Provenance is all

PROVENANCE, as I have often mentioned here, is one of the elements that must be taken into consideration when a cataloguer is setting the estimates for a work of art. To see the name Hirsch in a list of owners catches the attention, even when it refers not to Robert von Hirsch (1883–1977), the sale of whose collections at Sotheby’s was the sensation of 1978, but to the unrelated Leopold (1857-1932), with no ‘von’.

However, Leopold was also an interesting collector, who had arrived in London with only £5 to his name and ended up with a house in ‘Millionaires’ Row’, otherwise Kensingtonby the ‘Master of the Embroidered Foliage’, who was active in Brussels between 1480 and 1510. The name was coined by Max Friedländer in 1926 because the points of light on his foliage resemble tapestry stitching. Most paintings attributed to him are after Madonnas by Rogier van der Weyden, but this derives from an altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes. In Leopold’s 1934 Christie’s sale, it made £819; now, at Bonhams, it reached £806,700.