The Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th-Century Booksellers Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece By Laura Cumming

FREE DOWNLOAD ✓ WWW.TEXASBEERGUIDE.COM º Laura Cumming

Hmm, a nice book.

Chapters mostly alternate between the story of one John Snare, a mid-ninetenth century bookseller, stationer and printer from Reading who bought at auction a painting that he became convinced was a portrait of Charles I by Velázquez, and chapters generally about Velázquez.

If I may be so bold, I like Velázquez, and one of my pleasures is to admire his works as presented in the National Gallery in London, where I might see his Majesty King Philip IV, or Christ visiting Mary & Martha and thanks to this book I learn that many of those pictures are war loot, captured by the Duke of Wellington from the abandoned baggage of Joseph Buonaparte - lately King of Spain after his defeat at the battle of Vittoria (1813), as celebrated by Beethoven, Velázquez was not it seems particularly valued by the Buonapartes, a painting by Leonardo, and some by some other guy I've forgotten were packaged up and sent under escort back to Paris, but not the Velázquezs which had been just dragged from Madrid across country and then abandoned in the town of Vittoria, one might have thought that Wellington would have returned the looted art works to a newly liberated Spain, but good old Albion didn't get the reputation for being perfidious for nothing. So I'm a soft audience for any book about Velázquez and easily impressed. Cumming plainly loves Velázquez too, her writing about his work glows off the page, so much so I am convinced that I could read the book in the dark.

The problem is, the story of John Snare, it is interesting enough and it would make a great five or seven page article in the colour Sunday supplement to your newspaper of choice (forgive me for assuming you are as ancient old as myself and as fond of leafing through a newspaper as me) but there's not enough to it I feel to sustain half a book, so reading I was completely wowed and happy for the first hundred pages, then I met my Waterloo, or Vittoria, and read on with a limp.

It is a tale of Nomen ist Omen John Snare was attracted by an advert for an auction, spotted a picture at a viewing that captivated him, bought it, and caught by it became convinced that it was a portrait of Charles I as Prince of Wales, painted by Velázquez while the Prince was attempting not nearly well enough, to win himself a Spanish royal bride. But at least he left with the painting, and on the rebound picked himself up a French princess instead. Snare had the painting cleaned, he researched it as well he could to establish a provenance for it, exhibited it and had various adventures with it. He is in Cumming's telling mildly obsessed with the painting, sleeping with it (in the same room, not curled up under it or with it in his loving arms ) Cumming eventually disappears, presumably dying in the USA, the painting also disappears - last seen loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1880s. Cumming's thinks that it might have returned to Britain and could have ended up in the vaults of a county bank later bought out by Barclays, in which case it could be in the mega-castle that the Barclays Brothers had built for themselves on the Island of Sark. Then again it could be in the USA or anyway really.

Well I won't spoil the entire story, there are various interesting stories about the lives of paintings, and their misattributions, the leading English expert on Velázquez at the time of John Snare believed that Diago was an artist of such sobriety and dignity that he would never have painted a dwarf, this expert had perhaps seen one genuine Velázquez - it was an age when many paintings were safely getting mildewed in stately homes, there were few reproductions and much less reliable information about artists available than today. There's a nice story of how an art dealer had a picture cleaned to convince an expert (in order to get his endorsement) that a canvas was a Velázquez, but since it was being sold to a wealthy American who had never seen a Velázquez, but had a pretty certain idea of how a Spanish old master ought to look, the dealer then had a restorer tone down the painting so it looked suitably grave.

It's a nice book but I felt the writing about Velázquez was of newspaper Art critic standard, rather than Art historian, which is to say I felt the love, but have my doubts about the expertise, with all due respect to Mme Cumming. Hardcover ”They were like guests at a surprise party waiting for your arrival and now you have entered the room---their room, not the real one around you---or so it mysteriously seems. The whole scene twinkles with expectation. That is the first sensation on the threshold of the gallery in the Prado where Las Meninas hangs: that you have walked into their world and become suddenly as present to them as they are to you.

And what keeps them here, what keeps them alive, or so the artist implies, is not just the painting but you.”




It has been twenty plus years since I was last in the Prado, but I do still remember this painting. It wasn’t a scene that would usually be of much interest to me. At first glance, there is nothing really going on in this painting, barring a princess getting ready for a ball or a dinner party or to meet some dignitaries from another court from another country. It would be easy to pass it by, except for the scale of the painting. It is huge. Instead of scurrying on past, I suddenly found myself trapped under the gaze of the painting. These people, all long dead but very much alive, are looking at me as if I just interrupted their activities by walking in the room. These sensations I felt that day all come back to me when I read Laura Cumming’s description above.

I, without intention, have fallen into 1656. Of course, in real life we can’t stare at people like I stared at the people in this painting. I think that at any second the little girl would lift a hand to her face and giggle, or Velazquez himself would raise an eyebrow at my imprudence. They are so guileless and welcoming. Velazquez has immortalized all these people from the dwarfs to the ladies in waiting, from the artist to the king and queen reflected in the mirror, as if everyone in this painting were, at least in paint, equal.

For Velazquez everyone is unique, and by him showing us their remarkableness, they become indispensible to the rest of us.

”He finds a Venus and a Mars in the humble people around him, sees a king as compellingly ordinary and is able to make an old man selling water seem like an ancient prophet. There is an extraordinary equality to his empathetic gaze.”



If Velazquez had only painted Las Meninas, he would have been immortal, but luckily for the rest of us, he shared his gift in a number of paintings, not enough, mainly because he became so successful in the court of Philip IV that his duties to the king, beyond just painting portraits, were taken up with tasks that would have been better left to others.

The story may have begun in the 17th century, but the second act happened in the 19th century when a bookseller by the name of John Snare bought a painting at a liquidation sale. Take it from me, booksellers are always trouble, and Snare was no exception.

Now just being in the book business, we can assume that Snare was “gently mad.” There is something about art, books, and race horses that take the gently mad to the certifiably insane. This painting, luminescent beneath the grime of dust and smoke, is of the Prince of Wales, the future Charles the first, significant in the fact that he is young, but sports the beard he grew while he was petitioning Philip IV for an alliance with his daughter.

In 1649, Charles is overthrown by Oliver Cromwell and his supporters and very publically beheaded. He wore two shirts to the execution so that a morning chill would not be misinterpreted as a shiver of fear. He put his head on the block and signaled the executioner he was ready by spreading out his arms. Regardless of whether history sees him as a good king or a terrible one, his courage in his last moments was incontestable.

Could the painting be the long lost Velazquez portrait? It could be a Van Dyck, who painted Charles many times. There is something though about the eyes and the deftness of the brush that convinces Snare that it must be Velazquez. He sets out to prove it. Laura Cumming found herself consulting the same exact sources that Snare did almost a hundred and seventy years earlier.

He displays it and makes some money off people coming to see this painting by a Spanish painter rarely seen in England. Snare has a lien that doesn’t exist slapped against the painting by unscrupulous people in an attempt to steal and sell the painting before the court system can prevail. He survived that near parting with his precious; and yes, there is a bit of Gollum in Snare. He is later sued by an estate believing that the painting was stolen from a private collection. He goes bankrupt defending his right to own the painting, but even though he wins the court case, he leaves for America.

He doesn’t run away, like a normal man, with a young doxy. He runs away with a painting.

Snare leaves a wife and children. One child is born after he leaves. His paterfamilia responsibilities are superseded by his responsibility to art.

He could have sold the painting for a handsome sum and avoided bankruptcy. I can imagine he considered it, but who he is, by this time, is so defined by being the owner of this “Velazquez” that he can’t give it up. It would be like selling Secretariat or selling a building with your name on it or selling a Gutenberg Bible. You know that by selling something that precious that you will never be able to own it again.

Cumming not only expanded my knowledge of Velazquez exponentially, but also introduced me to a 19th century, mad as a hatter version of myself whom I understood completely. I knew that Velazquez was an important painter. I learned that at the Prado, when I laid my eyes on Las Meninas, the people of the Spanish court laid their eyes on me. He was such a humanist. He depicted dwarfs and poor people and famous people and royalty with the same deft brush strokes. He held no one up for ridicule, but showed each of his subject with the power of their uniqueness, evident for all to see.

He was a maestro.

”Even now one wonders how he could know where to place that speck of white that ignites a string of flashing glints across pale silk, how to convey the stiff transparency of gauze with a single dab of blue on grey, how to paint eyes that see us, but are themselves indecipherable. How could he lay paint on canvas so that it is as impalpable as breath, or create a haze that seems to emit from a painting like scent, or place a single dab of red on the side of a head so that it perfectly reads as an ear?”


Velazquez sold this painting of The Water-seller, but then when he had the chance, he bought it back and kept it for the rest of his life.

It would have made everything so much easier if Velazquez had signed all of his paintings, but then the more that I get to know the man, the more I realize that he was saying something by not signing them. He was but an instrument of his talent. His paintings belonged to the world.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten Hardcover (B) 73% | More than Satisfactory
Notes: Like a box too big for its baubles, it’s profuse in puffy packing peanuts: padding out vacuities with filler art analyses. Hardcover An excellent overview of the work of Diego Velazquez and his standing among the Old Masters. It's also the story of one man transfixed to the point of monomania by one of Velazquez's works, John Snare, a 19th century bookseller and collector. Highly recommended. Hardcover
Two enigmatic men are the subject of this book. John Snare, a bookseller and printer, is an ordinary Victorian man who in 1845 attends an inauspicious auction of artefacts from a boys’ school that has closed down. There he sees a painting which casts a spell over him. It’s a portrait of King Charles I, listed in the catalogue as possibly by Van Dyck. However Charles is so young in the picture that Snare believes it might be the rumoured but never seen painting by Velázquez, executed when Charles visited the Spanish court as a young prince to woo King Philip IV’s daughter. At this point in time virtually no one outside Spain has ever seen a Velázquez. Snare buys the painting for £8. He removes some of the grime from a corner of the picture with a moistened finger and loves what he uncovers. His quest now is to prove to the world it’s the Velázquez painting.

The other subject of this book is the largely mysterious Velázquez himself, a man who left virtually no written account of his life and didn’t even sign his paintings. Velázquez was my old history of art teacher’s favourite painter and I know she would love the eloquence of praise Cummings heaps on the Spanish painter.

The author Laura Cummings does a great job of intertwining the two narratives – Snare’s story is a tale of obsessive, self-destructive love, of the little man fighting the establishment, of class prejudice and inequality. Just as he is beginning to convince the world his painting is the Velázquez it is “repossessed” by its supposed former owners, an aristocratic Scottish family, and a protracted court case begins, in the process of which Snare goes bankrupt and has to auction all his belongings, leaving his wife and children in poverty. The only thing of worth he doesn’t sell is the painting, even though the proceeds would have solved all his financial difficulties. He can’t bring himself to part with the picture. Instead he flees with it to New York. At this point the painting (and his sense of injustice) has become more precious to him than his wife and family.

The outcome of this book’s investigations is a bit of a let-down. We don’t get a happy or tidy ending. No reproduction of this painting exists and the painting which caused John Snare so much suffering has vanished without trace. Rather like Velázquez the man.

I enjoyed this for several reasons. The insights it gave into the snobbery and sense of entitlement of the upper classes in Victorian Britain and the virtually insurmountable obstacles placed in the way of the common man with cultural aspirations were especially fascinating. Also it’s a fabulous detective story at times. It also offers an inspired and inspiring evaluation of the art of Velázquez. Hardcover

From one of the world’s most expert art critics, the incredible true story—part art history and part mystery—of a Velázquez portrait that went missing and the obsessed nineteenth-century bookseller determined to prove he had found it.

When John Snare, a nineteenth-century provincial bookseller, traveled to a liquidation auction, he stumbled on a vivid portrait of King Charles I that defied any explanation. The Charles of the painting was young—too young to be king—and yet also too young to be painted by the Flemish painter to which the work was attributed. Snare had found something incredible—but what?

His research brought him to Diego Velazquez, whose long-lost portrait of Prince Charles has eluded art experts for generations. Velázquez (1599–1660) was the official painter of the Madrid court, during the time the Spanish Empire teetered on the edge of collapse. When Prince Charles of England—a man wealthy enough to help turn Spain’s fortunes—ventured to the court to propose a marriage with a Spanish princess, he allowed just a few hours to sit for his portrait. Snare believed only Velázquez could have met this challenge. But in making his theory public, Snare was ostracized, victim to aristocrats and critics who accused him of fraud, and forced to choose, like Velázquez himself, between art and family.

A thrilling investigation into the complex meaning of authenticity and the unshakable determination that drives both artists and collectors of their work, The Vanishing Velázquez travels from extravagant Spanish courts in the 1700s to the gritty courtrooms and auction houses of nineteenth-century London and New York. But it is above all a tale of mystery and detection, of tragic mishaps and mistaken identities, of class, politics, snobbery, crime, and almost farcical accident. It is a magnificently crafted page-turner, a testimony to how and why great works of art can affect us to the point of obsession. The Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th-Century Booksellers Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece

The

In 1845, a humble bookseller named John Snare bought a painting at an auction, which was listed as being probably a Van Dyck but which he was convinced was a Velazquez. This book tells the story of how that purchase took over Snare's life, not always for the better! Along the way, Cumming writes a good deal about Velazquez's life and especially his art. It is a very interesting story but where the book excels, for me, are the passages where Cumming writes about Velazquez's paintings. She writes with a love and a reverence for his art, which I found inspiring and moving.

I switched between the hardback edition and the audio for this book. The audio was very ably narrated by Siobhan Redmond, but I was glad to have the book as well, mainly for the beautiful colour plates of Velzquez's paintings, especially the iconic Las Meninas.

Hardcover BOTW

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06x8vq2

Description: Laura Cumming charts the obsession of a 19th century Reading bookseller with a portrait of Charles I - painted when the Monarch was a young man on a visit to Madrid. The Spanish genius Velasquez painted very few pictures, so did John Snare discover a long-lost treasure? And if so, where is it now?

This is a story about the intense emotions that great art can provoke - passions that sometimes verge on the irrational and which transcend considerations of value. John Snare's conviction about the painting he bought evolved into a dispute with those who had more money, power and influence. In a sense, the missing Velasquez became a battleground for class war and the individual against the establishment. But at the heart of the story lies a work of art, created with such skill and delicacy that it inspired the fiercest of feelings and continues to exert its mysterious pull to this day.


Episode 1: An auction bargain ignites a humble bookseller with a lifelong obsession

2/5: It is 1847 and John Snare invites the public to admire his Velazquez portrait

3/5: The Lost Velasquez is put on show in Edinburgh at the beginning of 1849. But soon Snare finds himself having to fend off not just challenges over the portrait's authenticity,but also overownership.

4/5: The Velasquez has been restored to Snare but he has now vanished - until the portrait is advertised for show on Broadway in 1860. The Reading bookseller has fled to America.

5/5: In 1888 a Velasquez portrait of Prince Charles is reported as being lent to the Reading Art Museum by the widow of John Snare. Somehow the picture has returned to Britain.

Laura Cumming: how Velázquez gave me consolation in grief – and set me on the trail of a lost portrait. Hardcover

“There is something intensely romantic in the fact that while walking up Broadway in the midst of a busy noonday crowd – made up of Bulls and Bears, rattling omnibuses, express wagons, Fifth-avenue carriages, railroad ticket offices, big hotels, big coaches hurrying passengers to steam on water or land – in a few moments, and by passing through a rather slim and dusty hall, you may shut yourself out from the present. In this silent place … may be seen a magnificent painting, a portrait of Charles I painted by the great Vélazquez. This is truly superb. (New York Times, March 1860)


Laura Cumming, art critic and author of this non-fiction book, says: ”Or rather, in the drowsy shadows of a library in winter, I came upon a curious Victorian pamphlet stitched into a leather-bound miscellany between a quaint history of the Hawaiian Islands and a collection of short stories ominously titled Fact and Fiction.” The pamphlet had been written and published by John Snare, a bookseller in Reading, England. It referred to a portrait of Prince Charles, the future Charles I of England, painted in 1623 by Diego Vélazquez. And thus began a quest to discover more about said painting.

This is a story within a story within a story. Ms Cumming renders homage to artist Vélazquez (1599-1660) and provides a biographical sketch of him. Her paean of praise alternates with the story of what the bookseller found, where he found it, how he became obsessed with the find and what the consequences were. Then as the third story we learn about Ms Cumming’s search for further details of the Charles I portrait. All in all an interesting labyrinth of a book.

In fact, it seems that Vélazquez’s personal information is rather sketchy. Ms Cumming suggests that we get to know him through his art and then she discusses several of his works, including the magnificent Las Meninas (1656). However, much is known about Vélazquez’s professional life. A memoir had been written during his own life, and subsequently in 1739 Antonio Palomino’s ‘Works of the Most Eminent Spanish Painters’ had been published. The section on Vélazquez detailed several of his paintings. The artist was an instant success. In 1623 he travelled to Madrid to promote himself and his work, and his portfolio consisted of his painting ’The Water Seller of Seville’. An influential person, Juan de Fonseca, immediately bought the painting, sat for his own portrait to be painted and a day later: tra-laaa - it was ready and met with much acclaim. Before long Vélazquez was the Court painter. A contemporary of “Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Rubens and Poussin” he held his own in exalted company. Artist Édouard Manet was apparently an ardent admirer of Vélazquez’s work.

Self-portrait of Diego Vélazquez, 1643


John Snare’s story reads like a thriller. Not much was known in England about Vélazquez at that time (he was referred to as Valasky, Velasco and various other permutations) and the portrait in question had been attributed to Van Dyck. Without going into any details and spoiling the book for you, let me simply mention that Snare ran into all sorts of problems, not least because he was a mere tradesman who was held to merely be dabbling with things that he oughtn’t have bothered with. He was up against money, nobility and a well established art critic, the polymath William Stirling Maxwell.

Ms Cumming brings the stories of Vélazquez and Snare together with that of her own very extensive research. In addition she provides interesting historical snippets, such as the art lost/found when Joseph Bonaparte fled a Spanish battlefield as well as some delightful details about Spanish theatre during the reign of Philippe IV, the Spanish ruler and Vélazquez’s employer. We read that Spanish theatres at that time already had sophisticated lighting and machinery for special effects. There were spectacular productions on the lake at El Retiro Park, and “On a single spring night in 1632 Count-Duke Olivares laid on three productions for the king and queen on temporary stages in the bosky gardens of a villa outside Madrid. A few weeks later, on Midsummer’s Eve, they returned for Francisco de Quevedo’s crackling satire He Who Lies Most Prospers Most, and then progressed through to the gardens of the villa next door to watch Lope de Vega’s Midsummer’s Night.”

Here are some of the paintings discussed: (all pictures courtesy of Art Authority www.artauthority.net)
Old Woman Frying Eggs, 1618

“The whole tableau was visibly made to bewitch, and so it does. But at the quick of it is a feat of staggering veracity: the star-spangled pan of eggs coalescing from translucent fluid to opaque white flux, a moment in which liquid becomes solid, acquires visible form –just like the magical illusion of painting itself.”

The Water Seller of Seville, 1620 (as mentioned above)


Villa Medici, Grotto-Loggia Façade, 1630 - this was done during one of two trips to Italy.


The Dwarf Francisco Lezcano, 1643-1645


Las Meninas, 1656
Hardcover It is always a delight to encounter great Art, especially when the person presenting it is knowledgeable and enchanted by her subject. Cumming has a wonderful way with words. The writing here is excellent. Ms. Cumming tends to repeat herself but does so with new and equally eloquent turns of phrase, so the recapitulations are at least a pleasure to read.

Where the book falls short is in its focus on Mr. John Snare, the eponymous bookseller from Reading who was also passionate about great Art but whose personal story grows vague and wearisome over time. Setting him aside, this homage to Diego Velazquez and his ability to sketch both high- and low-born creatures in luminous oil was quite good.

3.5 stars Hardcover An obsession with a work of art led to the ruin of a British man, John Snare. In 1845, Snare purchased an old painting at an auction. He thought it might be a painting of Charles I, painted by Velazquez when the future English king visited Madrid. In this true story, author Laura Cumming tells about Snare's infatuation and eventual financial ruin. He lost his bookstore and print shop, left his family, and devoted his life to researching and showing the painting. The book also discusses Velazquez's artistic gifts, and his life as a painter and a courtier in the 17th Century. Cumming continued Snare's detective work with only written descriptions guiding her. The portrait of Charles I disappeared after Snare's death, and no one knows if it was destroyed or is now in a private collection. The book combines a mystery, a biography, and art history into an interesting story that art lovers should enjoy. Hardcover