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Corot’s Impressionist Lunchbox
20 Plays4 years ago
Only nine times in his seventy-eight years did Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot paint on anything other than canvas, paper, and panel. On one occasion, offended by the crude wooden lunchbox carried by his friend Alfred Robaut, Corot had a new one constructed, which he decorated with a plein air painting, "Fraîcheurs matinales" ("Morning Freshness"). It’s a mini-masterpiece made all the more charming by its humble setting, a breezy landscape of trees and hills awash with sunlight and enlivened by one of Corot’s favorite motifs: a flash of red, the hat of a small figure coming over a rise. Host Ben Miller gets the story from the dealer who sold it, Jill Newhouse, and the collector who bought it, Ray Vickers.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Unusual Painting
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello, welcome to Curious Objects brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller, and we're doing something a little bit new in today's episode.
00:00:17
Speaker
I'm speaking with both a dealer and her client about a piece that he recently bought from her.
00:00:23
Speaker
There's no question that the dealer-client relationship is right at the center of the entire world of collecting.
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Neither of them would exist without the other.
00:00:32
Speaker
So I'm excited to be speaking today with Jill Newhouse of Jill Newhouse Gallery.
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She's a dealer in master drawings and paintings on Manhattan's Upper East Side, as well as her client, Ray Vickers.
00:00:43
Speaker
Now, Ray recently bought a piece from Jill, which is both beautiful and highly unusual.
00:00:50
Speaker
It's a painting, but rather than canvas or board or plaster, the medium is actually a wooden lunchbox.
00:00:58
Speaker
Yeah, you heard me right.
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Speaker
We'll get into exactly what that means.
Corot's Wooden Lunchbox Painting
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Speaker
But the artist is Camille Corot, the great 19th century French painter whose work is seen as, among other things, a precursor to Impressionism.
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Speaker
Jill is the person to talk with about Corot.
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Speaker
She's currently at work developing and updating a catalog resume of Corot's drawings.
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And alongside her scholarship, Jill has bought and sold numerous works by Corot over the years, including, of course, this box, which was, as I said, recently purchased by Ray Vickers.
00:01:32
Speaker
Jill and Ray, thanks so much for joining me.
00:01:35
Speaker
Pleasure.
00:01:36
Speaker
Now, I want to start by giving listeners a sense of exactly what we're talking about.
00:01:41
Speaker
And as always, you can see photos at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
00:01:47
Speaker
But Jill, you know, a minute ago, I described this as a lunchbox.
00:01:53
Speaker
Can you elaborate on that and describe the box and the painting on it?
00:02:00
Speaker
I will.
00:02:01
Speaker
It's interesting that art objects and paintings and drawings don't always come to us with full provenance information or the history of where they've been.
00:02:10
Speaker
And in this case, we were lucky enough to have
The Tale of Two Wooden Boxes
00:02:13
Speaker
that.
00:02:13
Speaker
And there's quite a story around what is actually two boxes.
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Speaker
One is a dark wood box measuring about
00:02:24
Speaker
eight by three and a half by four inches high, and there's a second box, which is six and a half by three and a half by three and a half inches high.
00:02:33
Speaker
So they're small.
00:02:35
Speaker
And they exist in the literature on Coro, and what we know about them is that they belong to a man named Alfred Robo, who was a French draftsman and printmaker who's really best known today as an art historian because he published...
00:02:53
Speaker
printed and organized the catalogue raisonne of the work of Delacroix in 1885 and of Coro, which was published in 1905.
00:03:01
Speaker
And these books are still considered the primary sources of authentication of research on these artists.
00:03:11
Speaker
So in the 1870s, Robo was living in northern France near a town called Arras, and Coro visited him there, and he painted there often.
00:03:24
Speaker
In fact, one of his best-known paintings of the period is an 1871 landscape that's now in the collection of the National Gallery in London of this area called Arleux du Nord.
Robo and Corot: A Creative Relationship
00:03:37
Speaker
So in the literature, Robo tells a story that he had this dark brown, simple wooden box, which was made for food in his kitchen.
00:03:48
Speaker
And Coro commented that he thought the box was really ugly.
00:03:54
Speaker
And he suggested that if Robo would exchange it for a new one, he, Coro, would decorate it in an appropriate fashion.
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Speaker
Now imagine 1871, Coro is at the height of his career.
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Speaker
He's very well known.
00:04:08
Speaker
He's successful.
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Speaker
He sells his works.
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He's heavily faked by this point.
00:04:15
Speaker
So he went to a local carpenter in Arleu and commissioned a new box, which is the second box that we have, the smaller box.
00:04:24
Speaker
He was very precise about the specifications of the size, apparently.
00:04:29
Speaker
And then on the inside of the lid, he painted a wonderful landscape, which is the, it's like the epitome of Koro's landscape art and style in the later years, all in this really three by five inch space.
00:04:46
Speaker
And the painting is fully signed.
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Speaker
It shows a single tree in a windswept plain and two figures in the center lower left,
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Speaker
One of them has a bright red hat on and it's fully signed at the right.
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And it's got this amazing rapid brushwork and this hazy and diffuse light that Coro became so well known for in his later years.
00:05:14
Speaker
It's like a little masterpiece, and it's inside a box that was used for food, kept in the kitchen, apparently,
A Collector's First Impression
00:05:23
Speaker
of Robo.
00:05:23
Speaker
So Robo, when he was recording all of Koro's work, titled it Frascheur Matinal, which means the freshness of the morning, and he
00:05:37
Speaker
tells us that this is one of nine recorded objects in which Coral painted on something other than a traditional support, a canvas.
00:05:48
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And one of them, he says, is he painted something on the back of a plate, on a cigar box, and even on his own silk hat.
00:05:57
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So this was really the artist having fun and the intimacy and the importance of the relationship between Koro and Robo cannot be understated.
00:06:07
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:06:09
Speaker
So it was amazing that the two boxes had stayed together, that they came down and were inherited past generation to generation in a family in France.
00:06:20
Speaker
And they came up for auction in a sale in Europe.
00:06:27
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And as I had been working on Coro for a long time, I was lucky enough to have colleagues call me and we were able to buy it.
00:06:34
Speaker
So very, very unusual object.
00:06:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I have to say it makes me wish I had a friend like Koro to paint my lunchbox.
00:06:42
Speaker
To paint your lunchboxes, exactly.
00:06:44
Speaker
No, it really is.
00:06:46
Speaker
It's quite a beautiful scene.
00:06:47
Speaker
And I want to emphasize for listeners, it's very small.
00:06:50
Speaker
I don't know if you'd quite call it a miniature.
00:06:53
Speaker
No, the actual
Corot's Artistic Evolution
00:06:54
Speaker
painting size must be three by five inches or so.
00:06:57
Speaker
But the way...
00:07:00
Speaker
Ray discovered it, in fact, was we sent an email out showing just the painting.
00:07:07
Speaker
And the amazing thing about emails is you can make things bigger than they really are, smaller than they really are.
00:07:14
Speaker
And this, the painting itself,
00:07:17
Speaker
is amazingly complete is very powerful it when we ray came and looked at it we we looked at the box from across the room and you the painting carries amazingly so i'm looking across the room at it right now and it keeps distracting my attention six by three inches in this very small box yeah what was your ray what was your first sort of gut reaction when you saw it
00:07:43
Speaker
Well, as Jill said, I saw it on the website, which was, I think, announcing an extension of a show she was doing.
00:07:50
Speaker
And I immediately sent an email saying, can you tell me the price?
00:07:54
Speaker
Because I thought the image was just wonderful.
00:07:56
Speaker
It's that kind of late Corot, lots of energy and...
00:08:03
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And she said, well, you know, in her return, she said, you know, it's on a small box.
00:08:11
Speaker
And actually sent me a photo of it in the box.
00:08:15
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And I have to say, that didn't really put me off.
00:08:18
Speaker
I mean, I was for a number of reasons, but...
00:08:21
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I still thought it was a wonderful image and I couldn't imagine, you know, not having it at that point.
00:08:29
Speaker
It's interesting, you know, to have a landscape scene in a box with a culinary purpose.
00:08:38
Speaker
There's no sort of obvious connection to it.
00:08:40
Speaker
I think the connection is Coram is a landscapist.
00:08:47
Speaker
You could argue he's the greatest landscape painter of the 19th century.
00:08:51
Speaker
He did do figure paintings, but I think that would be really small for a figure.
00:08:58
Speaker
So put this in context for me, say, you know, 1871, he's sort of at the height of his fame, his reputation.
00:09:06
Speaker
Give me a little more context here.
00:09:07
Speaker
What kinds of work is Kuro producing at this
Impact of the Wooden Box on Corot's Style
00:09:10
Speaker
period?
00:09:10
Speaker
You know, how does this fit into his sort of the arc of his biographies?
00:09:14
Speaker
Well, he started out, he was born into a working class family.
00:09:20
Speaker
I think his father was a wig maker and his mother was a milliner, which is a good combination, I suppose.
00:09:27
Speaker
And he...
00:09:30
Speaker
was a bad student, was sent to boarding school, and he didn't come to decide on a career as an artist until he was 26, which at that point, you know, the 1820s, that was not what one did.
00:09:45
Speaker
Half your life was over already.
00:09:46
Speaker
Yeah, that was practically middle-aged, I think.
00:09:51
Speaker
And he apprenticed two painters, one named Michelon, another Bertin, very young,
00:09:57
Speaker
traditional neoclassical artists and what he proceeded to do in his career is take those very formal
00:10:05
Speaker
structured landscapes that were being painted and he loosened them up and loosened the brushwork and made them more spontaneous and his trajectory leads directly into what we would identify as impressionism so which really is a kind of realism because it's trying to capture the fleetingness of the landscape and
00:10:32
Speaker
Even in this little painting, the sense you get is of the wind blowing across a field.
00:10:38
Speaker
So Vacura was very, two early trips to Italy that changed his career dramatically, but he mostly worked in and around France, drew constantly, sketched, did a lot of oil sketching on paper, which was then mounted to canvas.
00:10:56
Speaker
So...
00:10:59
Speaker
sometimes on panel but predominantly on canvas, so very much a constant draftsman, constant painter.
00:11:06
Speaker
So the speed of his brushwork is very evident in this late work, and the later works have this kind of diffuseness to the picture surface.
00:11:18
Speaker
So...
00:11:20
Speaker
Now you say he mostly painted on canvas.
00:11:22
Speaker
Mostly on canvas, yeah.
Ray Vickers' Art Collection Journey
00:11:24
Speaker
What differences do you think this change in medium might have?
00:11:29
Speaker
Well, he painted a lot on paper too, which I think might have had a practical aspect in the sense that, you know, for an artist as prolific as Koro was, you were probably forever running out of canvas and paper and all different mediums.
00:11:44
Speaker
But...
00:11:47
Speaker
there's a certain reaction that the canvas has a certain give when the brush hits it that would be different in paper.
00:11:58
Speaker
But what we see on this box, being able to reduce a landscape to a three by five inch surface like that shows an artist at the height of his career.
00:12:10
Speaker
He just knows exactly where
00:12:14
Speaker
Each stroke of the brush goes, and it explains what you're seeing without literally translating it, which is what the neoclassical school that preceded him was more inclined to do.
00:12:28
Speaker
So this is a kind of impressionism.
00:12:30
Speaker
He's making you feel the landscape that you're looking at.
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:34
Speaker
So, Ray, I want to turn to your experience of the box.
00:12:38
Speaker
And in service of that, can you give us a little bit of context about your own collecting?
00:12:46
Speaker
And maybe the first question to ask is whether you even consider yourself a collector.
00:12:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's always a difficult question.
00:12:54
Speaker
It seems like a, I don't know, a kind of highfalutin term, but after a number of years of purchasing objects and having a great many of them around our apartment, I guess that term is probably accurate at this point.
00:13:09
Speaker
I mean, we began here in New York in the 70s really buying objects.
00:13:14
Speaker
Japanese art and that really started after a trip to Japan in the early 70s.
00:13:23
Speaker
And then in the late 70s we actually moved to Asia and then spent the next 18 years there, mostly in Hong Kong but two years in Tokyo.
00:13:35
Speaker
So we were exposed to both Japanese and Chinese art in a very big way.
00:13:40
Speaker
And that was our principal area of collecting for many years.
00:13:48
Speaker
At the
Creative Art Display at Home
00:13:49
Speaker
same time, we had a good friend as a dealer whose interests were quite eclectic.
00:13:56
Speaker
And he would, from time to time, show us other things that he had collected.
00:14:01
Speaker
And then sometimes we would buy some of those, African art, pre-dynastic Egyptian stone items.
00:14:11
Speaker
Most of those now have been sold over the years, really to purchase other things.
00:14:18
Speaker
Okay, as your interests have evolved.
00:14:19
Speaker
Yeah, things have changed.
00:14:22
Speaker
And to a certain extent, environments have changed.
00:14:26
Speaker
Some things look very good in a certain house or apartment.
00:14:33
Speaker
And my wife and I have moved many times over those years.
00:14:39
Speaker
So then when we came...
00:14:42
Speaker
back to the US, we had in the meantime purchased a house in France as a second home.
00:14:49
Speaker
And we had that for 20 some years.
00:14:52
Speaker
And so that really re-stimulated our interest in Western art.
00:14:56
Speaker
And again, we started looking at
00:15:01
Speaker
items both in Japanese and not so much Chinese and in Western art again.
00:15:07
Speaker
So this is why we got to know Jill was through when we moved back to New York and we had an introduction to her in the gallery and we started really
00:15:20
Speaker
looking at things through her eyes.
00:15:23
Speaker
And it's been a very good... This is really just the latest of a number of acquisitions we've made from Jill.
00:15:30
Speaker
That have quite a range to them too.
00:15:33
Speaker
Some contemporary things and 19th century things.
00:15:37
Speaker
Yes, I think it's been interesting.
00:15:38
Speaker
Jill in her gallery almost always has a few contemporary artists that she's showing.
00:15:46
Speaker
And
00:15:47
Speaker
It's interesting because one of the things is that they are affordable for the most part.
00:15:56
Speaker
And, you know, it's a different look.
00:15:59
Speaker
And I should say one of the things about our approach is that we have a very flexible display system in our various apartments over the years, and we do here in New York now.
00:16:13
Speaker
And as a consequence, we tend to put things up for a short period of time, a month, two months, three months, and then rotate things around.
00:16:26
Speaker
We sort of got into that habit in Asia, because that's the style there with Japanese art.
00:16:31
Speaker
You know, when you have hanging scrolls and whatnot, you put them up for a while and then
00:16:35
Speaker
change them out, and we do that here also with Western art.
00:16:40
Speaker
And it's fun, actually, to try to put, say, an Asian type of painting next to, say, a Nabi painting and look at the colors and how they talk to each other.
00:16:54
Speaker
Not to
Appreciation for Unique Art Forms
00:16:55
Speaker
suggest that one was influenced by the other, but rather to see how
00:17:01
Speaker
people at relatively the same period would have approached objects on other parts, you know, on opposite parts of the world.
00:17:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting.
00:17:11
Speaker
I mean, it's a theme that you hear more and more about these days, even in the decorative arts world.
00:17:16
Speaker
You know, people decorating apartments with sort of eclectic objects, you know, putting, instead of trying to put like with like, putting like with very much unlike, even in some cases, total opposite.
00:17:31
Speaker
And the way you describe the trajectory of your collecting, you're not a focused collector of 19th century French painting.
00:17:40
Speaker
You've been a collector of a number of different genres, a number of different periods from millennia past.
00:17:49
Speaker
So I can imagine you have a bit of a more, could I call it a holistic perspective?
00:17:56
Speaker
idea of the kinds of art objects that you enjoy.
00:18:00
Speaker
Yeah, and I would say for us, and I think everybody who buys art goes about it differently, but for us it's been a question of what's been on offer.
00:18:11
Speaker
I mean, we haven't decided that certain areas were, or that it was our taste or whatever, and then gone out and sought those.
00:18:18
Speaker
We really allowed the dealers to suggest what they find to be of interest.
00:18:26
Speaker
Now, you said you saw the box on Jill's website.
00:18:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:31
Speaker
And you immediately called her about it.
00:18:34
Speaker
So there was something about the, and this was before you even knew it was on a box.
00:18:39
Speaker
So it's something about the painting itself that attracted you.
00:18:43
Speaker
And then when you found out that it was a box, you mentioned to me that this connected in a way to some other objects that you've collected.
00:18:52
Speaker
Tell me a bit more about that.
00:18:54
Speaker
Yeah, the, well, first of all, as I say, as we've talked about, as Jill has mentioned, far better than I can, the image is really quite remarkable.
00:19:03
Speaker
And that's what really first caught my eye.
00:19:07
Speaker
When she said it was a box, that didn't really put me off because it fits within an area of collecting that most Asian and Chinese, Asian-Japanese collectors would be familiar with, which are called scholars' objects.
Podcast Promotion and Engagement
00:19:22
Speaker
These are objects which would have been on the desk of a 17th, 18th, 19th century scholar.
00:19:30
Speaker
That is someone specializing in calligraphy or ink painting.
00:19:36
Speaker
These would have been brush pots where he kept his brush made of precious woods.
00:19:41
Speaker
It might have been an armrest which they used to rest their arm while they were writing or drawing with the brush.
00:19:51
Speaker
Also, they would include ink stones.
00:19:53
Speaker
An ink stone is a slab of slate-like material, and you take an ink stick, which is a congealed soot,
00:20:04
Speaker
in a sort of water-soluble glue and you rub it on the stone with water and it produces black ink.
00:20:12
Speaker
These come in all shapes and sizes but I have one in my collection which is made from a discarded roof tile of a very famous gate to a temple in Kyoto.
00:20:25
Speaker
So it has some of the same aspects of the box.
00:20:27
Speaker
I mean it's got a written provenance, explains where it came from,
00:20:34
Speaker
It's a household daily object, something you'd have on your desk.
00:20:38
Speaker
So I look forward to a time when I can have both my inkstone and this box sitting on the desk.
00:20:45
Speaker
Perhaps I write an email to Jill to ask her what's going on with this new thing on the solar site.
00:20:53
Speaker
That's a great picture.
00:20:58
Speaker
We'll be right back with Jill Newhouse and Ray Vickers.
00:21:01
Speaker
First, just a reminder that you can see images of the painting and the box it's painted on at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast and on my Instagram at Objective Interest.
00:21:10
Speaker
If you enjoy Curious Objects and want to support the podcast, I'm thrilled to hear it.
00:21:15
Speaker
One thing that would be really helpful is if you could leave a rating and a review on the app where you're listening right now.
00:21:20
Speaker
And if you haven't done it already, subscribe to the podcast so you can hear episodes as soon
The Art of Dealer-Client Relationships
00:21:25
Speaker
as they're published.
00:21:25
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:21:27
Speaker
So I'm interested in the sort of the inception of the purchase for you.
00:21:35
Speaker
You know, I've talked with a lot of dealers on this program.
00:21:38
Speaker
I've talked with some collectors as well, but I've never had a dealer and a collector in the same room talking about an object that they've exchanged.
00:21:46
Speaker
And it's a sign of the art world that I think
00:21:49
Speaker
People who haven't experienced it firsthand may not have a very good sense for how exactly that process happens.
00:21:56
Speaker
I know it's different for different people, but for the two of you, you know, Ray, you called Jill when you saw the piece on her website and that started the conversation.
00:22:09
Speaker
How did that sort of proceed?
00:22:10
Speaker
How did it proceed from that point to the point of deciding to make the purchase?
00:22:16
Speaker
Well, of course, the inquiry I made was principally about the price.
00:22:22
Speaker
To put it into a context that
00:22:25
Speaker
of purchasing.
00:22:28
Speaker
And did you have a, uh, idea or a prediction based on your own experience of what you've, how much you expected it to cost or were you really sort of out of the blue?
00:22:38
Speaker
Um, you know, just, just, uh, wondering what, what on earth, you know, whether it might even be within your, your budget.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:48
Speaker
Um, well,
00:22:51
Speaker
Corot has produced some other small things, not in a box, but small things.
00:22:59
Speaker
And you'd bought a Corot drawing from me, which is an earlier one, very linear and stuff.
00:23:09
Speaker
And I knew it was small.
00:23:10
Speaker
That was said.
00:23:12
Speaker
I didn't know it was inside a wooden box, but I knew it was small.
00:23:15
Speaker
So I figured it might well be within a range I was willing to think about.
00:23:24
Speaker
Now, for me, maybe not for a lot of people, but for us, I mean, each of these things has not just a cost, but it has an opportunity cost.
00:23:32
Speaker
Because it means if I buy that, it means I'm probably not going to buy, able to buy some other things.
00:23:41
Speaker
So one of the things that Jill and I discussed, quite openly and frankly, was...
00:23:45
Speaker
other things that she might have that I might purchase in lieu of this if I didn't do that.
00:23:53
Speaker
And that was a very interesting conversation because it involves not just prices but kind of relative aesthetic values as well.
00:24:00
Speaker
I mean, do you get as much
00:24:04
Speaker
enjoyment out of this object as that one.
00:24:08
Speaker
And I think that's really how we zeroed in on it, was looking around and deciding, which puts both a monetary context around it, but also an aesthetic one as well.
00:24:23
Speaker
Right.
Balancing Sales and Relationships
00:24:24
Speaker
And so much that, what's so interesting as a dealer is that who decides to buy what?
00:24:34
Speaker
And it is often not a judgment of the quality, it's more a question of,
00:24:42
Speaker
each individual person, their aesthetics, their lifestyle, and what they'd like to have at home with them.
00:24:48
Speaker
And the wonderful thing about Ray and Priscilla is they've always, in all the years we've known each other, they're incredibly open-minded aesthetically.
00:24:57
Speaker
And that's something that appeals to me greatly, the idea of mixing Japanese art with Western art, drawings with paintings.
00:25:06
Speaker
And even the idea that they rotate what they're looking at is so interesting.
00:25:13
Speaker
They have an independence...
00:25:16
Speaker
and a surety of what they like and what they want to own that's pretty rare, really.
00:25:24
Speaker
So, I mean, we've built up a long relationship over the years and discussed things and trust each other, but it really comes, which is the basis of any relationship in the art world between dealer, client.
00:25:43
Speaker
But they always had a kind of broad...
00:25:45
Speaker
open-mindedness which
00:25:50
Speaker
fits with my point of view because I have a lot of different kinds of things in the gallery that I've shown at different moments from contemporary to earlier things.
00:26:02
Speaker
And this kind of object, as you called, it goes well with your scholars' objects because just for the sake of the people listening, the box is closed.
00:26:13
Speaker
You need to open the box and then in the inside lid is where you see the little painting.
00:26:18
Speaker
So
00:26:19
Speaker
it's almost like a little secret world that you can open or not.
00:26:23
Speaker
You could display it with the lid open so the painting is visible, or you could display it closed.
00:26:30
Speaker
And it's not going to appeal to everyone.
00:26:35
Speaker
I fell in love with it.
00:26:36
Speaker
I think Ray did too.
00:26:41
Speaker
Each object has its home, and that's the trick about having a gallery is you hope that people...
00:26:50
Speaker
fall in love with the things you show the way you have.
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:53
Speaker
I want to come back in just a minute to the sort of eccentricity of it.
00:26:57
Speaker
But while we're on this subject, is there, I mean, a dealer obviously wants to make a sale.
00:27:03
Speaker
That's how you stay in business.
00:27:06
Speaker
A dealer also, we hope in the best of all possible worlds, is really trying to develop, as you say, a long-term relationship, a relationship based on trust
Timing and Interest in Art Purchases
00:27:18
Speaker
with their clients.
00:27:18
Speaker
And
00:27:19
Speaker
How do you adjudicate those interests?
00:27:22
Speaker
When Ray calls you up and says he's interested in this piece, and you know it's a piece that might have a sort of appeal to a particular kind of person or a person with a particular kind of interest—
00:27:36
Speaker
how do you decide whether this is the thing that you want to sort of promote or whether to encourage your clients to think about other options?
00:27:49
Speaker
How do you sort of... Clients have interests, but dealers also have... I mean, they're professional persuaders.
00:27:58
Speaker
So how do you sort of...
00:28:01
Speaker
navigate that.
00:28:01
Speaker
I never thought of myself as a professional persuader, but anyway, well, in most cases, in art of the period that I show, and even the contemporary art, the little bit that I show, I find things that I think are good, and then I hope that the people that I know will agree with me by purchasing something.
00:28:27
Speaker
If you're asking...
00:28:30
Speaker
When Ray was interested in this box, I was thrilled because we have a long relationship.
00:28:36
Speaker
I understand his taste a bit.
00:28:39
Speaker
I would rather it went there than went to someone I was less involved with, although it's always nice to make new clients as well.
00:28:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:53
Speaker
I don't know, does that answer where you were going with that?
00:28:56
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm just trying to sort of explore this notion, this sort of, and I encountered this as a dealer myself with some regularity, which is, you know, we, the firm where I work is about 100 years old and prides itself on its relationships, long-term relationships with clients.
00:29:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:21
Speaker
And we like to think in many cases we know our clients' interests and that sometimes guides our purchasing decisions as well.
00:29:28
Speaker
If we know that there are one or two people on our mailing list who have a keen interest in this kind of object, we're much more likely to want to buy it or bid it higher at an auction, that sort of thing.
00:29:43
Speaker
But not everybody can buy everything all the time.
00:29:46
Speaker
Well, no, timing is a lot of it, too.
00:29:48
Speaker
I mean, Ray wasn't always in New York all the time, and this would have been a tough one to buy sight unseen, I have to say.
00:29:56
Speaker
And then also, everyone is not in a buying mood all the time.
Art Collecting as a Personal Journey
00:30:01
Speaker
And we have different objects here.
00:30:04
Speaker
But I have to say, after 40 years in business, one of the biggest mysteries is who is...
00:30:12
Speaker
why a certain person buys a certain object.
00:30:15
Speaker
I mean, some of it is slightly predictable, but when we put up a show or a catalog, there's always a surprising connection to someone that we maybe wouldn't have thought of.
00:30:26
Speaker
Obviously, there are certain things I know if I get them, I would call Ray, but this I didn't really...
00:30:37
Speaker
think that you would be interested in this.
00:30:40
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure you would be interested because it's interesting, but to buy it, I wouldn't have known that, really.
00:30:46
Speaker
I have a Corot drawing, and I've looked at a number of Corot things with Jill, never having purchased them, but we have
00:30:55
Speaker
There are a couple of artists that she knows that I now have a, didn't really start with the idea, but now have three or four of them.
00:31:04
Speaker
One might even say a little collection of
00:31:08
Speaker
And I think if she were to find a nice drawing of one of these, I would probably get a call.
00:31:16
Speaker
But on the other hand, I might not be in the mood for the artist at that point.
00:31:21
Speaker
You never know.
00:31:22
Speaker
And you've talked already about buying things and then later deciding to sell them and move on to something else.
00:31:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:31
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that that's, you know, unrealistically I thought when I really started this back in the 70s that I would never own more than ten things.
00:31:41
Speaker
And I would always sell, dispose somehow, and keep the quality.
00:31:48
Speaker
Well, that left the barn a long time ago.
00:31:52
Speaker
But the lovely thing about the way you collect is you see something and you do think...
00:31:58
Speaker
You take it independently, but then you think, well, how does this fit with what else I've got?
00:32:04
Speaker
And you're making all these mini-exhibitions of the objects you have at home.
00:32:09
Speaker
And so it keeps a very open mind on your part, which is great.
00:32:16
Speaker
Well, I always found, I mean, when we started out...
00:32:23
Speaker
It really was always trying to buy the best object I could that I could afford.
00:32:28
Speaker
Not necessarily in the genre that I already had, but just if something... Again, as I say, I didn't go looking.
00:32:36
Speaker
Dealers, I've been very lucky.
Market Perception of Unique Art Pieces
00:32:39
Speaker
Jill, another friend that she knows...
00:32:43
Speaker
Very good dealers who have brought things or sent whatever information about things and have permitted one to pick and choose, you know, and not get annoyed.
00:32:57
Speaker
if you say, well, thanks very much, but no thanks this time.
00:33:01
Speaker
A minute ago, Jill, you mentioned this sort of, I don't know if you used the word eccentricity, I think maybe I did, but this sort of unusual feature of the painting being on the inside of the box, which you said was maybe not a feature that everyone would enjoy or find to be an advantage.
00:33:22
Speaker
How does the market, do you think, treat a piece like that, which
00:33:27
Speaker
For some people might be a turnoff, but for others, you know, there's there's really a kind of a charm and a personal intimacy to it that might be appealing, maybe even more appealing, but only to a smaller group of people.
00:33:38
Speaker
What kind of influence do you think that has on on the value of the piece?
00:33:44
Speaker
An object like this is really very hard to value in any kind of rational way, I would say.
00:33:53
Speaker
I would also say the market for Coro paintings is erratic because of the problems of how heavily faked he was and because of how prolific he was.
00:34:07
Speaker
So any artist like Renoir, any artist that produced that project
00:34:12
Speaker
many works, there's going to be a big swing in the quality.
00:34:17
Speaker
So I think that this box, and tell me if you agree, Ray, it's the kind of, I bought it up to a level where I felt just on instinct would be too much if I paid more and really...
00:34:40
Speaker
for a little commission, was happy to pass it along to Ray.
00:34:45
Speaker
It's a very indefinable thing.
00:34:47
Speaker
I don't know if scholars' rocks have a steadier... No.
00:34:51
Speaker
I mean, I think, again, these are so individual.
00:34:55
Speaker
For me, one of the real attractions, though, is the feeling that you're practically as close to the artist's hand as you can get.
00:35:04
Speaker
That's what I loved about it, actually, that you can just envision him painting it.
00:35:09
Speaker
Right.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:10
Speaker
And somehow you can have a... You know, this didn't just... It wasn't on the easel in the studio for a week while he did this and that.
00:35:20
Speaker
I mean, this is something he sat down and there is a really special quality of that for me.
00:35:28
Speaker
And... But as to...
00:35:36
Speaker
Of course, Jill knows the market in a way that I don't, but I found that it was... I mean, if this were a sizable painting, I think it would be one of the really special Corot landscapes.
00:35:52
Speaker
If it had been done on an easel and it were four by six feet.
00:35:55
Speaker
Right.
00:35:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:57
Speaker
I mean, it would be one of
Cultural Appreciation of Art Objects
00:35:58
Speaker
the big bobby-dazzlers.
00:36:02
Speaker
So I don't know.
00:36:04
Speaker
I mean, I think on the other hand, because of its size, there are a few limitations you might impose on it.
00:36:19
Speaker
You know, it's interesting because if I had in the gallery a two-by-three-foot coral oil painting from the late period, I don't think that would be your particular taste.
00:36:32
Speaker
Even though you loved it, I don't know that that would fall into your collecting category.
00:36:37
Speaker
And really, my gallery started...
00:36:40
Speaker
specializing in drawings and that has drawings have the same kind of intimacy that that appeals to both Ray and I about the object you know a drawing after all is as close as the artist can get to the paper with nothing in between so I think that that probably that's a lot a lot of the appeal of it
00:37:03
Speaker
So there are definitely people who want large-scale, highly finished works for whom this would just seem too small an item.
00:37:17
Speaker
Too small and too rustic.
00:37:21
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:37:25
Speaker
It's interesting.
00:37:27
Speaker
I mean, that's the, that's the, um, that's a taste.
00:37:31
Speaker
It's a personal taste is also, and personal taste affects the market in that, uh, when things come up for sale publicly, I guess it depends how many people share a certain kind of taste over another kind of taste.
00:37:43
Speaker
But, um, yeah, but you know, I mean, I'm,
00:37:49
Speaker
I'll carry my sandwiches to work in this, you know.
00:37:53
Speaker
In the box, in the lunchbox.
00:37:55
Speaker
I mean, that's what it was intended for, after all.
00:37:58
Speaker
These days, moving from the bedroom to the living room.
00:38:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:02
Speaker
Right.
00:38:05
Speaker
Well, actually, in that sense, an intimate object to me makes much more sense in these moments where we're home...
00:38:13
Speaker
looking at what we own, what we're surrounded with, it's kind of a perfect moment for now.
00:38:19
Speaker
Actually, more similar to the 1870s when they didn't move around as much as we all came to move around.
00:38:27
Speaker
Well, also, you know...
00:38:29
Speaker
It's interested me that these, in a sense, what I'll call scholars' objects, have been popular in France with the big politicians.
00:38:41
Speaker
I mean, I don't know if you see a photograph of Jacques Chirac's desk.
00:38:46
Speaker
There will be a small African sculpture on it.
00:38:52
Speaker
Mitterrand was much the same way.
00:38:54
Speaker
They always had these small little...
00:38:57
Speaker
objects of aesthetic interest.
00:38:59
Speaker
I think here in the US politicians it's usually they might have something interesting but it more is associated with US history or something more prosaic.
00:39:15
Speaker
And I think that's how I see this.
00:39:18
Speaker
I mean, this will look just wonderful to me on a desk otherwise associated with workspace.
Shared Enjoyment in Art Dealing
00:39:33
Speaker
So it fits into many, many categories.
00:39:38
Speaker
Now, maybe not for everybody, but certainly that's how it strikes me.
00:39:42
Speaker
Well, fortunately, it doesn't have to for everybody.
00:39:44
Speaker
You're the one who bought it after all.
00:39:47
Speaker
Well, I want to wrap things up here, but can I just, sort of in closing, I mean, it's quite a pleasure for me to see the two of you talking like this and hear a bit about how you're both relating to the object and
00:40:04
Speaker
in your own ways, contributing to its ongoing story.
00:40:10
Speaker
But I, you know, I sort of, we tend to think, I think some of us tend to think of the dealer-client relationship as a one-way street.
00:40:19
Speaker
But,
00:40:19
Speaker
Clearly, as you're showing right now, it really isn't.
00:40:23
Speaker
You are both offering things to each other in terms of your knowledge, your experience, your learning.
00:40:33
Speaker
So I just want to, as a sort of an open-ended question for both of you, ask, what do you learn from each other?
00:40:41
Speaker
What have you learned from each other?
00:40:43
Speaker
Well, we both said the last time when you came to look at this, that we just enjoy talking to each other about the artworks that Ray's eye on, on what he sees in the gallery often helps me see things that I may not have seen.
00:40:59
Speaker
And I certainly seeing when I've been to their apartment, the, the context that artwork is put in is, is fascinating.
00:41:08
Speaker
And it's,
00:41:09
Speaker
the ability to share things that we both find visually and intellectually stimulating.
00:41:14
Speaker
So it brings a lot.
00:41:16
Speaker
And actually, especially in these difficult times, it's so nice to have people in the gallery, like even doing this and Ray coming and seeing it and sharing those moments, which for me are the driving moments of having a gallery.
00:41:30
Speaker
It's having people in and talking about the art, whether they buy something or not, is really what
00:41:39
Speaker
makes me come to work every day.
00:41:42
Speaker
I think too, you know, again, as I say, everybody's different, but I'm often first taken by the object.
00:41:51
Speaker
And then, then I want to learn about it.
00:41:55
Speaker
And the nice thing about Jill is that if you say, I really like that, but I don't quite understand it, she's perfectly happy to take all the time in the world to get out the books, show you where the antecedents of it are, where another version of it might have appeared in a museum, to put it into a broader context.
00:42:18
Speaker
So that's a very important thing.
00:42:20
Speaker
I mean, that's a very important relationship to have.
00:42:25
Speaker
Now, I can go read books myself to be able to be put onto the right path.
00:42:30
Speaker
For example, Robo.
00:42:32
Speaker
I had known about Robo, who was the... Koros' friend.
00:42:38
Speaker
Koros' friend and...
00:42:40
Speaker
cataloger.
00:42:44
Speaker
And now I know I'll have to be on the lookout for
00:42:49
Speaker
Hard to find out a lot about Robo.
00:42:52
Speaker
And what he did was he published these two catalogues, the Delacroix and Coro.
00:42:57
Speaker
So that's two amazing artists of the 19th century.
00:43:01
Speaker
The Coro volumes are four volumes.
00:43:04
Speaker
And in many cases, they did have some photography of the works, but in many cases, Robo drew pictures.
00:43:11
Speaker
images of the paintings, measured them and cataloged them.
00:43:15
Speaker
I mean, it was really an act of love.
00:43:17
Speaker
So he, without him, our scholarship on those two artists would be in very rough shape.
00:43:27
Speaker
But that's the sort of thing that I think that we share.
00:43:35
Speaker
And I mean, I can't imagine actually working with a dealer with whom you didn't have that kind of relationship.
00:43:41
Speaker
Well, it's been a pleasure.
00:43:45
Speaker
Ray Vickers, Jill Newhouse, thank you so much.
00:43:46
Speaker
Thank you, Ben.
00:43:47
Speaker
Thank you, Ben.
00:43:58
Speaker
That's our show.
00:43:59
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
00:44:00
Speaker
I'll just sneak in one more reminder to leave a rating or write us a flattering review.
00:44:04
Speaker
Very much appreciated.
00:44:06
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
00:44:11
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:44:13
Speaker
And I'm Ben Miller.