'Any other business' used to appear as the last item on any Agenda when I went to formal Board Meetings. A sort of omnium gatherum of anything anyone wanted to raise or discuss. This is the Personal Section, with occasional articles about art business, values, gossip and many of the related matters that the art world talks about. It is almost another web site. If you prefer to stay with the works of art you can do so by clicking on BACK or on Home Page or Alphabetical List below and at the end of each section
There is a short history of the firm, with pictures of the present and former principals (father to son) and their galleries.
We have been privileged to sell our paintings and works of art to a great diversity of people, some of whom have become good friends. We have also sold to museums and public institutions, so we have listed most of these. We also offer appraisals & valuations for insurance, inheritance or family division. A number of the difficult criteria used in these appraisals, the problems of attribution and appreciation as well as more light-hearted matters are discussed in what I have called a series of remarks and topics about collectors and dealers about these subjects. Effectively this section forms a group of essays on more and less related subjects of great interest. There are also notes on visits to galleries and what we think of the art world that we inhabit. We are also privileged and proud to include an important series of essays from an eminent specialist conservator on the construction, care and conservation of paintings .
There is a section for desiderata, which may include not only requests by clients but in certain cases also perhaps lost, stolen or strayed items. (But note that another organisation on the net covers stolen art systematically and that is not our function.)
We started with a news page but we have not found that it was very popular, so of late we have rather neglected, if not quite abandoned it. When we opened this site in 1997 not many people were using the web but with the rise of Internet activity everyone now has other sources of news. But sometimes we may pick up a bit of rumour that is worth retailing so it might still be worth a quick click and BACK to see if anything worthwhile has been said. Sometimes we may give our own especially biased view of an Antique Fair.
I have included a literary section and also allowed a friend of mine to publish some stories on this site. They have a tangential relevance in that some of the protagonists were clients or what the French call marchands amateurs. I found these slightly salacious stories sufficiently amusing to be worth recording for him.
Finally to lower the tone a bit, there are all manner of peripheral matters, which naturally garrulous art-dealers may add and which might or might not be of interest or amusement.
If you get bored from here or any page you can always press the Back button or
Return to Home Page? or Alphabetical List to look at art.
And you can contact us by e-mail: info@wengraf.com
We are glad also to give Acknowledgements and thanks