The photograph in the catalogue, no larger than a postage stamp, showed a rabble of rampaging people setting fire to a large building and making off with loot. Before any major sale of artworks Sotheby's puts out a catalogue so that interested buyers can see in advance what will be on offer.Ī great art expert, Sir Denis Mahon (1910-2011), was looking through the catalogue one day when his eye was caught by one painting in particular. When he died, his children put the paintings on sale by Sotheby's, the London auction house. Afraid of being burgled, he rigged up his own home-made alarm system, using klaxons powered by old car batteries, and always slept with a loaded shotgun under his bed.
So he simply piled them up, keeping some in his chicken sheds. There were too many to hang them all on the walls of his relatively modest home, Baylham Mill in Suffolk. Eventually he collected more than five hundred canvases. He used to go around local auctions and whenever a painting came on sale, especially if it was old, he would make a bid for it. Known as an eccentric, his hobby was collecting paintings. Laura Cumming’s book is “sumptuous.A gleaming work of someone at the peak of her craft” ( The New York Times).A true story that took place in 1995: It concerns the legacy of an unusual man with an unusual name: Mr Ernest Onians, a farmer in East Anglia whose main business was as a supplier of pigswill. But in making his theory public, Snare was ostracized and forced to choose, like Velázquez himself, between art and family.Ī thrilling investigation into the complex meaning of authenticity and the unshakable determination that drives both artists and collectors of their work, The Vanishing Vel ázquez is a “brilliant” ( The Atlantic) tale of mystery and detection, of tragic mishaps and mistaken identities, of class, politics, snobbery, crime, and almost farcical accident that reveals how one historic masterpiece was crafted and lost, and how far one man would go to redeem it. When Prince Charles of England-a man wealthy enough to help turn Spain’s fortunes-proposed a marriage with a Spanish princess, he allowed just a few hours to sit for his portrait, and Snare believed only Velázquez could have been the artist of choice. Velázquez (1599–1660) was the official painter of the Madrid court, during the time the Spanish Empire teetered on the edge of collapse. His research brought him to Diego Velázquez, whose long-lost portrait of Prince Charles has eluded art experts for generations. Snare had found something incredible-but what?
The Charles of the painting was young-too young to be king-and yet also too young to be painted by the Flemish painter to whom the piece was attributed. When John Snare, a nineteenth century provincial bookseller, traveled to a liquidation auction, he found a vivid portrait of King Charles I that defied any explanation. “As compelling and entertaining as a detective novel” ( The Economist), the incredible true story-part art history and part mystery-of a Velázquez portrait that went missing and the obsessed nineteenth-century bookseller determined to prove he had found it. A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2016
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