Art | featured news

In one of the most significant gifts in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon Leonard A. Lauder has promised the institution his collection of 78 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures.

Vladimir Tretchikoff's original painting of the Chinese Girl, believed to be the world's most reproduced print, sells at auction for £982,050, around twice its anticipated sale price.

A mystery portrait donated to a British heritage charity as part of a mixed lot of paintings has been identified as a work by Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn -- worth more than $30 million.

The FBI said Monday it believes it knows who was behind one of the most significant art heists in the United States -- the 1990 theft of 13 precious works, once valued at $500 million, from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

The first official portrait of Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, has been unveiled at London's National Portrait Gallery -- but has met with a mixed reaction from art critics and the public. Award-winning artist Paul Emsley, who spent three-and-a-half months painting the Duchess's likeness, said he had tried to portray her warmth and personality in the picture.

One of the most significant drawings by Italian master Raphael in private hands has sold for 29.7 million pounds ($47.8 million) in London, smashing pre-sale estimates for the black chalk work....

Going once, going twice ... sold for $43 million. Wednesday night in New York City, Christie's auctioned off Claude Monet's "Nympheas" and two other paintings inherited by the Hackley School for a combined total of more than $50 million.

On Tuesday, the art world reeled after the theft of seven valuable paintings from the Kunsthal gallery in Rotterdam. Before dawn, thieves broke into the museum and, in five minutes, made off with famous works by the likes of Picasso, Monet and Matisse.

A 1932 portrait by Pablo Picasso of his young lover and a pioneering 3-D Andy Warhol painting of the Statue of Liberty are expected to sell for at least $35 million each, but could fetch much more when they are auctioned next month.

The lore of the landscape was as irresistible to its owner as its beautiful brush strokes: Renoir had painted it, Baltimore collector Saidie May said, for his mistress on a linen napkin at a Paris restaurant along the Seine.