Here at Hallett we’ve been huge supporters of this event and every year sponsor the Acquisition Award for Museums and Galleries.

Director Clare Pardy has this year been given the prestigious task of picking her top ten pieces from the Fair, which showcases artwork including old and modern masters, from Rembrandt and Canaletto to Whistler, Matisse and Picasso.

Clare says: “Although I was enormously disappointed like the rest of the Fair’s loyal supporters, I must admit that I have loved trawling the virtual show especially having been given the task of choosing ten favourites. As well old favourites, I did find myself attracted to images that chime with this extraordinary period we are living through.”

Click here to find out which ten pieces Clare chose from the collection

The following interview with Hallett Independent’s Associate Director Clare Pardy is kindly supplied by Plowden & Smith – painting, fine art and furniture restorers

In the wake of the devastating effects of Storm Dennis, and the news that over 1,650 homes across the UK have been flooded, we revisit an interview with Clare Pardy, Associate Director at Hallett Independent, where she discuss a 2019 flood in the South London home she shares with her husband Stephen.

The flood saw 85 gallons of water pass through Clare and Stephen’s Georgian house, causing substantial damage to the interiors and the furniture.

Clare and Stephen saw the benefit of having their insurance arranged through a specialist broker, Clare’s own firm, Hallett Independent and an expert insurer, AXA XL, which resulted in the smooth running of their claim from start to finish.‍

Interview with Sarah Giles, Director – Business Development

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SG‍

I understand you were on holiday and came home to discover your house had been flooded.‍

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CP‍

Yes, we had been in Berlin but luckily, we live next door to a pub and one of the regulars spotted water streaming down the inside of our first-floor drawing room window. He alerted the pub landlady who had our mobile number and rang us. We were at Cologne station, returning to London by train. We then contacted another neighbour (also the Chair of the Resident’s Committee and a real force of nature!) who immediately set to work with buckets and towels, turned off the water and called an emergency plumber who established the cause as a cracked cistern in the second-floor bathroom.‍

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SG‍

It sounds as if you were very lucky and have great neighbours!‍

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CP‍

Yes, we were and we do. A lot of people think that if you live in central London nobody knows their neighbours, but our square is very different, and we were enormously grateful.‍

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SG‍

So how much damage was actually done?‍

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CP‍

Well my husband calculated that 85 gallons went through the house which is pretty alarming. However, luckily, our guest bedroom is located immediately below the bathroom with the cracked cistern and it seems that the bed absorbed an enormous amount of the water. Although we have pictures on every wall, amazingly only one small etching got water damaged, and all our books escaped unscathed which again, we were astonished at.‍

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SG‍

Some of your furniture was, however, damaged?‍

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CP‍

Yes, a Regency demi-lune card table, an early 18th Century side table and a couple of leather armchairs were damaged, which is why I contacted Plowden & Smith.‍

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SG‍

Why did you choose Plowden & Smith?‍

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CP‍

Well, I have known and worked with Plowden & Smith for over 20 years in a professional capacity and I have seen the work that they have done for many clients over the years.

Our furniture isn’t particularly fine in an antique sense, but it is of its period and both my husband and I were very keen that items were not over-restored and that the patina was respected. The specialists who came to pick the items up immediately understood this, and we knew from the outset that we were in safe hands.

The armchairs (pictured below) had been designed by Stephen and handmade by an old and established firm of furniture makers in the East End and it was important that the calf leather that was used for the re-upholstery had the right feel. Plowden & Smith sent us some examples so we could agree on exactly the right colour and weight.‍

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SG‍

Were you tempted to move out and leave them all to it?‍

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CP‍

Not really, I know a lot of people do in those circumstances, but we felt it was important to be involved. When we bought the house in the 1990s, it was very unloved and had been given the 1970s treatment so we spent a number of years replacing windows, installing panelling, shutters and fireplaces and we were keen to ensure that the period feel we had so painstakingly achieved was not compromised.

Ironically, a friend who is a professional interiors photographer, had asked us whether he could photograph the house a year or so before the cistern went and there had been a big spread in English Home, which only came out a couple of months after the flood. This turned out to be very helpful as we were able to show the loss adjuster the photographs as a way of explaining what we wanted to achieve.

We have been so lucky because everything has gone according to plan and as someone who has been a specialist art and high net worth insurer for almost 40 years, I know that this is not always the case.

I have spent my whole career telling potential clients how important it is to appoint a specialist broker and insurer and it is rather gratifying to demonstrate from a personal perspective the wisdom of this advice!!

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Find out more about our household and private collections insurance: www.hallettindependent.com/households-and-private-collectors

Like many people, I seized the opportunity to visit both permanent collections and selected exhibitions in the brief Summer window between lockdowns. With more talk of museums struggling to survive the disastrous effects of the pandemic, in spite of what was seen as generous Government funding, these sorties now seem even more precious. While the lockdown brought out the extraordinary inventiveness of these beloved institutions to adapt, providing as they did, opportunities to view exhibitions, enjoy curatorial tours and lectures and participate in webinars, the limited re-opening underlined the very special experience of seeing an exhibition in situ.

When we were officially released at the beginning of July, I must admit to feeling a certain amount of anxiety about exposing myself to fellow exhibition goers, however well managed, and even the logistics of getting to the shows was intimidating. But I had been booked to see the Young Rembrandt at the Ashmolean earlier in the year so when it re-opened I was determined to go.

Through the years, I have seen Rembrandt themed in a number of exhibitions. Pitted against and compared with Caravaggio, in the Van Gogh museum back in 2006, the glorious late works at the National Gallery in 2016, the etchings in 2017 at Norwich Castle Museum, last year’s show at the Rijksmuseum and now, the Young Rembrandt at the Ashmolean. The very fact that he can be endlessly re-examined and subjected to continual curatorial scrutiny highlights for me, the depth and richness of his oeuvre and his unique place in art history.

The Ashmolean show was rather poignant not only because the young Dutch curator had worked so hard to bring it to fruition only to see it close within days of opening, but also what it revealed of Rembrandt’s early struggles. It showed rarely exhibited early works, starting in 1624, in which the draughtsmanship is quite clumsy and hesitant and where the faces are almost caricatured. It sees him working in tandem with Jan Lievens whom the curator describes as being the more naturally gifted artist, and how he becomes more assured, developing a repertoire of facial expressions through multiple studies of his own face. By the conclusion of the exhibition in 1634, the year he marries Saskia and is admitted to Amsterdam’s Painters Guild, he is in full possession of many of the skills and painterly techniques we associate with him. As well as, most endearingly for me, his full dressing up box of turbans, armour and rich velvets which will feature in so many of his most famous pictures.

On a brief visit to Cumbria at the end of September, we stopped off at the Hepworth, Wakefield which is another favourite museum, to see an exhibition devoted to Bill Brandt and Henry Moore. The two men met for the first time when Brandt was commissioned by Lilliput Magazine to photograph Moore in his studio. The exhibition charts the many parallels in the artists’ lives and work over five decades. Starting with Brandt’s recording of industrial and coal mining areas of Northern England as part of the Mass Observation project which mirrors Moore’s enormously touching studies of men in the Castleford mine where his father had worked. It moves on to their individual treatment of the underground shelters during the second world war. Tellingly, Moore was reluctant to record individuals in his studies feeling that it was too intrusive and so his extraordinarily beautiful renderings in chalk, wash and gouache have a haunting universality. Brandt on the other hand, records civilians as they slept with the objective, anthropological eye of the photographer. Interestingly, a portfolio of his works was sent to the U.S President Franklin D. Roosevelt to show the spirit of Londoners during the Blitz.

From these works, the show proceeds to explore both artists’ interest in the ancient sites of Avebury and Stonehenge, in found objects such as the weathered flotsam from beaches in Sussex and concluding with their individual takes on the human form. The curator is particularly interested in the way in which photography and sculpture overlap and inform each other and this is demonstrated in the juxtaposition of Brandt’s abstract female forms and Moore’s monumental sculptures in wood and bronze. One of the highlights for me was a marvellous tapestry which Moore commissioned forty years after the original work. Entitled ‘Row of Sleepers’ it is on an epic scale and is a fitting climax to a great show. For those who missed it, the exhibition is scheduled to be shown in the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich in the new year.

The last of my outings was a visit to the National Gallery and its much talked about Artemisia Gentileschi blockbuster. Inevitably, when exhibitions are so lauded, they can end up being a disappointment but this really exceeded all my expectations. These are pictures that command your attention with all their colour, drama and violence. Her skill as a painter is evident from the early age of 17 and there is an audacious operatic quality which some critics have compared to the films of Martin Scorsese. As there were only 30 works in total, the hang was generously spaced allowing each picture to be enjoyed on its own terms.

The circumstances of Gentileschi’s life are extraordinary even by the standards of her time and details of her rape and subsequent trial are illustrated with original documents which go some way to explain the particular stories and themes she repeatedly explores. In both Susannah and the Elders and Judith and Holofernes, we see her examining the dynamics of the relationship and bringing a freshness and immediacy to each interpretation, often tracing over one picture to create another – a practice much used by Caravaggio.

The other striking element was the way in which she used her own face again and again, posing as Susannah, Judith or Cleopatra as well as in the self portraits as St Catherine or simply in her real-life role as artist. Although the cost of models was a very real and practical reason for resorting to her own face and was, for this reason common practice, it brought to mind 20th Century women artists like Cindy Sherman and indeed Frida Kahlo whose life was similarly traumatic.

Hallett Independent is an art insurance broker for galleries, museums and private collectors. Get in touch to discuss your art insurance needs

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Image caption: Portrait of an Old Man, Rembrandt © Ashmolean Museum

But this ignores the fact that antique values are dynamic and change according to prevailing tastes. There are inevitably many categories of art which are not as sought after now as they were say 30 years ago. Notable amongst these and often cited are so-called brown furniture and Victorian pictures by minor artists – precisely the sort of thing that many people have inherited. On the other hand, we all read about the inherited Chinese vase stored for years in a kitchen cupboard or used as an umbrella stand that turns out to be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds

How This Can Affect Your Insurance Policy

Your insurers will have agreed your policy cover based on the information disclosed to them at the time of inception and on the basis of you having an alarm with remote signalling which is maintained under a contract.  If changes are to be made to your alarm system, you must inform your insurance company of those changes so they can agree them and approve the new system.

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What You Need To Do

If you are an existing Redcare client, it is imperative that you contact your alarm system provider to ensure that an alternative and appropriate replacement can be installed before the 1^st August 2025 and that remote signalling will continue uninterrupted. Alarm providers are expecting a surge in demand and installation capacity may be in short supply, so do not delay.

The replacement to consider should comply to the latest “DP3” (dual path) Grade as being the most appropriate.

Please contact us if you have any questions about your current insurance obligations and/or the alternative system suggested by your alarm company and we will check it with your insurers.

*Your alarm installer must have an NSI or SSAIB accreditation in order for your alarm to qualify for a policy response.

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What Happens If You Do Nothing

If you do not arrange for your alarm signalling to continue uninterrupted and your cover is based on remote signalling being in place, you are not meeting your policy conditions and are jeopardising any claim for theft or fire, as insurers are within their rights to reject such a claim.

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Click here to find out more here

Cold-Cast bronzing has been around since the early 1960s but with the selling opportunities offered by the internet and eBay, additional techniques have been adopted to mimic real bronze more convincingly. It is widely agreed however that the term cold-cast is misleading as the process involving a mix of resin and bronze powder requires none of the skill involved in making and casting sculpture in bronze.

There are ways to tell if a bronze sculpture is real but inevitably they do involve seeing, touching and examining the sculpture which cannot be done online. They are:

Sound – tap the sculpture with a solid object like a wedding ring. The real thing produces a clear, resonant sound. Resin produces a dull thud or plastic sound.

Weight – bronze is generally heavy. If a piece feels unnaturally light it is likely to be wrong.

Colour and patina – bronze will have a deeper colour with a patina created by exposure to air and moisture. Fakes may show signs of artificial patination and can flake or chip.

Details and quality – real bronze is cast hollow and a scratch will reveal shiny bronze beneath and genuine bronzes are also usually meticulously crafted with intricate details and a high level of artistry.

Signature and Foundry markings – these can be a way to verify the authenticity.

In the light of the rise in the marketing of resin bronzes, DACS is hoping to revive a project to register genuine bronzes.