One of the most significant bequests to the nation in a century, including masterpieces by Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, goes on public display from today.
The exhibition of the 18 masterpieces, at Tate Britain, London, is likely to be the first and last opportunity to view the £100m collection in its entirety before the works are split between the Tate and the National Gallery.
Simon Sainsbury, the British philanthropist and art collector who died in 2006, left the pieces to the two institutions – five to the National, with the rest to be housed by the Tate. Some, such as Freud’s Boy Smoking, have not been seen by the public since 1954. Paul Gauguin’s Bowl of Fruit and Tankard before a Window has not been exhibited since 1936.
The pieces left to the Tate include three works by Freud, a rare early work by Bacon, Thomas Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Carter, and three works by the French artist, Balthasar Klossowski de Rola. Two pieces by the French painter, Pierre Bonnard, Nude in the Bath and The Yellow Boat, will make the Tate one of the principal places to see his work outside Paris.
Other works include the gallery’s first “conversation piece” by the German painter Johan Zoffany, and an oil painting of a hunt by the English artist John Wootton, who specialised in sporting subjects. The National Gallery will receive impressionist and post-impressionist works, including Monet’s Snow Scene at Argenteuil and Water-Lilies, Setting Sun.
Simon Sainsbury had a passionate interest in the arts, particularly 18th and 19th century architecture and art. Sir Nicholas Serota, the director of Tate Galleries, said the gift would “transform” the Tate’s ability to show a number of artists in depth. He said it was “one of the most important in the history of Tate” and would greatly enhance its collection.
Nicholas Penny, the National Gallery’s director, said the bequest would make a “huge difference to our impressionist and post-impressionist galleries”.
(The Independent)

Until 27th August, the city of Basel is hosting an extraordinary exhibition dedicated to French artist Robert Delaunay. Thanks to the curator Roland Wetzel, the Kunstmuseum of Basel has organized “Robert Delaunay: hommage à Blèriot,” an event that displays the eight compositions of the homonymous series, put together for the occasion with other masterpieces of Delaunay’s other series and with works of his contemporaries Vasilij Kandinskij, Fernand Lèger and futurist Luigi Russolo. Moreover, the Centre Pompidou of Paris has lent “Prismes èlectriques”, the painting that the artist’s wife, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, exposed at the Salon des indèpendants next to her husband’s “Homage à Blèriot”.

translated by Giorgina Arcuri

On 25th June, Sotheby’s London auction house will open the “Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale”, an extraordinary event for collectors of masterpieces by the most famous names of the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. The success of this auction seems to be anticipated by the artistic figures that will be presented. In a period when we keep on waiting for the signs of the art market crisis to surface, Sotheby’s makes the right choice, that is to auction 56 pieces of undoubted quality executed by the greatest names of the history of art. A very wise strategy that even collectors should pursue, as important works are not affected by devaluations and even if the market may slow down due to the latter, it will certainly never fail.

The 6th May auction brought about some confirmations, but also gave rise to creeping fears that have been circulating on the art market for a while. The top lot of the evening was the splendid painting by Claude Monet “Le Pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil” which went under the hammer for 41,481,000 dollars. With this sale Monet exceeded the previous record at auction, realised last June during the Sotheby’s auction in London; on that occasion, “Ninphéas” from 1904 went under the hammer for 36.7 million dollars.

THE PAINTING “ARII MATAMOE” IS NOW PART OF THE MUSEUM COLLECTION

The Los Angeles museum, Paul Getty, announced a few days ago that it had acquired the painting “Arii Matamoe” executed by Paul Gauguin in 1982.