‘Lost Rembrandt’ Surfaces in New Jersey

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

‘Lost Rembrandt’ Fetches $870,000 | A small portrait suspected to be the work of a young Rembrandt was sold at auction in New Jersey yesterday for $870,000, reports The Art Newspaper. The painting, titled Oil on Board, Triple Portrait with Lady Fainting, was expected to fetch a paltry $500-800 until experts suggested it might well be a depiction of smell from Rembrandt’s ‘Five Senses’ series, which he painted when still a student. The as-yet-unidentified buyer’s fingers are doubtless firmly crossed.

Kapoor’s ‘Dirty Corner’ Goes for Gold | Anish Kapoor’s thrice-vandalised sculpture in Versailles has been covered in gold leaf to mask the anti-semitic graffiti daubed on it since it was installed in June. Kapoor has taken the decision to transform the racist messages into ‘something positive’ after local politicians forced the President of the Chateau de Versailles (not Kapoor himself, as the artist has made clear in a statement this afternoon) into removing the graffiti. If nothing else, it will certainly add another layer to the work.

Musée d’Orsay Strike Enters Second Day | Paris’s Musée d’Orsay remains closed today after yesterday’s vote on strike action. The museum has rather optimistically announced that a series of events coinciding with its now-delayed exhibition Splendour & Misery, will begin on 24 September. Given that the strikers have yet to show any indication of giving way, this seems rather optimistic.

Beatrix Ruf Receives Agnes Grund Curatorial Award | Apollo congratulates Stedelijk Museum director Beatrix Ruf, who has been named as the winner of the 2015 Agnes Grund Curatorial Award. Ruf, who took over the reins at the Amsterdam museum last year, has described it as an ‘extraordinary honour’.

Property Tycoon Gives $20 million to Singapore National Gallery | The family of the late Ng Teng Fong, a property developer who was Singapore’s richest man until his death in 2010, has donated $20 million to the city state’s National Gallery, reports the Straits Times. When it opens in November, the gallery will be the biggest of its kind in South East Asia.

Dealers Scramble for Damien Hirst | Major American art dealers hoping for a price surge are ‘stockpiling’ works by Damien Hirst, reports The Times. High-stakes interest in the artist has apparently been revived in anticipation of the opening of his Newport Street Gallery next month. The astronomical value attached to Hirst’s work even now suggests they may be dicing with (The Physical Impossibility of) Death (in the Mind of Someone Living).