Frans Hals (1581-1666) was born and lived almost all his life in Haarlem (Netherlands) where he essentially painted portraits. He was extremely successful and is considered as one of the best portraitists of his age equal to Rembrandt. This portrait of the poet Samuel Ampzing was probably made about 1635, some time before the death of the sitter whose attitude makes us think that he is alive and looking at us in earnest. It is an oil on brass and measures 16.2 x 12.3 cm.It was bought at the beginning of the XIXth century by the 2rd Earl Clancarty, British Ambassador to Brussels and was acquired in the XXth by Sir William Cornelius van Horne (1843-1915), American railroads magnate. In July 2008 it was sold in London by Sotheby's for £ 4.15 million ($ 7.67 million), four times its estimated price, to an English art dealer.
If you want to know what the 200 biggest collectors of Art in the world are collecting, it is easy. They collect Contemporary art : 147 of the 200 main collectors (73%) of Art prefer to buy and collect Contemporary art.
According to a extensive survey recently made by an art magazine, the preference for Contemporary art is overwhelming and it is understandable. Contemporary art offers reasonable prices and huge potential capital gains whereas Old Masters and Modern art are out of reach and much more sensitive to prices' variations on the art market.
However the second main choice of the 200 biggest collectors is ... Modern Art : 74 out of 200 (37%) collect Modern art. Once more it is not really a surprise : among the 200 biggest collectors there are more than 50% of multi-billionaires who can afford to play high stakes and pay million of dollars for a certain canvass. Inside this category, 17 (23%) collect Impressionism paintings which means that almost a quarter of people who collect Modern art do collect Impressionists painters.
Then we have the inevitable Old Masters. They are out of reach from the hands of the rich people and are affordable only by the very very rich : Paul Allen (Seattle), the Blacks (New York), Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein, the Kravis (New York), the Landaus (New York), Philip Niarchos (Paris), the Plotnicks (Chicago), the Resnicks (Los Angeles), Elie and Eric de Rothschild (Paris), the Schwartzs (Bloomfield Hill), Sheikh Saud Ali al-Thani (Doha), David Thomson (Toronto) and some nostalgic and wealthy Hispanics like José Luiz Varez Fisa (Madrid), Placido Arango (Madrid), Alicia Koplowitz (picture) Marchioness of Bellavista (Madrid), the Abellos (Madrid) and the richest Mexican man Carlos Slim Helu (Mexico city). Only 20 (10%) of the biggest Art collectors in the world possess and enjoy the view of an Old Masters at home. Behind the Old Masters and surprinsigly enough come the collectors of.... Photography (11 out of 200) which represents 5.5%, a non negligible percentage. Then we have the collectors of Expressionism (4%), Sculpture (3.5%), Asian art (3%), Tribal art (2%), African art (2%), Furniture, Islamic art and Video art (each with 1.5%).
Collectors of Pop art, Chinese ceramics, antiquities, rare books and works on paper represent globally 5% of the collector world while collectors of Rare coins, Primitive and Conceptual art represent each 0.5% ot the total.
Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) is one of Britain’s finest and most original 19th century artists who created richly colored visionary landscapes inspired by the Romantic artist and poet, William Blake. Palmer had an ecstatic response to nature which he expressed in his art through intense color effects and decisive drawing. He had a profound influence on British art inspiring a number of Neo-Romantic painters and printmakers.
Born in London he was the son of a bookseller and some time Baptist minister. He was raised by a pious nurse and started painting churches at age twelve. He first exhibited Turner-inspired works at the age of fourteen at the Royal Academy. He had little formal training and did nit have any formal schooling.
Samuel was largely forgotten after his death. In 1909, large amounts of his work were destroyed by his surviving son Alfred who burnt "a great quantity of father's handiwork.. knowing that no one would be able to make head or tail of what I burnt."
However this son did not burn everything and in 1909 he brought Harvest Moon to the front counter of Christie's and obtained 5 Gns. for it at auction. Christie's missed a good deal, had they bought the picture in they would have striked gold. In 1972 a member of the family who bought it in 1909 came again to Christie's and put it for sale : it fetched this time 44,000 Gns. ($120,120). Alfred Palmer made the bonfire of the century that almost paled the auto dafé of the Nazis in 1933. The difference is that Alfred Palmer wanted to avoid more humiliation to his father's works.
Palmer painted several Harvest Moon.
Not attributed to Peter Bruegel the Younger but to his circle of followers, this oil on panel, stamped on the reverse with the coat-of-arms of the city of Antwerp and the maker's mark of Guilliam Gabron, is entitled The Bird Trap. The Bird Trap was also painted par Peter Bruegel the Elder and it is thought that the prototype for this composition is a painting by Pieter II's father, Pieter Bruegel I, signed and dated 1565, in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. But there were a large number of replicas of this picture and the fact is not absolutely certain. The eldest son of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the young Pieter Bruegel (1564-1638) studied first under his grandmother, the miniaturist Maria Verhulst, and then in Antwerp. He painted largely in the manner of his father and even copied many of his works which were themselves copied by his followers like this picture shows.
Far from being snubed by the amateurs, this kind of painting is very much sought after by the public ; it went on auction in July 2008 at Christie's in London and was estimated for a maximum of 29,000 dollars. It eventually fetched the more impressive sum of $ 154,227.
David Hockney was born on July 9, 1937, in Bradford, England, to Laura and Kenneth Hockney. The Hockneys -strict Methodists- were, as David said, a "radical working class family."Hockney was always considered an eccentric in Bradford. He spent afternoons at Sunday School drawing cartoons of Jesus, much to his teachers' dismay. Like his father, a conscientious objector, he worked as a medical orderly in hospitals as his National Service in the 1950s.
In 1953, Hockney enrolled in the College of Art of Bradford and began painting with oils, his favorite medium. In 1957, Hockney took the National Diploma in Design Examination. He graduated with honors and then enrolled in the Painting School of the Royal College in London two years later, where and when he would gain national attention as an artist. In the summer of 1961, Hockney traveled to New York for the first time where he befriended Andy Warhol and Dennis Hopper.Later he moved to Los Angeles, California spending much of his day at Santa Monica pier, to watch and admire the beautiful boys that seemed to be at the beach every day of the year.In 1964, he experienced his first true romance with a nineteen-year-old student named Peter Schlesinger who became a favorite subject of Hockney's, and the many drawings of him show the informal intimacy of the two. His art is marked by the ideas of naturalism.Since he burst upon the art scene in the middle of the Sixties, David Hockney has been one of Britain's most successful painters. To mark the artist's 50th birthday in 1988, London's Tate Gallery staged a major retrospective of Hockney's work.Estimated between £350,000 and £500,000, This "Table" fetched £825,250 ($1,644,724) in June 2008 on auction at Sotheby's in London. It is an acrylic on canvas 60 x 60in. (152.4 x 152.4m.) painted in 1967.David Hockney, is now based in Yorkshire, United Kingdom. He was made a in 1997 and is also a Royal Academician.
Frans Hals (1581-1666) was born and lived almost all his life in Haarlem (Netherlands) where he essentially painted portraits. He was extremely successful and is considered as one of the best portraitists of his age equal to Rembrandt. 
