Three Artcurial auctions

18/3/24 - Art market - Paris - This is a painting that could be acquired by at least three museums in the Paris region: the Musée Carnavalet (if it had an ambitious acquisition policy, which unfortunately it does not), the Louvre or the Musée du Grand Siècle. We can only hope that one of them (or a provincial museum like the Musée Fabre in Montpellier) buys it at the Artcurial sale next Wednesday. The work in question, The Transfiguration by Frans Pourbus (ill. 1), has a remarkable origin and an equally remarkable journey to reach us.
The work came from the Grands Augustins church in Paris, from which it disappeared during the French Revolution. A century and a half later, it was found in the Goudstikker collection, which was forcibly sold to Göring in 1940. But it had probably long since lost its identity, and it is as a "17th-century Dutch school" that it will go on sale at the Dorotheum in 2019 (with the agreement of the Goudstikker heirs) and then in Madrid in 2023 as a "17th-century Roman school".
Given Pourbus’s role in the birth of the French school in the 17th century, it is clear that it should remain in France, especially as the estimate remains reasonable for a work of this quality...

1. Frans Pourbus the Younger (1569-1622)
Transfiguration
Oil on canvas - 148.5 x 125.5 cm
Artcurial Sale, 20 March 2024
Photo: Artcurial

See the image in its page

Another 17th-century French painting is also of undeniable heritage importance, as it is a new element in the decoration of the chapel of the Hôtel Brissonnet in the Marais, by Eustache Le Sueur (ill. 2). While The Annunciation, which adorned the altar, is now in the Toledo Museum in the United States, and a panel of panelling in the Art Institute of Chicago, the figure of Justice was acquired in 2018 by the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg (see brief of 20/6/18). This rediscovery raises hopes that other panels may reappear on the art market in the future.

2. Eustache Le…