307 N Michigan Ave., Suite 308
Chicago, IL 60601
Downtown: 312.814.8510
Suburban: 630.734.3300
Finders Keepers: Stolen Artwork Uncovered
Marcia Fuqua, a 51-year old Virginia woman, unwittingly purchased an original painting by French Impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) for $7 at the Harpers Ferry Flea Market. News of the discovery made waves in the art world this month when an Alexandria auction house announced its intentions to sell the Renoir landscape, and a journalistRead the Rest…
Recto/Verso and Vice Versa: The “Backstory” Behind a Famous Drawing
Recto and Verso are, or front and back, are common terms used when describing art. Although most of the time we appreciate a painting or a drawing from the front, the verso should not be dismissed. ARead the Rest…
The Power of Provenance: A Picture Worth a Thousand Words
Every picture has a story. To be able to follow an image from its inception to its current-day location is an incredible example of provenance, or the documented story behind a piece of work. In terms of the art market, provenance is a means by which art experts can examine and verify authenticity and establishRead the Rest…
Damage and Insuring Art
This past January and February, just a few months after the catastrophic Hurricane Sandy flooded parts of New York City, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) published a new map assessing the risk levels per neighborhood of possible future flooding inRead the Rest…
Examining Authentications
In art and antiques, the authenticity of an object defines its value and importance in the trajectory of art history. Without legitimate provenance, or a sequence of historic records of the chronology of ownership, custody or location of an item, evidence of an object’s legitimacy can be seen as ambiguous and circumstantial. In these casesRead the Rest…
The Importance of a Professional Eye
There exists something in the art world called “connoisseurship.” It simply means the combination of knowledge, experience, and instinct that enables experts to discern a true work of art from the superfluity of fakes and imitators in the world. It is this quality that can elevate a simple sketch into a treasured part of history,Read the Rest…
Édouard Leon Cortès: Picturing Paris
French post-Impressionist artist – born 1882 in Lagney-sur-Marne, France – is most famous for his romantic Parisian vignettes. Grandson to artist Antonio Cortès and son to Spanish Court painter Antonio Cortès, the virtuoso Édouard was inclined toward the arts in his youth and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. When in 1901 theRead the Rest…
Masami Teraoka: New Views of Mt. Fuji/Sinking Pleasure Boat
At first glance Masami Teraoka’s panoramic view of a rustic wooden boat filled with revelers and being overtaken by ferocious waves appears to be a traditional Ukiyo-E, or Japanese woodblock print. These colorful prints originating in the austere Edo period depicted the “floating world” of transient sensual pleasures of beauty, music, food, and drink. TheyRead the Rest…
Ruth Duckworth: The Metamorphosis of Ceramic Sculpture
Modernist sculptor Ruth Duckworth – born 1919 as Ruth Windmüller in Hamburg, Germany – is widely recognized for her monumental, abstract ceramic works and large-scale wall sculptures. The artist – who was condemned to her house to improve her health as a child – was born to a Jewish mother, and so fled Nazi GermanyRead the Rest…
Pablo Picasso: The House Paint Pioneer
The recent discovery by experts from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Argonne National Laboratory that Pablo Picasso used house paint to render his masterpieces further illustrates the artist’s innovative spirit and transcendent genius. The self-described “Picasso CSI” team of art Historians and scholars– who have long hypothesized that the artist’s invisible brush marksRead the Rest…
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307 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 308
Chicago, IL 60601
phone: 312.814.8510
email: info@mirappraisal.com
