Hello

Emily

I achieved a first-class honours degree in English Language and Literature at Oxford University; it was a subject that I enjoyed immensely, but I had also long nurtured an equivalent love of art and invariably I would try to find ways to shoehorn images and references to art into my essays, sometimes testing the tolerance of my tutors.

I went on to gain a Masters in the History of Art at The Courtauld Institute, specialising in the painting that emerged in Paris, London and New York in the period 1880-1940. I wrote my dissertation on the bombshell impact made by The Armory Show in 1913, focusing on the controversy that surrounded Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2 and how the movement of images of it, through newspaper reproductions, caricatures and postcards mailed across the country, created a sensation that was to shape the reception of Modern Art in the USA at the time and  in the decades that followed.

I joined the auction house Christie’s in 2022 and now work as Senior Object Intelligence Researcher within the Impressionist and Modern Department in London. As the title suggests, it is my job to research and assess information about high-value art objects and to maintain and manage the database compiling their details, in support of colleagues who need access to this knowledge. I also help facilitate strategy by analysing art market intelligence for potential sales, consignments and acquisitions. I have been privileged to collaborate with major institutions, helping with artwork loans to landmark exhibitions, most recently The National Gallery’s Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers and The Courtauld’s Monet and London. Views of the Thames. From time to time, specialists will ask me to help them draft lot essays on individual artworks for sale and it is this service that has inspired the creation of this blog.

Finding myself at liberty to offer my thoughts on any artist or artwork in this blog, I will venture beyond the commercial considerations of my day job and will present readers with what I hope they will find to be informative, entertaining and thought-provoking insights – any cross-pollination between my work and my writing will be incidental!

I hope you enjoy our posts and we welcome any feedback.

Alan

I recently retired as a company director and now have the time and freedom to indulge my passion for writing, for art history and art appreciation. Its a pure joy to collaborate with Emily; we will share in everything from choice of subject to editing and to the swapping of ideas and of course the writing. We will range across works and artists that mean something to us, some of which will be familiar but others less so, but which all merit a closer look in our view.