WITH no fairs to preview for who knows how long and no physical exhibitions to flag up or review, I shall devote some of these lockdown columns to show the various ways that the art trade is offering its wares and services on the internet. I shall also take opportunities to look back at the changes in markets and fashions during the 60 years since I first ventured into junk shops, galleries and salerooms as a schoolboy.
Of course, art and antiques traders have been using the internet to advertise themselves for some time, but not all have exploited it as effectively as they might. Many rightly feel that it is still generally best to examine a work of art physically before buying it. Even when one has a catalogue, it is all too easy to make a careless mistake. Leaning against a wall across the room from me is a watercolour for which I made a post-sale bid from the catalogue when it had been bought in. I was so pleased with myself for recognising the artist when the auctioneer had it merely as English School that I failed to check the measurements. It is too big and heavy for me to hang anywhere.
Some things—small bronzes for instance—demand to be held in the hand. When assessing a chair, furniture dealers will immediately examine its underside and the first rule for buying a picture is: look at the back, which may tell you as much as the front. However, even if technology can never eliminate human fallibility, or render the eye and hand redundant, it forges on and virtual exhibitions are a great advance on photographs, in whatever form.
Denne historien er fra April 08, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra April 08, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
