Lost, stolen or strayed

This is a strange, tantalising book of unintentional poetry; it is rather like a book plucked from the shelves of one of Jorge Luis Borges’ impossible libraries. The first book of the celebrated philanthropist, collector and Daimler heir, Gert-Rudolf ‘Muck’ Flick, it is a highly scholarly and lucid biography of a dozen or so great paintings; a biography so far as it is known, since this is the story of the provenance and history of paintings now thought to be lost. None of them is definitely destroyed; another book could be written about such works, like ‘The Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn’, which many of Hogarth’s contemporaries thought his greatest painting, which now is only known through a stunning engraving. Instead, these are simply works which are known to have existed, which in most cases were of sufficient celebrity to be recorded, copied or engraved at the time, which subsequently disappeared and have never resurfaced.