2007 Catalogue - Colnaghi

Fig. 15
Installation view of In the Company of Old Masters Exhibition, Colnaghi
“Today painting is dead” was the verdict of Delaroche
on the invention of photography in 1839, just over ten
years after the portrait by Kinson was painted. In the
event painting continued to flourish in the nineteenthcentury
alongside the newer medium and Colnaghi
was among the first dealers to recognise its artistic
significance, giving pioneering exhibitions of the work
of photographers such as Roger Fenton and Julia
Margaret Cameron. Since 1990, when Colnaghi put
on a major retrospective of the work of Julia Margaret
Cameron, photography has been one of the fastest
growing areas in the art market and, as a reflection of
this, as well as in homage to the gallery’s nineteenthcentury
history, Colnaghi mounted an exhibition of
Victorian photography in partnership with New Yorkbased
dealer Hans Kraus, which included a masterly
Orientalist Study [fig 14] by Roger Fenton sold to an
American private collector. This was followed by an
exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work at the
Bernheimer Gallery in Munich and there are plans for
further photography exhibitions in coming years at
both galleries. The Mapplethorpe show explored
juxtapositions between the work of the great twentieth-
OPPOSITE Fig. 14
Roger Fenton (1819 – 1869)
Orientalist Study
Acquired by a private collector
16
century photographer and the art of the past.
In a similar vein, the show In the Company of
the Old Masters [fig 15] mounted in collaboration with
New York dealer, Mitchell Innes and Nash, brought
together three American contemporary artists - Julian
Schnabel, Tina Barney and Eve Sussman; it explored
the interrelationships between their work and a
selection of Old Master paintings which had inspired
them. The relationship between contemporary art
and the art of the past is, we believe, an ongoing
dialogue and this explains Colnaghi’s most recent
collaboration with the contemporary art dealers
Hauser and Wirth, who, since October, have occupied
the top three floors of the building above Colnaghi.
Hauser and Wirth will be mounting a series of
contemporary art exhibitions in the Colnaghi Gallery
which, it is hoped, will encourage new collectors to
explore aspects of this relationship between
contemporary art and the art of the past and, hopefully
find inspiration, like so many artists, in the work of
the Old Masters.
Jeremy Howard, December 2006