The painters who rewrote art history News from the art world Constable’s “artistic botox”
When it comes to dating a picture, wouldn’t a dated signature indisputably in the artist’s hand be completely authoritative? Apparently not, says David Sanderson in The Times. A forthcoming book by the art expert Philip Hook reveals that many painters have given their works disingenuously early dates in order to make them appear more cutting edge. This kind of deception was particularly prevalent in the early 20th century, when radical new developments in painting were taking place across Europe and artists wished to look as if they “had been the prime movers in a new -ism”. The German painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, for instance, gave a false 1906 date to Girl under a Japanese Umbrella, which had, in fact, been finished as late as 1909 – likely in order to pre-empt accusations that he had merely copied earlier, similar images by Matisse. Even Kazimir Malevich, a regarded as a seminal modernist, was “guilty of a little bit of later adjustment in the dating of works from his cubist phase”, pushing his 1913 work Cow and Violin back to 1911.
Art historians have identified a previously unknown portrait by John Constable, along with a cache of telling details about its sitter, says Dalya Alberge in The Observer. The work, which depicts “a Regency woman in all her finery”, has been recognised as a painting of Emily Treslove, a wealthy neighbour of the artist, who also painted her husband. In diary entries unearthed by researchers, Treslove describes taking receipt of the portrait in 1826, and then sitting for him again three years later so that he could make “the likeness stronger”. A technical study of the work suggests this meant removing her “double chin”, changing the hairstyle and slimming down its features – a process described as “artistic botox” by one of Treslove’s descendants. The diaries show she was initially happy with the portrait, but soon developed doubts about it and later requested alterations. “Perhaps she thought that she looked a bit porky when it was done,” says expert Sarah Cove. “I just think that’s hilarious.”