RENOIR : BAIGNEUSE COUCHEE

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was a French leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, the child of a working class family . As a boy, he worked in a porcelain factory where his drawing talents led to him being chosen to paint designs on fine china .

Renoir filled his work with the joie de vivre of a happy temperament. When we look at his work we know that we are the casual stroller who takes in this slice of life in passing but nothing more. However he makes us extremely happy to see it. A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art.

In the 1890s Renoir began to suffer from rheumatism, and from 1903 (by which time he was world-famous) he lived in the warmth of the south of France. The rheumatism eventually crippled him (by 1912 he was confined to a wheelchair), but he continued to paint until the end of his life. In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters. He died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, French Riviera, on December 3.

In 1977 his Baigneuse Couchée fetched $ 660,00 at a auction sale in New York City. Two of Renoir's paintings have sold for more than $70 million : Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre sold for $ 78.1 million in 1990.

AUDUBON : THE BIRDS OF AMERICA

John James Audubon was born in Santo Domingo, present-day Haiti, in 1785. He grew up in France, where his loving stepmother encouraged his interests in drawing and the outdoors. His father sent him to the United States in 1803 to avoid Napoleon's draft. Over the next 17 years, Audubon unsuccessfully wandered from career to career, and place to place.

In 1820 Audubon began his masterpiece, The Birds of America. From then on, he devoted most of his time to painting birds, with the intent of printing as engravings life-size portraits of all the kinds of birds in the United States.

Unable to secure financial backing in the United States, Audubon went to Europe in 1826. There he found both subscribers and engravers for the project. The first prints were made that same year.

Over the next twelve years, Audubon divided his time between London and America. When abroad, he supervised the engraving and coloring of the prints. In America, he traveled in search of birds to paint. He died in 1851.

The Birds of America by John James Audubon, is a fantastic representation of the flying species and more of the United States in the 19th century. There is now an Audubon Society that promotes the knowledge of Audubon and of the animal world of America.

The University of Pittsburgh is fortunate to own one of the rare, complete sets of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. It is considered to be the single most valuable set of volumes in the collections of the University Library System (ULS). Indeed, only 120 complete sets are known to exist.

One set containing 436 planches in color printed in London in 1827 went for sale on auction in 1977 and fetched $320,000. It was then the highest price reached by a printed book.

FRAGONARD : PSYCHE MONTRANT SES CADEAUX

Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) was Boucher's star pupil. His figures moves with a grace that links him with Tiepolo whose work he admired. He painted with a breadth and spontaneity reminiscent of Rubens. But Fragonard had the misfortune to outlive his era : his pictures became outmoded as the French Revolution approached. After 1789, he was reduced to poverty, supported ironically by Jacques Louis David who recognized his achievements and who made a fortune under the Napoleonic era.

Fragonard died virtually forgotten in they heyday of this Imperial era. This painting -whose full title is Psyche showing her sisters her gifts from Cupid- too had been forgotten by the public and the art dealers all together and when it was rediscovered in the ex-Rothschild House of the 7th Earl of Rosebery, Mentmore Towers, it was attributed as "The Toilet of Venus" by the French painter Carle van Loo ( 1705-1765). When the whole collections of Mentmore Towers went for sale, an expert from Christie's thought it could be attributed to Boucher which was quite a good bet by the way.

But when he checked on the Boucher's catalogue he did not find any mention of such a picture : so it was put on auction as attributed to van Loo and the auction house bought it in for $8,800. After the sale, Christie's expert thought that the next possibility was Fragonard as he had worked 5 years in the studio of Boucher. The Wildenstein catalogue on Fragonard mentioned that he had painted a picture of this subject as a pupil but that it was "an untraced work."

After further expertise with the National Gallery London, Christie's resold it in 1978 for almost £ 500,000 ($850,000). It is now the property of the National Gallery which could have bought it a year earlier for 8,800 quid.

CHATEAU LAFITTE : 1805 BORDEAUX BOTTLE

A bottle of Lafite-Rothschild 1805 was sold on auction in London in 1978 for the modest sum of $ 14,524 . Today a bottle of Lafite-Rothschild cuvée 2006 is available for $368 but must be bought by case of 12 bottles which makes the whole purchase jump to $4,416. To me it is not Art anymore but sheer snobism to buy such a bottle of wine. And plain stupidity to drink it.

CHATEAU LAFITTE 1787 : $ 1.3 MILLION

Peak of stupidity or snobism, this 1787 bottle of Chateau Lafitte, stamped with the initial T.J (for Thomas Jefferson, later President of the USA) was sold in 1985 for $1.3 million to the heir of the Forbes group, Chris Forbes.

Chris Forbes who is by the way a very charming man came to London with his private (corporate) jet and immediately after the auction flew back to the USA in the hope to get in time to put the bottle on Thomas Jefferson's table which was on loan to the Forbes Museum from the Maryland Museum for the evening opening of an exhibition.

You do no want to know how much would cost in those circumstances the privilege to own the bottle of this prestigious vinegar. I am a wine amateur but the idea makes of me a Budweiser fanatic. Those super-riches have amusements of another nature. Are they nuts ? It is not even pretty. Anyway it will make happy a bunch of gullibles who will be be ecstatic and crack silly jokes about the price of one glass of Lafitte 1787 once owned by Jefferson.And it will make Mr Forbes feel powerful and richer in his little museum.