Magnificent Pieces at Master Paintings Week

Richard Green Salomon van Ruysdael (1600/3-1670) A river view with the town of Weesp, 1650 Oil on panel, 47 x 63.5 cm

Master Paintings Week runs until 8th July so there is still time to get to London for this prestigious event. It is regarded as an essential destination for private collectors, museum curators, art historians and art lovers around the world.

Following the success of London’s first Master Paintings Week in 2009, 25 dealers and auction houses from Italy, Paris, New York and Stockholm have pulled the stops out; magnificent pieces are on display, and there are still special items for sale.

The selection is mainly of European paintings, dating from the 15th to the 19th centuries, and these are displayed alongside another dealer initiative, Master Drawings London, also running to 9 July.

Tiepolo, Rubens, Turner, Guercino, Brueghel, Murillo, Van Ruysdael, Van Dyck, Constable and Benjamin West are just some of the most famous artists of the western world whose works will be available along with lesser-known masters of very high quality.

Verner Åmell Ltd Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) Portrait of a young woman with a black scarf. Oil on canvas, oval, 57.5 x 47.5 cm

Amongst the earliest pieces are the Bohemian School Martyrdom of St Barbara, c.1390 (Simon Dickinson), and a triptych centred on the Crucifixion by Jacopo di Cione (Florence, documented 1365-1398) (Moretti Fine Art. One of the more recent is a noble Head of an African by Léon de Troy dating from around 1880 (Ben Elwes Fine Art).

Agnew’s will be showing Old Master Paintings at Tryon Galleries while their new Albemarle Street gallery is being refurbished.  Highlights include Benjamin West’s (1738-1820) Cupid and Psyche, painted in London in 1808 but not seen in this country for over a century.

Italian paintings at Agnew’s include the superb Holy Family of c.1609 by Parma artist, Bartolomeo Schedoni (1578-1615). This rare and beautiful painting was, until 2008, only known to modern scholars from a photograph of c.1972 in the Witt Library, by which time the original painting was in the Herman Correa Borguez collection in Santiago, Chile.

Among the fine works to be offered by Verner Åmell will be Portrait of a Young Woman with a Black Scarf by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805). This was part of the celebrated collection belonging to Pierre-Louis Pau Randon de Boisset (1708-1776), who had one of the finest Dutch and Flemish picture cabinets in Europe.

Also of note is the Portrait of David Papillon (1691-1762), standing full-length, holding a bow and quiver, a spaniel at his side by John Closterman (1660-1713).  Papillon was the grandson of David Papillon, the French Huguenot and military engineer who built Papillon Hall in Leicestershire between 1622 and 1624.

Richard Green, who has been dealing in Old Master paintings for 55 years, will feature, among other schools, a number of fine Dutch and Flemish works including A river view with the town of Weesp by Salomon van Ruysdael (1600/03-1670). One of the originators of naturalistic landscape painting and stately river views celebrating the special beauty of

Holland’s inland waterways, of which this is a prime example, it has a distinguished provenance as it belonged to the Marquis of Biencourt.

Stair Sainty Gallery. Louis Gauffier (1762-1801), Ulysses recognises Achilles amongst the daughters of Lycomedes. Oil on canvas, 81.5 x 114 cm Master Paintings Week, London, 3 to 9 July 2010

The gallery will also feature the delightful Portrait of an eight-year-old boy, possibly of the Blauhulck family, holding a horse from the Circle of Jan Claesz (1570-after 1618), which recently came to light in a French private collection.  Such portraits are extremely rare and were only painted in West Friesland, the most northerly part of Holland, especially the town of Enkhuizen where Claesz was born.

Sphinx Fine Art will present The Collectors: Old Master Paintings, an exhibition comprising 100 works by artists that were prized by a dozen of the world’s most exacting patrons, all of whose works are now in the Hermitage, St Petersburg.

The exhibition includes a pair of Italian landscapes by one of Catherine the Great’s favourite artists, Jacob Philipp Hackert (1737-1807), and such historical works as Philips Wouwerman’s (1619-1668) Hawking Party.

The entire exhibition gives a fascinating insight into the tastes of some of the greatest politicians, monarchs, artists, and patrons of the 18th and 19th centuries.

All the London galleries showing during Master Paintings Week are in Mayfair and St James’s, a short walk from one another, and are open until Friday from 10 am to 6 pm.  The auction houses will be open from 9 am to 4.30 pm on Friday.

More information is available here: