2007 Catalogue - Colnaghi

FOREWORD
It has been two years since our last review catalogue, during which time we have continued to build on our traditional strengths
in Old Master paintings and drawings, and have managed to buy some works of the highest quality, some of which, I am very
proud to say, have ended up in great museums, such as the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and others, in important
private collections in Europe and America. At the same time we have also undertaken some exciting new initiatives through
our recent cooperation with the contemporary art dealers Hauser and Wirth and our continuing involvement in photography,
an area in which Colnaghi played a pioneering role as dealers in the nineteenth century.
The beginning of the twenty-first century is a particularly challenging time for the Old Master dealer. Every year the search
for high-quality paintings and drawings becomes more difficult with a diminishing supply of top-quality works of art available
on the market. At the same time we are operating in a world, which seems at first glance, to have become increasingly
dominated by contemporary art; by the worship of the new at the expense of the old. However, there are signs that more and
more younger people are beginning to look again at the Old Masters and that contemporary art collectors are realising that
the art of the past and the art of the present can coexist in exciting ways. Although it sometimes seems as though the supply
of pictures by the Old Masters must be drying up, I am encouraged by the fact that we can still manage to put together a
catalogue containing excellent works by artists of the calibre of Boucher, Cranach the Elder and Jan Brueghel the Younger and
that, in the last two years, we have sold important paintings by Watteau, Luca Giordano, Ribera and Honthorst. I am
extremely proud of the links that we have established and maintained over the years with some of the world’s great museums,
but I am also delighted to have been able to forge new friendships with several young collectors who have become clients of
Colnaghi since I took over the ownership of the Gallery in 2002 with my colleague and business partner Katrin Bellinger.
While our core business continues to be centred on Old Master paintings and drawings, our exhibitions over the last two years
have ranged widely from Victorian photography and German nineteenth-century art to the paintings of Edward Seago and,
on the drawings side, from botanical watercolours of the Anglo - Indian School, to the contemporary drawings of John
Sergeant. We continue to participate actively in international art fairs, including the International Fine Art Fair in New
York, the Paris Biennale, Palm Beach and the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht and this summer we will be returning to
the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair in London. Our colleagues in the Drawings department have also been very busy
exhibiting at the Salon du Dessin in Paris and at Old Master Drawings Week in London. In addition, this year we will be
launching some new educational initiatives with study weekends at the Hotel Schloss Fuschl in collaboration with the
Bernheimer Gallery in Munich as well as an active exhibition programme.
I am grateful to Jeremy Howard, who recently rejoined Colnaghi after fourteen years in the academic world, for editing the
catalogue and to Sarah Gallagher who researched many of the entries. I am also grateful to the following for their help: Colin
Bailey, Matthew Burke, David Chesterman, Patrick Corbett, John Davis, Simon Folkes, Claus Grimm, Matthew Hollow,
Michael Howes, Leon Krempel, Anthony Ley, Fred Meijer, Luuk Pijl, Marcel Rothlisberger, Anne van de Sandt, Mary Tavener
Holmes, Johanna Tran Dubreuil and Luisa Wood-Ruby. In addition I would like to thank Katrin Bellinger, Georgina Duits,
Maeve Cosgrove, Florian Haerb, Peter Iaquinandi and Livia Schaafsma in London and the colleagues of the Bernheimer
Gallery in Munich for all their hard work over the past year.
I hope you will enjoy the catalogue and we look forward to seeing you either in the gallery or at one of the international art
fairs that we will be attending in 2007.
Konrad Bernheimer, February 2007
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