviously a keen gardener (he actually studied garden design) and, annoyed by the wasps in the garden, he invented a pistol for shooting them. After he moved to Italy to prevent taxes in great britan, he refused to cover his new wife’s debts which resulted in her spending three months in prison. He was this avid reader and collector of books he had seven libraries as part of his home. Other eccentricities included paying his son an allowance in line with the amount paid by among his forebears to his son through the Black Death, and trying to pay for his son’s Eton school fees with produce from his garden. But perhaps most bizarrely, Sir George had the cows on his estate stenciled in the blue and white Chinese willow pattern to make them look better. This is actually the realize that Sir George hung around the gate of his manor in Derbyshire, England: “I must ask anyone entering the home to never contradict me or differ from me in any way, because it inhibits the functioning of my gastric juices and prevents my sleeping at night.”

Lady Ida Sitwell

Lady Ida Emily Augusta Denison,

Mother For the “Sitwell Trio!”
According to Sacheverell Sitwell, ”his mother had only met his father twice at luncheon before their marriage; in just a couple of days from the wedding she ran home to her parents, but was firmly repaid to her husband. This was perhaps not surprising; sex failed to rank high about the large list of Sir George’s interests. Based on family tradition, Edith, Osbert and Sachie were conceived using a ritual deliberation. Sir George would prepare himself for his act of dynastic responsibility by immersing himself in suitable books and works of art, including different art painting techniques. He'd then announce, ‘Ida, I am ready!’ as well as the procreation of another Sitwell genius would occur.”

Sir George Sitwell married the Honorable Ida Emily Augusta Denison, daughter into the future Earl of Londesborough, on November 26, 1886. To Sir George, it wasn't her beauty that was the greatest attraction or asset. Indeed, it was the”blue blood” that ran through her veins and her direct descent from your former ruling house of Plantagenet, that made her his ideal range of bride.
As Osbert relates in Left Hand, Right Hand!, the occasion of marriage generally seems to to have precipitated Sir George right into a flurry of artistic patronage.
After having a wedding present of your conventional outdoor portrait of Lady Ida in a chaise by Heywood Hardy, he commissioned a number of drawings step by step of himself and the wife from Lillie Langtry’s favorite artist, Frank Miles.

By September of the following year, he was considering approaching two of the leading painters of the classical revival, Lawrence Alma-Tadema and William Blake Richmond, for a larger painting which would do justice to his young wife’s Grecian features.
In 1888, he wrote home to his agent Peveril Turnbull: “(Richmond) wishes to paint her within an amber dress of your loose and rather aesthetic character and totally unlike in every particular to the style and a feeling of those she wears.” And 3 weeks later: “Richmond quit of his or her own accord his dress after it had been made and looked hideous. Now he's got begun a portrait of Ida in a single of his lolling back positions. We have told him, I dislike it, I wonder if he'll kick?”
Osbert observes; “ the eventual portrait - not using among his lolling back positions, but uncomfortably upright, dressed in a turquoise blue coat and playing a zither, an instrument she had not witnessed in her life until she had sat to Richmond - is very hideous and insignificant, although a pretty likeness. My dad, on receiving it had been anxious to reduce the head, frames it as a little oval picture and burn the others!”

Art market euphoria replace by realism

London salerooms produced a record series of Impressionist and Modern art auctions last week, but only just.

After the buzz of expectation developed by the London salerooms, they did produce a record series of Impressionist and Modern art auctions last week, but only just. Mid-way with the fifth and final session, the sales total crept after dark previous record of £298 million, occur June 2008, finally winding up at £303 million. There have been no celebrations, however, and a palpable air of disappointment pervaded. Strip away the auctioneers’ commissions, and also the total was nearer £250 million, below the £300 to £450 million estimate for that series.

Things began badly at Bonhams, which sold none of their top lots. A Chagall painting technique, full of figures and was estimated to fetch at least £1.2 million. But buyers were delay because it was believed to have been painted over 30 years, and it bore a stamped rather than hand-written signature.

Although Sotheby’s sold the majority of its top lots, it was touch and go for a number of them. The much-heralded Manet self-portrait sold, albeit for a record £22.4 million, on just a single bid on the low estimate from Franck Giraud, the dealer who bid an archive £32 million with respect to the Qatar royal family in the Yves Saint Laurent sale last year for a Matisse still life. And Russian interest seemed to have rescued a highly estimated Soutine portrait of a seated valet. The only visible bidder was Alex Lachman, a dealer from Cologne who advises Russian collectors, and who bought it about the low estimate for £7.9 million.

Occasionally, Russian or Ukrainian bidders locked horns with Americans to push the bidding up over estimates and also to record levels for Andre Derain, whose fauvist landscape in the Ambroise Vollard collection sold for £16.5 million, and for a drawing technique by Matisse, whose reclining nude sold for £5.9 million.

Christie’s main sale set a brand new record for any UK auction at £153 million, but was, none the less, below its target. This was due mainly towards the failure of the Monet painting for which £30 million had been asked. Neither the composition, a lily pond partly obscured by mist, nor the data that it had been available privately prior to the auction, helped to warrant the price. Another flop would be a rare, early, with no doubt historically interesting painting by the German expressionist, Otto Dix, that Christie’s hoped to obtain a record £4 million. However, this was a case of something being just too rare for that market. The painting didn't seem like a typical Dix, also it, too, was unsold.

Carrying your day for Christie’s was Picasso’s blue period portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto from the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, which could now be coming to the China. You purchased it , for £34.8 million for an anonymous client by Jen Lyn Low, a Christie’s expert in Chinese pieces of art, recently seconded to the Impressionist department to develop its business relations in Asia. However it hardly sparked a bidding war. Probably the most bullish area of the market was for late Picasso. Le Baiser (1969), a typically primitive depiction of the couple embracing, had been sent available by US newsprint magnate Peter Brant who had paid £2.8 million for this in 2003, a record for a late Picasso. Last week it sold for £12 million.

Neglecting to reap any rewards were a Matisse paper cut-out that were unsold in New York last November with a $3 million to $4 million estimate, and was unsold again in spite of its vastly reduced £500,000 ($760,000) estimate, along with a portrait of the showgirl by van Dongen that went through the roof in 2007 when it sold for quadruple estimate £1.7 million, but found no buyer this time around to match that price.

Such failures, though, were the exception as a very solid 80 per cent of the works offered a week ago found buyers. The fragility shown at the top end from the market was because the estimates were too high. High estimates are going to meet sellers’ expectations, and therefore are often the consequence of competition between your salerooms when trying to influence sellers where you can sell. With oil disasters and fears of a double-dip recession, the marketplace has perhaps changed from two months ago, when the estimates were set still within the euphoria developed by $100 million prices for Picasso and Giacometti.

Last week saw a correction to that euphoria; a correction that will have to be taken into consideration for the next big Impressionist sales in Ny this autumn.

Art Movements of 1900s: Massurrealism

Massurrealism

Massurrealism may be the name given to an art genre characterized by the convergence of surrealism and mass media, such as the influence of pop art. The definition was originated in 1992 by American artist, James Seehafer.

History

Massurrealism is really a development of surrealism that emphasizes the result of technology and media on contemporary surrealist imagery. James Seehafer who's credited with coining the word in 1992 said that he was prompted to do this while he had been unable to find a simple explanation to characterise the type of work he was doing, which combined elements of surrealism and mass media, the latter consisting of technology and pop art-”a form of technology art.” He had begun his work using a shopping cart software, which “represented American mass-consumerism that fuels mass-media”, and then incorporated collages of colour photocopies and spray paint with the artist’s traditional medium to oil paint.

In 1995, he assembled a small group show near Ny and located an area cyber-cafe, where he started to post material about massurrealism on the internet arts news groups, inspiring some German art students to stage a massurrealist show. The following year he started their own web site, www.massurrealism.com and began to receive work from other artists, both mixed media and digitally-generated, “which is massurrealism because of its origins in strict electronics”. He credits the World Wide Web with a big part in communicating massurrealism, which spread to La, Mexico and then Europe.

Seehafer has said:

“ I am not credited with inventing a brand new oil painting technique, nor I don’t think I should be credited with starting a new art movement, but instead simply coining a word to categorize the type of present day surrealist art that had been without definition. As a result, word “massurrealism” has brought lots of enthusiasm from artists. Though there are several who believe defining something essentially limits it, a persons condition has always had the need to categorize and classify everything in life. ”

The differentiating factor, according to Seehafer, between surrealism and massurrealism may be the foundation of the first kind in early Twentieth century in Europe prior to the spread of electronic media. It is not easy to define the visual type of massurrealism, though an over-all characteristic may be the use of today's technology to fuse surrealism’s traditional access to the unconscious with pop art’s ironic contradictions.

In 2005, graffiti artist Banksy illicitly hung a rock in the British Museum showing a caveman pushing a shopping cart, which Shelley Esaak of about.com referred to as “a nice tribute to James Seehafer and Massurrealism.”

Massurrealism continues to be influenced through the writings and theories of Cecil Touchon, Marshall McLuhan, and Jean Baudrillard.

Artists

Melanie Marie Kreuzhof. ‘Die tote Stadt, mixed media, 2004.

Alan King, Ginnie Gardiner, and Cecil Touchon are massurrealist artists.

German artist, Melanie Marie Kreuzhof, who describes her are massurrealistic, was commissioned in 2004 through the editor from the Spectakel Salzburger Festsiele Inside magazine to produce an artwork about Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt in the Salzburg Festival. To make her work she took 9 digital photographs, composed them in a computer and printed the result directly onto canvas, which was then mounted on a wooden frame, done with acrylic paint coupled with objects attached-3 guitar strings, a strand of hair along with a silk scarf. The pictures and elements were based on themes within the opera.

What Is An authentic Picasso Graphic?

A graphic is an original work of art made in two steps. First, the artist creates a prepared surface with the art design or image; and secondly, that image is inked and transferred straight to paper while using force of the press to push the sheet of art paper firmly from the inked surface that contains the prepared image.

An original graphic may also be known as a print, not to be mistaken with an inexpensively produced reproduction (which is a copy of the work of art which was originally created in another medium).

The types of prints (or original graphics) which are most typical are intaglios such as etchings, engravings, linoleum and wood block prints, and the planographic medium of lithographs. Although Picasso is proven to be the best painter and most innovative sculptor of the Twentieth century, he seemed to be its foremost printer.

The process of printmaking requires a balance of mastery and inventiveness, which Picasso ingeniously employed. He was imaginative towards traditional old masters techniques and in a position to coax new and inventive methods to further his artistic intent in the region of making original graphics.

Le Repas Frugal by Picasso, etching

Picasso’s graphic oeuvre spans a lot more than seven decades, from 1899 to 1972. His published prints total approximately 2,000 different images “pulled” from plates of metal, stone, wood, linoleum, and celluloid. It is these original prints what are primary focus of the Saper Galleries Picasso exhibition.

Note that Picasso prints are not necessary out-of-reach financially because he was very prolific plus some of his graphics come from book editions which are usually a smaller amount expensive than the very limited quantity of prints of some editions. Between 1911 and 1971 Picasso published 163 art books containing his original prints.

The costliest Picasso etching sold at auction was on November 30, 2004 for $1.14 million. That 1904 “Le Repas Frugal” was from the first suite of Picasso etchings that was published in 1913. The earliest signed, original Picasso graphic in this Saper Galleries exhibition is “Femme Couchée” (woman reclining) which will sell for $27,500. It wasn't long ago that “Le Repas Frugal”, created once the artist was 23 years old, also sold for around $20,000.

Femme Couchée, The first Picasso lithograph

The beautiful from the original graphics within this exhibition is they present an autobiographical sketch of Picasso’s life, particularly with respect to the women of his lifewho are depicted in the collection.

Additionally, Picasso’s prints demonstrate his intuitive and characteristic ability to recognize and exploit the options inherent in any medium by which he made a decision to work. Once he'd mastered the traditional methods of creating a particular print medium (for example etching from a flat metal plate), Picasso usually experimented further, pursuing new directions and scarcely known techniques such as “sugar-lift aquatint”.

In this exhibition, there's a clearly defined succession of periods in which certain art painting techniques predominated.

When Picasso gone to live in Paris in 1904 he experimented with more traditional etching, adding the techniques of drypoint and aquatint to the copper plates. He later bought his own press (rather than working in the Parisian ateliers) so he could try their own, making numerous trial proofs and developing new approaches to producing graphics.

La Biche, a sugarlift aquatint and drypoint developed by Picasso

Between 1919 and 1930 Picasso worked more in lithography. In the 1930s he returned to etching, then creating the 100-image Vollard Suite and the etchings to illustrate Buffon’sHistoire Naturelle suite. Following World War II many of his compositions were intended as book illustrations. Within the Vollard Suite the etchings offer understanding of both Picasso’s often tempestuous sex life in addition to his working style in the studio. In a neoclassical style he demonstrated the incredible fluidity of his imagery and ongoing curiosity about Cubism.

Picasso was extremely productive by every measure. At times, he'd have an impulse that could become a frenzy of labor, as happened within the last week of January, 1934 when he created 11 from the Vollard Suite etchings. In 1957 he created 26 aquatints for hisTauromaquia suite in a matter of hours.

The very first linoleum block prints (or linocuts) were first carved by Picasso in 1939. The linocuts really are a relief method of carving and printing similar to a woodcut but using linoleum instead of a wood surface. By 1951, when Picasso was 70 years of age, he renewed his curiosity about the skill of linocuts and continued focusing on them for another Two decades.

Clown for Leiris, lithograph by Picasso

Also by 1951 he had produced some 300 etchings, concerning the number Rembrandt had created in the lifetime. And Picasso had just started!

During his seven decades of printmaking, Picasso created five major sets of etchings, a tour de force unrivaled within this medium. This is evidenced by his Saltimbanques Suite of 1904-1905 (15 works), Vollard Suite of 1930-1937 (100 works), Series 60 of 1966-1968 (60 works), 347 Number of 1968 (347 works) and, finally, his 156 Series of 1969-1971 (156 works). These suites alone total 678 individual images.

Picasso’s achievement in various intaglio media have been extraordinary and may assure his pre-eminence in the history of printmaking.

In 1945 Picasso’s greatest lithographic work is at the atelier of Fernand Mourlot. His growing mastery of the medium and his inventive genius soon enabled him to venture into domains new to lithography and to achieve bold and striking effects. Several of the Mourlot lithographs have been in this Saper Galleries exhibition.

After The second world war Picasso’s production as a printmaker substantially increased and the etching and engraving stayed his favorite medium for graphic expression. The supply of inspiration for his graphic are employed in the 1940s and 1950s were painter and writer Françoise Gilot and Jacqueline Roque (who became his second wife in 1961).

In his 80s Picasso actively resumed etching and engraving. In his last decade about 500 different images were made by using their medium, a testimony to his energy, and prolific output and continued creativity and inspiration.

Picasso has astonished the ablest printmakers again and again. It is not only he mastered the down sides of new techniques with playful ease; he soon continued to obtain results that had been deemed impossible before his successes.

A virtuoso craftsman in engraving, etching, lithography and linocut, Picasso explored their secrets with patience and love and elicits from each medium the subtlest effects it's able to yielding. Picasso cared. It is hardly surprising that five, 10 as well as 30 states (or variances) were sometimes necessary before a masterpiece emerged from his hands.

Georges Bloch, who catalogued Picasso’s graphics observed, “Picasso is really revealed by using the genesis of his work in one date to another. All his phrases and styles, which we use as landmarks, are in reality only successive stages of a continuity that constitutes the phenomenon of Picasso.”

Picasso would be a master from the line along with a great draughtsman, as those who visit this exhibition will observe. Picasso said, “The graphic arts are…my favorite medium.”

In this Saper Galleries exhibition, Picasso: Original Graphics and Ceramics, you are invited to see for yourself that level of creativity and genius that makes Picasso an innovator and master from the medium who will always be regarded as the 20th century’s foremost printmaker and perhaps probably the most legendary artist of all time.

It will be my pleasure to welcome you.

Munch’s Madonna costs record £1.25 Million.

Edvard Munch’s Madonna sold for £1.25 million

A hand-coloured image of Edvard Munch’s Madonna sold for £1.25 million today - doubling its estimate and making it the most expensive print ever to become sold in the united kingdom.

The controversial artwork, in Munch’s famous swirling painting technique, have been estimated to fetch £500,000 to £700,000 at Bonhams Prints sale working in london.

Bonhams asserted in addition to setting a UK record, the look seemed to be the second most expensive print to be sold in the planet.

Another Munch work, Vampire II, bought from Oslo in 2007 for around £1,256,000.

The Madonna artwork was purchased at Bonhams by a private buyer from the Usa, for £1,252,000 including buyer’s premium.

The job, which has not been proven in public before coming to auction, is signed and dated 1895, the year of its creation.

The artist re-worked his original idea many times between 1895 and 1902.

The print is in the initial state and is, according to Bonhams, arguably the first hand-coloured impression.

It shows the Madonna in yellow and white painting color set against a halo of blue, green and red.

The central figure is encompassed by a blood red border containing forms resembling sperm along with a

The model for the Madonna was Munch’s mistress, Dagny Juel, described as a ”femme fatale” who after numerous ill-fated affairs was shot dead by a young lover in a Tblisi hotel aged 33.

The work, described as being in ”excellent condition” have been within the same family in excess of A century.

Bonhams head of prints, Robert Kennan, said: ”It has been a real privilege selling this type of wonderful image and it fully needs to have achieved such a fantastic price.”

The work was sold on behalf of the estate of abstract expressionist artist Frank (Albert) Avray Wilson.

It had been previously in the assortment of his wife Ivy Eckbo, the adopted daughter of Eivind Eckbo, a Norwegian businessman and philanthropist who owned several Munch lithographs.

foetus.