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Gustave Doré (1832–1883), Going to the Derby (London), 1873, graphite, pen and ink, and wash with white gouache highlights, 39 1/4 x 28 3/4 in., Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Doré is the Rembrandt of caricature … He shows us the awful reduced to an absurdity; and yet makes us feel that awe can not be entirely made absurd and that even ridicule can not quite free us from its power. — Richard Grant White, Harper’s Magazine, April 1, 1862 F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
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Featuring over 50 nationally acclaimed award-winning artists. Come visit our exquisite galleries and magical sculpture garden.
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“Bringing the Outside In” Plein Air Painters of the SouthEast The Booth Museum | Cartersville, GA Jan. 16 - March 8, 2020 Reception Jan. 16, 2020 5-8pm
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F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
Miguel Peidro
“The Glorious Alps,” 18 x 22”, Oil on Canvas
“Magical Autumn,” 24 x 39”, Oil on Canvas
Lotton
GALLERY
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Publisher’s Letter
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Favorite: Benjamin Frowein on Edward Hopper, by David Masello
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Off the Walls
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Classic Moment: Jennifer Balkan
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Allison Malafronte describes the talents of Clio Newton, Sara Scribner, and Alessandro Tomassetti.
We highlight five great projects in the American West this season.
ARTISTS MAKING THEIR MARK: THREE TO WATCH
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DUFFY SHERIDAN: FINDING WHAT’S NOBLE IN OTHERS By Kelly Compton
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CELEBRATING THE PETS AND WILDLIFE WE LOVE By Max Gillies
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“IN A STATE OF COMING ALIVE”: MARCIA MARCUS IN PROVINCETOWN By Rebecca Allan
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JON DEMARTIN: A NEW APPROACH TO AN OLD TRADITION By Matthias Anderson
072 ON THE COVER VIRGINIE BAUDE (b. 1978), Wolf Spirit (detail), 2019, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 in. (overall), available at the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition, Charleston (February 14–16). For details, please see page 57.
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HARRIET HUBBARD AYER AND WILLIAM MERRITT CHASE: A MYSTERY SOLVED?
ART IN THE WEST: START THE YEAR WITH ART
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PATTI MOLLICA: TRANSITIONING FROM COMMERCIAL ART TO FINE ART By Daniel Grant
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IN CHICAGO, MASTER DRAWINGS FROM THE GRAY COLLECTION By Thomas Connors
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BACKLIT: LOOKING INTO TURNER’S LIGHT By David Masello
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ADVANCING THE CAUSE OF FIGURATIVE ART, FACE TO FACE By Peter Trippi
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A MERRY MIX: PROVENCE, THE FRENCH RIVIERA & EDINBURGH By Peter Trippi
By Annette Blaugrund
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GREAT ART NATIONWIDE
We survey five top-notch projects this season.
Fine Art Connoisseur is also available in a digital edition. Please visit fineartconnoisseur.com for details.
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a Goo w it t
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ON PART OF
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Open Daily 10am-6pm | Jan. 18-MaR. 29, 2020 Loop 101 & Hayden rd, Scottsdale, Az 480.443.7695 Tickets Available At
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We are the West’s most premier event for art enthusiasts
Meet the creative minds behind the original work at Celebration of Fine Art. This juried, invitational show and art sale in the heart of beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona draws seasoned art collectors and first-time buyers from around the globe. Browse 40,000 square feet of working studios, get to know the people behind your favorite pieces, and admire and acquire an unsurpassed selection of artwork in all mediums and styles. For 30 years, the Celebration of Fine Art has been the place where art lovers and artists connect. Meet 100 of the finest artists in the country, watch them work and share in the creative process. Where Art Lovers & Artists Connect
P U B L I S H E R ’ S
SPDING H RIS O RAISM Eric Rhoads poses for Nikolai Blokhin in his St. Petersburg studio in September 2017. Photo: Ulrich Gleiter
NIKOLAI BLOKHIN (b. 1968), Portrait of B. Eric Rhoads, 2017–19, oil on canvas, 31 1/2 x 20 in.
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or well over 15 years, this magazine has carried the flag for the new realism, which some call contemporary realism. We have highlighted its artists, schools, and collectors, and we have encouraged their interconnections with kindred galleries and museums because we believe strongly that this movement has a solid future in a world that had once lost interest in all things realistic. In normal times, young artists’ works are embraced by young buyers, who ultimately become collectors. Today, alas, there is a huge gap. We now see many well-trained artists creating incredible works, yet there are not enough buyers. Not enough younger people (or even older ones, for that matter) know about this movement. There is an urgent need to both educate and create awareness. Recently, my millennial nephew, Ryan, told me his tech billionaire friend paid $1 million for a photograph. When I noted the quality of realist painting and sculpture he could have bought for that price — something from a major deceased master, or several pieces from a living one — he simply replied, “Our generation does not know that. Make us aware, and we will buy it.” He added that fine art is not really on his generation’s radar because they didn’t see much of it at school. “So educate us,” he said. Educate we must. If we don’t, thousands ofdeservingartistswillneverfindtheirmarket, J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y
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or will be forced to accept remuneration out of sync with the quality of their work. At the end of our successful Figurative Art Convention & Expo (FACE) in November, participating artists told me they finally felt like they fit in somewhere; they had found a home and a community unavailable elsewhere. They liked the vibe — the energy, the fun, the non-stuffy, non-political environment. Even artists who lived near each other were meeting for the first time, and will now have someone in town to connect with when the studio becomes too isolating. This prompted an idea, so today I’m announcing a new organization (still unnamed) led by Fine Art Connoisseur, FACE, and our counterpart Realism Today. We hope to create a network of regional clubs that involve everyone who believes in contemporary realism. This includes artists, students, instructors, collectors, and art professionals such as dealers, curators, and scholars. My goal for this network is to see regional branches created, each with a board or leadership team, so members can meet regularly, mount exhibitions, promote art education, and generally increase awareness. This grassroots effort is necessary to take contemporary realism to the next level. Ideally, the FACE convention held every autumn would become the central meeting point for all of these groups. In the meantime, we will gladly provide a framework and share best practices with regional leaders during quarterly conference calls, so that all of these groups can grow more dynamic. As they always say, we are stronger together. I predict this initiative will start out with one or two groups, then expand into every major community as word spreads. We’re seeking proactive leaders everywhere who have the passion, time, and desire to organize that first meeting, to spread the word locally, and then to keep the group active and growing. As a boost, we suggest that all who subscribe to Fine Art Connoisseur, Fine Art Today, or Realism Today, or who attend FACE, become members of this network. If this idea appeals to you, and if you can be the catalyst to gather a group in your area, please drop me a note so we can send you a list of simple next steps. I believe this effort will speed up awareness of contemporary realism across the country, and I really hope you will get involved.
B. ERIC RHOADS S Cha Publish he r bericrhoads@gmail.com 561.923.8481 facebook.com/eric.rhoads @ericrhoads 2 0 2 0
F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
J EAN S C H WAR T Z
February Fire 24x24 oil on panel
w w w. j e a n s c h w a r t z p a i n t i n g s . c o m On view and available at the
PRINCIPLE GALLERY
WSLP Exhibition
|
February 14-March 16, 2020
2 0 8 K i n g S t . A l e x a n d r i a , VA | w w w. p r i n c i p l e g a l l e r y. c o m
|
703-739-9326
T
HE
A
MERICAN
S
OCIET Y
OF
MARINE ARTISTS 18 TH NATIONAL EXHIBITION P REMIERING M ARCH 6, 2020 AT THE JAMESTOWN SETTLEMENT MUSEUM
3 RD N ATIONAL M ARINE A RTS C ONFERENCE JAMESTOWN AND WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
M ARCH 5 - 8, 2020
Full Conference Registration Includes: • Premiere reception of the 18th National Exhibition • Full access to presentations & demonstrations by ASMA Fellows • Christopher Blossom • William R. Davis • Michael B. Karas • Len Tantillo • Access to even more demonstrations by ASMA Signature Artists Patrick O’Brien, Morgan Samuel Price, Mark Shasha and Nancy Tankersley • Sponsored Plein Air Paint Out at Historic Jamestown Settlement • Tickets to Keynote Address by Sarah Cash Associate Curator of American & British Paintings, National Gallery of Art and co-author, with Richard Ormond, of Sargent and the Sea • Welcome Dinner • Captain’s Dinner & Award Ceremony
REGISTER NOW AT: AMERICANSOCIETYOFMARINEARTISTS.com/EVENTS-AND-CONFERENCES
AMERICAN T ONALIST S OCIE TY Fostering the Tradition and Art Form of Contemporary American Tonalism
DANIEL AMBROSE www.danielambrose.com Represented by
Hughes Gallery, Inc. 333 Park Avenue Boca Grande, FL 33921 941-964-4273 Six for Gold, egg tempera, 31 x 43 in. (framed) Daniel Ambrose
www.hughesgallery.net
Shawn Krueger
Shawn Krueger Evening (Ode to A. Hoeber) Oil on panel: 2019 5” x 5” Available at Abend Gallery, Denver, CO
Shawn Krueger Nocturne: Sugar Cove Oil on Linen: 2018 6” x 6” Available at Grovewood Gallery, Asheville, NC
Shawn Krueger Dawn (Black Marsh) Oil on Linen: 2019 8” x 8” Aavailable via the artist: ShawnKrueger.com
Shades of Gray Inaugural Exhibition Catalog Available at AmericanTonalistSociety.com
E D I T O R ’ S
N O T E
I
t’s the New Year, but everyone is still talking about the banana that fetched $120,000 last year. If you haven’t heard about it, you are lucky, and I hesitate to relieve your bewilderment. Every December the cutting-edge art world gathers in Miami for the constellation of fairs surrounding Art Basel Miami Beach. Billions of dollars’ worth of art is traded, most of it more conceptual, minimalist, or experiential than what you see here in Fine Art Connoisseur. If you haven’t visited Miami during the first week of December, it’s well worth going, once, to get a sense of how closely cutting-edge art resembles show business these days. Perhaps Miami Basel’s greatest triumph ever came last month when Galerie Perrotin — a leading international dealer — exhibited a real banana attached to its wall with duct tape. This “sculpture” came in an “edition” of three, and all three sold promptly for $120,000 each. The “creator” is Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960), the dashing Italian provocateur whose previous “outrage” was the 18-carat gold toilet premiered at the Guggenheim three years ago and stolen from an exhibition at Blenheim Palace last year. Cattelan is a hugely successful conceptualist more interested in ideas than craftmanship, and he is also a publicist’s dream because his ideas are far more exciting to read about than to see; this knack for getting noticed sells newspapers, and draws “collectors” like moths to the flame. To make the Miami situation even more memorable, a Georgian-born performance artist (David Datuna) walked into Perrotin’s stand, calmly removed the banana from the wall, then ate it as “astonished” onlookers filmed him. No harm done, of course. As with most conceptual artworks, the new owners were
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expecting to replace their bananas with fresh ones whenever they wanted to admire their new acquisitions. In fact, most “collectors” at this level are more interested in the limited edition’s certificate of authenticity issued by the artist, which gets parked in a bank vault and sold to someone else eventually. In this world, it’s about the idea, not the object. I believe in capitalism, so I have no particular objection to this nonsense. If people want to spend money on a clever prank whose notoriety will be superseded by next January, that’s their right. But I am worried — yet again — about what message this sort of thing sends to sensible people who occasionally think that art might just be something they would enjoy buying. Note: I felt the same way about the heavily restored Leonardo painting of Christ that sold for the ludicrous sum of $450 million at Christie’s two years ago, so this is not about my hating Maurizio Cattelan or bananas. Bottom line: a succès de scandale like the banana essentially tells “regular” people — folks who can actually afford to buy good, appropriately priced art — that any art worth having is admirable only for its financial value, cleverness, or rarity. That perception is not helpful for most working artists, for dealers, for auctioneers, or even for museums, which feel increasingly pressured to exhibit sensational artworks in order to sell tickets. What to do about it? Take it all in stride, chuckle at the joke, then reassure the “regular” art lovers we know that they can still get in the art game — a less noticed corner of the field, to be sure, but one that is more emotionally, intellectually, and even spiritually rewarding than the nonsense making headlines last month.
F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
TRIPPI PHOTO: FRANCIS HILLS
HERE WE GOAGAIN
A Day For Musing, 48” x 36”, oil on linen
The
MARSHALL
Gallery 7106 East Main Street Scottsdale, AZ 85251 480.970.3111 email@themarshallgallery.com www.themarshallgallery.com
DUFFY SHERIDAN Living Master
®
AMERICAN T ONALIST S OCIETY Fostering the Tradition and Art Form of Contemporary American Tonalism
Rachel warner
Specializing in custom Tonalist commissions.
Wolf Moon 20 x 40 in. Oil
Represented by: Gallery 903, OR Montana Trails Gallery, MT Palm Avenue Fine Art, FL
www.rachelwarnerart / 406 253 5351 Follow Rachel on Facebook and Instagram
Shades of Gray Inaugural Exhibition Catalog Available at AmericanTonalistSociety.com
ANNE HARKNESS
Never Alone 50” x 50” oil on canvas
VISION GALLERY • www.twogalleries.net PROVIDENCE GALLERY • www.providencegallery.net anneh arknes s.com • annep harkne ss@gm ail.com • 704-62 2-3077
WRIT TEN BY DAVID MASELLO
R O O M
S E R V I C E
BENJAMIN FROWEIN
President, Schumacher
Hotel Room EDWARD HOPPER (1882–1967) 1931, oil on canvas, 60 x 65 in. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid Inv. No. 594 (1977.110) © VAGA, New York
or Benjamin Frowein, it was love at second sight. When the president of Schumacher fabrics was a graduate student in Madrid from 2004 to 2006, he walked into the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum and came upon Edward Hopper’s painting Hotel Room (1931). “When I look at things, especially artworks, that don’t immediately scream at me to pay attention, I always give them a second chance,” Frowein says from his headquarters in New York, where he gives many second looks at patterns and designs for Schumacher, the internationally renowned maker of fine textiles. “There must be a reason a painting like this is on view, and so I give it a second look.” It was during that concentrated study of Hopper’s details — a partially undressed woman reading a book on a bed in a plain hotel room — that Frowein became, in his words, “haunted” by that image, and remains so all these years later. In his role with Schumacher, Frowein travels the world constantly, checking into and out of hotels. He claims to have worked, on extended stays for Schumacher and for previous employers, on every continent. And although many of those hotels, some blessed with five stars, are welcoming and comfortable, there is still an intrinsic loneliness to travel. “Edward Hopper painted a real scene here,” Frowein says. “When you travel, whether it’s for pleasure or business, it’s exciting and you meet new people. But then comes that moment when you get to your room in the evening and you’re alone. You can love that moment of solitude, but you can also feel lonely.” Although Frowein hasn’t seen the Hopper at the ThyssenBornemisza for some 15 years, it is clear that he looks at images of it often, given his immediate grasp of its details. He notices, for instance, that the woman is just beginning to read the book in her lap, that her luggage is only partly unpacked, and that she is undressed but not for bed, as if not yet certain she will turn out the light and spend the night alone in this stark room. “In this painting and the other Hopper works that come to mind right away — the people in a cafe at night
F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
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and the woman usher at the movie theater — he understands the duality of life, that there can be a sense of excitement and loneliness at the same time. Hotel Room comes across as a very simple scene, but everything in it feels purposeful.” Most of Frowein’s travel is to some of the world’s most glamorous and animated cities, yet he discerns the currents of loneliness that can be present in the busiest of metropolises. “Hopper records the intimate moments people have in cities, which can feel alienating.” When Frowein was a student in Madrid, he did not exactly feel lonely. “I shared a flat with five friends,” he recalls, “and we had an awesome time. After studying and attending classes all day at a very strict Jesuit university, we’d go out for dinner, as you do in Spain, at 10 p.m. and then arrive at a club at 2 in the morning.” While everyone else was recovering on the weekends, Frowein might head to museums and see, among other artworks, this Hopper. Ironically, the thesis he wrote that year for his business degree was about “the competitive strategies in the global hotel sector.” Upon recounting this fact, he suddenly becomes aware of the link, years later, between that research and his adoration of a painting of a hotel stay. Information: This painting is on view through February 23 in the exhibition Edward Hopper and the American Hotel at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. The show will move on to the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields (June 6–September 13, 2020).
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TEQUESTA, FLORIDA
Manon Sander
North Palm Beach, Florida manondesigns@comcast.net 415.606.7685 www.manonsander.com Fixer Upper, 20 x 16 in., oil on linen
Maria Marino
Sykesville, Maryland hazzee@aol.com 410.353.4420 www.mariamarinoart.com Morning at Backcreek-Eastport, 12 x 24 in., pastel on La Carte
373 Tequesta Dr., Tequesta, FL 33469 | 561-746-3101 | LighthouseArts.org/PleinAir
Ralph Papa
Boynton Beach, Florida artistpapa@bellsouth.net 561.374.0837 www.papagallery.com Sunrise at Jupiter, 12 x 16 in., oil on panel
Erin Dertner
Priscilla Coote
Mendocino, California
Big Pine Key, Florida
erinsart@erindertner.com | 707.684.0665 | www.erindertner.com
admin@pcoote.com | www.pcoote.com Off the Point, 40 x 30 in., oil on linen
Sunrise at the Cove, 16 x 20 in., oil
373 Tequesta Dr., Tequesta, FL 33469 | 561-746-3101 | LighthouseArts.org/PleinAir
Richie Vios
Carl Bretzke
Victoria, Texas
Minneapolis, Minnesota
vioswatercolor72@gmail.com | 361.935.7884 | www.vioswatercolor.com
carl@carlbretzke.com | www.carlbretzke.com
Fulton Yard, 11 x 14 in., watercolor
Bayside Heron, 9 x 12 in., oil
Kathleen Denis
Chris Kling
Palm Beach Shores, Florida
Stuart, Florida
kd@kathleendenis.com | www.kathleendenis.com
cbkling@bellsouth.net | 772.285.7826 | www.chrisklingartist.com
Sunday Morning, 11 x 14 in., oil
Misty Beach Morning, 12 x 16 in., oil Available through Kling Gallery, Wine & Decor
373 Tequesta Dr., Tequesta, FL 33469 | 561-746-3101 | LighthouseArts.org/PleinAir
Make sure our past has a future. Friends of Conservation
Conservators play a vital role in protecting and preserving the objects and places that tell the story of our lives, history, and society. You can learn about conservation and help preserve cultural heritage. Become a Friend of Conservation and help make sure our past has a future. culturalheritage.org/friends
EZRA TUCKER
Monument, Colorado Stars of the Show, 18 x 30 in., acrylic on board ezratucker155@aol.com | 719.487.0648 | www.ezratucker.com
LARRY MOORE
Charleston, South Carolina Panic Room, 24 x 48 in., oil on wood larry@larrymoorestudios.com | 407.222.8585 | www.larrymoorestudios.com
ELEANOR ROYALL PARKER Mount Pleasant, South Carolina
Thru the Trees, 24 x 30 in., oil on canvas elparkerpaintings@gmail.com 843.906.6466 www.elparkerpaintings.com
ANN GOBLE
Gainesville, Georgia Sunset, 16 x 16 in., oil
goble@charter.net www.anngoble.com
JOHN TOLMAY
Franklin, North Carolina
Duke, 25 x 42 in., bronze bronzeafrica@gmail.com | www.bronzeafrica.com
MICHAEL BEDOIAN Saluda, North Carolina
Eternity, 56.375 x 36.375 in., oil on panel michaelbedoian@gmail.com www.peacefulcoexistence.net
STEPHEN TOWNLEY BASSETT Komani, Eastern Cape, South Africa
Transformation, Liphofung Rock Art Site, South Africa, 14 x 15 in., natural pigments on cotton rag stephen@stb-rockart.co.za | +27 83 774 9565 | www.stephentownleybassett.co.za
CARRIE PENLEY Carrollton, Georgia
Scout, 30 x 40 in., acrylic on canvas info@carriepenleyart.com 404.550.2116 www.carriepenleyart.com
BEVERLY FORD EVANS Franklin, Tennessee
Morning Stroll, 18 x 24 in., oil on linen bfevans@comcast.net | 615.400.5457 | www.beverlyfordevans.com
SPECIAL SECTION
(L-R_A courtyard at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
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The great hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
USUMS V MOS
or the past four years, Fine Art Connoisseur has dedicated part of a winter issue to highlighting America’s art museums and the important, wide-ranging roles they play. The American Alliance of Museums reports that 860 million visits are made to U.S. museums every year. That statistic is impressive, yet it does not fully convey how central museums have become in our civic life. They are no longer just places to learn, but also to gather, celebrate, mourn, and have fun. Museums have grown ever more welcoming, enticing people of all ages to come have a look. And for those who live too far away to visit, museums are working hard to catalogue and post their collections online. This year we asked you, our readers, to tell us which art museums you love the most. We appreciate your having responded so enthusiastically, and now we are thrilled to report your choices below, ranked in order of popularity. One note: we asked you to choose with a nod toward institutional budget sizes (essentially large, medium, and small), because it’s really not fair to compare a gigantic museum mounting dozens of exhibitions each year to a very small one with just one or two shows.
LARGE Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Art Institute of Chicago Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Philadelphia Museum of Art
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The Frick Collection's west gallery, New York City
MEDIUM Frick Collection, New York City Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
SMALL Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, Georgia Brookgreen Gardens, Murrells Inlet, South Carolina National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City Wow, did you choose well: all of these museums are doing great work. And we found your choices in the “small” category especially revealing; clearly, there is a need and affection for institutions that specialize in particular areas (like art of the American West, or sculpture). That’s just as it should be, and we are grateful that America has many such venues nationwide. Finally, we thank our museum colleagues for all they do on our behalf, and we wish them much continued success.
Peter Trippi, Editor-in-Chief, Fine Art Connoisseur
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2020 MUSEUM EXHIBITION CALENDAR ONGOING FROM 2019 December 6, 2019–April 11 Richard Galusha Retrospective "An Artist’s Journey,” Steamboat Art Museum, CO
JANUARY January 7–March 28 Carmelo Blandino Exhibition (Opening Reception January 9), Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, Wausau, WI January 11–March 22 Dox Thrash, The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY January 19–April 26 Francisco Goya, The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY
April 22–July 2 96th Annual Spring Salon Exhibition (Opening Reception April 22), Springville Museum of Art, Springville, UT
August 11–October 31 A Timeless Legacy: Women Artists of Glacier National Park (Opening Reception August 8), Hockaday Museum of Art, Kalispell, MT
April 24–June 1 Continuum: Contemporary American Indian Art from the Missoula Art Museum Collection (Opening Reception April 23), Hockaday Museum of Art, Kalispell, MT
SEPTEMBER
MAY
September 18–25 Steamboat Art Museum 2020 Plein Air Exhibition and Sale, Steamboat Art Museum, CO
May 13–September 7 “Years Gone By” David M. Taylor and Denise Labadie Art Quilts, Steamboat Art Museum, CO
September 17–January 18, 2021 Visual Voices: Contemporary Chickasaw Art, Briscoe Western Art Museum, San Antonio, TX
OCTOBER October–January 2021 The Sundance Series by Gary Schildt, C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT
FEBRUARY
May 16 Annual Art Ball, Springville Museum of Art, Springville, UT
February 1–May 3 New Beginnings: An American Story of Romantics and Modernists in the West, The Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, GA
May 17–January 3, 2021 Dress Codes, Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, CA
October 20–December 23 4th Annual National Juried Exhibition (Opening Reception October 22), Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, Wausau, WI
February 8–March 22 Masters of the American West® Art Exhibition & Sale, Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, CA
May 21–August 23 Making Their Mark: American Women Artists (Paintings by AWA), The Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, GA
October 21–January 13, 2021 35th Annual Spiritual & Religious Art of Utah Exhibition (Opening Reception October 21), Springville Museum of Art, Springville, UT
February 11–July 11 Legacies of the Vaqueros, The Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, GA
May 22–September 6 Still in the Saddle: The Hollywood Western, 1969-1980, Briscoe Western Art Museum, San Antonio, TX
NOVEMBER
February 13–June 7 The Jackson Hole 5: Important Painters from the West, The Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, GA February 14–April 10 Looking at the Landscape: The Work of Dale Beckman and Richard Thompson, Hockaday Museum of Art, Kalispell, MT February 20–March 19 The Russell Exhibition and Sale, C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT
MARCH March 7–July 26 On Seeing Color: Elliott Porter and Robert Glenn Ketchum, The Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, GA
JUNE June 5–September 12 Northwest Montana Nature Photographers (Opening Reception June 4), Hockaday Museum of Art, Kalispell, MT
June 6–September 30 Andy Warhol: Cowboys and Indians/Billy Schenck: Myth of the West, C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT June 9–August 1 Jacob Dhein Exhibition (Opening Reception June 11), Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, Wausau, WI June 20–September 13 Transformations: The Art of John Van Alstine, The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY
March 28–June 14 Tradition! Russian Lacquer Paintings, The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY
June 20–September 13 J.S. Wooley, Adirondack Photographer, The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY
APRIL
Summer 2020 Technology and the American West, C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT
April 17–August 1 Intertwined w/Living Waters: the Art of Linda Glover Gooch (Opening Reception April 16), Hockaday Museum of Art, Kalispell, MT
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December 4–April 17, 2021 “Four Directions. Common Paths” — Whitcomb, Oberg, Smith, Young, Steamboat Art Museum, CO
June 6–August 30 Forever Glacier: A Legacy Project by Nancy Cawdrey, C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT
March 27–May 3 Night of Artists Exhibition and Sale (Opening Weekend March 27–28), Briscoe Western Art Museum, San Antonio, TX
April 7–May 30 Craig Blietz Exhibition (Opening Reception April 9), Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, Wausau, WI
DECEMBER
JULY AUGUST August 11–October 10 2020 Painting the Figure Now Exhibition (Opening Reception August 13), Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, Wausau, WI
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Visit Los Angeles and See Works by 64 Premier Western Artists FEBRUARY 8–MARCH 22, 2020 DON’T MISS artist talks by Billy Schenck and Kim Wiggins on Opening Day, February 8. PARTICIPATING ARTISTS Tony Abeyta • William Acheff • Peter Adams • Bill Anton • Gerald Balciar • Thomas Blackshear II • Christopher Blossom • Autumn Borts-Medlock • Eric Bowman • John Budicin • Kenneth Bunn • Scott Burdick • George Carlson • G. Russell Case • Tim Cherry • Len Chmiel • Michael Coleman • Nicholas Coleman • Mick Doellinger • Dennis Doheny • John Fawcett • Tammy Garcia • Richard V. Greeves • Logan Maxwell Hagege • Harold T. Holden • Doug Hyde • Oreland C. Joe Sr. • Steve Kestrel • Susan Lyon • Mark Maggiori • Walter T. Matia • Eric Merrell • Denis Milhomme • Dean L. Mitchell • Jim Morgan • John Moyers • Terri Kelly Moyers • Bill Nebeker • Conchita O’Kane • Dan Ostermiller • JoAnn Peralta • Daniel W. Pinkham • Kyle Polzin • Howard Post • Kevin Red Star • Grant Redden • Mateo Romero • Gayle Garner Roski • Roseta Santiago • Billy Schenck • Sandy Scott • William Shepherd • Tim Shinabarger • Mian Situ • Adam Smith • Daniel Smith • Matt Smith • Tim Solliday • Margery Torrey • Kent Ullberg • Dustin Van Wechel • Brittany Weistling • Kim Wiggins • Jim Wilcox
AUTRY MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN WEST 4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles, CA 90027-1462 TheAutry.org/Masters | Event Contact: 323.495.4331
BRITTANY WEISTLING, PATRICIA’S ROSES (DETAIL), OIL ON LINEN, 16 X 26 IN.
(L to R) Kathryn Mapes Turner, Amy Ringholz, September Vhay, Kathy Wipfler, Amy Lay
The Jackson Hole 5: Important Painters from the West February 13, 2020 – June 7, 2020
Todd Conner, A Glance Into the Past, Oil, 24” x 36”
The Night of Artists Exhibition and Sale takes place along the iconic San Antonio River Walk and showcases over 300 works by more than eighty of the country’s top Western artists. Attendees will enjoy a full weekend of events, including the Exhibition Preview, Live Auction, and the Luck of the Draw Sale and Reception.
Opening Weekend: March 27 & 28, 2020 Public Exhibition & Sale: March 29 - May 3
Visit briscoemuseum.org/noa for event details.
AUCTION HIGHLIGHT
MARCH 21-23, 2 019
Joseph Henry Sharp(1859‒1953), Call of the War Chief, oil on canvas, 30 by 36 inches
Widely recognized as one of the most prestigious and fun western art events in the world, The Russell is set to impress once again, offering competitive bidding for significant works by highly acclaimed historic and contemporary Western artists.
2020 EXHIBITIONS Andy Warhol: Cowboys and Indians Billy Schenck: Myth of the West JUNE 6 - SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 Organized by the Briscoe Western Art Museum, Andy Warhol: Cowboys and Indians explores how the father of American pop art highlighted classic Western archetypes and called attention to myths of the American West in his colorful, iconic style. Cowboys and Indians is unique within Warhol’s print series because it was the first to combine images of material culture with portraits. Organized as a companion exhibition, Billy Schenck: Myth of the West illustrates how the “Warhol of the West” fashioned a new movement— Western pop—inspired by Andy Warhol’s techniques and appropriation of source materials. From the start, Schenck based his paintings on Hollywood interpretations of a mythic “Old West.”
Forever Glacier: A Legacy Project by Nancy Dunlop Cawdrey JUNE 6 - AUGUST 30, 2020 As a Glacier Centennial Artist and with the Park so close in proximity and near to her heart, Nancy Dunlop Cawdrey has created a series of large colorful silk paintings honoring each of the 18 large mammals and four additional pieces showing groupings of all the small mammals who live or have lived in Glacier Park.
The Sundance Series by Gary Schildt OCTOBER 2020 - JANUARY 2021 This remarkable series of 42 paintings by the Blackfeet artist Gary Schildt represents the most meaningful aspects of the annual Medicine Lodge ceremony, or Sun Dance, celebrated in July by the Blackfeet of Browning, Montana. Painted over a three-year period (1995–1997), the series was conceived by Schildt as a way to give back to his people and to reconfirm his own cultural roots. 400 13 th Street North | Great Falls, Montana | (406) 727–8787 | cmrussell.org
35th Annual
Spiritual & Religious Art of Utah
Carmelo Blandino Order in Chaos, 60” x 60”, Acrylic and chalk on canvas, 2019
New paintings on exhibit at the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art January 7 - March 28, 2020
Reception January 9 from 6-8pm wmoca.org
Just Released on DVD and Digital Video. Visit today: LiliArtVideo.com • 877-867-0324
There is a lot of superb art being made these days; this column by Allison Malafronte shines light on a trio of gifted individuals. In the paintings of SARA SCRIBNER (b. 1982), young women appear in ethereal settings, dressed in vintage clothing, and usually surrounded by flowers, butterflies, birds, and other feminine symbols. Featuring otherworldly environments and mystical motifs, these paintings create a sweeping sense of being in another time or place, perhaps even in a dream. That is why Scribner refers to her paintings as “dreamscapes.” In her words, she is looking to transport the viewer to “a more magical place,” using her imagination and skills as a realist painter to create that portal to another world. “Lately, I have been thinking more about creating dreamscapes,” the artist shares. “I want to capture the moment when you wake up from a dream — when you open your eyes but can still see the other world you came from, in your mind’s eye.” Scribner also draws inspiration from real-life settings that contain dream-like qualities. In particular, when she is outdoors — in forests, gardens, or by the sea — she likes to reflect on the beauty and grandeur around her, then uses it as fodder for future paintings. “There is something about being in nature that makes me contemplative,” Scribner says. “The paintings Evening Hollyhocks and Harvest at Last Light are both studies on that feeling.” As with all of her paintings, in Evening Hollyhocks Scribner not only pays close attention to fine details in the figure and flesh tones but also in the design of the background. When looking through her work, we see numerous backgrounds that, if extracted from the whole, could function as decorative paintings or textile designs themselves. Combining the complementary aesthetics of portraiture and design creates an even more compelling image. Based in Oklahoma, Scribner honed her painting skills at the Academy of Art University (San Francisco), from which she graduated in 2005. Through her studies and experimentation, she realized that combining traditional and imaginative realism was her strength and passion. As she says, “Traveling the world through books, sifting through stories, I find myths and folktales that use flora and fauna in their allegories. When combined with realism, the results are contemporary paintings that speak a language that has been used by painters and poets for centuries.” SCRIBNER is represented by Wally Workman Gallery (Austin).
SARA SCRIBNER (b. 1982), Evening Hollyhocks, 2019, oil on aluminum, 24 x 8 in., Gallery 1261 (Denver)
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CLIO NEWTON (b. 1989), Hayden (left) and René (right), 2019, compressed charcoal on Fabriano paper, 91 x 58 in. each, private collection
The debut solo exhibition by CLIO NEWTON (b. 1989) — which appeared this autumn at Forum Gallery (New York City) and opened to a packed house — piqued many people’s interest and raised more than a few eyebrows. Venus was the artist’s first public presentation of her series of large gender-composite drawings exploring the themes of femininity in art history and gender identity today. In such fictional portrayals as Hayden and René (pictured here), Newton renders portraits of women onto the bodies of men using a hyper-realistic technique that on the surface blurs the edges and transitions between the two. One of the artist’s purposes in creating these bi-gendered amalgams is to investigate classical norms of beauty, modesty, and idealism as expressed in art history. Newton believes that the artistic conventions of androgyny and idealization were an inherent part of a tradition governing and censoring representations of the body and women in the past, particularly during the Renaissance. “I am interested in a Renaissance aesthetic of masculine femininity without idealization,” she shares. “The specificity of a face, the idiosyncrasies of a body, and the psychological world these details can suggest, act against a tradition of censorship. I hope to question what defines
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a body or a gender and what qualities make that body appealing, approachable, threatening, or political.” Newton continues, “I am also deeply interested in the politicization of women’s bodies and non-binary individuals. In these drawings, I wonder which features of a person inform our understanding of a body, what is deemed appropriate, and what is perceived as beautiful.” Despite part of this discourse relating to gender issues and gender identity, Newton’s depictions do not fall easily into transgender categorizations, but rather retain distinctly female (face) and male (body) characteristics. If indeed there is a message to be surmised from the art, it seems to be less political and more humanistic: the artist intends to celebrate the possibilities of the body and the individual. Having received her B.F.A. at Cooper Union (New York City) and an M.F.A. at Zürcher Hochschule der Kunste in Zürich, Newton completed further studies at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy. Today she lives and works in Zürich. NEWTON is represented by Forum Gallery (New York City)
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ALESSANDRO TOMASSETTI (b. 1970), To the Birds, 2019, oil on aluminum, 27 1/2 x 19 1/2 in., private collection. This painting will travel with the Art Renewal Center’s International Salon in 2020 (artrenewal.org).
While the women painters featured in this month’s Three to Watch section focus on female perspectives and explore various sides of the feminine beauty ideal, the figurative work of ALESSANDRO TOMASSETTI (b. 1970) is about what it means to be male. The Canadian-born Italian artist does not pull any punches in presenting the rarely exposed sides of masculinity: vulnerability, sensitivity, and intimacy. These softer characteristics conventionally associated with the female form are juxtaposed against the physical appearance of his sitters, who often appear quintessentially masculine: strong, strapping, self-assured. This irony is no accident, as Tomassetti’s art asks viewers to rethink assumptions about female and male attributes. At the same time, he is looking at how women and men have been portrayed in traditional portraiture and modern advertising throughout history. “Painting predominantly figurative work of men is a natural fit for me,” the artist explains. “Obviously I think there is beauty in the male form. There is a very strong tradition in fine art of female representation and female beauty, both by male artists and female artists, but the opposite is not as true. Male portraiture sort of went the way of popes and CEOS and captains of industry. But the men that I was seeing and was interested in painting weren’t represented. I think being able to see men in a gentler, more vulnerable way can only benefit our society today.” Now based in Barcelona, Tomassetti received his B.F.A. at McMaster University (Ontario) and went on to work as a specialeffects and computer-animation artist for Disney and Sony, followed by a stint as a menswear fashion designer. After taking a workshop with the Spanish painter Eloy Morales in 2014, Tomassetti decided
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to pursue the profession of painter full-time, teaching himself the majority of what he knows today. Three short years after that workshop, he began exhibiting and selling his work in Europe and the U.S. to a widely receptive and responsive audience. Today Tomassetti continues to revere the historical tradition of realism while acknowledging the language of contemporary times. And although most of his models are recruited from Instagram, his paintings stand in stark contrast to the social-media selfie. Instead, in his imagery, the creative instrument of interpretation — the paint brush — is back in the artist’s hand. TOMASSETTI is represented by 33 Contemporary Gallery (Chicago) and RJD Gallery (Bridgehampton, NY).
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B Y K E L LY C O M P T O N
T O D A Y ’ S M A S T E R S
SHERIDAN:
I
T
ING T’SNOBLE THERS
and mankind its citizens.” His belief that all of the world’s religions have been stages in the revelation of God’s will and purpose for humanity informs the Sheridans’ outlook generally, and Duffy’s art specifically. The artist concedes, “My paintings were not very good when Jeanne and I moved to the Falklands in 1976.” In response to an appeal from regions where Bahá’í communities needed assistance, the couple headed to these windswept islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, now best remembered as the site of a brief but furious war in 1982 between their owner, Great Britain, and neighboring Argentina. The low cost of living there allowed the couple to survive on Jeanne’s salary, so Duffy took up painting full-time, experimenting with different styles and consulting the photos of artistic masterworks — both historical and contemporary — mailed to him by American friends. “The isolation and religion we experienced in the Falklands were critical to my art,” he recalls. “I had time to formulate my style and follow my heart in its expression, and I learned to love to look at stuff.”
t (b. 1947) seeks “to magnify the dignity of the human spirit, and also the singular beauty of all things.” He explains, “When people look at one of my paintings, I’d like them to see that humans, indeed, are noble beings.” He achieves this by capturing in paint “a look, a movement, a casual occurrence that enshrines power and grace in time.” Amazingly, Sheridan has been able to create his compellingly life-like paintings without formal training, except for a few basics proffered by his father, who was a traditional painter of marine scenes. “But if I had it to do over again,” he admits, “I probably would have gone to art school, as it would have saved me considerable time.” As it was, he taught himself by looking in all directions. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Sheridan was living in the Bay Area, managing a grocery store by night and selling portraits by day. He married his wife, Jeanne, in 1969, and two years later they became members of the Bahá’í Faith. “There is a direct relationship between what I do as an artist and what I believe as a Bahá’í,” Sheridan notes. This proactively international faith was formalized by the Persian thinker Bahá’u’lláh (1817–1892), who wrote that “the earth is but one country,
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Self-Portrait, 1983, oil on canvas, 48 x 30 in., private collection
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Self Portrait, 2008–09, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in., Marshall Gallery of Fine Art, Scottsdale
Friendship Rose, 2018, oil on linen, 44 x 30 in., Marshall Gallery of Fine Art, Scottsdale
Among the objects of his attention were native Falklanders — generally a quiet, introspective population of shepherds, lighthouse keepers, and the like. By the time war broke out six years after his arrival, Sheridan had created a group of locals’ portraits that would soon be exhibited to great acclaim in London, where curiosity about this distant part of the British Empire was keen. Having ignored calls to evacuate, the Sheridans looked after other residents and spent 56 consecutive nights sleeping head-to-toe in the crowded bunker of their babysitter’s family. After painting 11 scenes from the Falklands’ history for a set of Royal Mail postage stamps, Sheridan departed in 1983 with his family. Most of the art he had made there was destroyed,
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not by bombs, but by Duffy’s own hand — he felt it was just not good enough to bring to his life’s next chapter. Fortunately, his unflinching self-portrait from this period (illustrated here) made the cut. The Sheridans spent three years in a remote part of Northern California, and in 1986 they headed to American Samoa, in the South Pacific. During five years there, Duffy painted a portrait of Samoa’s head of state (another member of the Bahá’í Faith), as well as a huge scene for the island’s Roman Catholic cathedral. Yet another chapter opened as the family moved to Arizona, first to artistic Sedona, and then — in 1997 — to help create Desert Rose Bahá’í Institute, a center for the arts and agriculture at Eloy, halfway between Phoenix and
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(ABOVE) Decoration in Red and Gold, 2012, oil on linen, 42 x 38 in., private collection (TOP RIGHT) Parasol, 2017, oil on linen, 9 x 12 in., Marshall Gallery of Fine Art, Scottsdale
(RIGHT) Study of a Young Man, 2019, oil on panel, 12 x 12 in., Marshall
Gallery of Fine Art, Scottsdale
Tucson. This rural enclave has truly become home, to the extent that the Sheridans are helping to launch an artist residency initiative there; their goal is to reinvigorate the participants’ “sense of what it means to be an artist today, to benefit from this atmosphere of uninhibited artistic expression, and to share all of that with the community.” In the meantime, Duffy keeps busy painting, Jeanne making ceramics, and their neighbors developing permaculture practices at Desert Rose. TOKENS OF THE DIVINE Sheridan explains, “It is not my aim to make great philosophical statements with my paintings, but instead to explore, and allow my audience to explore, those simple elements of human expression that reveal tokens of the Divine. My eye — my heart — is always attracted to things which are beautiful. People want to be uplifted, and so I try to bring hope through beauty to a despondent humanity.” The results of this effort are Sheridan’s straightforward likenesses of young people, especially women, notable for their deft blend of exacting detail and an inner life that transcends mere photorealism. Seeking what he finds “emotionally attractive” in the sitter, the artist seemingly delves deep into each model’s soul, bringing viewers into communion with her or him. Each of these oil paintings takes at least one month to complete, working from the live model or photographic references Sheridan takes himself. He works in a windowless studio under artificial lighting that matches the gallery lighting where the finished painting will be exhibited. Sheridan also makes luminous images of women posed in woodlands or by the sea, and every five years or so he makes another self-portrait to mark his own development. “If I had to do it again,” Sheridan reflects, “I would be a sculptor, but I have not lived in places where I could have done anything with the results. Paintings are easier to handle and transport.” In F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
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fact, his paintings of people evoke sculpture in their immediacy and palpability; we suspect that some of them might get up and walk off the canvas any minute. Sheridan rightly feels that his work is only getting better over time, and he realizes how fortunate he is to have only ever painted what he wants — to never have felt pressured to make one specific thing again and again. Today his art can be experienced in person at the galleries representing him: Jones & Terwilliger Galleries (Carmel and Palm Desert, California), Marshall Gallery of Fine Art (Scottsdale), Mary Martin Galleries of Fine Art (Charleston), and Palm Avenue Fine Art (Sarasota). In addition, Friendship Rose (illustrated here) is traveling with the exhibition of finalists from the Art Renewal Center’s International ARC Salon Competition. It is among approximately 100 pieces now on view at Barcelona’s Museu Europeu d’Art Modern (MEAM) through February 2. Next summer, it will appear among a similar number of Salon works at Sotheby’s in New York City (July 17–27, 2020). In fact, Sheridan has been designated an ARC Living Master by the Art Renewal Center. KELLY COMPTON is a contributing writer to Fine Art Connoisseur.
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BY MAX GILLIES
T O D A Y ’ S M A S T E R S
CELEBRATING THEPETSAND WILDLIFE WE LOVE s fellow residents of Earth, animals have always fascinated humans, especially the artists among us. Thus many creatures appear in prehistoric cave paintings, and today the desire to depict them endures, actually stronger than ever. The artworks illustrated here confirm this ongoing enthusiasm, and it’s easy to learn more thanks to an array of activities happening across North America. For example, in Charleston this winter (February 14–16), the annual Southeastern Wildlife Exposition (sewe.com) is set to delight animal lovers with exhibitions, demos, and other activities highlighting the importance of conservation. Touring the country are the annual Art and the Animal exhibitions organized by the Society of Animal Artists (societyofanimalartists.com), and then there is the annual festival hosted by Artists for Conservation (artistsforconservation.org), which features an exhibition by leading international artists, screenings, demos, and performances. Look out as well for Wisconsin’s Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum (lywam.org), which hosts an annual Birds in Art exhibition, and the American Kennel Club’s newly opened Museum of the Dog in midtown Manhattan. Enjoy this truly national array of offerings — all encouraging evidence that this longstanding genre is alive and well.
MARK EDWARD ADAMS (b. 1974), Young Bear Walking (edition of 35), 2019, bronze, 13 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 7 in., Mountain Trails Galleries (Sedona, AZ) and Frame of Reference Fine Art (Whitefish, MT)
MAX GILLIES is a contributing writer to Fine Art Connoisseur.
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(FAR LEFT) EDWARD ALDRICH (b. 1965), On the Scent, 2018, oil on panel, 24 x 24 in., Sorrel Sky Gallery (Santa Fe and Durango, CO)
(LEFT) BARRIE BARNETT (b. 1959),
Waiting for Master, 1999, pastel on paper, 18 x 13 1/2 in., private collection
(ABOVE LEFT) VIRGINIE BAUDE (b. 1978), Wolf Spirit, 2019, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 in., available at
Southeastern
(February 14–16)
Wildlife
Exposition,
Charleston
(ABOVE) JIM BORTZ (b. 1963), He
Ain’t Heavy, 2019, oil on board, 18 x 36 in., available from the artist
(FAR LEFT) LYN BOYER (b. 1952), Rivers in the Desert, 2018, oil on linen panel, 14 x 11 in., private collection (LEFT) KARIN BRAUNS (b. 1989), You Are Kraken Me Up, 2019, acrylic and glitter on canvas, 48 x 24 in., available from the artist
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) BARBARA CONAWAY (b. 1956), Lucy, 2008, oil on linen, 12 x 10 in., collection of the artist
ROX CORBETT (b. 1956), Dog Park, 2018, charcoal on paper, 20 x 24 in., available at Cowgirl Up! Exhibition &
Sale, Desert Caballeros Western Museum, Wickenburg, AZ (March 27–29)
MICK DOELLINGER (b. 1956), Brute Force
— Black Rhino (edition of 15), 2015, bronze, 23 1/2 x 49 x 16 in., Fama Fine Art (Houston) and Doellinger Sculptures ELLEN FULLER (b. 1945), Bosque del Apache, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 72 in., available from the artist
HEATHER
FOSTER (b. 1968), View from a Blade of Grass, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 36 in., Ann Korologos Gallery (Basalt, CO) VINNY DIGIROLAMO (b. 1955), Eye of the Tiger, 2018, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 in., private collection
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(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) KATHERINE GALBRAITH (b. 1956), Casting a Long Shadow, 2016, oil on linen, 20 x 24 in., collection of the artist
SHAWN GOULD
(b. 1974), Otter Curiosity, 2016, acrylic on board, 24 x 30 in., Trailside Galleries (Jackson Hole, WY) GRANT GILSDORF (b. 1984), A New Perspective, 2019, oil on linen, 20 x 16 in., Brandt-Roberts Galleries (Columbus, OH)
BRYAN HAYNES
(b. 1959), Shiny Things — New Mexico Museum of Art, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 in., private collection
JULIE GOWING HAYES (b. 1957), In
a Flurry, 2018, oil on linen panel, 8 x 10 in., private collection
DANA HAWK (b. 1975), Chipmonk, 2019,
oil on panel, 10 in. (diameter), private collection
(CLOCKWISE
FROM
TOP
LEFT)
JOHN HYLAND (b. 1954), Giuseppe Pig, 2018, oil on canvas, 10 x 8 in., private collection
PAUL KRATTER
(b. 1956), Elephant Grazing, 2019, oil on panel, 16 x 20 in, on view in the Society of Animal Artists’ 59th
Annual
Exhibition
(currently
at San Antonio’s Briscoe Western Art Museum through January 5) CHRISTINE LASHLEY (b. 1967), Trout Swim, 2019, oil on linen, 10 x 20 in., Turquoise Door Gallery (Telluride, CO) DEBRA JONES (b. 1951), At the Vet, 2011, water media on canvas panel, 14 x 11 in., collection of Dr. Lori Delac
LORENA KLOOSTERBOER
(b. 1962), Tempus ad Requiem XXIX, 2019, acrylic on panel, 12 x 15 3/4 in., available
on
Contemporary
Artsy
through
Gallery
33
(Chicago)
JANE INGOLS (b. 1952), Hold It Right There, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40 in., private collection
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(TOP
ROW)
Making
JOHN POTTER
Waves,
2019,
oil
(b. on
1957), canvas,
20 x 30 in., available at Southeastern Wildlife Exposition, Charleston (February 14–16)
SUSAN TEMPLE NEUMANN
(b. 1953), Wild River Crossing, 2019, oil on linen panel, 18 x 24 in., Women Artists of the West 50th National Exhibition, Settlers West Galleries, Tucson (March 25–April 17) (MIDDLE ROW) JOHANNE MANGI (b. 1953), A Youngster, oil on linen, 16 x 8 in., available from the artist
LORI MCNEE
(b. 1965), Harey Situation, 2019, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in., Kneeland Gallery (Sun Valley, ID) (BOTTOM ROW) KARLA MANN (b. 1945), Out of the Shadows, 2018, oil on canvas on board, 16 x 16 in., private collection LARRY MOORE (b. 1957), Last Train, 2018, oil on wood, 48 x 60 in., private collection
(TOP ROW) STEPHANIE REVENNAUGH (b. 1973), Mo & Benson (edition of 21), 2019, bronze, 30 x 28 x 28 in., available at Cowgirl Up! Exhibition & Sale, Desert Caballeros Western Museum, Wickenburg, AZ (March 27–29)
LINDA HARRIS
REYNOLDS (b. 1957), Lola, 2019, charcoal and chalk on paper, 13 x 14 1/2 in., collection of David Dixon
(MIDDLE ROW) PAUL RHYMER (b. 1962),
Yawning of a New Day (edition of 25), 2019, bronze, 34 x 15 x 10 in., Manitou Galleries (Santa Fe) and Lovetts Gallery (Tulsa)
ROSETTA (b. 1945), Spirit
Brothers (edition of 18), 2018, bronze, 14 x 18 x 12 in., available from Bronze Coast Gallery (Cannon Beach, OR), Mountain Trails Fine Art (Santa Fe), and Wilcox Gallery (Jackson, WY)
(BOTTOM
ROW) SANDY SCOTT (b. 1943), Little Blue Heron (edition of 35), 2019, bronze, 18 x 9 x 8 in., available at Southeastern Wildlife Exposition, Charleston (February 14–16)
RACHELLE SIEGRIST (b. 1970),
Stealthy Approach, 2019, watercolor on rag board, 4 1/2 x 2 1/2 in., on view in the Society of Animal Artists’ 59th Annual Exhibition (currently at San Antonio’s Briscoe Western Art Museum through January 5)
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(TOP ROW) GIANNI STRINO (b. 1953), A Special Love, 2019, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 in., Lotton Gallery (Chicago)
DEBORAH TILBY (b. 1955), Lochside Pig,
2019, oil on panel, 14 x 24 in., collection of Susan Walter
(MIDDLE ROW) RON
UKRAINETZ (b. 1949), Family Affair — Grebes, 2019, polychromatic engraving on clayboard, 10 x 14 in., Terakedis Fine Art (Billings, MT)
EZRA TUCKER
(b. 1955), A Warm Gray, 2019, acrylic on board, 15 x 40 in., available from the artist
(BOTTOM) BART WALTER (b. 1959), Among Giants (edition of 5), 2018,
bronze, 18 x 9 x 61 in., available from the artist
BY REBECCA ALLAN
T O D A Y ’ S M A S T E R S
“IN A STATE OF COMING ALIVE”
MARCIAMARCUS IN PROVINCETOWN ohn tells me to jump out of the truck and open the chain-post lock at Race Point Beach on this blustery, steel-gray October day. He turns his truck from the pavement onto the private road, accessible solely to vehicles with a special permit to drive overland, across the vast sand dunes of the Cape Cod National Seashore. This is the only way to reach the dune shacks of the Peaked Hill Bars Historic District in fall and winter, when the 50-minute walk along the beach from the parking lot is out of the question. As a nor’easter pummels his windshield with blinding rain, John drives on, casually remarking: “You’ll nevah get ovah sand unless you let a few pounds of ay-ah out of the tiyahs.” In October 2018, I was invited to be the artist in residence at the C-Scape Dune Shack, the dwelling that the American artist Marcia Marcus, now 91, rented as her summer studio and family gathering place from 1952 to 1977. A few of the dune shacks — built from the mid-19th century onward as huts for fishermen and ship rescue teams — are now offered to artists and writers for creative residencies through a competitive
The C-Scape Dune Shack as it looks today; photo: Rebecca Allan
Great Dune, 1983, oil on canvas, 8 x 22 in., private collection
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Self-Portrait in the Dunes, 1979, oil on canvas, 72 x 56 in., collection of the artist
Self-Portrait in White Dress, 1959, oil, sand, and collage on canvas, 60 x 37 in., Eric Firestone Gallery, New York City
application process. Most of these structures are isolated and fragile; others (like one that belonged to the playwright Eugene O’Neill) have washed away into the Atlantic Ocean. The program’s mission is to honor the historic use of the dune shacks, which remain an essential feature of this environmentally sensitive and protected landscape. Tom Boland, a historic preservationist, manages the program, assisted by John, who transports artists to and from the shacks. PROVINCETOWN AS CREATIVE CATALYST Marcia Marcus (b. 1928) makes paintings that explore her own identity and family relationships, the landscape, and still life. Distinguished by their precise observation of detail, subtle color tonalities, and psychological sophistication, her pictures address themes that were radical in the 1950s and ’60s, including the power of self-possession, interracial friendship, and what I regard as clever, feminist interpretations of art history. Marcus also took many photographs and produced (and participated in) early iterations of performance art, an aspect of her work that has yet to be fully acknowledged. F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
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Born in New York City, Marcus studied at Cooper Union, then at the Art Students League with Edwin Dickinson, her most influential teacher. Her contemporaries at Cooper Union included Lois Dodd and Alex Katz. In Provincetown, Marcus was a member of the Sun Gallery on Commercial Street, the town’s main drag. At the invitation of Red Grooms, she also showed at New York’s Delancey Street Museum, where she performed in one of the first Happenings ever. From the 1950s through the 1970s, Marcus exhibited at such leading New York galleries as Charles Alan, Stable, ACA, Zabriskie, and Terry Dintenfass. Today her work is held in many private and public collections, including the Hirshhorn and Whitney museums. Provincetown offered Marcus not only the seclusion she needed to work, but also the social and intellectual stimulation reverberating from its history as one of America’s first artist colonies. Beginning in 1899 with Charles Hawthorne’s Cape Cod School of Art, and later Hans Hofmann’s famous summer school, generations of artists came from afar to study and replenish themselves amid the stimulation of a bustling fishing village, mercurial coastal light, and dynamic cultural institutions such as the Provincetown Players Theatre and Provincetown Art Association. Marcus’s time in Provincetown coincided with that of the married abstractionists Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler, with whom she was friendly. Although she was rather isolated living and working out on the dunes, she also enjoyed close friendships with peers including Milton and Sally Avery, Mary and Robert Frank, Yvonne Anderson, Mimi Gross, Lucas Samaras, and Allan Kaprow. The Province Lands Dunes are anything but barren. Formed more than 18,000 years ago when eroded sediments from the glaciers were deposited by longshore currents, they encompass a diverse ecosystem.
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Tyna, Alvin, and Baby, 1970–71, acrylic on canvas, 49 3/4 x 40 in., collection of the artist
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Family II, 1970, acrylic and gold leaf on canvas, 70 x 95 in., Eric Firestone Gallery, New York City
In her 1983 painting Great Dune, Marcus conveys the ripples and slopes of the sand formations, as well as the green and rust hues of vegetation and topographical variations. Here, she uses sgraffito (scratching through paint with a hard tool) to create pale hatchmarks throughout the dunes, softening their appearance in contrast to the sky — a shimmering expanse of opaque, powder blue. Marcus uses sgraffito inventively in many of her canvases, imparting the sense of texture and atmosphere that are hallmarks of her approach. C-Scape Dune Shack has no electricity, running water, or indoor plumbing. Water for dishwashing and bathing comes from a handpump a few yards away. Marcus rented it every summer from another Provincetown painter, Jean Cohen (1923–2013), who had once been married to Alex Katz. By 1978, it was in danger of falling off a bluff into the ocean, so it was moved back. Once inside it on the wet, windy day that I arrive, I feel like a misbegotten character in one of Marcus’s homespun Happenings: I rush around in the gathering darkness seeking a tarp to seal a leaking window against the driving rain. Finally settled in with a wood fire and a supper of wine, cheese, and tomatoes, I begin to think about Marcus’s fierce independence, and how the landscape and spirit of Provincetown influenced her artistry. Her daughter, the filmmaker Kate Prendergast, has generously shared her memories and insights with me along the way. She is currently making a film, Marcia Marcus: Art in the Family, that F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
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lovingly documents her mother’s life through rare footage while revealing the particular challenges she faced in supporting herself as a woman artist. Provincetown gave Marcus a reprieve from the constant financial anxiety of being a professional New York artist who had to take office jobs to keep afloat; it was only after 1957 that she earned her living primarily as an artist and educator. INFLUENCE AND EMPATHY IN PORTRAITURE Painted 20 years apart, Self-Portrait in White Dress (1959) and SelfPortrait in the Dunes (1979) exemplify the development, even as they underscore the continuity, of Marcus’s visual language. In the earlier work, she gazes directly at the viewer as she lifts her arm in a gesture of drawing. The ground, a mixture of oil paint with sand, absorbs light in such a way that we can feel its cool, granular dampness. Four centuries earlier, Carlo Crivelli (c. 1430–1495) used egg tempera to create such trompe-l’oeil surfaces beneath his Madonnas and saints. While growing up in upper Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, Marcus frequented the Cloisters, where she absorbed the medieval collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These two portraits interest me for their introspection, reinforced by the framing of the figures within open spaces that are also, paradoxically, charged. Marcus’s eggshell whites, sun-drenched beiges, and emerald greens, applied in fine
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Marcia Marcus painting Lucas Samaras on the beach in Provincetown, 1965; photo: Marcia Marcus
Lucas in the Dunes, 1965, oil on canvas with silver and gold leaf, 53 x 35 in., private collection
layers, meld the influences of her teacher Edwin Dickinson with her own internalization of classical art. The exuberant group portrait Tyna, Alvin, and Baby (1970–71) reveals Marcus’s nuanced skill in representing African-American friends and models, reminding me of the younger artists Barkley L. Hendricks (1945–2017) and Amy Sherald (b. 1973). Posed against radiant turquoise bands of sky and sea, the figures are realized in subtle shades of black and brown with purple and gray overtones. Marcus unifies the family members through her arrangement of the negative spaces between them. The white linen tunic worn by the baby (coincidentally named Marcus) and the sparkly details of a gold-leafed belt buckle and earring symbolize for me the exchange of trust that occurs during the bonding experience of a portrait sitting. A summery joie de vivre comes through in the hip yet understated sartorial style of Alvin’s flared white pants and Tyna’s patterned halter dress. Art historian Jessica Bell Brown, in her essay for the Eric Firestone Gallery’s 2017 exhibition Marcia Marcus, Role Play: Paintings 1958–1973, writes that “Marcus depicted an alternative image of black families that ran counter to stereotypes of brokenness and poverty plaguing popular culture ... opting instead for a radical ordinariness in her treatment of black bodies.”
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In Family II (1970), Marcus portrays Terry Barrell (her husband at the time) and their daughters, Kate and Jane, within an airy, white-and-gray space that simultaneously unifies and separates the individuals. Marcus, the smallest figure, appears far away as she stands in profile before a window that looks out onto the dunes. For me, this depiction of separateness within a social group resonates deeply; it conveys the sometimes lonely experience of being in the midst of a gathering while you are simultaneously analyzing it from an aesthetic distance. Even so, the playfulness and visual delight shared within the artist’s family is evident in the uncanny color combinations of Barrell’s cobalt blue and white robe, the girls’ dresses, the Snoopy toy, and the needlepoint cushion. The fashionable outfits worn by Marcus and her subjects were sourced at church sales, at boutiques such as the one owned by the Provincetown artists Eleni and Jack Larned, and even at the town dump. Marcus liked to stand very close to her gessoed linen canvases, and she preferred using very stiff, worn brushes with short bristles. She often held several brushes, palette knives, or a rag in her left hand while painting with her right. I think this allowed Marcus to achieve both precision in draftsmanship and the tonal color that results from judiciously wiping the paint into the surface. For trips to Provincetown, her family Volkswagen bus was packed tightly with art supplies. On the dunes, Marcus would often make an improvised easel out of driftwood, as seen in a 1965 photograph of her painting Lucas Samaras. (The resulting portrait is also illustrated here.) Marcus’s years in Provincetown contributed to her sustaining friendships and her achievement of a singular voice in the history of American art — one now being more fully appreciated through thoughtful gallery exhibitions, scholarly research, and acquisitions. Like me, Marcus came to C-Scape Dune Shack — despite its primitive conditions — because it offered solitude and an affordable space in which to concentrate on beauty and expand into the work. There, on the distant coast of Massachusetts, she created a visual world that is abundant, artistically rigorous, and influential. In 1975, Marcus penned — on the back of an envelope — an insight as enduring as the dunes: “I aim for balance and subtle tension to make the work exist in a state of coming alive.” Information: Marcia Marcus is now represented by Eric Firestone Gallery, New York City. All photos © 2019 Marcia Marcus / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York REBECCA ALLAN is a New York City-based visual artist and horticulturist. She is represented by David Richard Gallery (New York).
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BY M AT T H I A S A N D E R S O N
T O D A Y ’ S M A S T E R S
JON DEMARTIN: A NEW APPROACH TO AN OLD TRADITION
T
he artist Jon deMartin (b. 1955) is a lucky man. Every autumn he spends two weeks in Venice drawing, painting, and studying the methods of the many historical Venetian masters who have long inspired him. Fortunately, his latest visit occurred before the catastrophic flooding this November that submerged much of La Serenissima, and now he hopes that his favorite destinations are both uncompromised and drying out. Over the years, deMartin’s visits to Venice have prompted a subtle “sea change” (pun unintended) in his artistry, a move from a naturalistic approach to one that is — in his words — “more felt,” more reliant on his own drawings and his own memory. This evolution has been somewhat surprising even to deMartin, who is hardly a newcomer to art. A native of Wilmington, Delaware, he graduated from Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute with a B.F.A. in filmmaking, then studied fine art in Manhattan at the Art Students League, School of Visual Arts, and New York Academy of Art, as well as privately with Michael Aviano. Today deMartin lives in White Plains, 33 miles north of New York City, and teaches in his studio in nearby Port Chester. For more than 25 years he has taught, and he continues to teach, life drawing and painting at many prestigious New York and Philadelphia institutions. In his exhibiting career, deMartin is best known for paintings of figures posed indoors and outdoors, portraits, and industrial landscapes. Throughout his Venetian initiative, deMartin has “sought to work out a reliable method that supports what I want to express, because how I approach the painting, on the technical side, profoundly influences the outcome. This has been a fascinating, difficult, and passionate adventure, during which I have developed a certain degree of confidence in my process so I that can focus on the idea.” Ever the educator, deMartin has recently been lecturing about this aesthetic journey at such institutions as Studio Incamminati (Philadelphia) and Grand Central Atelier (New York City). His talks are peppered with relevant quotations by the greats of art history, from Leonardo to Hopper, and illustrated by examples of his own work at every stage of the process. F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
Jon deMartin draws in Venice’s Piazza San Marco.
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(LEFT) Text Message, 2019, oil on wood, 15 x 13 1/2 in., collection of the artist
(BELOW) Program Seller,
2019, oil on wood, 18 x 12 in., collection of the artist
Illustrated here are his recent paintings of Venetian subjects, and also an architectural study he drew there. Note the recurrence of smart phones in these scenes: deMartin is not seeking to turn back time, but rather to show the city and its people as they are today.
Closing Time, 2019, oil on wood, 16 x 11 in., collection of the artist
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SELECTING THE ESSENTIALS At the heart of deMartin’s self-discovery is his decision to no longer paint from life, but instead from drawings he has made from life, and also from his own memory. He stresses that the act of drawing forces the artist to “select the essentials,” eliminating the clutter of what does not matter. On occasion, he concedes, his photographs of a model or setting become useful in double checking backgrounds or colors, but never can a photograph select the essentials as a drawing does. Logically, deMartin begins with the idea, allowing nothing to impede his imagination — especially reality. He always has paper and pen handy in case inspiration strikes unexpectedly, and he sees his compositional drawing as the initial “gesture” of the painting that will ultimately emerge. During its preparation, important questions may arise, such as, “Is this painting going to be about the figures or the setting?” J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y
Having drawn a composition, no matter how tentatively, deMartin begins to draw figure poses from his imagination. Like past masters, he also feels free to borrow poses from historical sources, which is why having a good art library is helpful. He urges his students to conceive and draw the main figure, the background figures, the props, and the setting before they hire a single model or go outdoors: “I have wasted precious modeling time and money by not being prepared,” deMartin admits. Once the models arrive, the artist makes drawings that purify their forms down to the essentials, always depicting them nude before drawing them clothed. DeMartin also draws the entire pose even if part of the body will be cropped out later. He notes that experienced models can provide unanticipated insights, but, like actors in rehearsal, they need a clear-headed director who already has a compositional drawing (or script) well underway. Having continuously sought to strengthen the image’s overall graphic power, deMartin “squares up” the final compositional drawing in order to transfer it to the canvas that he will paint. After finalizing his color palette so that he can concentrate on the act of paint2 0 2 0
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Grand Canal at Dusk, 2018, oil on wood, 14 x 20 in., collection of the artist
ing, deMartin begins to integrate his drawings of the models or architecture. Knowing that he may have to adjust the composition as the painting process unfolds, his goal now is to create “expressive, three-dimensional lines with spontaneous and flowing figures.” This approach means deMartin has abandoned the use of cartoon transfers (which, he says, “force me to color between the lines”) and of oil sketches (“which use up all of my expressive energy before I even get to the final canvas”). Reasonable as this approach may seem to laymen, it is still not fully understood in the world of American classical ateliers. Fortunately, this is a free country, without a nationalized system of art instruction, so deMartin can do as he wishes, and we all can enjoy the results illustrated here. We at Fine Art Connoisseur look forward to seeing what comes next from his lively brushes and pens. MATTHIAS ANDERSON is a contributing writer to Fine Art Connoisseur.
Chiesa San Zulian, 2019, graphite on paper, 7 x 7 in., collection of the artist
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BY ANNETTE BLAUGRUND
H I S T O R I C M A S T E R S
HARRIET HUBBARD AYER AND WILLIAM MERRITT CHASE:
A MYSTERY SOLVED?
W
illiam Merritt Chase (1849–1916) painted the beautiful Chicago socialiteHarrietHubbardAyer(1849–1903) in 1879 and 1880, and possibly again the following year.1 Chase had recently returned from a long period of study in Munich (1872–77), followed by a stay in Venice. Although he was still in his early 30s and had lived abroad for six years, he was already acknowledged as a leading figure in American art. He set up a fabulous workspace in the prestigious Tenth Street Studio Building in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, decorating it with antiques and exotic objects he had collected in Europe.2 These trappings would surely have appealed to Harriet Ayer, who had recently furnished her Chicago house with antiques purchased in Europe and from Sypher and Company, an upscale shop near the Tenth Street Studio Building.3 Her taste paralleled that of many American captains of industry then amassing antiques and paintWilliam Merritt Chase in the larger of his two studios in the Tenth Street Studio ings to adorn their newly built mansions. Building, c. 1895, photo courtesy Parrish Art Museum Ayer’s choice of such a daring, yet still affordable, portraitist — Chase then charged approximately $2,000 for a full-length portrait — was in keeping with her sophistication and family finances.4 This article explores why Chase lavish purchases. When the Aesthetic Movement’s leading spokesperson, Oscar Wilde, visited Ayer’s Chicago home in 1882, he “went into ecstapainted Ayer twice within such a short period and assesses the discies [sic] over the aesthetic furnishings of her parlors. He said he had tinct possibility that she was the model for his Studio Interior (1881–82, seen no more beautiful decorations in America.”5 Chase’s aesthetic was Brooklyn Museum). expressed in the mirrors, textiles, brass, paintings, collections of historic TWO OF A KIND clothing, shoes, and much more that adorned his private studio and the Chase and Ayer were quintessential products of the Gilded Age. Born in adjacent, larger, and more public one that had once served as the building’s exhibition gallery. Here he emulated the striking studios he had 1849, both possessed not only the talent to create Aesthetic environments admired in Europe, such as that of his Munich Academy mentor, Karl with antiques and decorative objects, but also an extravagance in their
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The Tenth Street Studio, 1880, oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x 48 1/4 in., Saint Louis Art Museum
of a woman of her class, while her folded hands emphasize a polite feminine modesty rather than her strong personality. Comparison of this portrait with a photograph of Ayer wearing the same gown shows that Chase modified the sleeves and bodice, painting the fabric as transparent rather than opaque. He also contrasted the black of the dress with the pinkish background, which brightens the entire composition. Just a year later (1880), Chase completed a second portrait of Ayer. Why two portraits in such rapid succession? Perhaps she wanted a more playful likeness, or perhaps she simply enjoyed sitting for Chase, with whom she shared so many interests. It is also possible that Chase instigated this second portrait in the hope that it would attract more wealthy clients from Chicago, or that Ayer herself may have commissioned it. Whatever the circumstances, it depicts her in a Directoire-style gown and
von Piloty.6 In fact, while Chase was still living abroad, he had prophesied to his fellow artist William S. Macy, “I intend to have the finest studio in New York.”7 Chase’s decor combined Aesthetic taste and Victorian clutter, and his acclaimed paintings of it helped establish his reputation across the U.S. In his book Our American Artists (1879), S.G.W. Benjamin wrote that Chase’s studio “is one of the most artistic in the country; for the artist brought home with him a great variety of curious and interesting objects which he picked up abroad. Faded tapestries that might tell strange stories, quaint decorated stools … picturesquely arranged around the studio with a studied carelessness, which carry the fancy back to other climes and the romance of bygone ages.”8 Chase’s collections expressed his sensibility and personality, as well as his aspirations. He created a treasury of past and present art, symbols of a cultural continuum that conveyed his cosmopolitan erudition and also attracted patrons. Ayer’s life journey was not as smooth as Chase’s. In December 1882, she separated from her philandering, alcoholic husband and brought her two daughters to live in a townhouse just two blocks from the Tenth Street Studio Building.9 Desperate to earn money after the collapse of her husband’s iron business, Ayer accepted a job as a saleswoman and interior designer for Syphers, the firm she had previously patronized. On one of her frequent trips to Europe seeking treasures for its clients, Ayer bought, from a chemist in Paris, the formula for a face cream that reputedly had been used by the French beauty Madame Récamier (1777–1845). In 1886, she founded the Récamier Manufacturing Company,10 becoming the first American woman to manage a successful cosmetics company. That same year she applied for a divorce; it was granted in 1887 and gave her full custody of her children in an era when husbands usually retained legal guardianship. Soon she was enjoying press accolades that compared her achievements to those of successful men in business.11 Subsequently, after enduring kidnapping, betrayal, seduction, and imprisonment in an insane asylum by the two men in her life, Ayer reinvented herself as “the highest paid newspaper woman in the United States.”12 But that is another story.13 THE PORTRAITS In Chase’s first portrait of Ayer (1879), she wears one of the dresses Charles Worth (1825–1895) had designed for her in Paris in 1872, while she was recuperating from the death of a child after the great Chicago fire the previous year. Worth had transformed couture into high art and big business, creating styles that became hugely popular among young American women traveling abroad. Here Ayer appears as the stylish socialite she was. Her straightforward gaze engages us with the self-possessed confidence F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
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Harriet Hubbard Ayer, 1879, oil on canvas, 48 1/8 x 32 1/4 in., Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York
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Portrait of a Lady (Harriet Hubbard Ayer), 1880, oil on canvas, 27 1/4 x 22 1/4 in., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
bonnet, probably selected from the artist’s own collection of historical costumes. By this time, Chase and Ayer knew each other well enough for him to suggest a likeness resembling his less formal portrayals of his student models. Chase exhibited the 1880 portrait of Harriet that year under the title Portrait of a Lady at the Society of American Artists, where it was favorably reviewed. A writer in The New York Times reported that the sitter’s “pose is exceedingly restful, easy, and natural as if she knew that dressed in such becoming clothes, and placed before such a charming background, every body would be pleased while looking at her.”14 IN CHASE’S STUDIO Chase included women in almost all of his studio interior scenes, not only to provide scale and incidental interest, but also to suggest that women possessed intellectual curiosity. Yet all of these figures have thus
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far remained unidentified — therefore virtually part of the sumptuous décor, as in The Tenth Street Studio (1880, Saint Louis Art Museum) — rather than individuals in their own right. I have previously proposed a strong visual resemblance between the second portrait of Ayer and the similarly dark-haired woman seen in Chase’s Studio Interior of 1881–82. I believe she wears the same dress and bonnet in both15, though my proposal has been rejected on the basis of differences in the bodice and sleeves. However, as with the black Worth dress in the first portrait, Chase could well have modified these features for the studio scene. Note particularly that the bonnet and sashes are of the same color, as are the pale blue fulllength gloves. Importantly, the woman in the studio scene takes the initiative to examine the large illustrated folio on the floor before her: she represents a new kind of modern woman who might readily
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— as Ayer did soon after — fight for her rights and launch her own business.16 There is further evidence that Ayer might be this model. First, she allowed Chase to exhibit Portrait of a Lady publicly (somewhat unusual for a married woman at this time), then permitted Frederick Juengling to make a wood engraving of it that would be published in the American Art Review (January 1881) accompanying an article about Chase by the critic Mariana G. Van Rensselaer. The critic insisted on illustrating Chase’s second portrait of Ayer and would tolerate no substitutes.17 Soon after exhibiting the portrait again, at the 1881 Interstate Industrial Exposition in Chicago, Chase finally sent it to Herbert Ayer, who was not at all pleased with either the portrait of his wife or the article.18 He told Chase the only thing he recognized in the image was his wife’s feet. It is believed that Chase angrily cut off the portrait’s lower half and sent Ayer (with his “compliments”) the fragment showing Harriet’s blue-slippered feet resting on a striking pink embroidered pillow.19 Herbert Ayer must have returned it, however, for at some point Chase gave the fragment to Van Rensselaer.20 He kept the top half of the portrait in his studio until his death, after which it was sold at the American Art Association in New York for a mere $15 during Chase’s estate sale in 1917.21 Fortunately, Juengling’s engraving shows us how the full-length portrait actually looked. Chase’s retention of the rejected portrait is yet another indicator that he might have thought to revisit its costumed figure in his Studio Interior. While we may never have definitive proof, all of this circumstantial evidence encourages us to think that Ayer is the woman depicted there. Courageous as it may have been to sit for Chase’s second portrait or pose as his model, Ayer proved even more bold through her marketing of Recamier products by incorporating her name and family crest on their labels.Shealsoprovedadeptatadvertising,writingadvertorialsthatquickly brought success to the Recamier firm, anticipating such later cosmetics F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
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Studio Interior, c. 1881–82, oil on canvas, 28 1/16 x 40 1/8 in., Brooklyn Museum
entrepreneurs as Elizabeth Arden, Hazel Bishop, Helena Rubinstein, and Estée Lauder. First with creams and balms, then with her ideas as the first female editor of the women’s pages in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World newspaper (1886–1903), Harriet Hubbard Ayer encouraged generations of women to look and feel better about themselves. Far ahead of her time, Ayer proved an equal to William Merritt Chase in self-advancement, and their relationship lives on through his remarkable images of her. ANNETTE BLAUGRUND is an art historian, curator, author of 15 books on American art, and former director of the National Academy Museum in New York. In 2011 The History Press published her documented biography of Harriet Hubbard Ayer. Endnotes
1 Ayer was a leading figure in Chicago society between 1873 and 1882. I thank Barbara Dayer Gallati for reading a draft of this article and Peter Fedoryk for assisting with the illustrations. 2 See Annette Blaugrund, The Tenth Street Studio Building: Artist Entrepreneurs from the Hudson River School to the American Impressionists (Parrish Art Museum, 1997). 3 Syphers was located at 860 Broadway by the 1880s. 4 Margaret Hubbard Ayer and Isabella Taves, Three Lives of Harriet Hubbard Ayer, 1957, 84, asserts that her father-in-law, John V. Ayer, commissioned the portraits, but this is impossible as he died in 1877, before Chase returned to the U.S.
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FREDERICK JUENGLING (1846–1889), Wood engraving of Chase’s Portrait of a Lady (before its lower half was cut off), in Mariana G. Van Rensselaer, “William Merritt Chase,” American Art Review, vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1881), facing p. 92
5 “Troubles of Her Life,” Boston Globe, December 19, 1886, 4. 6 European exemplars included Hans Makart, Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, and JeanLéon Gérôme. 7 Katherine Roof, The Life and Art of William Merritt Chase, 1917, New York: Hacker Art Books, reprinted 1975, 51. 8 S.G.W. Benjamin, Our American Artists (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1879) n.p. 9 Ayer moved to the house located at 120 West 13th Street. 10 Recamier was born Jeanne-Françoise-Julie-Adélaïde Bernard (1777–1849). By September 1886, Ayer was selling her Recamier cream and balm through druggists; in October she advertised her business address as 27 Union Square. See, for example, her advertisements in the Chicago Tribune, September 12, 1886, 8, and October 3, 1886, 7. 11 “Mrs. James Brown Potter: A Practical Business Woman Expresses an Opinion,” The New York Times, December 4, 1887, 5. 12 “Mrs. Harriet Ayer Dead,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 26, 1903, 4. 13 See Annette Blaugrund, Dispensing Beauty; The Triumphs and Tragedies of Harriet Hubbard Ayer (The History Press, 2011). 14 The New York Times, March 16, 1880, quoted ibid., 33. 15 Blaugrund, The Tenth Street Studio Building, 119. Ronald G. Pisano initially agreed with my conjecture and repeated it in Ronald G. Pisano [completed by D. Frederick Baker and Carolyn K. Lane], The Complete Catalogue of Known and Documented Work by William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), vol. 2 (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009), nos. 60, 68. 16 Erica Hirschler, “Old Masters Meet New Women,” in Katherine Bourguignon et al., William Merritt Chase: A Modern Master (New Haven: Yale University Press with the Phillips Collection, 2016), 17–49. 17 Van Rensselaer mentioned it again the following month: “William Merritt Chase,” American Art Review, 2:2 (February 1881), 138–42. 18 The painting was exhibited in its full-length form as Portrait of a Lady, no. 501, at the Interstate Industrial Exposition, fall 1881. 19 Pisano/Baker/Lane, The Complete Catalogue…, 34; Keith L. Bryant, William Merritt Chase: A Genteel Bohemian (University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 1991), 103; Three Lives, 84. 20 In 1881, a third portrait of Harriet Hubbard Ayer was painted, this time by Eastman Johnson (1824–1906), a renowned master one generation older than Chase. 21 The Completed Pictures, Studies and Sketches Left by the Late William Merritt Chase, American Art Association, New York, 1917, no. 91.
Feet [cut by Chase from the original Portrait of a Lady], 1880, oil on canvas, 14 x 38 3/8 in., Graham Williford Foundation for American Art, Fairfield, Texas
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GREAT NATIO WHAT DOES RED MEAN?
THE RED SHOW Eleventh Street Arts and Salmagundi Club Long Island City and Manhattan eleventhstreetarts.com and salmagundi.org through February 1, then February 3–March 1
Curated by the artist Dale Zinkowski, The Red Show is an exhibition of 23 still life, figure, and portrait paintings created by instructors and alumni of the Grand Central Atelier. (The atelier’s exhibiting space is called Eleventh Street Arts after its physical location in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, New York City.) As the title suggests, Zinkowski sought to investigate the artists’ use of color as a symbolic language, and particularly the psychological associations of the color red. He cites an observation from the German publisher Benedikt Taschen, who wrote in 2010: “Symbolically, red is the color of life. Red attracts us, conveying vitality, warmth, excitement,
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passion. Its meaning relates, at bottom, to the human experience of blood and fire, the burning energy of human desirousness.” On view now are one piece each from the artists Anthony Baus, Liz Beard, Jon Brogie, Diana Buitrago, Devin Cecil-Wishing, Kevin Müller Cisneros, Jacob Collins, Savannah Tate Cuff, Jon deMartin, Kathryn Engberg, Sam Hung, Brendan Johnston, Sarah Lamb, Rodrigo Mateo, Edward Minoff, Gregory Mortensen, Sandra Sanchez, Travis Schlaht, Tsultrim Tenzin, Brian West, Katie Whipple, Justin Wood, and Dale Zinkowski. A dozen of these works will move on to Manhattan’s Salmagundi Club for a monthlong run there.
TRAVIS SCHLAHT (b. 1975), Nude in Red, 2015, oil on linen, 23 1/2 x 28 1/2 in., available from the artist
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SEEING OURSELVES
IT COULD BE YOU: PORTRAITURE IN A CONSTRUCTED WORLD Portraits, Inc. Birmingham, Alabama portraitsinc.com January 23–February 20
Organized by, and already presented at, the New York Artists Equity Association’s Equity Gallery, the exhibition It Could Be You: Portraiture in a Constructed World will soon be on view at Portraits, Inc. It features works by more than 30 artists from around the world who explore the purpose — and limits — of portraiture, identity, and the self in our digital age. Equity Gallery director Michael Gormley writes, “Somewhere between the introduction of cheap camcorders and the proliferation of smart phones, we became distrustful of our body’s ability to mediate directly with the physical world. To a large extent, we have exchanged the sensual perceptions emanating from our surroundings for simulated experiences that mitigate reality through camera lenses and digitalized imagery. Once understood to be aide-mémoires of life’s lived experiences, the media is reality — a reality comprising instantly shareable content validated or refuted by social media emojis. That’s a risky way to construct one’s universe. How can we hope to fix an identity, let alone one informed by ethical principles, on a mutating digital stage that is subject to the whims of marketing algorithms and bots on a mission? Given present conditions, it is no wonder that our instinct to ascertain ‘what’s real’ has devolved into an addicting stalk for pleasure hits that
TAKING STOCK OF AMERICAN PORTRAITURE THE OUTWIN 2019: AMERICAN PORTRAITURE TODAY National Portrait Gallery Washington, D.C. npg.si.edu through August 30
The Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery has opened its fifth triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, titled The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today. This important project is made possible by an endowment established by the late Virginia Outwin Boochever and continued by her children. This edition’s first-prize winner is Hugo Crosthwaite of San Diego, who created a stop-
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(ABOVE)
ALEXANDRA
TYNG
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1954),
Seven
Generation Vanitas, 2018, oil on linen, 26 x 36 in. (RIGHT) HYESEUNG MARRIAGE-SONG (b. 1978), Lilo, 2018, oil on canvas, 60 x 84 in
never quite satiate an appetite weaned on spectacle. That said, can we stake out what is abiding, true, and stable about us and our fellows? In an increasingly alarming and chaotic era, art that depicts what is actually there and recognizable is defiant — and nothing could be more necessary and reassuring at the moment than simply showing what we actually look like (and mean) to each other.” A jury (comprising Hyeseung MarriageSong, Beverly McNeil, and Patricia Watwood) motion drawing animation that traces a woman’s journey from Mexico to the U.S. in pursuit of the American Dream. He has received a $25,000 award and a commission to create a portrait of a living individual for the museum’s permanent collection. On view now are portraits by all 47 competition finalists. They were selected by a jury from more than 2,600 submissions from 14 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The jurors were Harry Gamboa, Jr. (California Institute of the Arts), Lauren Haynes (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art), Byron Kim (Yale School of Art), and Jefferson Pinder (School of the Art Institute of J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y
has presented awards to four exhibitors: Jamie Adams (first place), Natalie Italiano (second place), Traci Wright Martin (third place), and Allison Maletz (honorable mention).
Chicago). The Portrait Gallery curators Taina Caragol, Dorothy Moss, and Brandon Brame Fortune also served on the committee. The gallery’s director, Kim Sajet, notes, “Nearly all of the leading national conversations from the past three years — immigration, the rights of workers, climate change, and the impact of racial violence — are presented here on a personal level. It is a moment to stop, look around, and admire the tenacity and beauty of the American spirit through portraiture.” One exhibiting artist will win the People’s Choice Award, to be announced in May 2020.
WAYDE MCINTOSH (b. 1985), Legacy, 2017, oil on Dibond, 9 1/2 x 8 in., co-winner of the competition’s third place prize
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their counterparts at the well in the desert; for Sondow, at least metaphorically, the desert is Russia, and the well is the Repin Academy with its spring of knowledge. Together the artists’ works highlight the dynamic between the grand design of biblical text and that of personal space, and also the balance between traditional and contemporary aesthetics.
BETWEEN WORLDS
IN THE PRESENT TENSE Kate Oh Gallery New York City kateohgallery.com February 6–29
The Kate Oh Gallery will soon open In the Present Tense, a show featuring paintings by Iliya Mirochnik and sculptures by James Sondow. The artists became friends while studying at the Bridgeview School of Fine Arts (New York City) and Repin State Institute of Arts (St. Petersburg, Russia). Today both are leaders in conveying the creative side of academic training to their many students in the U.S. The exhibition’s title refers to the liminal space Mirochnik and Sondow occupied while shuttling between New York and St. Petersburg. Today each is able to see through the forward- and backwardlooking realities in which those two cultures and art educational systems exist in order to explore immediate experience, focusing on moments of transformation and channeling them in their art.
(ABOVE) ILIYA MIROCHNIK (b. 1988), Amy and Sydney, 2019, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in.
(RIGHT) JAMES
SONDOW (b. 1974), Joseph, 2019, resin, 17 x 9 x 9 in.
Mirochnik’s latest works include landscapes from Florida and southern England, intimate familial portraits, and scenes inspired by antique and biblical narratives. Sondow’s sculptures utilize motifs from the Old Testament to shed light on his own life. For example, his sculptural interpretations of Rebekah, Rachel, and Tsiporah are all incarnations of his own Russian-Jewish wife. Those three biblical matriarchs met
NATURE TAKES A BOW
SOUTHEASTERN WILDLIFE EXPOSITION Charleston sewe.com February 14–16
The Southeastern Wildlife Exposition (SEWE) is the largest gathering of its kind in America and South Carolina’s single largest annual event. On just one weekend, more than 40,000 nature lovers will attend the 38th annual edition of this celebration of wildlife and environmental conservation. Held at venues throughout the art-minded city of Charleston, it provides a platform for more than 500 artists, exhibitors, and wildlife experts from around the world. Though there will be many events to attend, of particular interest to collectors is the juried show of 100 artists who depict animals and sporting subjects. This year’s featured artist is the painter Jason Tako of Pennsylvania. Also on offer will be exhibitions featuring local artists, decoys, and sporting arms, as F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
well as film screenings and lively demonstrations of birds of prey, retrievers, cooking, and art-making for all ages. Many events require tickets, so check before you go. Available on the website are details on SEWE’s VIP program, which provides privileged access to events starting as early as February 12.
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MITCH BAIRD (b. 1972), Repose in the Shallows, 2019, oil on linen, 18 x 30 in.
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ART IN THE WEST
THE TOAST OF DENVER DENVER coorswesternart.com January 11–26
Featuring 60 artists from across America, Canada, and Europe, the 27th annual Coors Western Art Exhibit & Sale will tempt collectors from Denver and beyond with an eclectic mix of contemporary realist artworks capturing the Western way of life. This year’s featured artist is Sophy Brown, a Coors participant for the past 10 years. Illustrated here is her Signature Work, Maelstrom, already acquired for the collection
of the National Western Stock Show, of which the Coors exhibit is a key part. (Posters of it can be purchased online and on site.) Born in England, Brown earned her M.F.A. at the University of Michigan and is now based in Colorado, where she rides horses regularly. Her latest paintings depict these extraordinary animals with an overlay of raw emotion. Referring to them as “selfportraits,” Brown experiments with spray paint, adding torn layers and flinging paint at the surface as she dives into her own psyche.
On January 7, the ticketed Red Carpet Reception will offer Coors patrons the privilege of seeing and buying exhibited artworks early. The next day, the Denver Art Museum will host its 14th annual Petrie Institute of Western American Art symposium. The exhibition’s net proceeds will again support the National Western Scholarship Trust, which helps more than 100 college students annually pursue training in rural medicine, agriculture, and veterinary medicine.
HANDS ON SCOTTSDALE celebrateart.com January 18 – March 29
Now entering its 30th year, Celebration of Fine Art (CFA) is Arizona’s longest-running art show. It brings together 100 artists from across America, all of whom spend 10 weeks creating new pieces right in front of visitors. Guests are invited to ask the artists questions while they work, and these encounters are complemented by weekly demonstrations of woodturning, welding, kiln firing, and bronze pouring. Everyone is welcome to explore the sculpture garden, which features nearly 100 pieces, and to enjoy the on-site cafe. CFA recently launched its own podcast channel, Celebrating Art, where participating exhibitors get to share their fascinating stories. In 1991, inspired by California’s Laguna Beach Festival of Art, Tom and Ann Morrow collaborated with city officials and the community to open CFA’s “big white tents” for the first time. Today the project is carried on by Tom’s daughter Susan Morrow Potje and her husband, Jake, who took the helm in 2004. CFA now encompasses 40,000 square feet of covered space surrounding the one-acre sculpture garden.
ROBIN DAMORE (b. 1955), Lillya, 2017, oil on canvas, 36 x 24 in.
SOPHY BROWN (b. 1963), Maelstrom, 2019, acrylic on board, 92 x 55 in.
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THE WEST RETURNS TO TINSELTOWN
WYOMING COMES TO GEORGIA
LOS ANGELES theautry.org/masters February 7–March 22
CARTERSVILLE, GEORGIA boothmuseum.org February 13–June 7
The Autry Museum of the American West is set to host its 23rd annual Masters of the American West Art Exhibition and Sale, featuring new pieces created by 64 leading painters and sculptors working in the Western genre. Among them are George Carlson, G. Russell Case, Tammy Garcia, Logan Maxwell Hagege, Mark Maggiori, Mian Situ, and Brittany Weistling. The roster also includes returning Masters favorites such as Bill Anton, Michael Coleman, and Kyle Polzin, and the organizers are looking forward to welcoming newcomers Autumn Borts-Medlock, Steve Kestrel, and Grant Redden. Sales of the artworks provide essential support for the Autry’s educational programs, exhibitions, and more than 100 public events annually. If you can, make every effort to attend the opening weekend (February 7–8), which will include a private preview mingling with the exhibitors and other collectors, talks by artists Kim Wiggins and Billy Schenck, the awards presentation, the fixed-price sale drawing, and the after-sale soirée.
Five artists from Jackson Hole, Wyoming — Kathryn Mapes Turner, Amy Ringholz, September Vhay, Kathy Wipfler, and Amy Lay — have worked closely with the Booth Western Art Museum to create the exhibition The Jackson Hole 5: Important Painters from the West. Although their ways of depicting Wyoming’s landscape and wildlife differ, these artists share two passions: a reverence for their region’s wide-open spaces and a commitment to conveying its magnificence in art. According to
Turner, all five draw inspiration from the natural world, from their community’s creative energy, and from the enterprising individuality that has shaped the West. The museum’s director, Seth Hopkins, notes, “The opportunity to put five terrific painters together in a group show like this, representing a specific geographic area, does not come along often. While all five of them happen to be women, we will be focused on the quality of their work and the nature of the geography and wildlife that surrounds their homes and studios. Those are the common themes in their art, much more than their gender.” On March 28, the public is invited to enjoy a lively discussion with all five artists, followed by a tour of the exhibition and a reception where everyone can get to know them better.
Kathryn Mapes Turner, Amy Ringholz, September Vhay, Kathy Wipfler, and Amy Lay; photo: David Stubbs
A SCHOOL HIGHLIGHTS ITS OWN SCOTTSDALE scottsdaleartschool.com February 20–March 19
BILL ANTON (b. 1957), Pacific Pastures, 2019, oil on linen, 40 x 48 in.
The Autry highlights the region’s art, history, and cultures. Its collection of more than 600,000 artworks and artifacts encompasses the Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection, one of the finest holdings of Native American material in the U.S. Co-founded in 1988 by Jackie and Gene Autry and Joanne and Monte Hale, the Autry merged in 2002 with Women of the West, an organization highlighting the impact of women’s experiences. The Autry has three campuses in Los Angeles: the Autry Museum in Griffith Park, the Historic Southwest Museum Mt. Washington Campus, and the Resources Center (now under construction). F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
The Scottsdale Artists’ School is poised to open The Best and the Brightest, its annual juried fine art show and sale highlighting artworks by top students living around the world. Any student who had taken a workshop or weekly class here since January 2016 was invited to submit works, the finest of which have now been juried in. During the show’s festive opening reception on February 20, guests will be able to purchase right from the wall, and awards will be presented in the categories of oils, drawings, pastels, sculptures, small works (no larger than 8 x 10 inches), and water media. Last year’s Best of Show was won by Lia Bomar for her drawing, The Rifleman, and she also placed first in the drawings category with the superb work illustrated here. The exhibition will remain on view right through March 19.
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LIA BARDIN BOMAR (b. 1987), Miracle Within, 2018, pastel, charcoal, and white pencil on paper, 24 x 18 in., awarded first place for drawings in the 2019 edition
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BY DANIEL GRANT
PATTI MOLLICA:
TRANSITIONING FROM COMMERCIAL ART TO FINE ART
W
hen Patti Mollica (b. 1955) graduated from art school in 1977, she was “unfocused. I didn’t know where things would lead or how to get more rooted in the art world.” OK, no real surprise there. At some point, most artists have probably said the same thing. Fortunately, Mollica is now a successful and prolific painter living in Nyack, New York. Her most popular subjects are street scenes of Manhattan; she sells an average of 50 paintings annually through four galleries, as well as directly to individual collectors. Mollica did not follow a straight line from art school to such robust sales figures. After graduating, she set up a booth at various arts festivals and did 10-minute portraits at the Great New York State Fair in her hometown of Syracuse. “From morning till evening, there was a line of people waiting for me to do their portraits,” she recalls. “I thought, there has to be an easier way to make a living than this.” Such thoughts usually kill off a fine art career for good, but in Mollica’s case they only deferred it for a while. In 1980, she enrolled in the Atlantabased Portfolio Center, a two-year, for-profit, non-degree-granting school that teaches copywriting, design, and illustration skills for the advertising and design fields. Mollica took to it quite well. The school awarded her the prize for best portfolio in art direction, graphic design, and illustration in her graduating class, and in 1982 she was on her way to making a living and a career in Atlanta. For most of the 1980s and ’90s, fine art was largely an after-hours hobby for Mollica. She worked at an advertising agency for almost two years while freelancing on the side, then started freelancing full-time, working as a graphic designer and illustrator for numerous clients. Mollica created book covers for St. Martin’s Press and Penguin Press, images used in advertising campaigns for American Express, Sheraton, and Marriott, posters for New York University and Barnes & Noble, and designs for wine labels, calendars, and greeting cards. Other clients were in the technology and financial services industries. In 1985, she joined up with a copywriter and account executive to form a creative services agency (Mollica, Bell & Dvorin) that developed advertising campaigns, identity branding, marketing strategies, graphic design, copywriting,
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Crossing Madison, illustrating an article in Mortgage Banking (2007)
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Red Hot Jazz, illustrating the cover of the DVD The Sudnow Method: Weekend Piano Seminar (2012)
and illustration were becoming more web-based: images were being created on computer screens rather than drafting boards and easels. “I didn’t want to give up paint,” Mollica says. “Working on a screen makes your work more sterile and leftbrained.” For her, all the energy of swaths of color applied with a brush dissipated within the confines of computer code. (“I took a class in computer coding and decided that I would do anything but that.”) She felt the new web-based images were all “vector-looking. Commercial clients had hired me for my fine art look.” So, if you want to pursue a fine art look, why not be a fine artist? That is what Mollica decided to become, without fully giving up the design and illustration jobs that still come via her agent (“only if it’s interesting and pays well”). She pushed herself to do her own paintings and get them in front of an art crowd rather than art directors.
DIFFERENT WORLDS
On the Cell Phone, illustrating the cover of The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature (2008)
and illustration services for corporations around the country. Its clients included hospitals, banks, shopping malls, cable providers, and accounting firms. In 1992, after 12 years in the South, Mollica was looking to move back north; she had grown up in Syracuse and earned her B.F.A. at the State University of New York at Oswego. After relocating to Manhattan, she began her career anew, sending out her illustration and design portfolio and promptly landing numerous freelance jobs. “I totally fell in love with the city,” Mollica explains. “The street life of people and buildings and cars and colors fit me so well.” The style of illustration and art she produced also seemed more at home in New York City than Atlanta, as her colorful brushy images of people and objects captured the bustle of Manhattan. Mollica’s new clients also liked the energetic brushwork and artistically expressive elements of her illustrations. Many of the financial services firms liked being associated with what looked more like fine art than generic design. In fact, some of Mollica’s first exhibitions occurred at charity benefits sponsored by the hedge fund managers for whom she freelanced. “They could tell that I was an artist and not ‘just’ a designer, and they offered encouragement.” By 2000, Mollica found her living conditions a bit cramped — “studio space is impossible to find in Manhattan, and you need some space to move around in,” she says — so she moved to Nyack, a 30-minute drive north. Other changes were taking place by then that started to shift her focus. Most importantly, design F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
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Having a foot in two careers such as illustration and fine art — really, anything and fine art — is not easy. The wider world often appears to demand that you choose one or the other. Tom Christopher, another full-time illustrator who became an occasional illustrator and full-time painter, notes that many art directors look down on fine artists as not working hard and being unreliable. “They have a living-in-a-cold-water-flat-and-chopping-off-your-ear conception of artists. They looked at me and said, ‘Is that what you are these days?’” It is not an easy balance to maintain, because there is often a drop-everything aspect to commercial assignments that may disrupt the process of creating fine art, but then trade-offs feature in all creative people’s lives. Mollica’s commercial art agent, Gail Gaynin, observes that illustration is not something in which you can just dabble: you are competing for every job against very talented illustrators who do nothing but illustration all day. “A lot of people think, ‘I’m not all that busy; I can do some illustrations to make some money.’ But it doesn’t work that way,” Gaynin warns. “It’s more difficult for a fine artist to become an illustrator than for an illustrator to become a fine artist.” Gaynin continues, “In fine art, you are working out your own ideas; in illustration you are solving someone else’s problems.” Perhaps the client isn’t just one person but a committee, maybe more than one committee — all of whom can demand changes to your concept, colors, and design. Not every fine art graduate can accommodate that. Additionally, an illustration is intended to be understood in an instant (looks cool, buy that, seems trustworthy), while a fine artwork that can be digested quickly is probably not good. Art should command our attention longer as we seek to comprehend what the artist is attempting to reveal. Warhol’s image of a soup can, though accurate, gives rise to a variety of thoughts — about consumerism, about billboards as the 2 0 2 0
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Times Square Biker, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 in., collection of William Shortell, Boston
landscape of the modern world, about a familiar image drained of its original meaning — that are unrelated to a common food. Not every agent offers the necessary latitude to an illustrator seeking to be more of a fine artist, but Gaynin can see both sides. She herself earned a B.F.A. at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn “because I had wanted to be a painter all my life.” She did not find artistic success, but a friend told her that some of her images would work as fabric designs, “so I worked up a portfolio and sent it to a company that made custom rugs,” she says. “I ended up working in that field for several years.” Then a photographer friend asked her to act as his agent, and she doubled his volume in the first year. This eventually became her full-time career. Needless to say, it is good to be represented by someone who understands that you are multidimensional and that, in fact, being multi-dimensional is a selling point. It took Mollica a while to gain a foothold in the fine art world. She approached gallery owners but learned that they “want to find you, not for you to find them.” She also “exhibited” her art in restaurants, though “some came back smelling of marinara sauce.” Getting rejected is expected, but sometimes you just
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need to be at the right place at the right time. While on vacation in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Mollica stopped in at a gallery and asked the owner if she would be interested in exhibiting her work. A painter herself, Simie Maryles did not look interested, but “she asked for my card, and while I was seeking it in my bag, she began to look through my portfolio and immediately said yes.”
THE FINE ART OF SUCCESS
Simie Maryles Gallery was the first to show Mollica’s paintings. Now there are three others, and half of her sales occur through these galleries. Other sales are to people who contact her directly, and she sells smaller, less expensive paintings on Etsy.com. Her pieces range in size from 8 x 8 inches to 60 x 60 inches, priced accordingly from $225 up to $8,000. And there are private commissions from time to time. One couple who live part of the year in Manhattan and the other part in Florida commissioned a 5 x 5-foot painting of the view from their 37th-floor apartment, which features boats on the East River, cars, pedestrians, and the United Nations building. Mollica says they “wanted to hang it in their Florida
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(CLOCKWISE) Next to Compton’s, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 in., collection of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Bowes, Matthews, North Carolina
Latte Break at the Met, 2017, oil on
canvas, 10 x 12 in., collection of Ann Self, W. Port Island, Maine 2016, acrylic on panel, 8 x 8 in., collection of the artist
SoHo Shopping Buds,
Summer Tulips, 2014, acrylic on
canvas, 12 x 12 in., collection of Angel Cacciola, Somerville, Massachusetts
home to remind them of what they saw every day in New York.” She has also been asked to paint portraits or a favorite vacation spot. Mollica also conducts painting workshops for amateurs in the U.S. and abroad. She has written four art instruction books and created several videos that may be purchased as DVDs or downloaded, and she gives two-hour lectures on acrylic paint as a representative of Golden Artist Colors. Moreover, Mollica still takes on the occasional illustration job when Gail Gaynin calls. Adding it all up, Mollica now earns twice as much as a fine artist than she did as an illustrator. Piecing together a livelihood from various sources is something she had already mastered as a freelance illustrator. F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
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“There aren’t a lot of safety nets out there,” Mollica cautions. Undoubtedly, many people see themselves as novelists or songwriters or actors or fine artists. They just need a break to let them leave their day jobs and become who they are. It does happen, and it’s more likely to happen for people who can assemble various revenue streams that provide income when one or another slows to a trickle. The acclaimed California painter Wayne Thiebaud — still working at age 99 — calls himself an “illustrator gone uppity.” He is definitely not alone. DANIEL GRANT is the author of The Business of Being an Artist (Skyhorse Press) and several other books on the lives and careers of fine artists. 2 0 2 0
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BY THOMAS CONNORS
IN CHICAGO, MASTER DRAWINGS FROM THE GRAY COLLECTION
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sometimes think,” Vincent van Gogh wrote his brother Theo, “there is nothing so delightful as drawing.” The Dutch master was remarking on his own pleasure before a sheet of paper, but for the Chicago gallerist and collector Richard Gray (1928–2018), that sentiment was equally apt. A leading dealer in modern and contemporary art, Gray was, for more than 50 years, an active connoisseur of works on paper, primarily drawings, which afforded him — as he said of Willem de Kooning’s Two Women, I (1952) — “the sense of a connection with the artist … as if I were there, a fly on the wall, looking at him drawing.” By the time Gray died in 2018, he and his wife, art historian Mary L. Gray, had assembled a trove that ranges from Perino del Vaga to Jim Dine. The bulk of those holdings have been gifted to the Art Institute of Chicago, where the exhibition Pure Drawing: Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection is on view from January 25 througsh May 10.
A HAPPY ACCIDENT
AlifelongChicagoan,RichardGrayopenedhisgalleryin1963with an inventory he had recently acquired in New York, including a de Kooning collage and an India-ink drawing by Arshile Gorky. As he told author and journalist Lawrence Weschler in a 2009 interview, although he had no grand plan for the business, Gray did anticipate selling works on paper. “That’s the niche I thought I’d be filling, though it didn’t last long. I discovered that … nobody seemed to care much about works on paper, and I began dealing more broadly in paintings and sculpture.” While the gallery’s roster in those categories grew to include Milton Avery, David Hockney, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg, and Jules Olitski (among many others), Gray’s personal delight remained centered on drawing. “To this day,” he told Weschler, “I sometimes have to laugh when I find myself lighting up before a drawing when what’s
Attributed to FRANCESCO BONSIGNORI (c. 1455–1519), Portrait of an Old Man, late 15th century, charcoal, with wet brush and stumping, on paper, 10 3/4 x 8 3/4 in.
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(LEFT) GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEPOLO (1696–1770), The Head of a Young Man in Profile to the Left, 1749–53, red chalk, with touches of white chalk on paper, 9 x 9 1/2 in. (BELOW) JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID (1748–1825), Head of a Woman, c. 1780, pen and iron-gall ink on white laid paper, 7 1/2 x 5 1/4 in.
next to it, by the same artist, may be deemed more important, more valuable because it’s a painting.” “Drawings, for him, were akin to his passion for chamber music, inasmuch as all of the artist’s marks and process remain distinguishable, none hidden, as one can also hear each musical voice, each instrument in chamber music,” says Paul Gray, who joined his father in the gallery more than 30 years ago and continues to run it. That pronounced interest in drawing notwithstanding, Gray asserted time and again that his collecting was not overly strategic; he wasn’t driven by a checklist. “There has always been an opportunistic aspect to my acquisitions,” he told Weschler. “And it’s all highly intuitive. I don’t go looking for anything in particular. Rather, I respond to things as they come up.” Perhaps not surprisingly for a dealer in modern and contemporary art, Gray responded readily to Degas, Seurat, Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Picasso. But in the 1980s, he began to purchase material from the 16th through the 18th centuries, such as Guercino’s Saint John the Baptist, as well as drawings by Ingres and Delacroix. While sure of his own eye, Gray knew what he knew and what he did not know, and so welcomed expert guidance from the late Harold Joachim, longtime curator of prints and drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, and from François Borne, who served as director and international head of Old Master drawings at Christie’s from 1984 to 2001. “Richard was a man who really worshipped intellectual exchanges, and he was always full F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
of questions,” Borne recalls. “He wanted to be told, in no uncertain terms, why a drawing should be in his collection. And the reasons could not be because it was beautiful or because it was very desirable. You had to find a whole intellectual foundation for why a drawing was important.” J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y
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ANNIBALE CARRACCI (1560–1609), Study of Hercules Resting, with separate studies of his head and foot (recto), 1595–97, black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on paper, 10 1/4 x 15 1/2 in.
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FRANÇOIS BOUCHER (1703–1770), Study of a Draped Woman Leaning on a Pedestal, 1759–61, black chalk, with stumping, and white chalk on paper, laid down onto modern paperboard, 20 1/2 x 14 1/2 in.
Even when Gray was immediately taken with an image, he required a deeper engagement to complete his commitment. “There were some drawings he was carried away with, won over by straightaway, but that led to a second stage of serious analysis,” says Borne. “On some other occasions, it was a long campaign to try to convince him. Then, suddenly, he would stop and say, ‘I get it,’ and he was beaming.” It took Gray well over a year to decide on what would become one of his favorite pieces, a portrait of an old man, possibly from the hand of Francesco Bonsignori. “The Poussin, too [Studies after Andrea Mantegna, Giulio Romano, and the Antique] came after a very long period of appreciation,” Borne notes. “Richard was incredibly smart and very funny, but at the same time, a man of measured words,” reveals Kevin Salatino, who is now the Institute’s chair and curator of prints and drawings. “He didn’t really like to talk that much about himself. And when we discussed drawings, we talked about them in very different ways. He looked at them differently than an art historian or curator would, and I think he always thought the minutiae of curatorial knowledge was rather amusing. At the same time, he had great respect for it.” Although there is a certain catholicity to this collection — ranging as it does from 15th-century Italy to 21st-century America — the figure was always paramount for Gray. “The human figure, clothed and unclothed, standing, sitting, orating, gesturing, running, fighting, dominates the collection,” notes Salatino, who has co-curated Pure Drawing with his predecessor, Suzanne Folds McCullagh. “He didn’t like landscape all that much, or still life,” observes McCullagh, who curated a selection of the Gray material at the Institute in 2010 and became director of the Gray Collection Trust upon her retirement from the museum in 2016. “I think he liked the possibility of engaging in a story that might be suggested by the human form. The Carracci study of Hercules was one of his pride and joys. And I don’t know if he saw it as a reflection of his own soul, but the Bonsignori touched him deeply.” “Some of my favorite recollections are of the several works he acquired directly from the [Gray] gallery,” says Paul Gray. “A consignment might come in, say an estate with a number of works. I could tell when he had his eye on something he thought we shouldn’t let go, something he coveted, such as a magnificent watercolor of Picasso gazing at his lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter, from the early 1930s. It was consigned from a highly important private collection and Richard couldn’t bring himself to spend what it was truly worth, and of course we had a duty to the consignor to get full value. We ended up selling it to our most important and active client at the time. But years later, when that client thought to trade it back to us for a painting — and it was then worth even more — Richard didn’t hesitate. He said to me, ‘You’re not getting that to sell!’ The work remains in the collection still.” For years, Richard Gray insisted that he wasn’t a collector, that he had simply “accumulated” things. “It was only in the last 25 to 30 years of his life that he really collected aggressively, with determination, resources, and direction,” says his son. “Even in his 60s, he still didn’t yet think of himself as a collector, really.” In an interview conducted for the Archives of American Art in 2007, Richard Gray stated that “an awful lot of people out there think I am a collector of great distinction … I still have trouble accepting that entirely … but I guess I am a collector of great distinction.”
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With that realization came his determination to ensure that the collection was seen. “Since our exhibition in 2010, Richard and Mary collected a substantial number of works and wanted to show the full panoply of their drawings, a kind of summation of 50-plus years of collecting,” Salatino explains. “I think Richard was inspired, in part, by Eugene Thaw, a man he knew and greatly admired. He’d long had it in mind to do this, but I think the big commemorative exhibition of Thaw’s collection of drawings at the Morgan Library in 2017 was a catalyst.”
TREASURE TROVE
Comprising more than 100 items from the Gray collection, Pure Drawing features works by Rubens, Canaletto, Tiepolo, David, Rodin, Cézanne, Leger, Matisse, Pollock, and Hockney, among many others. Gray was drawn, in particular, to the male form (for what he referred to as its “architectonic” aspect), and the exhibition includes Annibale Carracci’s Study of Hercules Resting, in which repose flows across the heavily muscled body from wrist, forearm, and shoulder as the hero leans against the Roman wolf. In an utterly different realm is Odilon Redon’s Primitive Being (c. 1876), in which the figure — dwarfed by the severed head of a
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(LEFT) VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853–1890), Avenue of Pollard Birches and Poplars, 1884, reed pen and iron-gall ink on tan laid paper, 7 1/2 x 10 1//2 in.
(BELOW) Giuseppe
Porta (c. 1520–c. 1575), Bearded Man with His Right Arm Raised, 1562–64, black, red, and ocher chalk, heightened with touches of white chalk, on paper, 8 1/4 x 10 1/4 in.
giant — appears almost brittlely vulnerable. The notion of a drawing as the essence of gesture is forcefully manifested in images as varied as Ubaldo Gandolfi’s The Flagellation of the early 1770s — in which the victim, his tormentor, and the crowd are spun from a near vortex of undulating lines — and Matisse’s Seamstress (1900), in which simple contour mark-making generates both a sense of mass and movement. For Salatino, “One of the greatest drawings of the entire 18th century, not just the French 18th century — and that’s a big statement to make — is among the Gray drawings, and it’s a Boucher. It is spectacular, not only in size, but in ambition — it’s just a tour de force in black and white chalk. What we see is a woman leaning on a pedestal, heavily draped in this voluminous drapery, so heavily draped that the drawing borders on the abstract. You have the sense of weightiness, but also the sense of movement stilled. Not unlike it, but at the same time radically different, is what I consider one of the greatest Rodin drawings – of a standing nude dancer, in extraordinary condition. With Rodin, there are issues of authenticity and quality, but this is a completely unquestioned drawing, clearly made very, very rapidly with such a knowledge of the human figure, both moving and still, that it is breathtaking.” F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
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While Gray was propelled by his own taste and steered by how intimately a work engaged him, the collection of the Art Institute was never far from his mind. “At the end of his life, when he knew that we were working on the Dutch and Flemish drawings catalogue, he joined in,” recalls McCullagh. “We found a Dutch private collection that he could mine, and that’s what he did, acquiring six drawings from it. They were very much his choice, guided by me.” (This purchase included works by Cornelis van Poelenburch, Hendrick Goltzius, and Gerbrand van den Eeckhout.) Even though Gray did not always buy with the Institute’s needs in mind, the material he and his wife gifted has greatly enhanced its department of prints and drawings. “We do not attempt to be as encyclopedic or deep a collection as the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s,” Salatino says. “We care about great things, about really representing the full panoply of the history of works on paper. For example, while we do have some very nice Van Gogh drawings, we really don’t have that many, and his Avenue of Pollard Birches and Poplars, from Richard’s collection, is a masterpiece and a significant addition to the Art Institute, which is known for Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.” As great cultural philanthropists, Richard and Mary Gray supported nearly every major organization in their city, including the Goodman Theatre, Newberry Library, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But one suspects it is the mark he has made at the Art Institute that Richard Gray would find most satisfying. McCullagh, who spent more than 40 years at the museum, situates the Gray gift alongside such historic, institution-defining bequests as those of Martin A. Ryerson, which included Giovanni di Paolo’s Six Episodes from the Life of St. John the Baptist, Rembrandt’s Young Girl at a Half-Open Door, and Winslow Homer’s The Herring Net; the Impressionist material acquired from the collection of Bertha and Potter Palmer; and the Helen Regenstein collection of European drawings. “The Gray Collection ranks right up there as the expression of a native son,” asserts McCullagh, “an affirmation of his devotion to the city in many ways. The beautiful thing, for me, is that his modern eye — in which he rightfully had so much confidence — began to see Old Master drawings as nourishing as contemporary art.” “An institutional collection,” Gray remarked in 2009, “is the sum total taste and judgement of a number of people over time. As years pass, there are new directors, new curators, and they all have their own ideas about what’s important, and of course, the outcome is supremely valuable, in fact, irreplaceable. Nonetheless, it’s nice every once in a while to be exposed to the workings of an individual sensibility.” Hear, hear. Information: artic.edu. All works illustrated here were donated by Richard and Mary L. Gray to the Art Institute of Chicago. THOMAS CONNORS is a Chicago-based journalist who reports regularly on the visual arts for a number of the city’s publications including the Chicago Sun-Times, Michigan Avenue, and Splash. 2 0 2 0
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BY DAVID MASELLO
BEHINDTHESCENES
BACKLIT: LOOKING INTO TURNER’S LIGHT
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y friend used to take me to see his favorite paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I would watch him stare and stare, and continue to stare, at the canvases in Gallery 808, artworks he had seen numerous times. Watching him watch the paintings was like attending an act of performance art. Eventually, he would turn to me and say, as if he hadn’t said it many times before, “No one paints light like him. It’s as if the paintings are backlit.”
Every time he announced this to me, I would think, “You can love someone not just for how they appear in this world, but also for how they observe it.” I know no one who observes J.M.W. Turner’s paintings — really, any artist’s paintings — better than that friend, who, alas, is no longer a friend. Once he discovered, as if suddenly uncovering a detail amid the turmoil of paint on a Turner canvas, that I had developed stronger, romantic feelings for him, he chose to vanish — metaphorically into one of the Turneresque fogs so that he wouldn’t feel, as
Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840, oil on canvas, 35 3/4 x 48 1/4 in., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 99.22
Whalers, c. 1845, oil on canvas, 36 1/8 x 48 1/4 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 96.29
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he said, “uncomfortable” around me. I certainly was never as threatening as a Turner storm or inferno, yet he retreated and remains concealed. What I want to say, to anyone, is that when you do fall in love with someone — be it requited or unrequited — you develop a love for the things that matter to that him or that her. As for my friend? Turner’s paintings. One of art’s functions is that it links people, two people certainly, and ideally many people. F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
I never liked Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851). Yes, he was eerily ahead of his time in the 1830s and ’40s, painting works that are an amalgam of the realistic and the abstract. You can look at any of his seascapes, portscapes, landscapes, cityscapes and know what is happening and what isn’t. In Turner’s Whalers (c. 1845), one of the works in that Met gallery my friend admired, a many-masted ship rides a turbulent sea, with dark, roiling waves
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seemingly about to wash over the frame into the gallery. A large bruise-colored shape appears like a wound at the left side of the composition, and a chalk-white skyscape, as abstract an application of paint as that by any 20th-century Abstract Expressionist, looms above it all. But unlike Clyfford Still or Ellsworth Kelly or Joan Mitchell, or any such practitioner in the 1950s and ’60s, Turner’s moments of abstraction seem, to me, sloppy, messy, unorganized. I admire
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(LEFT) The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October 1834, 1835, oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x 48 1/2 in., Cleveland Museum of Art, 1942.647
(BELOW)
Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet Boat: Evening, 1826, oil on canvas, 66 3/8 x 88 1/4 in., Frick Collection, New York, 1914.1.119
his powerful response to natural elements and his depictions of them, but I rarely want to look for long. His port scenes reveal murky shorelines at low tide, and if you beachcomb in a gallery long enough, you’re likely to detect the stink of seaweed and rotting fish. His sunsets and sunrises are blinding. His shipwrecks, violent and hopeless. Fogs and rains and cloud formations obscure the beauty of a city skyline, and people rarely appear anywhere, having been subsumed by the elements on display. Whalers is one in a long series of works by Turner that depict that horrific maritime industry.
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Apparently, he painted this scene upon reading a true-life tale by Thomas Beale (1807–1849), a ship’s surgeon who recounted his adventures in an 1835 book, The Natural History of the Sperm Whale. Turner’s depiction both adheres to and departs from Beale’s story. The author described how the head of the whale knocked fishermen into the sea, with the justly vindictive mammal “swimming round and round them, as if meditating an attack with flukes.” Beale’s account of whale hunting’s brutality is riveting. He wrote, “The sea, which a moment before was unruffled, now becomes lashed into foam by the immense J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y
strength of the wounded whale, who with his vast tail strikes in all directions at his enemies.” According to the Met’s wall label, it is thought that Turner painted this work for a man who had made his fortune in whale oil. Upon seeing the finished work, however, he gave it back to Turner. Perhaps it was too realistic for the patron — not exactly good publicity for his industry. My friend’s admiration for Turner affected and infected me. He’s right about the light on canvas. I would not have noticed that key dynamic of Turner had it not been for his vision: Turner does paint light, its dark and bright versions, its illuminating and concealing versions, its violent and calming versions, like no other artist can. Now, whenever I wander a museum and find a work by him, I feel that satisfying jolt of discovery. I think how much my friend would love this work. I imagine him examining it in silence, standing before it as still as one of Turner’s ships in his windless ports, then turning to me and uttering his familiar phrase: “No one paints light like him.” I would nod in agreement, as I did at the Met, and off we would go to look at more art. It was as if his very body would fill with that painterly glow he had seen, be cast in it. I swear, he would stand taller, exude even more radiance, perhaps put a hand on my shoulder to guide me along, in a rare moment of affection. Like many art lovers, I prefer to visit museums and galleries alone. It’s difficult to gauge another person’s interest in the art, and I never like to be lectured by someone about the meaning of a painting or the details on which I’m supposed to focus. I know how to look and I know what I want to see. Don’t make me linger longer than I want, and don’t tell me to move on … yet. To go on a date at a museum with someone you don’t know well is to engage in an awkward ballet: you leave the partner, then rejoin him, then hesitate and wind up re-meeting at the bench. That choreography is always stilted. But with my friend, I was always happy to hear him comment on what we were seeing together. He didn’t lecture or explain unless asked. Rather, he articulated his heartfelt responses. So maybe another indication of love — confirmation that it exists — is your wanting to hear the object of your affection’s responses to art. That friend is kind of an anomaly, in that he admires representational art as much as abstraction. On the walls of his apartment hang a series of all-white works on paper, their surfaces simply, almost imperceptibly, embossed with shapes. I miss the company of someone able to want to live with those. He “taught” me to admire some of the most minimalist, monumental sculptures anchored in sculpture parks like Storm King or OMI in upstate New York. After one of our first 2 0 2 0
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Antwerp: Van Goyen Looking Out for a Subject, 1833, oil on canvas, 36 1/8 x 48 3/8 in., Frick Collection, New York, 1901.1.118
dinners, at the National Arts Club, I unlocked the gate to Gramercy Park (a privilege of club membership) and brought him in to see an Alexander Calder sculpture. He was able to discern, with only the faintest help from a streetlight, the primary colors coating its parts. As he did that night, and did with all such sculptures, he petted the metal, fingering the rivets as if they were Braille. He evinced an actual physical affection for the sculptures. Even if he didn’t say anything to me, I felt his admiration for them — or his dismissal. And that made me look even more closely at their unembellished I-beams or nebulous, organic forms. And at him, more closely. I admit, we did some heavy petting that night in Gramercy Park — of the sculpture, not of each other. When some love affairs end, you might be left with letters to re-read or clothing to wear. With my friend, though there never was a consummation of affection, I have something lasting. Now I can look at a Turner and understand that what he painted mirrored, in many ways, what I felt for my friend: a yearning to see clarity inside something complex. My friend is enigmatic, as are Turner’s paintings. His longtime friends describe the “wall” he erects, the emotional distance he maintains while exuding warmth. I was in Chicago with F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
him and one of his old friends when suddenly she steered me away from him. With bigsisterly concern, she confided, “I know that you love him. We both do. But I want to tell you that he has boundaries. And you can’t cross them.” As I learned from looking long enough into Whalers, its purple bruise is actually the whale’s tail after it has slapped apart a boat of hunters, scattering them into the sea. There is both the nebulous form of the whale itself and the faintest scar of paint that represents the tail, in an oblique profile. Turner painted the tail that exactingly and also that inexactly. In visual art, as in the most powerful poems, the suggested is always more evocative than the actual. The profoundly talented living sculptor Jane Rosen, whose works bridge abstraction and realism, told me once, “Great art produces a question, not an answer. The moment you have an answer, you stop looking.” Turner hides reality in his abstraction, just as my friend hides passion in his formality. If you look long and closely enough, the light that Turner paints reveals what he wants you to see. No matter how actually or metaphorically dark the subject matter of a Turner painting — a storm at sea, the houses of Parliament on fire, a slavecarrying ship whose captain has thrown his human cargo into the sea — there is light.
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Every good artwork inspires both a personal and a universal response. I lost someone who felt like a lover but who never was, and I lost a friend who did not act like a friend at a crucial moment in our friendship. The fallout feels as complicated as the miasma of a Turner scene. My friend had pointed out to me that moment of purple in Whalers, that note on canvas representing both beauty and death. He moved his index finger up and down to emphasize it to me. The men who got too close to the whale perished. My friend and I were often mistaken for a couple. Once at a glamorous party, the hostess said to me, “Your partner has the most radiant smile.” I look at — and into — Turner’s paintings, aware now that all is revealed because of the inner light the painter has supplied. And amid that glow, I still look, too, for my friend. He’s in there, and I wonder if he’ll emerge from it and stand beside me again to look at these paintings. He’s there, backlit, somewhere in the background, amid the radiance. I’ll never stop looking. DAVID MASELLO writes about art and culture. He is a widely published essayist and poet; many of his short dramatic works have been performed at venues in New York and Los Angeles.
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BY PETER TRIPPI
D E S T I N A T I O N A R T
ADVANCING THE CAUSE OF FIGURATIVE ART, FACETO FACE
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n November, the field of contemporary realism took another step forward when the third Figurative Art Convention & Expo (FACE) drew more than 300 people to Virginia’s Williamsburg Lodge for a lively celebration of art and ideas. Organized by Fine Art Connoisseur and hosted by publisher Eric Rhoads and myself, FACE offered a memorable combination of demonstrations by renowned masters, informal conversations among artists, and formal lectures by scholars. Participants gained technical skills and philosophical insights, all while getting to know each other personally in a fun, friendly, un-stuffy atmosphere. Eric and I believe that when likeminded people get together in person to share techniques and information, their sense of community and their passionate determination to excel grow exponentially. We all rely on social media and teleconferencing, but nothing can ever replace meeting face to face. A scene from the studio The event opened on November 9–10 with Daniel E. Greene (seated) two pre-convention experiences: Casey Baugh and Wende Caporale accept taught a course on painting a live model, while their Lifetime Achievement Daniel Maidman focused on drawing one. The Awards from Eric Rhoads feedback on their teaching was outstanding, and and Peter Trippi. we remain grateful to both of them for devoting so much energy and time. On November 10, many registrants headed out into the charming cobblestone streets of Colonial Williamsburg to paint its living history interpreters and to observe the stirring Veterans Day parade down Duke of Gloucester Street. Later that afternoon, the opening ceremony saw Eric and I extend a warm welcome to the registrants, who came from across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, South America, Europe, and even Down Under. We also announced that Marion and George Howard, Donna Dean, and Casey Baugh had generously underwritten registration, travel, and accommodation for six scholarship recipients: the students Brooke Hunter and I-Chen Lu, both of California; the educators James Andrews of Washington, Julie Beck of Massachusetts, and Brent Woodard of West Virginia; and the senior artist Sandra Harris of Montana. Andrews later wrote, “I am not being hyperbolic when I say that FACE was a life-changing experience. I have never felt more at home — more like I had found my people than I did
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(TOP ROW L-R)The six scholarship recipients take a bow: (left to right) I-Chen Lu, Brooke Hunter, Sandra Harris, Julie Beck, James Andrews, Brent Woodard Gloucester Street
(MIDDLE ROW L-R) Roger Rossi and Tom Garden having fun with the colonial photo backdrop
(BOTTOM ROW L-R) Gabriela Gonzalez Dellosso
Daniel Maidman
Reisha Perlmutter and Casey Baugh
Eric Johnson
there.” We encourage others to emulate these generous donors by creating still more scholarships for next year’s edition of FACE. On Sunday evening, Fine Art Connoisseur’s Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Daniel E. Greene (b. 1934) and his wife, Wende Caporale, who spoke movingly about their exceptional artworks and careers. This led in perfectly to a lively double demo in which Gabriela Gonzalez Dellosso and Joshua LaRock painted portraits of Greene and Caporale, respectively. After an update on the exciting Bennett Prize initiative from its founders, Steven Alan Bennett and Elaine Melotti Schmidt, the program closed with a festive cocktail reception in the Expo Hall, which remained open throughout FACE. The hall featured exhibitors who serve the figurative art community well, including: Princeton Artist Brush Co., Canson, Lyra, Maimeri, Rosemary & Co, Rembrandt, Cobra, Michael Harding, Blick/Utrecht, Edge, Sienna, Savoir Faire, and Jack Richeson & Co. In the three days to come, a host of world-class artists offered demos that inspired participants to paint and draw better, exhibiting distinctive approaches from which registrants could pick and choose. These talents were — in alphabetical order — Carolyn Anderson, Jennifer Balkan, Casey Baugh, Nikolai Blokhin, Ryan S. Brown, Tony Curanaj, Gabriela Gonzalez Dellosso, Danny Grant, Eric Johnson, Michael Klein, Joshua LaRock, Daniel Maidman, Charles Miano, Ted Minoff, Teresa Oaxaca, Reisha Perlmutter, Bill Schneider, Bill Suys, Dan Thompson, Scott Waddell, and Patricia Watwood. F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
Carolyn Anderson
Painting on Duke of
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Watching demos often makes you want to try out what you’ve learned right away, so FACE offered an optional hands-on studio experience. For two nights in a row, registrants filled a gigantic ballroom as they drew, painted, and sculpted from nine live models. On hand to provide them with tips and wisdom were almost 20 mentors from the demo faculty, to whom we are also grateful. Throughout each day, FACE offered stimulating events focused more on ideas than on techniques. On the main stage, we heard curator Laura Barry discuss the important art collections of Colonial Williamsburg, where she has worked for 25 years, and the art historian John T. Spike explore the interconnections between Renaissance and realist art. Another highlight was the evening panel discussion I moderated addressing the matter of Opportunities and Challenges for Figurative Artists Today. Participating in the conversation were the eloquent artists Chantel Barber, Ryan S. Brown, Michael Klein, Bill Suys, Patricia Watwood, and Katie Whipple, and the equally eloquent dealer Gary Haynes. On another occasion I gave an illustrated lecture about what’s next for contemporary realism. We were really pleased to welcome the voices behind the popular Suggested Donation podcast, artists Tony Curanaj and Ted Minoff, who recorded half a dozen conversations throughout FACE. (All of their dialogues will be posted online during 2020, so be sure to check suggested donationpodcast.com/blog.)
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(TOP ROW L-R) Bill Suys
Charles Miano
(BOTTOM ROW L-R) Nikolai Blokhin
Dan Thompson
Patricia Watwood
John T. Spike
Scott Waddell
(MIDDLE ROW L-R) Joshua LaRock
An array of presentations occurred in the separate Talks Room, including Lazare Gallery principal John Wurdeman on his display of Russian and Soviet paintings; Eric Rhoads on how artists can market their art more effectively; artist Tony Mastromatteo on his threehour still life; artist Nicole M. Santiago on her art and practice; artist Constance Bowden on how she has established and grown Richmond’s Manchester Studios; the Richmond collectors Ann and Jim Belk and artist-dealer Loryn Brazier on how they have supported Teresa Oaxaca contemporary realist artists; entrepreneur Jennifer Kirby and artist David Tanner on the impressive success of Richmond’s Crossroads Art Center; and faculty member Carolyn Anderson’s lively survey of the art history that artists need to know. More than two dozen attendees opted to register as VIPs, which allowed them to enjoy reserved seating, access to a VIP lounge with snacks and drinks, a festive dinner at a colonial tavern with various faculty members, and a cocktail reception in a private suite. FACE could not have been the success it was without the extraordinary dedication of the staff of Streamline Publishing, which produces Fine Art Connoisseur. Leading the way were Ali Cruickshank and Sarah Webb, ably assisted by Tish De La Bretonne, Kathy Duley, Tom Elmo, Bob Hogan,
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Laura Barry
Michael Klein
Tony Curanaj
Ted Minoff paints Tony Curanaj.
Bryant Jackson, Jaime Osetek, Jessica Smith, Trevor Smith, and Scot Young. A post-event survey of FACE participants revealed that while most had initially been attracted by opportunities to meet and observe world-class artists, they also relished getting to know other artists, thus anchoring themselves within a supportive community. To that end, we were delighted to close FACE with confirmation that its fourth edition will occur in Baltimore, Maryland, this autumn (October 29–November 1, 2020), with preconvention courses starting on October 28. Renowned for its superb art museums, Baltimore is easily reached from all directions and offers excellent dining and shopping options in walking distance of the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor, which is ideally suited for FACE’s activities. The following faculty members have already confirmed their participation: Juliette Aristides, Rick Casali, Virgil Elliott, Rose Frantzen, Quang Ho, Huihan Liu, Adrienne Stein, and Mary Whyte. Many more will be announced early in the New Year, and we truly look forward to welcoming you to Baltimore. Information: figurativeartconvention.com
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D E S T I N A T I O N A R T
AMERRY MIX: PROVENCE, THE FRENCH RIVIERA & EDINBURGH
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ine Art Connoisseur’s 10th annual adventure abroad was never going to be ordinary, given its surprising mix of destinations — Provence, the French Riviera, and Edinburgh. But thanks to our great travelers, great planning, and great weather, it all worked out brilliantly, and then some. Conceived by FAC publisher Eric Rhoads, the tour program has been going strong for an entire decade, blending superb art and architecture with five-star comforts and a delightfully cohesive group of travelers who share with each other their passion for beauty, quality, and learning. Upon our arrival in each place, I presented an illustrated lecture that set our upcoming sites (and their artworks) into historical context so they would make sense when we finally got there. The program included all breakfasts and most lunches and suppers: we are pretty sure everyone gained at least five pounds, as the meals were always delicious and plentiful. And our logistics proved remarkably easy, thanks in part to speedy motor coaches and a direct flight from Nice to Edinburgh.
THE SOUTH OF FRANCE To be precise, the French adventure actually began on October 8, when Eric Rhoads gathered a small group of fellow artists to spend three nights at the legendary hotel Les Colombes d’Or in the pretty Provencal hilltop
town of Saint Paul-de-Vence. Their time there centered on painting the scenic landscape and picturesque architecture, facilitated by the local artist Elisa Musson and her husband, Peter, and also the sculptor Remi Pesce. The rest of us got into tour mode on October 11, when we gathered at Domaine de Manville, an elegant hotel on an estate featuring olive groves, a golf course, and stirring views of the ruined hilltop castle of Les Bauxde-Provence. Our many repeat travelers warmly welcomed the “newbies” during a reception on the patio and then a supper in the conservatory. The next day began with a tour of the Cloître et Cliniques de Saint-Paul de Mausole, just outside the town of Saint-Rémy. This is the asylum (still used) where Vincent Van Gogh was confined after his ear-cutting episode. In fact, the artist was permitted to go out and paint the countryside during the day, so we spent considerable time comparing reproductions of his pictures to the actual olive groves and rugged hillsides around us. In downtown Saint-Rémy we explored the small but choice Musée Estrine, then headed to the larger town of Arles, where evidence of Van Gogh’s time there was brought to life by our professional guides. A particular highlight was the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, which had borrowed back several paintings by the Dutch master. The next day found us in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, a charming town that hums on Sunday mornings with a giant market selling everything from
Painting on the terrace of Elisa and Peter Musson overlooking Saint Paul-de-Vence (left to right: Elisa Musson, Rick Dickinson, Eric Rhoads) Peter Trippi, and Howard Wise rely on a golf cart to get them around the Domaine de Manville property.
Gabriel Haigazian (at the wheel),
The ruined castle of Les Baux-de-Provence was visible from the Domaine
de Manville; photo: Elaine Gaskell deSpoelberch
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(L-R) Bob Wrathall explores a grove of olive trees near Vincent Van Gogh’s asylum. Prof. Mary Flanagan leads us through the Dora Maar House.
Avignon’s Papal Palace seen through a glass of rosé wine — Provence’s favorite beverage
The costume designer Jeffrey Wirsing welcomes the group to his home in Beaucaire.
antiques and fresh food to clothing and jewelry. Having shopped ourselves out, we traveled to the city of Avignon, where the enormous, semi-ruinous Papal Palace hints at the luxuries enjoyed by the popes when they reigned here during the Middle Ages. Finishing out the day was the Musée Angladon, which has superb paintings and drawings collected by the once-famous couturier Jacques Doucet — especially a stunning Modigliani portrait. Monday, October 14 saw us covering a lot of ground, all of it memorable. We started at the Museum of Corkscrews, assembled by the owner of a vineyard near the hilltop village of Ménerbes. Leave it to a French wine lover to remind us that even a lowly bottle opener can be adorned enough to become a work of art. Soon we headed uphill to the former home of Dora Maar, best known as one of Picasso’s muses but also a gifted (surrealist) artist in her own right. The house has been refurbished by the Texas patron Nancy Brown Negley and is now operated by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which welcomes artists and other creatives to work there. We were shown its impressive public rooms and gardens by a former resident, Prof. Mary Flanagan of Dartmouth College, whose enthusiasm was infectious. Also in this charming town is the studio house once occupied by the American painter Jane Eakin, now a museum exhibiting her art. After a stop “at home,” we headed to Beaucaire on the Rhône River, where the New York-based costume designer Jeffrey Wirsing hosted us for a sunset reception on his huge terrace overlooking the town’s castle and red-tiled roofs. Then we headed back to Les Baux-de-Provence; there a disused limestone quarry has been ingeniously converted into a giant projection room called the Carrières des Lumières. Armed with champagne and canapés, we wandered its cavernous halls watching a thrillingly produced and scored reverie on Van Gogh’s art. Alas, the next day saw us depart the Domaine de Manville, but we were rewarded with a full day in the pretty city of Aix-en-Provence. After visiting the unusually historic Cathedral Saint-Sauveur, we
explored the rich collections of the Musée Granet, then the studio of the post-impressionist master Paul Cézanne, who spent most of his life in Aix. Before leaving town, our travelers gazed out from a hillside park toward Mont Sainte-Victoire, the massive mountain painted by Cézanne so often. Then it was on to our next base of operations, Nice, which is essentially the capital of the Riviera. Our new home away from home was the historic Hotel Le Negresco, renowned for its enormous collection of 20th-century art displayed frame-to-frame in every possible hallway and public space. Upon awakening in sunny Nice, we strolled along the sparkling Mediterranean and into the city’s picturesque historic center, then traveled uphill to see two large museums commemorating modernist masters who once lived on the Côte d’Azur: Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall. We closed the day with a festive supper at Le Galet, a restaurant that is literally on the beach. There’s no point in visiting the Riviera without seeing how the other half lives, so the next day saw us making the short scenic drive to St. Jean Cap Ferrat, one of the most expensive neighborhoods on earth. We glimpsed its fabulousness by touring the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, with its superb gardens overlooking the sea, then the Villa Grecque Kerylos in the next town over, Beaulieu sur Mer. Both mansions were constructed during the Belle Epoque by extremely rich collectors who spared no expense, though in distinctive ways. That night, we lived like billionaires by hitting the Casino de Monte Carlo; there we enjoyed an outstanding meal in its Salon Rose, then explored its famous salons and gaming rooms on our own. Our final day in France was spent on the other (western) side of Nice. First up was Les Collettes, the house in Cagnes-sur-Mer where the impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir spent his final years.
The Carrières des Lumières features an immersive sound-and-light show about Vincent Van Gogh. and Thetis at the Musée Granet in Aix.
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Exploring Paul Cézanne's studio
Professional guide Thibault Martin-Battisti notes a detail in Ingres’s Jupiter
In Nice, the Hotel Le Negresco became our home away from home.
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(TOP ROW L-R) Eric and Laurie Rhoads at the Casino de Monte Carlo
Discussing Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s studio
ROW L-R) Sheonagh Martin (in red) introduces the history of Edinburgh’s Georgian House. Britannia.
Director Celia Joicey welcomes Peter Trippi and Eric Rhoads to the Dovecot Tapestry Studio.
arts sale at Lyon & Turnbull. House terrace
A pipe and drum corps appeared out of the darkness at Gosford House.
At Matisse's Rosary Chapel
(SECOND
Bob and Charla Nelson prepare to board the Royal Yacht
(THIRD ROW L-R) John Mackie points out highlights in his decorative
On the grand staircase at Gosford House
(FOURTH ROW L-R) Emperor/Prime Minister/Ambassador Roger Rossi with a bagpiper at Gosford House Mary Burrichter on a terrace overlooking Villefranche-sur-Mer
Saint Paul-de-Vence
At Holyrood Palace
The banqueting hall at Gosford
Peter Trippi and Barbara Lynn Pedersen on Jeffrey Wirsing’s
At the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild
balmy southern France. Fortunately, the Fine Art Connoisseur team had anticipated the imminent change in climate by providing all travelers (in both countries) with snazzy fleece vests emblazoned with our official logo. These came in handy in Scotland, where the weather was dry but brisk. We checked into Edinburgh’s leading hotel, the Balmoral, which looks regally over Princes Street Gardens and across to the castle. We eased into Scottish culture by attending a festive reception and tour at the magnificent 18th-century Georgian House, which stands on the city’s most prestigious square and is operated by the National Trust for Scotland. SCOTLAND’S CAPITAL The next morning started early with private access to Holyrood Saturday, October 19 was action-packed. Many in the group had decided to journey with us to Edinburgh — not exactly a logical follow-on to sunny, Palace, where Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II spends time every sum-
We moved on to Saint Paul-de-Vence, whose pretty cobblestoned streets beg to be walked, then to the town’s chief artistic attraction, the Fondation Maeght. Created by a married art-dealing couple from Paris, this is an ideal place to see world-class modern art, displayed indoors and out. Our final stop was at the small but luminous Rosary Chapel, designed by Matisse in his old age as an expression of his Catholic faith.
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(TOP ROW L-R) At the Casino de Monte Carlo Jackson and Peter Vig
Libby and Dan Whipple with a bagpiper at Gosford House
Linda and Tom Garden
Claudia Clayton and Bob Wrathall
mer. After discovering its remarkable history — with frequent mentions of Mary, Queen of Scots — we enjoyed a fascinating exhibition at the adjacent Queen’s Gallery highlighting the Royal Family’s links with the Romanovs of Russia. After visiting Canongate Kirk (where the Queen worships) and Edinburgh Castle, we were piped aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia. This is the sleek vessel on which Her Majesty once traveled the world; now commoners like us can explore every deck with a glass of champagne in hand. On Monday morning, October 21, we delved into tapestry weaving, something many of our travelers had never witnessed. Once a public swimming pool, the Dovecot Tapestry Studio is now a leading venue for creating these complicated textiles. Here we were welcomed by director Celia Joicey and oriented by the American weaver Rudy Richardson and staff educator David Haslam. It was a quick walk over to the National Museum of Scotland, where research fellow Rosie Waine introduced the exhibition Wild and Majestic: Romantic Visions of Scotland, which explained — among many other things — why Scots are so closely identified with tartan. Then it was off to the auction house Lyon & Turnbull, where expert John Mackie told us about his imminent sale of Scottish decorative arts before we perused its lots. The day ended with an unforgettable gala at Gosford House, a historic palace east of Edinburgh owned by the Earls of Wemyss and March. Here we were (bag)piped in for a champagne reception and tour of the art collection before we feasted in the enormous banqueting hall. After dessert we shivered on the terrace as an eight-person pipe and drum corps magically emerged from the darkness, skirling “Scotland the Brave” and other classic anthems before vanishing again. Our final day together presented a different side of Edinburgh. Much time was devoted to the Arts & Crafts muralist Phoebe Anne Traquair; we
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Jill Stoliker
Barbara and Charlie Robinson
(BOTTOM ROW L-R) Kathy
David Orcutt enjoys fish and chips in Edinburgh.
were thrilled to see her two masterpieces, the Song School of St. Mary’s (Anglican) Cathedral, and the Mansfield Place Church. We moved on to the National Portrait Gallery, which has not only great artworks but also another spectacularly muraled hall, and finally to the Fine Art Society, a prestigious commercial art gallery that was exhibiting paintings by the Scottish icon John Byrne. MORE TO COME As always, it was bittersweet to part with friends old and new. This was an exceptionally merry group, their mood surely lightened by our peerless travel coordinator, Gabriel Haigazian (CTP Group, California), and his colleague Howard Wise. Our next trip, in September 2020 — the 11th annual — will explore Vienna and Berlin, with a post-trip to Dresden. These cities are synonymous with great art, architecture, and music, so we expect to have a marvelous time. For details, please contact Gabriel Haigazian via 818.444.2700 or gabriel@thectpgroup.com. Our official website, finearttrip.com, will be active in mid-January. PETER TRIPPI is editor-in-chief of Fine Art Connoisseur.
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Behind the Curtain of Dreams to underscore the artist’s surrealistic treatment of scenes from everyday life in the Caribbean world.
has integrated its aesthetic concerns into his own mature approach to painting figures and landscapes.
A RT I ST S & G A L L E R I E S
Edie Nadelhaft (b. 1964), After Robert Olsen, 2019, oil on canvas, 16 x 23 in., Lyons Wier Gallery, New York City Brian Keeler (b. 1953), Into the Light — Susquehanna Eventide, 2019, oil on linen, 38 x 42 in.
Ithaca, New York
northstarartgallery.com through March 1 Brian Keeler has long painted the Susquehanna River, taking inspiration from the work of Thomas Cole and other members of the Hudson River School. He recently organized a symposium and protest advocating protection of the river as industrial development threatens ever more of its watershed. Keeler’s latest paintings are on view at North Star Art Gallery in the exhibition The Beauty of the Susquehanna River, which features both large studio works and smaller plein air studies.
Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889), Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, 1876, oil on canvas, 67 1/2 x 42 3/4 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
New York City
lyonswiergallery.com through January 25 Lyons Wier Gallery is presenting the exhibition Evening in America, a group of road-trip paintings that picks up where Edie Nadelhaft’s first show here (2017’s Big Country) left off. Based in Manhattan, the artist is an avid motorcyclist who takes weeks-long tours of America collecting sketches, photos, and memories of relatively unremarkable sites. Inspired by forerunners as diverse as David Lynch, Diane Arbus, Donna Tartt, and Walker Evans, Nadelhaft has recently focused on the visual nuances and psychological ambiguity of twilight.
New York City
cwlac.org and nationalartsclub.org January 7–31 In the spirit of their namesake, the members of the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club will soon host their 123rd Annual Open Juried Exhibition, available to all women artists and held again at the National Arts Club. Founded in 1896, the organization owes its existence to the philanthropic generosity of Miss Wolfe, the only female co-founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During their presentation of more than 50 awards on January 17, the organizers will award the club’s highest honor for painting, the Horse’s Head Medal designed by sculptor member Anna Hyatt Huntington.
Miami
ascasogallery.com through January 31 Recent paintings by the Cuban-born, Floridabased artist Julio Larraz are on view at Ascaso Gallery this season. This exhibition is titled Julio Larraz (b. 1944), Canto Confesante, 2011, oil on canvas, 72 x 60 in.
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Lon Brauer (b. 1955), Longshoreman, 2019, oil on panel, 24 x 18 in., available from the artist
St. Louis
fontbonne.edu and lonbrauer.com January 17–February 14 The Fontbonne University Gallery of Fine Art will soon host a two-person show of recent oil paintings by Lon Brauer and sculptures by Ryan Bradley. An alumnus of the university, Brauer grew up in the heyday of abstraction and J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y
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David Peikon (b. 1958), Empire, 2018, oil on linen, 24 x 20 in.
New York City
cavaliergalleries.com January 16–February 6 Cavalier Gallery will soon present an exhibition of recent paintings by David Peikon, ranging from cityscapes to landscapes and botanicals. He has titled it Stories
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because each work is coupled with a brief narrative about how it came to exist. Peikon notes, “Since I can’t always be at the gallery to offer first-person accounts, and since the gallery staff can’t possibly know all the details, I hope this will make the experience more rewarding for visitors, helping them engage more completely, and connect emotionally, with the paintings.”
New York City
artdealers.org February 27–March 1
Francisco’s annual Art Week and will be complemented by an array of talks and panel discussions.
The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) is again hosting The Art Show at the historic Park Avenue Armory. On view will be compelling juxtapositions of modern and contemporary art, and more than half of the fair’s 72 exhibitors will feature intimately scaled solo presentations — including 15 dedicated to female artists.
Julio Gonzalez (1876–1942), Young Woman at Her Toilet, c. 1906– 08, pastel, black stone, and charcoal on paper, 18 x 10 in., Galerie Alexis Bordes (Paris)
Brussels
brafa.art January 26– February 2
William Matthews (b. 1949), The Slag Ladle, 2018, watercolor on paper, 23 1/2 x 18 in.
Denver
williammatthewsstudio.com through February 6 The watercolorist William Matthews has long depicted working people, ranging from cowboys to Amish and Chinese farmers. His latest exhibition, Steel, highlights a recent foray into the steel mills of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Building on his ongoing interest in architecture, Matthews contrasts the cold, flat planes of the mills’ rooftops with their red-hot interiors, while also offering dramatic portraits of their workers emerging from plumes of fire, steam, and smoke. More than 30 pictures will be on view in his Denver studio, which doubles as a gallery.
The Brussels Art Fair (BRAFA) is celebrating its 65th anniversary by welcoming 133 galleries and dealers from 15 countries covering 20 specialties within the realms of fine art, antiques, and design. The largest contingent of exhibitors (50) will be Belgian, with French ones (43) the next largest.
San Francisco fogfair.com January 16–19
To be held at the Fort Mason Center overlooking San Francisco Bay, FOG Design+Art offers an encounter with 48 galleries from around the world, including six making their first appearance here. The fair is the anchor of San
Curt Querner (1904–1976), The Prisoner Werner Jeffré, n.d., watercolor and gouache on board, 12 1/4 x 9 1/2 in., Ambrose Naumann Fine Art (New York City)
New York City
masterdrawingsnewyork.com January 25–February 1 Masters Drawings New York began in 2006 as a gallery walk held during the Old Masters auctions and the Winter Antiques Show. It has since blossomed into a festival of 25 international dealers exhibiting not only drawings, but also paintings, watercolors, sculpture, and oil sketches dating from the 14th through the 21st centuries. Most of these pop-up shows occur along Madison Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Anyone can register online for the free talks and tours, and can visit an intriguing exhibition of drawings loaned by Maine’s Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
AU C T IO N S & FA I R S
Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–1880), Lago di Nemi, mid-1850s, oil on canvas, 13 1/2 x 20 1/2 in. (framed), estimate: $200,000–$300,000
Boston Alice Neel (1900–1984), Ninth Avenue El, 1935, oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in., Cheim & Read (New York City)
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Stefan Kürten (b. 1963), Sorrow’s Child, 2019, acrylic and ink on linen, 59 1/8 x 47 in., Hosfelt Gallery (San Francisco)
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skinnerinc.com January 23 A highlight of Skinner Auctioneers’ upcoming American & European Works of Art sale is the study for Sanford Gifford’s Italian landscape Lake Nemi, now in Ohio’s 2 0 2 0
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Toledo Museum of Art. In 1855, the American artist visited London, where he admired the paintings of the late J.M.W. Turner. He went on to Italy, where he created this picture — about one-third the size of Toledo’s, yet conveying the same golden light, evocative atmosphere, and precise detail. This study has remained in the same family for four generations and is expected to exceed its (modest) estimate.
collection of his work in any public institution. Now the museum is set to open Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door, an exhibition that examines the 38-year relationship between Delaney and the writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin (1924–1987). On view will be more than 50 paintings, works on paper, photographs, and letters revealing how they shaped one another’s creative output and worldview through their intellectual exchange.
and the Galapagos Islands share forms, textures, symbols, colors, and compositions with works created by such forerunners as Maria Luisa Pacheco (Bolivia), Angel Hurtado (Venezuela), and Anibal Villacis (Ecuador). The checklist has been selected by AMA curator Adriana Ospina and guest curator Hilary Pierce Hatfield.
Las Vegas
bellagio.mgmresorts.com through April 26 The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art has opened a two-part exhibition titled Material Existence: Japanese Art from Jōmon Period to Present. Curated by Alison Bradley to include works of widely ranging scales, it highlights attitudes toward materiality, the natural world, and spirituality that are unique to Japanese culture. Some works have never been exhibited in the U.S. before. Part I will close on April 26 and then Part II will run May 16October 11, 2020. Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), Camilo Astalli, Known as Cardinal Pamphili, 1650–51, oil on canvas, 24 x 19 in., Hispanic Society Museum & Library, New York City
New York City
Kohei Nawa (b. 1975), Throne (G/P Pyramid), 2019, mixed media, gold leaf, and lacquer, 61 x 28 1/2 x 19 1/2 in., photo: Sandwich Architecture & Nobutada Omote
thewintershow.org January 24–February 2 New York’s longest-running art, antiques, and design fair — The Winter Show — is set to enliven the historic Park Avenue Armory with 70 exhibitors offering fine and decorative arts dating from antiquity through today. At its heart will be the exhibition Unrivaled, highlighting treasures from Manhattan’s Hispanic Society Museum & Library, which is currently closed for renovations. This display has been co-curated by art historian Philippe de Montebello and architect Peter Marino.
Pieter de Hooch (1629–c. 1679), Cardplayers in a Sunlit Room, 1658, oil on canvas, 30 1/2 x 26 1/2 in., Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
Delft, The Netherlands pieterdehoochindelft.com through February 16
The Museum Prinsenhof Delft is the ideal venue to present the largest retrospective in a generation of the 17th-century Dutch painter Pieter de Hooch. Titled Peter de Hooch in Delft: From the Shadow of Vermeer, this project gathers 30 paintings from collections in Europe and the U.S.; it has been informed by the groundbreaking research of six scholars who have published their findings in the accompanying catalogue. Hooch is best remembered for innovative views of the courtyards of Delft’s townhouses and the rooms surrounding them; his mastery of perspective and effects of light still impresses viewers today.
Salem, Massachusetts pem.org January 18–April 26
M USEU MS
Knoxville, Tennessee knoxart.org February 7–May 10
The African-American artist Beauford Delaney (1901–1979) was born in Knoxville, and so the Knoxville Museum of Art holds the largest Beauford Delaney (1901–1979), Portrait of James Baldwin, 1944, pastel on paper, 24 x 18 3/4 in., Knoxville Museum of Art
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Freya Grand (b. 1947), Tungurahua, 2011, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in.
Washington, DC
amamuseum.org January 23–April 26 Operated by the Organization of American States (essentially the United Nations of North, Central, and South America), the Art Museum of the Americas (AMA) is an often-overlooked jewel box in the heart of the nation’s capital. On view this season is an exhibition, Dialog: Landscape and Abstraction, that pairs mid-20th-century abstractions from the permanent collection with paintings by the Washington landscapist Freya Grand. Her immersive landscapes of Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y
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The Peabody Essex Museum has organized the first exhibition to examine Struggle: From the History of the American People, the series of paintings created by the African-American artist Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000). This new project, titled Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle, will reunite — for the first time in more than 60 years — 25 of his 30 panels depicting pivotal moments in early American history. (Five panels remain unlocated.) All emphasize the contributions that blacks, Native Americans, and women made in shaping America’s identity. The panels will be complemented by contemporary works made by Derrick Adams, Bethany Collins, and Hank Willis Thomas. This show will travel onward to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), Birmingham Museum of Art (Alabama), Seattle Art Museum, and Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.). Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000), 19: Tension on the High
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The Crocker Art Museum has organized the Redmond exhibition.
Sacramento
crockerart.org January 26 – May 17
Seas, 1956, egg tempera on hardboard, 16 x 12 in., private collection
Regina Baker, Summer Hair, 2019, watercolor on paper, 34 x 26 in., photo: Jon Bolton
Racine, Wisconsin ramart.org through April 18
The Racine Art Museum’s Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts is hosting Watercolor Wisconsin 2019, the latest edition of the annual statewide competition it has organized since 1966. On view are two- and three-dimensional works on paper painted in such aqueous media as acrylic and watercolor. Jurors Lal Bahcecioglu (Elmhurst Art Museum, Illinois) and Paula Kowalczyk (Christie’s, Chicago) were shown 262 submissions and narrowed the field to 106 (created by 85 artists).
The Crocker Art Museum is set to open the exhibition Granville Redmond: The Eloquent Palette. Redmond (1871– 1935) created paintings that capture California’s diverse topography, vegetation, and color. Depicting both northern and southern parts of the Golden State, his art ranges in style from contemplative tonalism to colorful impressionism. The silent film star Charlie Chaplin was a friend of Redmond, who was deaf, and noted: “Look at the gladness in that sky, the riot of color in those flowers. Sometimes I think that the silence in which he lives has developed in him some sense, some great capacity for happiness in which we others are lacking.” The Crocker’s exhibition, the largest ever assembled and the first in more than 30 years, includes 75 oil paintings and 10 more in other media.
New York City
italianmodernart.org through June 13
After Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), George IV when Prince of Wales, c. 1782–85, oil on canvas, 30 x 25 1/3 in., Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
Newmarket, England
palacehousenewmarket.co.uk through April 19 Variously cast as a wastrel, builder of the Brighton Pavilion, or a slow-witted dupe, King George IV (1762–1830) is one of British history’s least understood figures. T he e xhibition King George IV: Royalty, Racing and Reputation, explores his legacy as not only a great art collector, but also as a patron of horse racing. All but one of the 42 artworks — including portraiture, etchings, and trophies — are being lent by Her Majesty The Queen. Palace House (The National Heritage Centre for Horseracing and Sporting Art) is an appropriate setting, as it was founded by King Charles II in the 1660s for his racing activities. This show coincides with the exhibition George IV: Art & Spectacle at the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace through May 3 (and then at the Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh).
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The Center for Italian Modern Art has opened Marino Marini: Arcadian Nudes, the first U.S. exhibition of large-scale nude sculptures by Marino Marini (1901–1980). Featuring more than 30 pieces created between 1932 and 1949, including a series of small bronzes, it illuminates the artist’s creative process as he sought a contemporary means of depicting the classical subject of the female form. Curated by Flavio Fergonz (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa), the works have been loaned by public and private collections including the Fondazione Marino Marini. To visit for free, pre-register online or by phone. Marino Marini (1901–1980), Venus, early 1940s, terracotta, 44 1/2 in. high, private collection © Artists Rights Society, New York / SIAE, Rome
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Tom Nicholas (b. 1934), Late Autumn, Rockport Harbor, 2006, oil on canvas, 16 x 16 in., private collection
Gloucester, Massachusetts
capeannmuseum.org January 11–April 12
The Cape Ann Museum’s new exhibition, Tom and T.M. Nicholas: A Father and Son’s Journey in Paint, explores 40 years of artistic collaboration. Born and raised in Connecticut, Tom Nicholas has lived in Rockport since the early 1960s, making art in oils, watercolors, and gouaches that got him elected to the National Academy of Design and American Watercolor Society. His son T.M. studied with his father and works out of a studio in nearby Essex. He also exhibits widely and has won many honors. The works in this retrospective will be borrowed from many private collections nationwide. 2 0 2 0
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On February 15,T. M. Nicholas and fellow artist Stapleton Kearns will lecture on the Cape Ann School of Painting. The art historian Judith Curtis will lead a gallery talk on March 14, and T. M. Nicholas will offer another on April 4.
B O OK S No one is better qualified to publish the richly illustrated book Eanger Irving Couse: The Life and Times of an American Artist, 1866–1936 than his granddaughter, the art historian Virginia Couse Leavitt. Enjoying unique access to her family’s archives, she has produced the first scholarly exploration of Couse’s lifelong interest in Native American cultures, his upbringing in Michigan, his academic training under William Bouguereau in Paris, and his eventual relocation to Taos, New Mexico. There, in 1915, he helped found the Taos Society of Artists, serving as its first president and producing hundreds of superb Southwestern landscapes and respectful depictions of Pueblo Indians. Particularly insightful is the correspondence of Couse’s wife, Virginia Walker, who was an art student in Paris when the couple met. This 400-page volume is available through the University of Oklahoma Press.
A rediscovered trove of 19th-century correspondence and artworks has yielded a lively biography published by the journalist and historian Eve M. Kahn. Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams, 1857–1907 (Wesleyan University Press) is based on letters, sketches, journals, and paintings that surfaced in a Connecticut boathouse in 2012. Williams, a baker’s daughter from Hartford, ran Smith College’s
rity. This book documents the artist’s fierce opinions and reproduces her pastels and paintings of everyday marvels, from cottages mirrored in Norwegian fjords to Italian church altars swathed in incense.
The artist, writer, and curator John Seed believes we are “the most distracted society in the history of the world.” That’s one reason he recently created Disrupted Realism: Paintings for a Distracted World (Schiffer Publishing), the first book to survey 38 living artists who distort traditional realism to reflect the fragmentation of modern life. During interviews with these talents, Seed learned that all of them share the need to include perception and emotion in their process. The book contains 190 images, runs 208 pages, and has six thematic sections: Toward Abstraction, Disrupted Bodies, Emotions and Identities, Myths and Visions, Patterns, Planes, and Formations, and Between Painting and Photography.
The artist Mort Künstler (b. 1927) is best known for convincing scenes of the Civil War and other historical eras, but in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s he pursued a successful career creating covers and illustrations for such men’s pulp magazines as True Adventure, Male, Stag, and For Men Only. Edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, Mort Künstler: The Godfather of Pulp Fiction Illustrators is the first book to explore this overlooked period, when the artist worked “15-hour days, sometimes seven days a week.” This 134-page volume contains 150 illustrations and has been published by New Texture.
OUT & A BOUT
Two accomplished residents of Appalachia have collaborated to publish the 152-page, limited-edition book I Come from a Place: Appalachian Watercolors of the Serpentine Chain. Housed in its own slipcover, the handsome volume contains more than 80 watercolors of this scenic region painted by Alan Shuptrine, accompanied by the prose of Jennifer Pharr Davis, who holds the female world record for fastest supported hike on the Appalachian Trail (47 miles per day). The authors note In September, artist Charles Gilbert Kapsner unveiled the fifth and final painting in his Veterans Educational Historic Monument at the Minnesota State Veterans Cemetery in Little Falls. He spent a decade researching and preparing this cycle, which honors the stories, faces, and sacrifices of the women and men of each military service. In appreciation, Kapsner was given the Superior Volunteer Service Medal, the highest award to civilians from the Minnesota National Guard. On hand to bestow it were Brigadier General Lowell Kruse and Brigadier General Sandra Best.
art department while spending summers crisscrossing Europe by train, carriage, and bicycle. She socialized with Albert Pinkham Ryder in New York and trained with James McNeill Whistler in Paris. Her paintings, exhibited at venues from Paris to Indianapolis, were praised by critics, but after her untimely death, she fell into deep obscuF I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
that the 18th-century Celtic settlers who moved westward from the Eastern Seaboard gravitated toward this region’s rugged landscape because it looked like home. The new publication celebrates the mountain region’s land, people, and culture, asking readers to consider “where do we experience our most profound sense of belonging, of home?”
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In October, Dean Larson’s portrait of Sen. Ted Stevens (1923–2010) was unveiled in the U.S. Capitol’s Old Senate Chamber. On hand to remember the lawmaker from 2 0 2 0
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Dean Larson with former U.S. Sen. John W. Warner; courtesy U.S. Senate Photography
Alaska (also Larson’s home state) were his widow, Catherine Stevens, and family; Sens. Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, Patrick Leahy, Pat Roberts, Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan, and Charles Schumer; and various friends and colleagues.
Dean Larson (b. 1957), Theodore F. “Ted” Stevens, 2018, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in., Senate Leadership Portrait Collection, U.S. Capitol, Washington, DC
This autumn, the National Watercolor Society mounted its 99th International Open Exhibition at its gallery in San Pedro, California. On view were more than 100 watermedia paintings made by artists around the world. These had been juried in by the artists Jean Grastorf, Elaine Daily-Birnbaum, and Frank Eber, who selected only 12 percent of all submissions due to space limitations. On the big night, judge Brian Rutenberg distributed more than $40,000 in awards, including the NWS Purchase Award, which went to Kathleen Giles for her painting, Vanity (both depicted here).
In the nation’s capital this October, the National Portrait Gallery launched the exhibition Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today, described on page 78. Among its 47 works is Josephine, a drawing made by San Francisco resident Joel Daniel Phillips. Here he celebrates with fellow exhibitors Swoon (center) and Sedrick Huckaby.
This fall, East Oaks Studios premiered its documentary film, Jeffrey T. Larson, at the Catalyst Story Institute & Content Festival in Duluth, Minnesota. On hand to present it were Larson himself and his wife, Heidi, along with executive producers Michael Klein and Louis Carr. Directed by Joe Hawkins, the film has a trailer that can be viewed at eastoaksstudio.com.
In October, the environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., celebrated the unveiling of a portrait of him by New York artist Christopher Pugliese. The new work depicts Kennedy handling a raptor in a mountainous landscape.
Leslie Lobell, Eric Timsak, Phoebe Fischer, Phoebe Driscoll; photo: Tracey Norvell
In Prineville, Oregon, this November, Rimrock Gallery celebrated its third month and first-ever Small Works Show with a party. On hand to welcome guests were exhibiting artists Randall Tillery, Melanie Thompson, Rod Frederick, Shelly Wierzba, and Gene Costanza.
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In November, more than 400 guests attended the Scottsdale Artists’ School’s gala, Beaux Arts, which raised more than $195,000 for this nonprofit organization.A special award was presented to guest of honor Sheila Ingram (depicted here) for her longstanding commitment. Most of the artworks on offer had been donated by the artists who created them, including the signature raffle artworks by instructors Sandy Scott and Joseph Lorusso. Photo: Quinsey Sablan
J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y
This autumn, Leslie Lobell and Eric Timsak presented lectures on their adventures in art collecting during two major plein air programs.Their first talk occurred at the Susan Lynn Gallery (Rockport, Massachusetts) in conjunction with Cape Ann Plein Air. Two weeks later, the couple gave two talks on the same day as part of Palette to Palate at Rose Hill Farm, the scenic home of Phoebe and Rush Fischer in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. The latter was organized by LandArt Events and benefitted the Brandywine River Conservancy. 2 0 2 0
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On Halloween, New York City’s National Arts Club hosted a party to which guests came in an extraordinarily broad range of imaginatively designed costumes.
In October, Saint Bede Catholic Church (Williamsburg, Virginia) dedicated the first two of what will eventually be 34 mosaic panels circling the drum of its enormous nave. Pictured here are members of the creative team: third from left is Angel Ramiro Sanchez (b. 1974), the Florence Academy of Art (Italy) instructor who is painting scenes of all Catholic saints associated with the Americas. Around him are artisans from the prestigious Barsanti workshop in Pietrasanta, which is now building the next four panels. The panel depicted here features Sts. Tecla, Patrick, Bede, Alphonsus de Liguori, and Gemma Galgani.
Tim Newton and his wife, Cathi
Vaughn Massey, LaVon Kellner, Kyle Wagner
Jack & Annette Rau, Bill Rau, Rebecca Rau, Leslie Rau
Tim Newton admires the portrait of him painted by Sherrie McGraw (left), who co-organized the surprise party with artist Stephanie Birdsall (right).
In November, members of New York City’s Salmagundi Club gathered to thank Tim Newton for his many years of service as CEO. He arrived expecting to play pool, but was surprised by a huge crowd of friends and colleagues. Photos: Anthony Almeida
Jerry Cohen, Steve Cohen, Bill Rau
Whit Williams, Kate Cordsen
Drew Horton, Adam Zander, Scott Truitt, Lloyd Schoen, Wesley Palmisano
Tim Newton thanks the crowd. Behind him (left) is the club’s current CEO, Nick Dawes (Heritage Auctions); at right is artist and club president Elizabeth Spencer.
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In the historic French Quarter of New Orleans this autumn, M.S. Rau unveiled its expanded retail space, which now covers nearly 40,000 square feet spread over three floors, plus four courtyards. Led by third-generation owner Bill Rau, the firm has spent three years acquiring two adjacent buildings and interconnecting them while meticulously restoring the complex’s rich architectural details. Now the 112-year old business is ready for its next century selling fine and decorative arts, antiques, and jewelry in a handsome space that feels more like a museum than a gallery.
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MARY TAYLOR SCULPTURE
ECHO UK R AINE T Z
Song of Mountain Chief, 30.5 x 32.75, Batik Briscoe Museum • Night of Artists • San Antonio, Texas March 27 and 28, 2020
RON UK R AINE T Z
“Snowy Egret” Stainless steel, paint, clear coat, 27” x 18” x 10”, 2018
Restful Day, 24 x 36, Polychromatic Engraving The Russell • Saturday Night Auction • Great Falls, Montana March 21, 2020
marytaylorsculpture.com Heritage Inn • Great Falls, Montana • Rooms 113 and 115 March 18 - 21, 2020
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Larry Cannon ASMA LPAPA CPAP CWA
C
It Could Be You: Portraiture in a Constructed World A Group Exhibition Juried by Hyeseung Marriage-Song, Beverly McNeil, and Patricia Watwood January 23 - February 20, 2020 2801 6th Avenue S, Birmingham, AL 35233 www.portraitsinc.com F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
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WILLIAM A. SCHNEIDER
Revealing the Soul AISM, OPAM, PSA-MP
Drink from My Cup 20 x 16, Oil on Linen on Panel
Please see website for blog and workshop information
WWW.SCHNEIDERART.COM
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Online Fine Art Auction
March 20-25, 2020
NATIONALLY ACCLAIMED ARTISTS
Steve Atkinson ❒ Wayne Baize ❒ Teal Blake ❒ Dan Bodelson Nancy Boren ❒ Tyler Crow ❒ Mikel Donahue ❒ Tony Eubanks Deborah Fellows ❒ Bruce Greene ❒ Martin Grelle Terry Cooke Hall ❒ Whitney Hall ❒ Sherry Harrington George Hill ❒ Harold Holden ❒ Oreland Joe ❒ Greg Kelsey TD Kelsey ❒ Mehl Lawson ❒ Krystii Melaine ❒ Brenda Murphy Bill Nebeker ❒ Jim Norton ❒ Dustin Payne ❒ Bruce Peil Clark Kelly Price ❒ Paul Puckett ❒ Grant Redden ❒ Jason Rich R.S. Riddick ❒ Aaron Schuerr ❒ Jason Scull ❒ Donna Howell Sickles Kathy Tate ❒ Joshua Tobey ❒ Ezra Tucker ❒ Nelson Tucker Don Weller ❒ Xiang Zhang
From the 2019 Auction: Feather Fan by Martin Grelle, CA
• SPONSORED BY ATMOS ENERGY & FINE ART CONNOISSEUR MAGAZINE • Pieces on display March 20-29 at the Bosque Arts Center | Details at BosqueArtsCenter.org | 254.675.3724
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Cynthia Rosen
Sing A Song of Natures Gift, 38”x 68” through Mountain Oyster Club Art Show
Woodland Kaleidoscope, 36”x 60” purchase through artist
Upcoming plein air events Borrego Springs Invitational, C A Olmsted Invitational, GA for further information, please visit: www.c ynthiarosen.com | 802.345.8863
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THE ART OF CONVERSATION For Art & Workshop Schedule visit:
michelebyrne.com michele@michelebyrne.com
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Johanne Mangi Portraits of Distinction Specializing in Animal Art
mangifineart@johannemangi.com www.johannemangi.com Borzoi, 9 x 12, oil on board (Detail of painting)
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HEATHER ARENAS WAOW MASTER
AWA SIGNATURE
And Dreams of Cats 40x30, oil on cradled wood
WWW.HEATHERARENAS.COM
SUSAN LYNN GALLERY & STUDIO
79 Main Street, Rockport, Massachusetts susanlynnstudio.com | 816-803-9244 | susan@susanlynnstudio.com
Backlit Breaker, 16” x 20”, Oil
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North Star Art Gallery presents
BRIAN KEELER The Beauty of the Susquehanna River December 6, 2019 to March 1, 2020
Into the Light-Susquehanna August Eventide oil on linen, 38x42
7 4 3 S n y d e r H i l l R d • I t h a c a , N Y 1 4 8 5 0 • 6 0 7 . 3 2 3 . 7 6 8 4 • w w w. n o r t h s t a r a r t g a l l e r y. c o m
North Florida’s Premier Art Event
ANNO NCING THE 2020 FEATURED ARTISTS Suzie Baker Poppy Balser David Boyd, Jr. Luke Buck Charles Dickinson Aimee Erickson Michelle Held Leon Holmes Kathleen B. Hudson Charlie Hunter
Nancie King Mertz Terry Miura Vicki Norman Kendall Portis Tony Robinson Morgan Samuel Price Patrick Saunders Mark Shasha William A. Suys, Jr. Stewart White
March 20-29, 2020
ForgottenCoastEnPleinAir.com F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
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Balancing Act Bronze
© 2019
9 ”x 17 ”x 4 ” Limited Edition of 24
ROSETTA rosetta@rosettasculpture.com www.rosettasculpture.com 970-667-6265
ALAN LEQUIRE Miniature to Monumental Commission Inquiries: ecave@lequiregallery.com or 615.298.4611
At 40 feet high, Musica is the largest bronze figure group in America. Unveiled in 2003, this group of 9 colossal bronze figures celebrates the energy and diversity of the music industry in Nashville. 1/50, 1/24, 1/8 models, as well as full-scale fragments, available in limited editions.
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2020 VISION
Solo Exhibit Jan. 24- Feb. 5, 2020 530 BURNS GALLERY 530 Burns Lane, Sarasota, FL | 941.951.0620 Read how a muse participated in this solo exhibit. Richichi recently won the Richard McKinley Award & Signature status from the Pastel Society of America.
linda@lindarichichi.com 845.527.1146 www.LindaRichichi.com
Gallery Vibe | Naples, FL Botanical Garden, 16” x 16” Oil
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Nikki Sedacca Gallery | Edgartown, MA
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JILL BANKS AWA, WAOW
Capturing Life in Oils January - March
CLWAC at National Arts Club Special Studio Event - February Great Falls VA - see website WAOW 50th Jubilee - Settlers West Tucson (March 25-April 17)
Enrich Your Collection
JillBanks.com
Jill@JillBanks.com | 703.403.7435 JillBanksStudio JillBanks1
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Le Soleil d’Or oil 16 x 20 in (detail) - $2950 - painted plein air in Paris
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R e a l i s m I n Wat e r c o l or
|
L au r i n M c C r ac k e n
aws , n ws
Toys, Tins, and Boxes | 16” x 40” | Watercolor on paper
For inquires about commissioning a still life of your collectibles please contact the artist at Laurinmc@aol.com. W W W. L A U R I N G A L L E R Y. C O M
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GIVE THE GIFT OF PAI Dan niel MA IDMAN
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NTING LIKE A MASTER Albert H ANDELL
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Artist Joshua LaRock will show you how to strategize, adjust, and overcome the obstacles that get in the way of producing high-quality paintings. Inspired by masters of the past, his paintings are rooted in classical techniques, yet ÄS[LYLK [OYV\NO H JVU[LTWVYHY` ZLUZPIPSP[` /L PZ VUL VM [OL most sought-after painters nters in the th world d for commissions and instruction tion, and now you ou can learn d dire ectly from him.
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d i r e c t o ry o f a d v e rt i s i n g American Society of Marine Artists 18
LeQuire Gallery ....................... 120
American Tonalist Society ...... 19, 23
Lighthouse ArtCenter ............. 26
Arenas, Heather ...................... 118
Lotton Gallery ......................... 7
Autry Museum of the American
Lynn, Susan ............................. 118
West......................................... 38
MacDonald, John H. ................ 117
Bassett, Stephen Townley....... 34
Mangi, Johanne ....................... 117
Baxter Fine Art ........................ 122
Marino, Maria .......................... 27
Bedoian, Michael..................... 34
Marshall Gallery, The ............... 21
Booth Western Art Museum .... 39
McCracken, Laurin .................. 123
Bosque Arts Center ................. 114
Neumann, Susan Temple ........ 128
Brauns, Karin ........................... 132
North Star Art Gallery ............. 119
Bretzke, Carl ............................ 29
Papa Ralph .............................. 28
Briscoe Western Art Museum . 40
Paula Holtzclaw Fine Art ......... 6
Bronze Africa, John Tolmay..... 34
Penley, Carrie .......................... 35
Brookgreen Gardens ............... 41
Pepin, Patricia ......................... 123
Brown, Brienne ........................ 115
Portraits, Inc. ........................... 111
Buffalo Bill Art Show ............... 13
Principle Gallery ...................... 8–9
Byrne, Michele ........................ 116
Reinert Fine Art ....................... 4
C.M. Russell Museum .............. 42
Rhymer, Paul ........................... 131
Celebration of Fine Art............ 14–15
Richichi, L................................ 121
Closson, Nate .......................... 112
Rogo Marketing &
Coote, Priscilla ........................ 28
Communications..................... 22
Denis, Kathleen ....................... 29
Rosen, Cynthia ........................ 115
Dertner, Erin ............................ 28
Rosetta, Jan ............................. 120
Doellinger, Mick ...................... 5
Sander, Manon ........................ 27
Eleanor Parker Fine Art ........... 33
Schneider, William A. .............. 112
Evans, Beverly ......................... 35
Schwartz, Jean ........................ 17
Forgotten Coast Cultural
SEWE/Southeastern Wildlife
Coalition .................................. 119
Exposition ............................... 31
EVENTS:
Gleim, Lisa............................... 113
Sneary, Richard ....................... 116
Glover-Gooch, Linda ............... 114
Springville Museum of Art ...... 44
Goble, Ann .............................. 33
Stamford Museum & Nature
Feb 14 - March 16 Washington Society of Landscape Painters Exhibit Principle Gallery | Alexandria, VA
Harkness, Anne ....................... 24
Center ..................................... 11
Hitt, Karen Ann ........................ 10
Steamboat Art Museum .......... 45
Hockaday Museum of Art ....... 43
Tankersley, Nancy ................... 129
Jill E. Banks Art, LTD ................ 122
Taylor, Mary ............................. 110
Johnson, Stephanie ................ 113
The Hyde Collection ............... 46
Jung, Michelle ......................... 2
Tucker, Ezra ............................. 32
Kling, Chris .............................. 29
Ukrainetz, Ron & Echo............. 110
Koch, Philip ............................. 121
Vios, Richie .............................. 29
Larry Cannon Watercolors ...... 111
Wausau Museum Of Contemporary
Larry Moore Studios................ 32
Art............................................ 47
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Early Birds, 36 x 30 oil
March 6 - September 2021 American Society of Marine Artists 18th National Juried Exhibition Jamestown Settlement Museum | Jamestown, VA
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C L A S S I C
J E N N I F E R B A L K A N ( b. 1 9 70), S e l f- Po rtra it a s S t . C ath e ri n e o f Bologna, Patron Saint of Artists, 2016, oil on aluminum panel, 30 x 30 in., available from the artist
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COME SEE PAUL AT CELEBRATION OF FINE ART January 18-March 29, 2020 • Scottsdale, AZ
GALLERIES REPRESENTING PAUL’S WORK: Manitou Galleries 225 Canyon Rd Santa Fe, NM 87501 Lovetts Gallery 6528 E 51st St Tulsa, Ok 74145 Lunds Fine Art Gallery 591 Main St. Park City, UT 84060
“On Point” 24” x 24” x 12” Bronze on Onyx 2019, Ed. 25