Stephanie Brown44. Missing yearsLongtime readers may recall that the Gauguin catalogue raisonné for the years 1888-1903 was promised for the end of December 2020. Our...
Stephanie Brown41. Strong opinions about cow paintingsGustave de Maupassant, Untitled, Location unknown This watercolor by the now forgotten artist Gustave de Maupassant sold at auction in...
Stephanie Brown27. TransformationsRespected French art dealer Joseph Allard bought two Gauguin still lifes on April 14, 1923 for just over 9,000 francs total. Allard had
Stephanie Brown24. The evidence of the feetOn Friday December 13, 1889, Gauguin wrote a long catching-up letter to van Gogh. Van Gogh was convalescing in the asylum at Saint-Rémy...
Stephanie Brown23. Le roy et la royneIn 1938, a man named Jean-Albert Schmit donated a scrapbook of letters, photographs, and sketches to the Louvre. The oblong album was...
Stephanie Brown21. Still LifesThough there's a question as to whether Fruit in a Bowl was the still life Gauguin showed at the 8th Impressionist Exhibition, there's no...
Stephanie Brown18. Summer 1886Clovis Gauguin was seven years old the summer that his father discovered Brittany.
Stephanie Brown16. The Villa BruneTwo men connected by two circumstances: their addresses and paintings by Gauguin. Not just any paintings, either...
Stephanie Brown11. 1929: How to make a painting disappearIn June 1929, the art dealer Paul Reinhardt sailed from New York to Southampton, England, on the White Star Line’s “Majestic.” Reinhardt...
Stephanie Brown13. "No known provenance prior to its appearance at auction..."Eustache Le Sueur, The Rape of Tamar, about 1640 The Metropolitan Museum of Art This morning's New York Times features an article titled...
Stephanie BrownWelcome: Start Here.This blog is a mystery, a travelogue across time and place, and a memoir about life and art, museums and research.
Stephanie Brown8. 1964: Looking for Louis RoyMeanwhile, back in Stockton, I began studying the provenance for Flowers and Fruit that the Wildensteins had put together in 1964. I...
Stephanie Brown10. In which the Getty rearranges its storageLast week the Parisian daily Le Figaro announced that the Getty Museum had downgraded a sculpture previously attributed to Paul Gauguin...
Stephanie Brown7. 2016: The Chase BeginsSo here I was with a painting by an important post-Impressionist artist that no one in the museum world outside of Stockton, CA, had...
Stephanie Brown6. And speaking of reattributions...There's been a painting newly re-attributed to Van Gogh this week. This self-portrait that lives in the National Gallery in Oslo has...
Stephanie Brown5. The ProvenanceOn my first visit to the Haggin Museum, in January 2016, I saw Flowers and Fruit: a fairly traditional still life of a few bumpy apples...
Stephanie Brown4. Authenticity & ReattributionsPoppies got my attention because the circumstances—the regional museum, the work questioned by experts—were so similar to Flowers and...
Stephanie Brown3. Authenticity: A Painting Moves UpstairsA disputed Van Gogh is authenticated by experts.
Stephanie Brown2. 2016, 1923: The MysteryOne of those still lifes travels the world today as an authentic painting by Paul Gauguin. One hangs in