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Animal Painting in 19th-Century France
The most talked-about painting at the 1855 Exposition Universelle was a horse market, and it made its painter famous.
Collecting Antique Dog Portraits
Two of the dogs in our collection have names. Nobody knows who owned them. Everybody knows what they were called.
How to Read Signatures and Inscriptions on Antique Paintings
A signature is a clue, not a verdict. Where to look, how to read monograms and dates, and the red flags that separate real signatures from added ones.
How to Read Signatures and Inscriptions on Antique Paintings
Before photography, there was exactly one way to own the image of a famous painting. Someone had to paint it again, by hand, in oil. For four centuries, copying was not a shady corner of the art wo...
Relined, Restored, Craquelure, Understanding Condition
Craquelure is not damage and relined is not a defect. What condition terms really mean on a painting that has survived two centuries, and how to judge them.
French Impressionist Portraits Beyond the Famous Names
The man with the pipe in Degas's most famous café scene was a painter, and his own portraits are still in circulation.
Emperors, Officers and the Symbols They Wore
A double-headed eagle, a golden ram on a ribbon, a white coat. Four symbols that tell you what an Austrian portrait is.
Portraits of Unknown Sitters in Old Master Painting
History kept the faces and lost the names. Why anonymous portraits are the smartest buy in Old Master painting, and how to judge one like a specialist.
Rigaud, Tocqué and the French Rococo Portrait
One built the image of absolute monarchy, the other perfected the honest likeness. What after Rigaud and follower of Tocqué really mean on a painting.
Collecting 18th-Century French Portraits
Everyone who mattered in eighteenth-century France needed to be painted, and the great portraitists ran workshops to meet the demand. What the attribution terms mean, how to date a canvas without a...