There once was a curious character, a guru of sorts by the name of Joséphin Péladan, who succeeded in assembling around him in the Paris of the late 1880s an inspired and visionary coterie composed of painters, musicians and writers. While listening to Wagner and...
On 14 September an exhibition is due to open at the Marmottan Museum in Paris dedicated to the private collection of one of the greatest modern masters, Claude Monet. Featuring works by Renoir, Manet and Cézanne that belonged to the Giverny master, the collection was...
Imagine buying a painting for $19,000 in 1984 it being sold for $110.5 million in 2017. That’s what happened on Thursday 18 May at Sotheby’s when the hammer fell on the sale (with fees) of a Jean Michel Basquiat canvas from 1982 depicting a skull against a blue...
Impressionist and modern sales have been moving in a strange direction of late. Adopting marketing strategies that are unusual to say the least, they respond to a market where ‘high quality items are rare and demand is stronger than ever,’ as Thomas Seydoux, the Swiss...
‘It has to be said, there were a lot of young artists doing it for the money. In recent years, we’ve seen the market go into overdrive for these precocious talents. Artists between 25 and 28 whose works were selling for 50,000 to 100,000 euros and more. But the crisis...
Until 5 June, the Grand Palais in Paris has a lavishly produced exhibition featuring 278 extraordinary treasures belonging to Sheikh Hamad Bin Abdullah Al Thani, son of a former Qatari prime minister and cousin of the current Emir. In France, this family is also known...
Diego Giacometti (1902-1985), the brother and close collaborator of the illustrious sculptor Alberto Giacometti, has a seat in the pantheon of 20th century decorative arts. Hubert de Givenchy (born 1926), whose creations were made famous by the actor Audrey Hepburn...
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), a major artist from the dawn of modernism, both as a painter and a sculptor, died exactly 100 years ago this year. A hundred years is how long it took for a forgotten box containing 55 unseen drawings by this exceptional artist to appear on...
There is a unique sensation one feels at sight of a rare few old master drawings, to be found more often than not in museums. It is a beguiling emotion born from the impression you have of a life pulsating behind those drawn faces. They’re by Leonardo da Vinci, or...
The world’s most prestigious museums, the likes of the Louvre and the Metropolitan, fill entire rooms with uncommonly intricate works of art from the Medieval and the Renaissance period. For a long time the great European and American families, banking dynasties such...
Every year in November and May, the contemporary art auctions in New York are awaited as the final verdict on the overall health of the art market. Their impact is colossal, trickling down across all price ranges, as well as across other areas of the market. This year...
He was a one-time actor, a failed painter and a man of modest means who at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th created an immense body of work that systematically chronicled an old Paris that was in the process of disappearing. From inner courtyards...