CHRISTOPHER BISHOP FINE ART

Christopher Bishop has emerged as one of the best young eyes in the field in the past decade. Specializing in Old Master Drawings, he has gained a reputation during this period for important new discoveries. His keen understanding of historical materials and styles has allowed him to uncover an uncanny number of sleepers in the auction houses and private collections of America and Europe. Honed during his years crisscrossing New England to find fresh works, his nose for important, forgotten works is an extension of his study of 17th and 18th century Italian and French art at Yale. Part art of memory, part perseverance, the connoisseurship which he practices is a learned skill reinforced through repetition and discipline.

In January 2012, Bishop was scanning through auction catalogues when an early painting caught his eye. Mislabeled as a Dutch painting of the 18th century, the work was in actuality an important 17th century painting by the eminent Italian Baroque painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591-1666), known as il Guercino (“The Squinter”). Bishop embarked on the diligent research that would eventually allow him to prove that this painting, Aurora, although previously unpublished, was the same one that appeared in the account books of the Barbieri family as having been commissioned in 1662. This journey was longer and more arduous, but also more rewarding than he imagined. 

Seven years later, Bishop was reviewing a major auction catalogue when the eyes of Aurora again looked back at him from a drawing. In one fateful moment, he had the unimpeachable evidence he needed to tell his story.  At last, the key to a full understanding of the history of the painting was revealed. This highly finished preparatory drawing for the painting was once in the collection of Giuseppe Vallardi (1784-1863) who had direct access to the drawings that passed to the descendants of Guercino. Bishop was able to reunite the drawing with the painting for the first time in over 350 years, cementing his reputation for important discoveries corroborated by careful scholarship. His finding resulted the exhibition with which Bishop opened his New York gallery in October 2019.

The roots of the Guercino project can be identified in the love of close observation of paintings, which Bishop first acquired in his classes in the museums of Berlin during his undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago. Learning later not only from his teachers at Yale, but from his restorers and art dealer colleagues, his experiences over the years reinforced the idea that every work of art has a story to tell if we are only patient enough to listen.

His very first discovery, made in 2005, was a highly unusual and dramatic drawing by Pierre Monier (1641-1703). Appropriately, the drawing fit right into Bishop’s primary specialty of 17th century French art. Depicting the fearsome Medea arriving on her dragon chariot to slay her children, the drawing is a tour de force of the study of ancient statuary. Working from an old inscription, Bishop was able to identify the original context of the drawing, which must have been executed while Monier was a student at the Académie de Rome. Bishop sold the drawing to the Yale University Art Museum, where it will be studied by the students for generations.

Early in his career, Bishop had a chance to prove his skills again when he was sent by a dealer to look at an important Italian painting at auction in Virginia in 2006. While the focus of a number of European dealers remained squarely on this painting, much to his surprise he found an overlooked drawing in the corner of a back room. It was labeled “Honthorst” for Gerrit van Honthorst (1592-1656). As the auction began, he wondered if the other dealers who had traveled to Virginia had spotted the drawing. When the crowd dispersed after the sale of the painting, Bishop was able to scoop up the drawing for a bargain price. The drawing turned out to be the previously unknown The Idolatry of Solomon (c. 1625) – one of less than 75 known drawings by the artist. It was sold through Sotheby’s for $90,000 to a private collector and is now in collection of the Louvre Museum. 

In 2013, Bishop identified an important unpublished drawing by Federico Barocci (1533-1612) in a private English collection. The drawing, Study for the Head of Saint Dominic (c. 1589-93), is preparatory for a painting in Italy’s Marche region, The Madonna of the Rosary,  at the Pinacoteca Diocesana in Senegallia. For the first time, this to-scale pastel study of a head on blue paper granted scholars crucial insights into the process of creation of this important painting. At the symposium that accompanied a major Barocci exhibition at the Saint Louis Art Museum in 2014, Bishop was able to examine the drawing side-by-side with the painting along with the top scholars in the field. The drawing then passed into a private New York collection and is now a promised gift to the Frick Collection. 

Among his major sales are an exceptionally large and important drawing by the leading 16th century painter Paolo Farinati. Saint Anthony of Padua (c. 1595) is, in fact, twice the size of the related drawing in the Louvre. A drawing by one of the most important Roman sculptors of the 17th century, Alesandro Algardi, was placed in a prominent private collection in 2018. The magnificent Design for a Reliquary with Two Supporting Angels for Pope Innocent X presents a prime example of Algardi’s sculptural imagination made for the new Pamphili Pope. The monumental drawing was an important addition to the known work of Algardi. In the same year, Bishop published a major monograph on the 16th century Mannerist artist Jacopo Pontormo and his drawings for the Villa Castello outside of Florence. 

Bishop continues to practice his trade and passion in his new gallery, Christopher Bishop Fine Art, located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.