​The art world has been rocked by a haul of apparent forgeries by the ‘Moriarty of fakers’ that could cost investors £200 million.
The suspect Old Masters – said to be by artists including Frans Hals and Lucas Cranach – have been described as the ‘biggest scandal in a century’.
In one case, Sotheby’s has been forced to take back an £8.4 million ‘Frans Hals’ and The Mail on Sunday understands the auction house is now pursuing the London dealer who supplied the painting.
Experts are particularly concerned because the alleged fakes are so difficult to spot from the real thing.
Earlier this year, the Prince of Liechtenstein had a painting seized by French authorities amid suspicion that it was a forgery. And it is feared that up to 25 more ‘Old Masters’ will be revealed as possible fakes in the coming weeks after a judge launched an investigation.

​The paintings at risk could be worth up to £200 million.
Yesterday, internationally renowned art dealer Bob Haboldt said: ‘This is the biggest art scandal in a century. There has been nothing like this since the “early Vermeer” scandal of the 1940s [when doubt was cast on a number of pictures by the Dutch master].

‘It has put an entire generation of dealers on alert. The careful marketing of these highly sophisticated forgeries using primarily older materials has caught the market by surprise. The implications will be that buyers will insist on more guarantees, scientific and financial.’
The scandal is a matter of such embarrassment that few art figures are willing to speak openly, but one well-known dealer described the individual behind the copies as ‘the Moriarty of fakers’, because they are so brilliantly constructed.
The scandal began to take shape earlier this year when a painting by German Renaissance master Lucas Cranach and owned by the Prince of Liechtenstein was seized by authorities at an exhibition in the South of France. 
Venus, dated 1531, had been sold by the Colnaghi Gallery in London in 2013 to the prince for £6 million but is now understood to be under examination by experts at the Louvre to assess its authenticity.

​The suspect Old Masters have been described as the ‘biggest scandal in a century’. Pictured, David by 'Gentileschi' (left) and Venus by 'Cranach' (right)

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​The Cranach has been linked to a painting titled An Unknown Man, attributed to Dutch master Frans Hals, and a work called David With The Head Of Goliath, attributed to Italian master Orazio Gentileschi.
Both paintings were bought by London dealer Mark Weiss, with the Hals being sold on to a distinguished US collector. Sotheby’s took a cut for brokering the ‘private treaty’ sale.
However, when the collector, from Seattle, discovered the Hals painting was connected to the seized Cranach, he complained to Sotheby’s and their experts are understood to have subsequently decided it was a fake.
Sotheby’s were later forced to reimburse the collector and are said to be threatening legal action against Weiss to recover their losses.
Mr Haboldt said: ‘These three painters can be resold in the international market for millions and tens of millions. They are very hot names in the business and much sought-after. 
'The works are difficult to detect as forgeries but they lack any credible provenance and references in the numerous publications about these artists. The latter should have made the principal dealers suspicious

The willingness of Sotheby’s to accept the return of the portrait by Frans Hals and indemnify the buyer sets the stage for several more of these cases to come to light.‘But first, the international art world will have to wait for the results of the French investigation. Whispers in the trade have revealed a list of some 25 Old Masters produced by this particular forger’s workshop. I understand this list will be revealed soon.’
The Gentileschi is said to have been sold to a young US collector based in the UK, for an undisclosed amount, and was displayed at the National Gallery in London until recently. Haboldt said it is believed a ring of Italian forgers are behind the Old Masters and some of them have already been questioned by French authorities.
The common thread to these paintings is they passed through the hands of unknown French dealer Giulano Ruffini, who claims he has discovered a string of Old Masters.
Ruffini, 71, however, insists that he never presented any of the paintings as Old Masters. He said: ‘I am a collector, not an expert.’
Neither Mark Weiss nor Sotheby’s would comment, while Mr Ruffini’s lawyers could not be reached. The National Gallery said: ‘Gentileschi’s David With The Head Of Goliath has until recently been on temporary loan to the National Gallery from a private lender.
‘It was part of a small display of works by the artist that came to an end last week and it has now been returned to the owner. The gallery always undertakes due diligence research on a work coming on loan as well as a technical examination.’

By Adam Luck
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​A recent report in the Financial Times predicting that the Kenyan art market is on the cusp of a boom is overstated, according to data from artnet’s Price Database.
The article reported that the gradual cultural liberalization under president Mwai Kibaki in the 2000s provoked a generation of artists to tackle more controversial and challenging subjects—both in terms of content and style, encouraging collectors’ interest.
Related: The Highs and Lows of Africa’s Art Market Bonanza
Additionally, an annual auction of east African art at the Circle Art Agency in Nairobi is reportedly fostering a market for East African art.
However, the data indicates that the Kenyan art market—which is already tiny—is in fact shrinking. Since 2005, the total volume of sales of Kenyan artists at auction has totaled only $33.9 million. Without the sales of international star artist Wangechi Mutu, that figure drops to $7.6 million.
The market peaked in 2007, at a total auction sales volume of $6.8 million. Without the sales of Mutu, that figure falls to a peak of $1.7 million, achieved in 2012.

​Since 2012, when auction sales for Kenyan artists totaled $4.3 million, the market has steadily contracted, achieving $1.7 million in 2013, $3.2 million in 2014, and $1.7 million in 2015. Halfway through 2016, the market for Kenyan artists had totaled only $465,000.
Additionally, the number of Kenyan artists trading at auction is also very small, pointing towards a serious lack of diversity in the market. In 2007, when the market peaked at $6.8 million, those numbers were achieved by the cumulative sales of only four artists: Mutu ($5.4 million), Magdalene Odundo ($1 million), Simon Combes ($259,200), and Robert Glen ($92,802). Nine years later, two of the three artists with auction sales in 2016 are the same, Mutu and Odundo--Paul Onditi is the third.
Related: 10 Black Artists to Celebrate in 2016
However, as Giles Peppiatt, an African art expert at Bonham’s, pointed out to the FT, “Just because they are not fetching £100,000 a picture does not mean they are lesser. The trouble is, everyone expects everything to follow the trajectory of Chinese contemporary art. The market has cooled distinctly since those days.”
That is certainly true, but in terms of the market, Kenya still has a lot of catching up to do if it is to become a player in the African continent.

By Henri Neuendorf

​was a Russian landscape painter. Dubovskoy was born in Novocherkassk, a province of Rostov, in 1859
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He studied from 1877 to 1881 at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg under Mikhail Konstantinovich Klodt. In 1886, he became a member of the Peredvizhniki (the Wanderers), a group of Russian painters. The Peredvizhniki was formed as an artists' cooperative. Later, it gradually evolved into the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions in 1870.
The society was formed in St. Petersburg under the leadership of Ivan Kramskoi, Grigoriy Myasoyedov, Nikolai Ge andVasily Perov. Their aim was to infuse democratic ideals in the art sphere, which was in the grips of government.[1] In 1900, he became a member of the Academy of Arts.
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​By Chris van Dijk | Gallery France
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The museum will also host a show drawing parallels between the self-portraits of Claude Cahun and Gillian Wearing
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by Hannah McGivern
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​The National Portrait Gallery in London is to stage its first exhibition of abstract works in 2017, dedicated to the unorthodox portraiture of the British painter Howard Hodgkin.

The show, Howard Hodgkin: Absent Friends (23 March-18 June 2017), focuses on an enduring yet relatively overlooked aspect of Hodgkin’s work. More than 55 works from 1949 to the present will explore “his important contribution to our understanding of what constitutes a portrait”, according to a statement from the gallery.

Hogkin’s apparently abstract paintings “represent memories and emotions rather than literal appearances”, says the exhibition’s curator, Paul Moorhouse. “But these wonderfully sensuous and often intimate images are nevertheless entirely about people.” The artist has described himself as a “representational painter”, a maker of “representational pictures of emotional situations”.
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​The gallery has also announced an exhibition of more than 100 works drawing parallels between the slippery self-portraits of the French Surrealist Claude Cahun (1894-1954) and the British photographer and video artist Gillian Wearing. Despite being born 70 years apart, both artists have played with the themes of masquerade and gender identity in their work.

The show, Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun: Behind the Mask, Another Mask (9 March-29 May 2017), “seems particularly timely” in light of the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 2017, says its curator, Sarah Howage.

The National Portrait Gallery’s spring season is sponsored by the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills.

​Works were taken from Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2002
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by Hannah McGivern
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​Anti-mafia police in Naples have recovered two Van Gogh paintings that were stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam 14 years ago. The early works, View of the Sea at Scheveningen (1882) and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (1884-85), were discovered in a house in Castellammare di Stabia, on the coast near Naples. Investigators traced the property to Raffaele Imperiale, the leader of a drug-trafficking ring of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reports.

Experts from the Italian culture ministry and a delegation from the Van Gogh Museum have confirmed that the works are genuine. They were taken by thieves who broke in through the roof of the Amsterdam institution during the early hours of 7 December 2002.

View of the Sea at Scheveningen, a stormy seascape, was painted en plein air by Van Gogh at the eponymous fishing village near the Hague, soon after he began experimenting with oils. The Dutch artist dedicated Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen to his mother and pastor father, with whom he lived in the Nuenen vicarage from 1883 to 1885.

“The outcome of this investigation confirms how interested criminal organisations are in works of art which they use both as a form of investment and a source of funds,” said the Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini in a statement.
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UPDATE: The paintings were discovered without frames and in a relatively good condition with some signs of damage, according to a statement from the Van Gogh Museum. It is not yet known when the works will return to the museum, as the criminal case is still ongoing in Italy. “We have been waiting for this moment for 14 years,” said the director of the museum, Axel Rüger. “And naturally the only thing you want is to take them straight home with you. We will have to exercise a little bit more patience, but I am convinced that we can count on the support of the Italian authorities.”

       Virginians and visitors can spend a day in the country with one of the world’s greatest Impressionist paintings.
This fall, the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, celebrates the 19th-century fascination with rural labor and countryside landscapes in a new exhibition that presents Claude Monet’s Haystacks, Late Summer, 1891, on loan from the renowned Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the world’s premier museum of Impressionist art. It will be on view alongside 21 Chrysler Collection treasures by Winslow Homer, Paul Gauguin, and Camille Pissarro, and others. The works include paintings on agricultural themes, sculptures, detailed drawings, early photographs and Impressionist masterworks known for their evocation of light. Enriching this exhibition is Vincent Van Gogh’s dramatic Wheat Field behind St. Paul’s Hospital, St. Remy, 1889, a generous loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.
The Agrarian Ideal: Monet, van Gogh, Homer, and More opens to the public in the Chrysler’s skylit Hixon Family Impressionist Gallery (G. 217) on October 7, 2016 and remains on view through January 8, 2017. Admission is free.
“We are thrilled to partner with the Musee d’Orsay to bring this Impressionist masterpiece to the Chrysler,” says Lloyd DeWitt, Chief Curator and Irene Leache Curator of European Art. “It is a perfect complement to our own collection masterworks, as is the VMFA’s van Gogh.” 
“The Chrysler frequently lends important artworks to leading museums around the world,” says Museum Director Erik Neil. “Because of the relationships we have built, we are also able to borrow world-famous paintings like the Van Gogh from Richmond and the Monet from Paris.”
While the Impressionists are famous for scenes of Paris, in the 1890s many of them departed the city for the country. As Paris had become dangerous, crowded, industrial, and expensive, many of the city’s best artists left to seek simpler subjects and an integrated life untouched by the ills of modernity.
Claude Monet relished living in Giverny, 45 miles northwest of Paris. There, he captured the effects of changing light and weather on huge stacks in the fields near his home. Farmers in this part of France regularly stored the year’s crop of wheat in stacks that they left in the field, as they had for centuries. Between July 1890 through the following spring and summer, the artist completed more than 30 paintings featuring the subject. “Creating a shimmering surface with strokes of pure paint, Monet sought to capture the instant effects of light at their most evocative,” DeWitt says of Musée d’Orsay’s acclaimed canvas from late summer 1891.
Vincent van Gogh also headed to the country for solace. His Wheat Field (from the collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts) shows the view he painted many times from his window in the psychiatric hospital in St. Rémy. DeWitt says, “With its dramatic sky, it embodies the visionary approach he developed towards the end of his life.”
On this side of the Atlantic, Winslow Homer and a number of American artists also sought out country life in the wake of the Civil War, echoing Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in Notes on Virginia: “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.”
The Agrarian Ideal: Monet, van Gogh, Homer, and More will be on view at the Chrysler Museum of Art, One Memorial Place, Norfolk, Va., from October 7, 2016 through January 8, 2017. Admission is free. For programs related to the exhibition, see chrysler.org
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​When Velázquez exhibited his portrait of Juan de Pareja at the Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon in 1650, the picture “gained such universal applause that in the opinion of all the painters of different nations, everything else seemed like painting, but this alone like truth.” I love Velázquez for this rare quality: the ability to transcend his medium, even while using it so sublimely. One doesn’t often encounter this ability, but we are fortunate in New York to have several examples of it. Among my very favorites is Repin’s portrait of the short story writer Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin.

There are many paintings that painstakingly record the details of their subject, missing nothing except what is most important, the life, the truth about the subject. To do this an artist needs to be able to select, to perceive what is important and what is not, and to record it accordingly—beautifully. Art is a thing of the mind, not of the hand. This is why I love this portrait so very much; it reflects the painter’s mind while embodying the soul of its subject.To a viewer who is unfamiliar with the work of the great Russian painter Ilia Repin (1844–1930), this probing portrait of Garshin may appear photographic, especially in a small black and white reproduction. I assure you, it is wonderfully painted. It is the rare type of canvas that loses its self-consciousness as a painting, while retaining the sensuality of the paint. Repin’s painterly technique does not obtrude upon the subject; the artist’s hand is evident, but not distracting. He is like a musician who allows you to experience the music first, though you are quite aware that the music cannot exist exclusive of the musician, or his notes. He tastefully does not draw attention to his technique, as Giovanni Boldini so often did to his detriment. The brush is used in service of the subject, beautifully descriptive and probing, capturing what is essential to the subject with an economy of means. Repin is not merely a mirror that reflects; he is an artist before nature, selecting and distilling the very essence of his subject. Garshin’s intense gaze, so compelling and so alive, is more than paint on canvas; it is the visual perception of another living soul. This is not the mindless visual description of a man. This painting retains the integrity of the individual. It is far beyond description; it is art.
Repin is a painter’s painter as well. Observe the play of brushstrokes that make up the books, papers, and desk. Repin loves his brush strokes, but he knows their place in a painting. When one sees a Repin, one sees a visual feast of strokes, texture, color, and design. This particular painting has a very straightforward design that is appropriate for its subject. Anyone familiar with Repin’s Zaporozhye Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan (1880–81) is aware of the scale of Repin’s tremendous compositional abilities. Unfortunately, there are precious few paintings of his in this country. We are fortunate enough to have this remarkable portrait at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the gallery where it hangs, you will see many paintings, but in Repin alone will you see truth.

BY JAMES HARRINGTON
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​By Alexander Forbes
Mar 11th, 2016

​The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) released the 2016 edition of its annual report on the state of the art market on Wednesday. Compiled once again by cultural economist Dr. Clare McAndrew, the report confirms suspicions of a downturn in the international art market. But it also identifies positive indicators for certain sub-sectors of the market. Here are the 10 things you need to know.
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​Globally, sales of art were down 7% to $63.8 billion in 2015, compared to $68.2 billion in 2014. The amount of art transactions also decreased to 38.1 million, a 2% contraction. This will come as little surprise to anyone who has been watching headlines in recent months—in the art press, the pervading narrative has been one of a slowdown in the art market. Data began to trickle in to confirm this in recent weeks, as Sotheby’s reported a fourth quarter loss of $11.2 million and predicted a significant drop in sales in the first half of 2016 compared to last year. Meanwhile, a downturn in the macroeconomy—especially in key emerging markets like China and Brazil, which began to play out in the second half of last year—has led to jitters about the overall business climate in 2016. Though some headlines might suggest the art market is crumbling before our eyes, one would be advised to take pause. The rocket ship grown in the art market was not sustainable. Cyclical contractions are natural, healthy even, for both the global economy and the art market alike.
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​$27.3 billion-worth of art was sold in the U.S. last year, a 4% increase over 2014. That is a smaller increase than the 10% year-over-year growth that was recorded from 2013 to 2014, but amid a landscape in which sales in every other major market center declined, the U.S. market is arguably at its most dominant global position in history. It was responsible for a 43% share of total sales of art by value in 2015, which is more than double the share of its next-biggest rival, the U.K., where sales contracted by 9% to $13.5 billion for a 21% stake in the global art trade.
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​The U.K. firmly became the second biggest art-market center last year thanks to a staggering decline in sales in China. Previously the world’s second largest market for art, China experienced a 23% decline in art sales in 2015, dropping to $11.8 billion. Its share of the global market declined by 3%, from 22% to 19%. The Chinese art market had contracted by 0.05% in 2014, a year which also marked the country’s slowest year of economic growth of the previous 24. Last year was worse, with estimates ranging from the officially reported 7% to as low as 1%. Trading on the Shanghai stock exchange was suspended multiple times throughout the year, when multiple sell-offs resulted in declines of the exchange’s value within a single trading session over the allowed threshold. Meanwhile, president Xi Jinping increased crackdowns on so-called elegant bribery, in which luxury goods and artworks are used to curry favor with officials, in perhaps the most significant blow to the mainland’s middle market.
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​The art market got increasingly top-heavy in 2015, with 57% of all auction sales coming from works sold for over $1 million. That’s 9% more than the 48% of auction value derived from seven figure-plus works (measured in euros) in 2014, and it represents less than 1% of all transactions. Works over $10 million represented 28% of the total value generated from sales in 2015. That ultra-high-end segment of the market was the only value segment to grow in 2015—it was up 19%—thanks in no small part to several record-breaking sales. Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’) (1955) sold for $179 million at Christie’s New York in May to break the auction record for any painting and Modigliani’s Nu Couché (1917-18) sold for $170.4 million from Christie’s November sale
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​While modern art is the second most popular market segment, representing 30% of all works sold in 2015, it outperformed its competitors, only falling by 1% in overall value, to $4.5 billion. That value was more concentrated—20% fewer works were sold in 2015—but this jibes with past performance during economic contractions. Post-war and contemporary artworks saw record growth during the boom times, thanks to, among other things, a trend of new collectors speculating on young painters in hopes of achieving a high return. But as jitters hit the global economy, the world’s wealthy tend to turn towards alternative assets that are seen as more consistent stores of value, modern artworks being prime among them.
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Nearly half of all value generated from the sale of art in 2015—46%, down 2% from 2014—was from the post-war and contemporary art sector. Those sales represented 41% of the total volume of works sold last year. The post-war and contemporary art auction sales results are particularly interesting. A 14% drop was registered in auction sales, with $6.8 billion in post-war and contemporary artworks sold. That value was derived from 20% fewer lots than the year previous as well. While there are certainly numerous contributing factors to this decline, it could suggest that the fervent speculative interest in young painters has diminished and that the owners of those works, when trading them, are doing so privately. Dealers do not want similar works by young artists selling at auction for less than the previous high price. And thus, for contemporary art, the gallery backroom likely trumped the saleroom last year.
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Fighting the general trend, 4% more works by Old Masters sold at auction in 2015 than in 2014. However, the sector also saw the steepest decline in value, at 33%. That can likely be mapped to a continued generational trend away from the sector. The report cites “particularly strong” private sales of Old Masters in 2015, speaking to the continued discretion of the collectors of these works.
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Across the entire art market, perhaps the most encouraging data point is that of the online art market, which grew by a significant 7% for a total $4.7 billion in trade during 2015. Sales of art online now represent 7% of the overall value of art sales, up 1% from last year. There are several possible conclusions: A greater number of existing collectors are buying art online or are buying more expensive works online, and/or new collectors and art buyers are entering the market through these less intimidating and more seamless marketplaces. Data suggests it’s some combination of the two.
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Sales made on the auction house floor accounted for 47% of total value generated in the art market in 2015. All other sales—private sales conducted by auction houses as well as sales by galleries and dealers—made up the remaining 53%. Those numbers are more or less on par with the previous year, despite auction houses citing the private sales side of their business as an increasingly key site for future growth. For galleries, fair sales contributed to a steady 40% of their total revenue, a figure that suggests any lagging sales reported at fairs this year and last are a function of macroeconomic shifts, rather than any decreased interest from collectors in engaging in art fairs.
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​Across the art trade, dealers and auction houses spent 3% more on so-called supportive services ($17.8 billion) to conduct business last year. A portion of that can be attributed to inflation, one would assume. But it also raises an interesting question: How much more would have to be spent in order to keep the art market stable if the economy declines?
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The new Museum Voorlinden near the Dutch North Sea coast opened on Sept. 11

to showcase the impressive collection of modern and contemporary art assembled by wealthy Dutch industrialist Joop van Caldenborgh.
Among the highlights is Richard Serra’s 216-ton steel sculpture Open Ended which is on permanent display.
The setting in Wassenaar, The Netherlands, is also a draw for its landscaped gardens near the forested dunes outside The Hague. The museum is led by Wim Pijbes who left the prestigious Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to head Voorlinden.
Through January 8, 2017, Ellsworth Kelly Anthology is a stunning assemblage of works by Ellsworth Kelly (1923 – 2015), the American hard edge and minimalist painter, illustrator and sculptor. The selection consists of 80 works, including paintings, drawings and collages, that were chosen in close cooperation with the artist himself and the Ellsworth Kelly Studio before the artist passed away at the end of 2015.
Also on view, the first Museum Voorlinden collection presentation titled 'Full Moon' highlights a range of works across periods, from the 1912 landscape painting Maannacht IV [moonnight] by Jan Sluijters (1881-1957) to a three-legged table bycontemporary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

​At Christie’s over the last few weeks, two experts in old master paintings and drawings quietly left the auction house.
Their departures followed a year of spotty sales, in which the values of works by old masters — a pantheon of European painters working before around 1800 — fell by 33 percent, according to the 2016 Tefaf Art Market Report.
At a time when contemporary art is all the rage among collectors, viewers and donors, many experts are questioning whether old master artwork — once the most coveted — can stay relevant at auction houses, galleries and museums.
Having struggled with shrinking inventory and elusive profits, auction houses appear to be devoting most of their attention and resources to contemporary art, the most popular area of their business.
“They want to be associated with the new and the now,” said Edward Dolman, chairman and chief executive of Phillips auction house, who spent much of his career at Christie’s chasing works by old masters but now focuses on contemporary art.
“We have no intention of selling old masters pictures or 18th-, 19th-century pictures, because these markets are now so small and dwindling,” he added. “The new client base at the auction houses — and the collecting tastes of those clients — have moved away from this veneration of the past.”
A shortage of old master treasures, fewer up-and-coming old master specialists and public attention on the highest-selling pictures (which are in the contemporary market) are partly responsible for the shift in emphasis.
The London dealer Guy Sainty, who has long specialized in old masters, said that he is mystified and frustrated. “I’ve been an art dealer for nearly 40 years, and I just don’t get it — I don’t understand where the collectors have gone, the people with knowledge,” he said. "There’s a sense somewhere that the American collector has simply lost interest in European culture.”
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​​The old masters category generally denotes the period after the Renaissance and mostly describes European artists — including Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Goya and El Greco — who were known for their highly detailed, realistic paintings and drawings, along with the floral still lifes of Flemishmasters like Jan Brueghel the Elder.
To be sure, there is still a public appetite for viewing old masters. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s show “Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France,” for example, drew more than 165,000 visitors. The Getty and the Frick Collection, which focus on historic works, say attendance remains strong.
When prime masterworks do come up for auction, they perform well, as evidenced by the $58 million paid in July for Peter Paul Rubens’s “Lot and His Daughters” at Christie’s London’s old masters sale, the second-most expensive work ever sold at auction by the artist.
But masterpieces surface only rarely; private owners tend to hold onto them, as do museums. “It’s a real supply problem,” Mr. Dolman said.
An appreciation for old masters, experts say, also requires a deeper history of collecting and an educated eye. Christie’s, for example, trains its old master specialists for six to seven years, whereas its contemporary experts get three to four years. And new collectors tend to find contemporary art more accessible.

“People who buy into the old master field have more connoisseurship — maybe more passion,” said Christophe Van de Weghe, a Madison Avenue dealer specializing in blue-chip work by modern masters from Matisse to Basquiat.
Some attribute the increasing interest in contemporary art to the rising popularity of contemporary architecture. “People who come into the contemporary field like colors that go well with their couches,” Mr. Van de Weghe said.
“All these new buildings — with high ceilings, big windows,” he added, “they scream for contemporary art.”

​Old master curators are also increasingly hard to come by. In university art history programs in the United States, contemporary art is “by far, the most popular,” reports Richard Meyer, an art history professor at Stanford University, in his book “What Was Contemporary Art?”
“We’re losing a sense of the value of the past, including the value of past art,” Mr. Meyer said in an interview, “not just the aesthetic value, but the ways in which it can teach us about the cultures and the people who came before us.”

To fill curatorial positions, museums are having to look to Europe. The Getty, for example, recently hired Davide Gasparotto — the former director of the Galleria Estense in Modena, Italy — as its senior curator of paintings.
“You can’t find curators with the right training and knowledge of European art in American art graduate programs anymore,” Mr. Sainty said. “They want to do contemporary art.”

While acknowledging that the old masters market can be “very spiky,” Alexander Bell, the worldwide co-chairman of Sotheby’s old master paintings department, said: “We still very much believe in old masters,” adding that “we’ve all got to evolve in the way we present our material and engage with our clients.”

The art world is making adjustments, juxtaposing old masters alongside contemporary artists in exhibitions, galleries, art fairs and auction sales. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is planning a $600 million wing for contemporary and modern art; in March, it filled its temporary satellite, the Met Breuer, with unfinished works from the 15th century to the present, presenting Renaissance masters like Titian and Rembrandt alongside contemporary artists like Brice Marden and Kerry James Marshall.

Last year, the museum started an online series called “The Artist Project,” in which contemporary artists talk about historical works at the Met that inspired them — like John Currin on Ludovico Carracci’s 1582 oil on canvas, “The Lamentation.”
“When you hear contemporary artists talking with passion about the genius of old masters — that, we assume, will help open up the historical fields to new audiences,” Thomas P. Campbell, the director and chief executive of the Met, said, “to understand that all art was once contemporary.”

Similarly, the Art Institute of Chicago’s recent show of old master portrait prints explored how artists like van Dyck influenced contemporary artists like Chuck Close. “We brought printmaking into the present,” said James Rondeau, the museum’s president and director.
This mixing of genres has been prominently tested at Christie’s themed sales, which include works from many different time periods.

Perhaps they would rather put their resources into other, potentially more profitable departments,” said Nicholas Hall, the former co-chairman of old master paintings at Christie’s, who left in July, along with Benjamin Peronnet, Christie’s head of old master and 19th-century drawings.
While the Frick is eager to reach today’s audience, the museum is also wary of straying from its mission of showing classic European art and sculpture.

“A lot of museums are focused on a false dichotomy — if they get young people in through contemporary exhibitions they’ll stay and get interested in old masters,” said Ian Wardropper, the Frick’s director. “I just don’t believe it. The point is to try to reach them in an intelligent way on their own terms and make it interesting — and that’s not easy; we’re all struggling with that.”

In light of these developments, old masters have become a collecting opportunity. Printings and engravings can go for $4,000 to $5,000. While Orazio Gentileschi’s 17th-century “Danae” sold at Sotheby’s in January for $30.5 million, “that is less than a Christopher Wool and half the price of a Warhol,” Mr. Sainty said. “You can buy a really good Rembrandt for $40 to $50 million. That’s not a lot of money when you think about how many Rembrandts there are — and how many Jeff Koons.”
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