Old Master Paintings as Alternative Investment

My primary interest in art collecting is finding undervalued Old Master Paintings at San Francisco Auctions, where I am located. My Budget over five years ought to be $120,000. The basis for my expertise is continuous attendance of blockbuster shows at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, or FAMSF.

However, due to improved digital imaging technology it is also possible to buy paintings in New York. Also due to the recent Brexit and the subsequent devaluation of the Pound Sterling London may represent another source for acquiring the works of art.

My competitive advantage, on the other hand is that San Francisco Bay Area with its Museums offers a great place to examine classic painting in person, which I have done for the past 10 years as a Connoisseur.

My other area of interest is 19th century french art such as Barbizon and Impressionist works of art. I have done extensive studies on the subject with Lynn Federle Orr, formerly Chief Curator of European Paintings at the FAMSF.

While the contemporary art scene here is thriving, a lot of wealthy clients still like classic European Old Master Paintings as well as Antiques.

My biggest interest at the moment is to position some important 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th Century Art vis-a-vis the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco as well the Stanford University Art Museum as loans, so as to give my art works increased exposure and to boost their value.

In 2007 faced with contracting technology sector I became immersed in the managerial duties at the exquisite Art & Antiques business in San Mateo California. Surrounded by luxurious and classically designed period furniture, bronzes, tapestries, paintings and drawings, jewelry,

etc. my taste began to really coalesce, and transition away from modern art.

I hunted for treasures at local auctions, while building a reference system for vetting works of art already in the family collection. Visiting bookstores at Stanford and Cal Berkley Universities, I acquired academic publications many by my colleagues from the Graduate Art History Department at Berkeley.

Expertise was the name of the game - education, extensive world travel in major cities in Europe and the US, love of museums. So when the major Musee D’Orsay exhibition came to San Francisco it was a temporal moment of connecting my first exposure to the Paris museum in 1987 when it first opened and then seeing this celebration of French Art here at the “Paris of the Pacific!”

My formal theoretical training in art history at Cal transformed into a pragmatic know how of researching great art and then buying it at the San Francisco Bay Area Auctions.

Example of the last sharp acquisition was the purchase of the rare David Teniers the Younger Workshop “Landscape with a Peasant Party.” As the 17th Century revelers eat, drink, and dance, a mighty forrest worthy of Claude Lorraine rises above them in the background. This was September 2008 the beginning of the Global Financial Crisis.

Included below is a fine example of 16th Century Mastery of Veronese Workshop “Salome,” has been in our collection, for a long time. I would like to loan this painting to one of the local museum. I have also consulted with Lanier Graham former Chief Curator of FAMSF regarding this magnum opus of Old Master painting.

I am also attaching a Catalogue entry of Joos Van Cleve Workshop “Adoration of the Magi” that Mr. John Oliver Hand compared to the “Large Adoration” in Dresden, Germany. Our “Adoration” has been in our collection for the past ten years.

Given my expertise in Old Masters and Barbizon Painters I would like to continue to find synergy with new purchases. So, in a sense, I am quite a contrarian to the general message of the Online Sotheby’s Course as I think way too much priority is being given to Contemporary Art. An Art Investment Manager can’t take away the fact that good Old Master Paintings have withstood the test of time and generally appreciate in value every year and are a good hedge against inflation.

Bibliography

Micha Leeflang, Joos Van Cleve A Sixteenth-Century Antwerp Artist and his Workshop, Brepols Publishers, Netherlands 2015

Anna Tumers, The Eye of the Connoisseur: Authenticating Paintings by Rembrandt and His Contemporaries, Getty Publications, Los Angeles, California, 2011

John Oliver Hand, Painting in Antwerp in the Sixteenth Century, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2005

Sergey Skaterschikov, Skate’s Art Investment Handbook, Skate Press Limited, 2006

Flemish School, circa 1700 An extensive river landscape with numerous figures merry-making in the foreground oil on canvas 37 x 69 1/2in (94 x 176.5cm)

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“The Adoration of the Magi,” Netherlandish School, 16th century, Arched top 24 x 18 inches

Early Northern painting resonates with the socio-political as well as religious changes ushered in by the humanistic attitudes of the Italian Renaissance. Northern medieval traditions and institutions merged with the artistic discoveries of Renaissance figures in Italy such as Jacopo Bassano. Medieval linearity of the “The Adoration” is seen in the two-dimensional design of the panel that is also reflected in contemporary tapestry and stained glass design generally negating any sense of spatial recession. “The Adoration” reflects religious symbolism and narrative of the Moyen Age as well as the Gothic fascination with the naturalistic detail – the Netherlandish artists combined precise observation of the visible world with the oil medium mastery.

Bassano Workshop Market Scene 16th Century in Our Collection

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