Christie’s puts up for sale the recently discovered Van Dyck canvas

LONDON. Auction house Christie’s discovered a previously unknown painting by Van Dyck, which depicts the head of a man. Now the work will be put up for sale in December this year with an estimate of £ 200,000- £ 300,000.

The canvas most likely refers to the research that the artist conducted when creating the now-lost Large Group Portrait of the Elders of Brussels, which was probably painted in the early 1630s. Four similar works by Van Dyck have already been discovered earlier. Two of them are in the collection of the Eshmolov Museum, another in the private collection (it was found in New York by a London dealer Fergus Hell), and the latter was found thanks to the recent BBC television program Antiques Roadshow. This fourth in a row work was also exhibited at Christie’s last summer, with an estimate of £ 300,000 - £ 500,000, but could not find its buyer.

Based on Van Dyck’s earlier studies, it can be assumed that the work (background and drapery in the background) was completed after the artist’s death, to give her a more “salable” look. Indeed, at the time of the painter, drafts and unfinished works were treated scornfully, as graffiti Now, not counting this art. The concept of the value of an unfinished painting appeared several centuries later, when some sketches and studies of old masters were added.

Christie’s experts suggest that the new study found relates to a portrait painted for Brussels magistracy, preserved to us only in the form of a grisaille, which is now in the Higher National School of Fine Arts in Paris. On it you can see 7 sitters, the heads of three of which are turned to the right (as in the newly found, as well as four previously discovered sketches). However, the majority forgets that there was another, much larger Group portrait of the Masters of Brussels by Van Dyck, which, unfortunately, did not reach us, either in the form of sketches, or in the form of a grisaille, or in any other. It is only known that about two dozen models were depicted on it. Both large works of the painter were destroyed during the attack of Brussels by French troops in 1695.

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru