JOH A N NA H A R MON | ROMUA LDO LOC AT ELLI | M A R I A K R EY N | BR ITISH COU N T RY HOUSES
FEBRUARY 20 22 VOLUME 19 ISSUE 1
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VISIT LOS ANGELES AND SEE AND PURCHASE WORKS BY 64 PREMIER WESTERN ARTISTS EXHIBITION February 12—March 27, 2022 ART SALE Saturday, February 26, 2022
AUTRY MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN WEST 4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles, CA 90027-1462 TheAutry.org/Masters
Autry FAC JanFeb 2022 Ad 9x10.875.indd 1
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Tony Abeyta • William Acheff • Peter Adams • Bill Anton • Gerald Balciar • Thomas Blackshear II • Autumn Borts-Medlock • Eric Bowman • John Budicin • George Carlson • G. Russell Case • Tim Cherry • Len Chmiel • Michael Coleman • Nicholas Coleman • Glenn Dean • Mick Doellinger • Dennis Doheny • Teresa Elliott • John Fawcett • Tammy Garcia • R. Tom Gilleon • Richard V. Greeves • Logan Maxwell Hagege • Harold T. Holden • Doug Hyde • Oreland C. Joe Sr. • Brett Allen Johnson • Steve Kestrel • Joshua LaRock • Jeremy Lipking • Walter T. Matia • Ed Mell • 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 • Jason Rich • Mateo Romero • Roseta Santiago • Billy Schenck • Sandy Scott • Tim Shinabarger • Adam Smith • Daniel Smith • Matt Smith • Tim Solliday • Margery Torrey • Kent Ullberg • Dustin Van Wechel • Brittany Weistling • Kim Wiggins • Jim Wilcox CLOCKWISE, FROM LEFT: WILLIAM ACHEFF, NEW MEXICO SUNSET (DETAIL), OIL, 6.5 X 11.75 IN. • SANDY SCOTT, MAMA ALWAYS LIKED YOU BEST (DETAIL), BRONZE, 10 X 23 X 7 IN. • ERIC MERRELL, DESERT GEOMETRY (DETAIL), OIL ON CANVAS ON BOARD, 36 X 36 IN.
12/3/21 12:50 PM
Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012), Survivor, 1983, linocut on paper, 9 1/4 x 7 1/2 in., private collection
“I learned how you use your art for the service of people, struggling people, to whom only realism is meaningful.” — Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012)
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Big Cottonwood Canyon, 30” x 30”, oil on canas
he sun descends, and shadows climb the T mountains of Taos as fall colors paint the foothills. Created using an array of palette
knives, the awe-inspiring colors of the Southwest are captured in strokes of vibrating color.
BRAD TEARE prefers to paint from plein air sketches. He then paints larger versions channeling the controlled chaos of the field paintings into his studio work. The process produces surprises impossible to replicate by painting from photos or imagination.
Palace Ave. Gallery • 123 West Palace Avenue Santa Fe, NM 87501 • 505.986.0440 info@manitougalleries.com
Teare painting near the Rio Chama, New Mexico. Above: Distant Shadows, 30” x 30”, oil on canvas.
YU ZHANG
Founding Father, Grand Master
21st Century Renaissance Miraclism | Multiple Themes
Sunset Santa Monica Beach Oil on Canvas 48”x72”
Versatile Artist • Dancer Series • Splendor Series • Rice Paper Painting • Auspicious Series • Big Brush Stroke Art
www.miraclismzhang.com francisyuzhangusa@yahoo.com | 626-820-2688 P.O.Box1285, Alhambra,CA 91802
PUBLISHER
B. Er ic Rhoads bericrhoads@gmail.com Tw i t t e r : @ e r i c r h o a d s f a c e b o ok . c o m /e r ic . rh o a d s
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Peter Tr ippi peter.trippi@gmail.com 9 17.9 6 8 . 4 4 76 MANAGING EDITOR
Br ida Connolly bconnolly @streamlinepublishing.com 702.665.5283 CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Matthias A nderson Kelly Compton Max Gillies Daniel G rant
A llison Malafronte David Masello Louise Nicholson Charles R askob Robinson
C R E AT I V E D I R EC TO R
A lf onso Jones alfonsostreamline@gmail.com 5 61 . 3 2 7. 6 0 3 3
ART DIRECTOR
Kenneth W hitne y k whitney @streamlinepublishing.com 561.655.8778
DIRECTOR OF SALES & MARKETING
K atie Reeves k reeves@streamlinepublishing.com 919.673.8 895
P R OJ EC T & D I G I TA L A D M A N AG E R
Yvonne Van Wechel y vanwechel@streamlinepublishing.com 6 02 .810. 3518
VENDOR & CONVENTION MARKETING
S a ra h We b b swebb@streamlinepublishing.com 630.4 45.9182
SENIOR MARKETING SPECIALISTS
Dave Ber nard d b e r n a r d @ s t r e a m l i n e p u b l i s h i n g .com 503.539.870 6 Dede Russell dr ussell@streamlinepublishing.com 360.536.3919
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Cher ie Haas chaas@streamlinepublishing.com
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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
Thalia Stratton opa, noaps Paris, 2024
“The Art of Fencing”
Fencer in Repose II, 36”x24”, Oil on Canvas
Award Winner, 93rd Grand National Exhibition, American Artists Professional League
Thalia Stratton Fine Art
San Francisco Design Center • 2 Henry Adams Street, M-58 • San Francisco, CA 94102 • 415.971.5521 fashimag@pacbell.net • www.thaliastratton.com
Jill Basham
331 SE Mizner Blvd. Boca Raton, FL 33432 Ph: 561.655. 8778 • Fa x : 561.655.616 4 CHAIRMAN/PUBLISHER/CEO B. Eric Rhoads bericrhoads@gmail.com Tw i t t e r : @ e r i c r h o a d s f a c e b o ok .c om /e r ic . rho a d s E X E C U T I V E V I C E P R E S I D E N T/ C H I E F O P E R AT I N G O F F I C E R Tom Elmo telmo@streamlinepublishing.com PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Nicolynn Kuper nkuper@streamlinepublishing.com DIRECTOR OF FINANCE Laura Iserman liserman@streamlinepublishing.com CONTROLLER Jaime Osetek jaime@streamlinepublishing.com S TA F F AC C O U N TA N T Nicole A nderson nanderson@streamlinepublishing.com C I R C U L AT I O N C O O R D I N ATO R Sue Henr y shenr y @streamlinepublishing.com C U S TO M E R S E R V I C E C O O R D I N ATO R Jessica Smith jsmith@streamlinepublishing.com A S S I S TA N T TO T H E C H A I R M A N A li Cr uickshank acruickshank@streamlinepublishing.com
Subscriptions:800.610.5771 Also 561.655.8778 or www.fineartconnoisseur.com One-year, 6-issue subscription within the United States: $39.98 (International, 6 issues, $76.98). Two-year, 12-issue subscription within the United States: $59.98 (International, 12 issues, $106.98).
Where the Children Summered Jill Basham 24x18 oil on canvas, plein air, Manchester-By-The-Sea, MA
jillbasham.com jillbasham2014@gmail.com Principle, Alexandria VA I Reinert, Charleston SC I Trippe, Easton MD Crown, Blowing Rock NC I Sugarlift Gallery, NYC (online) | Olmsted Gallery (online)
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Attention retailers: If you would like to carry Fine Art Connoisseur in your store, please contact Tom Elmo at 561.655.8778. Copyright ©2022 Streamline Publishing Inc. Fine Art Connoisseur is a registered trademark of Streamline Publishing; Historic Masters, Today’s Masters, Collector Savvy, Hidden Collection, and Classic Moment are trademarks of Streamline Publishing. All rights reserved. Fine Art Connoisseur is published by Streamline Publishing Inc. Any reproduction of this publication, whole or in part, is prohibited without the express written consent of the publisher. Contact Streamline Publishing Inc. at address below. Fine Art Connoisseur is published six times annually (ISSN 1932-4995) for $39.99 per year in U.S.A. (two years $59.99); Canada and Europe $69.99 per year (two years $99.99) by Streamline Publishing Inc., 331 SE Mizner Blvd., Boca Raton, FL 33432. Periodicals postage paid at Boca Raton, FL, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Fine Art Connoisseur, 331 SE Mizner Blvd., Boca Raton, FL 33432.Copying done for other than personal or internal reference without the express permission of Fine Art Connoisseur is prohibited. Address requests for special permission to the Managing Editor. Reprints and back issues available upon request. Printed in the United States. Canadian publication agreement # 40028399. Canada Post: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608; Canada returns to be sent to Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2.
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003 Frontispiece: Elizabeth Catlett 016 Publisher’s Letter 020 Editor’s Note 023 Favorite: Michael Bastian on Vilhelm Hammershøi 098 Off the Walls 114 Classic Moment: Pauline Roche
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ARTISTS MAKING THEIR MARK: FIVE TO WATCH
Allison Malafronte and Charles Moore highlight the talents of Krystal W. Brown, Klaire A. Lockheart, Edmond Praybe, Robert Stutler, and Telvin Wallace.
IN DELAWARE, CONNECTING THE PAST AND PRESENT
By Margaretta S. Frederick and Heather Campbell Coyle
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By Daniel Grant
By Louise Nicholson
MARIA KREYN’S PAINTED PERFORMANCES FOR ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER
THE PHILADELPHIA (MURALS) STORY
JOHANNA HARMON: LEARNING HER OWN WAY
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HOSPITALITY ENDURES: COOKING, DINING, WINING By Kelly Compton
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DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH’S LADY IN GREEN By Dana Pilson
Joseph Lorusso (b. 1966), A Mischievous Look (detail), 2003, oil on board, 15 1/2 x 12 in., collection of Saad and Janan Habba. For details, please see page 92.
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By Michael J. Pearce
ON THE COVER
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ROMUALDO LOCATELLI: MASTERY AND MYSTERY
BRITAIN’S COUNTRY HOUSES: OLD HOMES, NEW LIFE
080 By Jeanne Schinto
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GREAT ART NATIONWIDE
We survey 4 top-notch projects occurring this winter.
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ART IN THE WEST
There are at least 5 great reasons to visit the American West this season.
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SAAD AND JANAN HABBA: BUYING ART THEY LOVE By Peter Trippi
By Peter Trippi
Fine Art Connoisseur is also available in a digital edition. Please visit fineartconnoisseur.com for details.
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KATHLEEN GRAY FARTHING Alliance, Ohio Postcards, 12 x 9 in., oil kathleen@kathleengrayfarthing.com www.kathleengrayfarthing.com
LIZ BONHAM Keller, Texas Morning Surf, 24 x 36 in., oil liz@lizbonham.com | www.lizbonham.com
JILL STEFANI WAGNER Saline, Michigan Sanibel Lighthouse, 9 x 12 in., oil on linen panel jill@jillwagnerart.com | 734.604.2864 www.jillwagnerart.com
RICHARD SNEARY Kansas City, Missouri Burnham’s Boatworks, 14 x 10 in., watercolor richard@richardsneary.com | 816.665.4911 www.richardsneary.com
Lighthouse ArtCenter • 373 Tequesta Drive • Tequesta, FL 33469 • 561-746-3101 • LighthouseArts.org/PleinAir
ORVILLE GIGUIENTO Littleton, Colorado Yampa’s Twin Butte, 13 x 19 in., watercolor arkinet@yahoo.com | 720.862.8369 | www.orvillegw.com
CHRIS KLING Stuart, Florida Breezy, 12 x 16 in., oil cbkling@bellsouth.net | 772.285.7826 www.chrisklingartist.com
CATHERINE HILLIS Locust Grove, Virginia Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella, 18 x 24 in., watercolor catherine.h.hillis@gmail.com | 703.431.6877 www.catherinehillis.com
Lighthouse ArtCenter • 373 Tequesta Drive • Tequesta, FL 33469 • 561-746-3101 • LighthouseArts.org/PleinAir
P U B L I S H E R ’ S
L E T T E R
NEW HOPE FOR REALISM
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s a man on a mission, I had three art-related goals I wanted to see fulfilled in my lifetime. One was furthering appreciation for plein air painting, which is why I founded PleinAir magazine in 2004. Due to lack of support, we retired it for a couple of years, and then it roared back to life in 2011. We have just finished celebrating its first full decade of robust health. The second goal was to promote the making of portraiture from life, which is why more than 26 top artists have been commissioned to paint my portrait. (One of them graces this page.) The final objective has to do with this magazine, Fine Art Connoisseur, which has been guided by a different set of priorities. Back in 2004, I believed that realist art was at risk of being lost. Publishers and critics remained enamored with conceptual art and installations, as did collectors and museums. Through their eyes, realism looked passé, despite the fact that it has evolved constantly over 600 years, with each generation of artists pushing boundaries and embracing innovations in order to advance and thrive. In 2004, the chief problem with realism in the market was that its quality was measurable; everyone could see when it worked and when it didn’t. In contrast, when something cannot be measured, it can be manufactured. Most dealers of contemporary art were all over this fact, especially as there was little quality work available to sell. They ignored the fact that modern art had lost the excitement that ignited the Armory Show in 1913, when highly trained professionals who already had the skills to create realist works chose to push on in new directions. Over the intervening decades, art educators had come to believe that the holy grail of self-expression required no technical training, so — with a few exceptions — most
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art schools no longer passed along core skills. By 2004 it had become clear to me that someone needed to call attention to the underground resurgence of realism and of the technical skills it requires, which were bubbling up at small ateliers and academies in unexpected places around the world. My intention was never to stop the other train, or even slow it, but instead to build a new track and give this young movement its own identity, its own opportunities. I’ve long urged readers of Fine Art Connoisseur to mark this movement’s monumental moments, and also its small victories. Year after year, for example, we have watched more teaching ateliers open, then still more as their graduates launch their own venues. Now three generations of graduates mean that we have thousands of welltrained artists on the scene — working in the realist tradition while infusing it with their own contemporary concerns and sensibilities, not repeating the past. There have been encouraging moments, and discouraging ones. The biggest challenge remains the creation of a market — building interest among collectors, getting dealers to take on these artists. It takes time and knowledge to move forward; some have, while others are cautious or risk-averse. Just last month, I was visiting a major painter who feels it’s all over for realism. But that same day, our own editor cited strong indicators that the resurgence is becoming more visible. Then last month, at the Miami Beach fairs — which still set broad trends in the art world — one of the world’s biggest dealers of cutting-edge art was exhibiting realism. What’s old becomes new. Two weeks earlier, I had suggested that if that same dealer were to embrace realism, J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y
Publisher B. Eric Rhoads, painted by ADRIAN GOTTLIEB (b. 1975), 2008, oil on canvas, 21 x 16 in., courtesy of the artist
doors would open and the world would change. Think about it: the rise of modernism was fueled by available inventory. Now, with thousands of brilliant artists exploring various forms of realism, inventory is again available. Those of you who have been collecting these artists may ultimately find you’re holding priceless masterpieces. Those who have yet to enter the market should know that quality is timeless and there are still bargains to be found; but if this trend takes off as predicted, values may soar. (Please don’t take this as investment advice, as I’m not qualified. Buy what you love, and you’ll be fine.) In this field, we’ve had moments of hope before, but never quite this big. This could change everything.
B. ERIC RHOADS Chairman/Publisher bericrhoads@gmail.com facebook.com/eric.rhoads @ericrhoads
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Scottsdale, Arizona | January 15–March 27, 2022 Open Daily 10am–6pm For over 30 years, Celebration of Fine Art’s live event has been known for bringing together seasoned collectors and first-time buyers from around the globe. Art lovers will have the opportunity to browse 40,000 square feet of on-site, working studios for 100 renowned and emerging artists from across the country, offering an unparalleled selection of artwork in all mediums and styles. Where Art Lovers & Artists Connect www.celebrateart.com
LEAH KISER Studio #143 Casa Grande, Arizona Fine Feathered Friends, 36 x 36 in., oil on canvas leah@artifactfa.com | www.artifactfa.com
DIANA FERGUSON Studio #132 Phoenix, Arizona Blue Sky Red Rocks Wearable Sculpture Bangle, 2 3/4 x 2 1/4 in., glass cylinder beads, monofilament thread dianafergusonjewelry@gmail.com | 262.374.2984 www.dianafergusonjewelrystudio.com
JENNY STEWART Studio #138 Phoenix, Arizona Put a Cork in It, 30 x 48 in., oil on canvas info@jennystewart.com | 623.282.4203 www.jennystewart.com
Golden Light
JULIA ROGERS 2022 Featured Artist Available at Auction 2/17/22
BEVERL
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www.be
SEWE 2022 40 years in the making For 40 years, Charleston has hosted one of the most beloved events in the Southeast. SEWE is a celebration of the great outdoors through fine art, live entertainment, and special events. It is where artists, conservationists, collectors, and sporting enthusiasts come together to enjoy the outdoor lifestyle and connect through a shared passion for wildlife. This Is SEWE.
February 17-20, 2022
Charleston, SC
sewe.com
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Brev
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Artist 17/22
BEVERLY FORD EVANS
Franklin, Tennessee
Stuck at Low Tide 18 x 24 in., oil on linen bfevans@comcast.net 615.400.5457 www.beverlyfordevans.com
JEN STARWALT
Brevard, North Carolina Journey of the Sea 48 x 36 in. soft pastel on sanded paper jen@jenstarwalt.com www.jenstarwalt.com
P U B L I S E H D E I TR O ' SR ’ LS E N T O T E T R E
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t’s funny how certain things suddenly come back to your attention again and again, reminding you why you like them or need to notice them more. That happened to me this autumn with watercolor paintings. I have always loved the flowing expressiveness of the watercolor medium — how it can be used to depict an image realistically yet never lets us forget it’s made of a slippery substance over which artists must have complete mastery. Even those drip marks are strategic. In November, as Eric Rhoads and I cohosted the successful four-day online conference known as Realism Live (realismlive.com), I refocused on watercolor’s joys during our celebration of the South Carolina artist Mary Whyte, who graciously accepted our Lifetime Achievement Award, and who has won acclaim for the superb portraits she creates in the watery medium. This reminder was reinforced by the fascinating demo of landscape painting in watercolors offered by Stewart White (Maryland) during the same conference. I myself can hardly draw a stick figure, so I remain in awe of how these talents make magic with a drippy brush and an unforgiving sheet of white paper. Still more watercolors delighted my eyes as I gathered information on Dean Mitchell’s
current show at the Huntsville Museum of Art in Alabama (please see page 99 for details), and again as I visited a fascinating new exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Titled Sargent, Whistler & Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano, it encompasses an array of watercolors, including the luminous scene (illustrated here) by Francis Hopkinson Smith, an artist I had scarcely heard of. I was astonished by Smith’s orchestration of bright colors — ones that usually strike me as garish — into a harmonious whole, and now I want to learn more about his life and technique. I am bound to draw further insights by watching Streamline’s next online conference, Watercolor Live (watercolorlive.com), scheduled for January 26–29. Offering their insights then will be an impressive range of talents including Kathleen Alexander, Poppy Balser, Cindy Baron, Susan Blackwood, Carol Carter, Alvaro Castagnet, Ali Cavanaugh, Chien Chung-Wei, Kathleen Giles, Laurie Goldstein-Warren, Michael Holter, Wennie Huang, Paul Jackson, Amit Kapoor, Tom Lynch, Carol McSweeney, Julie Gilbert Pollard, David Poxon, John Salminen, Thomas W. Schaller, Richie Vios, Carrie Waller, and Stewart White. All of these recent encounters have reminded me how much I enjoy the look of watercolors and why I should keep an eye open for a new one(s) to buy for my own collection. I encourage you to do the same, hopefully by joining us for Watercolor Live and also by Googling around to connect with the watercolor society nearest you. Almost every U.S. state and region has at least one, offering regular exhibitions where you can discover their members’ brilliance in person. See you there.
FRANCIS HOPKINSON SMITH (1838–1915), On the Way to the Public Garden, c. 1895, opaque watercolor and pastel over graphite on paper, 14 1/3 x 24 3/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., gift of Laura Dreyfus Barney and Natalie Clifford Barney in memory of their mother, Alice Pike Barney
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TRIPPI PHOTO: FRANCIS HILLS
WATERCOLORS FOR ALL
AMERICAN T ONALIST S OCIET Y Fostering the Tradition and Art Form of Contemporary American Tonalism
Look for info about our upcoming show at the Salmagundi Club, NYC in 2023. Sign up on our list to be the first to know Best inmailing Tonalism 2020
Award Winners
SECOND PLACE: Michael Albrechtsen
THIRD PLACE Jeff Cornell
FIRST PLACE Katriel Srebnik
Look for info about our upcoming show at the Salmagundi Club, NYC in 2023. Sign up on our mailing list to be the first to know!”
HONORABLE MENTION Denise LaRue Mahlke
HONORABLE MENTION Ben Bauer
HONORABLE MENTION Brian Sindler
Visit AmericanTonalistSociety.com or Instagram @americantonalistsociety
WRIT TEN BY DAVID MASELLO
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MICHAEL BASTIAN Creative Director, Brooks Brothers
Interior, Strandgade 30 Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916) 1901, oil on canvas, 26 x 21 1/2 in. Städel Museum, Frankfurt
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ichael Bastian dreams about rooms. Like many New Yorkers, in his sleep he imagines opening a closet door in his Greenwich Village apartment to find a new, unexpected room, or, unpleasantly, being stuck in a room, or simply moving through a space in an unfamiliar location. “Sometimes, I’d call these dreams, other times nightmares,” he muses, “but for some weird reason, I often find myself in these architectural settings.” As for this painting by Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916), one of Bastian’s favorites, he admits to feeling as if he dreamed being in the room that’s depicted here, even before he saw it. “There’s a feeling of déjà vu when I look at this, as if I saw it in my sleep.” For decades, Bastian has been one of the leading figures in men’s fashion, having established his own namesake brand, then served as creative director for Gant and now Brooks Brothers — all while remaining as handsome as the models he once propelled down the runways. Even though the Hammershøi, which is in the permanent collection of Frankfurt’s Städel Museum, shows the back of a woman seen through a doorway, Bastian emphasizes, “To me, this is a portrait of a mood. It captures a sense of melancholy, of loneliness.” Hammershøi, who lived and worked in Copenhagen, was a painter of interiors
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— quiet, poetic scenes of spare, minimally furnished rooms, cast in muted light, often occupied by a lone figure seen from the rear. The model for these enigmatic figures was usually his own wife in their own apartment (as in this scene). “When a figure is shown from the back, you have no interaction with it,” Bastian notes. “You can ascribe a lot of different intentions as to what the person is doing, more so than if they’re looking at you. You feel as if you’re observing something secretive.” Much of Bastian’s life as a clothing designer is about color and how light affects it. “I get obsessed about colors between colors — as in this painting, where there’s something between blue and gray.” Bastian cites Hammershøi’s native Denmark as having one foot in continental Europe and the other in Scandinavia — yet another example of how the designer
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“loves the idea of things that are between.” While Bastian was developing his lines for Gant, he spent considerable time in Stockholm. “The Scandinavian aesthetic speaks to me. And when you’re there, you get used to the situation with the light, about how much daylight you experience and that creepy time in midsummer when the sun never really goes down. In winter, you might get four hours of daylight. You understand the Scandinavian persona, which is both reality and cliché.” It wasn’t the first time, though, that Bastian had been immersed in such light, for he was raised in upstate New York, near Lake Ontario. “The Scandinavian northern light was something I was already used to.” Although most of the paintings Bastian owns and displays salon-style at home are abstract, he has a strong penchant for realistic depictions of rooms — certainly ones by Hammershøi, and also by Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, whose interiors assume a character of their own. As much as Bastian would like to own a Hammershøi, he confesses that this canvas and others are “already burned into my memory.” After all, he sees them in his dreams. “And I think if you want his paintings to have the truest effect, you need a setting like the very ones he painted in which to hang them. I haven’t seen this work in person, just in books, but it’s long been there in my mind.”
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a rare chance to see and paint the real russia Sept. 11-25, 2022
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hen I first visited Russia, I fell in love with the people, the scenery, and the Russian paintings. I’ve been back many times and, next time, I’m taking 50 painters with me to tour and paint Russia. Not just the Russia of the movies, but the real Russia! We’ll tour and paint in historic Saint Petersburg, arguably the most beautiful city in the world. We’ll also see and paint the highlights of Moscow. But it’s between these great cities where we’ll find the real gems. We’ll visit the home and studio of famed Russian artist Ilya Repin. We’ll paint quaint villages and stunning landscapes in the exact same places as the great Russian landscape painters Shiskin and Levitan. We’ll tour the three great Russian museums: The Hermitage, The State Tretyakov Gallery, and The Russian Museum. We’ll have the chance to paint with Russian master Nicholai Dubovik and visit great Russian art schools. We’ll open doors few others could ever open.
You’ll leave with a great appreciation for Russian art, you’ll discover the warm and wonderful Russian people (not what you see in the movies), and you’ll want to come back again and again. Best of all, you’ll travel with people who know the real Russia, you’ll grow as an artist, establish new and lasting friendships, and paint the memories from your time there. I’m opening doors to my friends and contacts in Russia to create this unforgettable painting trip in September, 2022, but I can only take 50 people. Eric Rhoads, Publisher
Our Russia trip for this past fall was sold out with a waiting list. We intend to go again this coming fall and are working with our travel advisors on dates. Because it will sell out fast, we recommend getting on the waiting list.
to learn more visit paintrussia.com
2022 M USEU M GU I DE
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W i l l ia m A . Suys , Jr. ( b. 19 55), Dan ce at th e Met, oi l , 3 6 x 2 4 i n .
SPECIAL SECTION
A SHOUT-OUT FOR OUR MUSEUMS BY PETER TRIPPI
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trictly speaking, a museum is a place dedicated to the muses — the nine (female) divinities of the arts, history, science, and literature who were revered by the ancient Greeks. Though most of us don’t worship those goddesses anymore, the subjects they symbolized are still brought to life daily in the vast array of museums found all over the world. Even the Greek gods could not have predicted how central museums would become in our civic life. They are no longer just places to learn, but also places to gather, celebrate, mourn, and have fun. That accessibility is key: the more often we bring our kids to museums to — say — attend a festival, the more likely they are to return as adults to enjoy the collections and exhibitions inside. Speaking of collections, museums deserve enormous credit for cataloguing and posting their collections online; they hold these treasures on behalf of the public, and now we have an ever-clearer idea of what they are. Moreover, many museums are now offering terrific online programs to engage their current audiences, entice new ones, and — in some savvy cases — raise revenues, too. Every winter, Fine Art Connoisseur dedicates part of an issue to highlighting America’s art museums. I am particularly fond of this initiative because I spent much of my career working in art museums and still love visiting them. Needless to say, 2020 and 2021 were challenging for museums. Throughout the pandemic, however, our museum colleagues have never
lost their focus on sharing the joys of fine art even when it’s harder, or impossible, for us to enter their remarkable buildings. Fortunately, most museums have now reopened, and their exhibitions and events have reminded us just how important they are to our communities. There are two ways readers of Fine Art Connoisseur can support museums. First, join as a member — even if it’s just a lower-level membership and even when you’re not particularly passionate about a specific museum’s specialties. This is a great way to help museums survive, and many museums have created a cheaper virtual membership that allows first-timers to get their toes wet. Second, there’s the worthy impulse to shop. Many museums have terrific websites highlighting the same high-quality merchandise they sell in their on-site boutiques. Even though the holidays are behind us, why not click on the relevant webpage and buy art-related items to delight your loved ones? 2022 will surely offer its own share of challenges. Let’s all do what we can to make museums’ paths a little easier, and let’s thank them for all they do to lift our spirits. Finally, if you know of a museum that should be included in this section in the future, please let us know. We are always grateful for your feedback.
Peter Trippi is editor-in-chief of Fine Art Connoisseur.
Curator Nathaniel Silver visits the hit exhibition he organized recently at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Titian: Women, Myth, and Power; photo © Jesse Costa/WBUR
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2022 MUSEUM EXHIBITION CALENDAR February 12–May 1, 2022: New London County Quilts & Bed Covers, 1750-1825; Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT
ONGOING FROM 2021 Through January 23, 2022: Revisiting America: The Prints of Currier & Ives; Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT Through March 20, 2022: The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA Through April 2, 2022: Portrayals of the American West: Curtis, Reed, Huffman, Wallihans Historic Photography; Steamboat Art Museum, Steamboat Springs, CO Through May 22, 2022: The Sun Dance Series: Heart of the Blackfeet People by Gary Schildt; C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT Through May 22, 2022: The Great Animal Orchestra: Bernie Krause and United Visual Artists; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA Long-term: Sculpture from the Brookgreen Collection (Portico Gallery) and Waccamaw Neck Memories exhibit of art, decorative objects, and furnishings (Holmes Gallery); Brookgreen Gardens, Murrells Inlet, SC Long-term: National Sculpture Society Honorees, works of notable NSS prize winners (displayed at the main entrance of the Rosen Galleries); Brookgreen Gardens, Murrells Inlet, SC JANUARY January 29–April 24, 2022: American Animalier: The Life and Art of Anna Hyatt Huntington (in the Rosen Galleries); Brookgreen Gardens, Murrells Inlet, SC
MARCH March–June 2022: Charles M. Russell Small Works; C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT March 25–September 4, 2022: Cowgirl Up! Art from the Other Half of the West; Desert Caballeros Western Museum, Wickenburg, AZ March 25–May 8, 2022: Night of Artists (Opening Weekend March 25 & 26); Briscoe Western Art Museum, San Antonio, TX APRIL April 2, 2022–July 30, 2023: Climate Action: Inspiring Change; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA April 8–June 11, 2022: Larry Blackwood/ Joan Renne (Main Gallery West, East), Reception: Thursday, April 7, 2022, 5–7 pm; Hockaday Museum of Art, Kalispell, MT MAY May 7–July 24, 2022: Bronze and Steel: The Art of Marc Mellon and Babette Bloch (in the Rosen Galleries); Brookgreen Gardens, Murrells Inlet, SC May 14–September 18, 2022: Dana Sherwood: Animal Appetites and Other Encounters in Wildness; Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT May 27–September 5, 2022: The Sons of Charlie Russell: Cowboy Artists of America; Briscoe Western Art Museum, San Antonio, TX
January 29–May 8, 2022: Each/Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA
JUNE June–September 2022: The Art of Winold F. Reiss; C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT
FEBRUARY February 2022: New gallery opens: Putnam Gallery of Native American and American Art; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA
June–September 2022: Through the Lens of Joseph Henry Sharp; C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT
February 12–March 27, 2022: Masters of the American West® Art Exhibition and Sale (Sale Saturday, February 26); Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, CA
June 3–September 3, 2022: OPA’s 31st National Juried Exhibition of Traditional Oils; Steamboat Art Museum, Steamboat Springs, CO
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June 17–August 20, 2022: Between Artists: Damon Falke and Tabby Ivy (Main Galleries), Reception: Thursday, June 16, 2022, 5–7 pm; Hockaday Museum of Art, Kalispell, MT JULY AUGUST August 6–October 23, 2022: National Sculpture Society 89th Annual Awards Exhibition (in the Rosen Galleries); Brookgreen Gardens, Murrells Inlet, SC August 27–October 29, 2022: A Timeless Legacy: Artists of Glacier National Park (Main Galleries), Reception: Saturday, August 27, 5–7 pm.; Hockaday Museum of Art, Kalispell, MT SEPTEMBER September 17–October 15, 2022 (Exhibition/Sale): Plein Air Glacier: Paint Out, Sale, Exhibition (Crown of the Continent Gallery), Paint: September 6–13; Hockaday Museum of Art, Kalispell, MT September 30–November 5, 2022: Steamboat Art Museum Plein Air 2022 Exhibition and Sale; Steamboat Art Museum, Steamboat Springs, CO September 30, 2022–January 29, 2023: Mangelsen: A Life in the Wild; Briscoe Western Art Museum, San Antonio, TX OCTOBER October 2022–May 2023: Greetings from Charlie; C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT NOVEMBER November 4, 2022–January 7, 2023: Dan Knepper/Gordon Skallenberg (Main Galleries), Reception: Thursday, November 3, 5–7 pm; Hockaday Museum of Art, Kalispell, MT DECEMBER December 18–February 27, 2022: Bill Anton Paints the West; Desert Caballeros Western Museum, Wickenburg, AZ
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March 25 & 26, 2022 Opening Weekend Celebration One of the premier Western art events in the world, Night of Artists includes the viewing and sale of nearly 300 new works of painting, sculpture and mixed media by over 75 of today’s leading contemporary Western artists. The opening weekend celebration features two days of in-person events including a live auction, a “Luck of the Draw” sale, a collectors summit and more on the banks of the iconic San Antonio River Walk.
March 27 – May 8 Exhibition & Sale
For more information visit briscoemuseum.org/NOA
Mian Situ, Still Waiting for Payday, Oil on linen, 20” x 23” Z.S. Liang, Turtle Talk, Oil on linen, 36” x 26”
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UPCOMING 2022 EXHIBITIONS at C.M. Russell Museum
November 2021–May 2022 The Sun Dance Series: Hear of the Blackfeet People by Gary Schildt
March–June 2022 Charles M. Russell Small Works
June–September 2022 Through the Lens of Joseph Henry Sharp
June–September 2022 The Art of Winold F. Reiss
July–August 2022 The Russell Sale Exhibition
October 2022–May 2023 Greetings from Charlie
400 13th Street North | Great Falls, Montana (406) 727–8787 | CMRussell.org/the-russell TOP: Gary Schildt (1938-2021), The Parade, 1997, oil on canvas, Gift of Dr. Daniel R. and Mary Ann R. Fiehrer. BOTTOM LEFT: Joseph Henry Sharp (1859-1944) , Seated Man Near Bison Hide with Dogs (detail), printed 2020, photopolymer gravure, C.M. Russell Museum Collection. BOTTOM RIGHT: Winold Reiss (1886-1953), Gets Wood at Night (Blood). Collection of the C.M. Russell Museum; Gift of Peter and Christina Reiss.
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Dali Higa
Tibetan Chores 48” x 60”
OIL ON CANVAS
BY DALI HIGA
Tibetan Chores
Tibet A people reaching up to the sky The Himalayas Mountains bending water down below Two Tibetans toiling Frozen in time God made them both Nourishment for all Feeding China, India and Pakistan it flows water discriminates not by race or creed Men discriminate with hate and greed Tibetan Chores – Peace– an example take heed
CALIFORNIA MUSEUM OF FINE ART www.californiamuseumoffineart.com
21 N. Frontier Street, Wickenburg, AZ 85390 Call 928.684.2272 for opening weekend tickets.
SPECIAL THANKS TO
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Wearable art at the Peabody Essex Museum Shop We’re thrilled to carry this sustainable fashion brand dedicated to creating one-of-a-kind styles for women on the go. Each piece is inspired by the vibrant culture of Africa. PEM members always receive a 10% discount
Shop online now
161 Essex Street, Salem, Mass. 01970 978-542-1619 | shop.pem.org
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12/1/21 11:40 AM
Presents
Portrayals of the American West
Edward Curtis, L.A. Huffman, Roland Reed, A.G. & Augusta Wallihan Historic Photography from the turn of the 19th Century
“Gossips – San Juan” Edward S. Curtis c/o The Tread of Pioneers
“Travois” Roland Reed c/o Roland W. Reed Gallery
“Augusta with Horse and Dog” A.G. Wallihan c/o Museum of Northwest Colorado
“SW Wrangler – C. Henry Tunis” L.A. Huffman c/o John Fawcett
December 3, 2021 to April 2, 2022 Located in the heart of downtown Steamboat Springs at 807 Lincoln Avenue Open Tuesdays through Saturdays – Admission Free Visit the Museum Store featuring the work of local artists. www.steamboatartmuseum.org (970) 879-1755
New London County Quilts & Bed Covers, 1750–1825 february
12 – may 1
96 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, CT • 860.434.5542 FlorenceGriswoldMuseum.org Petticoat Quilt, 1790-1810 [Detail]. Wool, Broadcloth/Muslin International Quilt Museum; University of Nebraska-Lincoln 2005.016.0001
There is a lot of superb art being made these days. This column shines light on five gifted individuals. All profiles written by Allison Malafronte except Telvin Wallace’s (by Charles Moore).
KLAIRE A. LOCKHEART (b. 1984), Brodalisca, 2020, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 in., available through the artist
Using sarcasm or irony in a painting to make a point is nothing new, but the way KLAIRE A. LOCKHEART (b. 1984) does it is. The South Dakota-based artist — who has earned both a B.S. and an M.F.A. — uses her sharp skills as a painter and thinker, as well as her acerbic wit, to comment on areas of injustice in art history and contemporary culture. Her Brodalisque series in particular takes a look at the antiquated role of woman as object. Turning the male gaze around, or “flipping the binary” as Lockheart describes it, this female artist presents a masculine, middleaged man in a passive “odalisque” pose and asks viewers to objectify him in the same way a woman would be. While compositions like these might elicit a quiet chuckle from viewers, they are not meant to be facetious. Rather, they are designed to help people take an honest look at age-old tropes and view them from a new, more equitable perspective. Lockheart has intentionally chosen a specific technique as part of the twist. “I create oil paintings in a Western academic style in order to have arguments with old, dead philosophers, colonizers, and misogynists,” the artist declares boldly. “I 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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purposely paint in a traditional manner as an act of rebellion because women have traditionally been marginalized in the art world.” Other subjects in Lockheart’s oeuvre explore additional topics that loom large in society, including gender identity and political turmoil. Beyond the Brodalisque collection, her Feminine Attempts and Domestic Sarcasm series explore commonly held assumptions, expectations, and absurdities. And then there’s Lockheart’s Thunderdomesticity series — a collaboration with her photographer husband Aaron C. Packard — where the brains and brawn (not the beauty) of women help save the dystopian day. Last but not least is the Miss Art World South Dakota series, which, ironically, is not ironic at all. Lockheart is, in fact, the South Dakota ambassador of Miss Art World, a new pageant system created by Los Angeles artist Katherine Cooksey that seeks to redefine beauty standards through a non-competitive, inclusionary exploration of performance and visual art. Lockheart is self-represented.
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KRYSTAL W. BROWN (b. 1968), Season’s End, 2021, oil on aluminum, 16 x 20 in., private collection
Art-making has always been an act of joy and solace for KRYSTAL W. BROWN (b. 1968). Growing up in Northern Wyoming in a large family with five older brothers, she would often steal away to her room and get lost for hours drawing, painting, sculpting, collaging, and sewing. When Brown first accompanied her mother to an art class at age 10, her love of painting was officially born. She continued to dive deeper in the ensuing years, eventually earning a B.F.A. from the University of Montana. Today, based near Houston, Brown has not lost that childlike sense of curiosity or forgotten how comforting and powerful art can be for herself and others. Although her portraits have gone from adolescent sketches in grade school to professional, award-winning works today, at her core she still sees art as “her very own beautification project” that can be used to uplift people and enrich their lives. “My vision is to bring more beauty and impact through my fine art,” she says. “To illuminate, connect, contribute, and help others create their own worlds.” One of the most fulfilling aspects of creating for Brown is being immersed in nature and working from life. The beginning stages of her painting process are quite academic; she uses the sight-size method of measurement and creates a grisaille underpainting with transparent
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oxide and cobalt to establish the composition. Then, as the painting progresses, she lets loose with an expressionistic style that explodes into a cacophony of color and light, as seen in Season’s End. Brown works in a variety of media — graphite, charcoal, pastel, oil, and watercolor — and with both traditional and nontraditional tools, such as brushes, palette knives, clamps, squeegees, and even twigs and string. Her lifelong commitment to drawing and learning to faithfully replicate what she sees creates a solid foundation under everything she paints. Brown is also an instructor who finds great purpose in helping others discover and develop their artistic talents, as her mentors did for her. “I love encouraging students by sharing my process through workshops, demos, classes, and online instruction,” she says. “Helping them find their unique voices is one of my main goals. The world needs the beauty we each bring to it. Why keep it waiting?” Brown’s solo exhibition Euphoric Perspective will be on view at Johnson Heritage Post Art Gallery (Grand Marais, Minnesota) from February 4 through March 4.
Brown is represented by Marta Stafford Fine Art (Marble Falls, Texas).
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It is certainly reassuring to find that sculptors continue to work even after the pandemic hastened the closing of numerous foundries and casting costs more than doubled. ROBERT STUTLER (b. 1989) is one of those who has remained committed to his fine art practice, even as he holds down a tech design job at Apple. Based in California, Stutler spends his days in Silicon Valley and his evenings, weekends, and spare time honing his skills at Oakland’s Dogtown Sculpture Studio, an artist collective that meets multiple times a week to work from the live model. Although Stutler uses classical methods and materials, he also experiments with digital techniques, including a sculpting program called Zbrush and printing 3-D models of those creations. “I do not belong to a single artistic lineage or school of thought, but instead believe in an individual process rooted in a strong sense of fundamentals,” the artist explains. “I love to work from life because it provides endless inspiration. Everyone truly has a unique and individual character. Nature provides the answers; the sculptor’s job is to observe using the emotional sensibilities within.” The sculpture shown here, Stutler’s self-portrait, was developed over the course of a year. Much introspection and reflection went into
it, and the artist gave himself the time necessary to develop an honest portrayal of where he stood in his personal life. “It took on many iterations during that period,” Stutler admits. “The natural evolution of this self-portrait became an instrument of learning to explore different sculptural processes and techniques. Originally sculpted in Chavant oil-based clay, it is my first finalized piece constructed solely for the act of creating a quality work of sculpture.” Illustrated here is a stained plaster copy of the original at 3/4-life-size scale. While developing this piece, Stutler was busy attending workshops around the country, something he does to continue developing his eye and artistic voice. He originally majored in industrial design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and then completed some postgraduate studies in fine art. From 2016 through 2019, he took advantage of his ability to work remotely and traveled around the U.S. and Europe attending workshops, participating in museum copyist programs and National Sculpture Society competitions, and offering demonstrations at art stores. Stutler is self-represented.
ROBERT STUTLER (b. 1989), Self-Portrait, 2018, stained plaster, 10 x 6 x 6 1/2 in., collection of the artist
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Edmond Praybe (b. 1982), Excavating the Present, 2019, oil on linen on panel, 48 x 60 in., available through the artist
EDMOND PRAYBE (b. 1982) has made an art of capturing the intangible essence and atmosphere of scenes with multiple subjects. Rather than creating a sensory overload, something set-ups of this kind might elicit in person, he carefully designs a composition that takes viewers on a peaceful visual journey around and through harmonious colors, textures, shapes, and patterns, offering just enough places to rest and contemplate. Take Excavating the Present, for instance, where the artist revels in painting space, volume, colors, shapes, and edges. The printed and solidcolored textiles in soothing hues of blues, greens, and pinks are balanced beautifully by the white fabrics and heirlooms painted in grisaille, offering neutral areas for our eyes to land and exhale. So busy are we with an inventory of the intriguing arrangement of colors and patterns that we almost lose sight of someone resting in the upper-left corner, practically camouflaged aesthetically but clearly still an intrinsic part of the narrative. For Praybe, the journey of conceptualizing and creating a painting goes well beyond the surface. Embedded in the items and ideas he composes are stories from another time and place. “I have held on to the objects depicted in my still lifes for many years, not only for their visual qualities but also for my attachment to the memories, places, and people they represent,” he explains. “Old clothing, dishes, vases,
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hemlock cones, bird nests, fabric scraps, and stones all contain small stories and memories. I imagine these stories overlapping across time and space, converging in unassuming vignettes arranged in the studio. The meaning of these objects is open to a slow unraveling of elusive symbols and connotations. I have left room for the interpretation and exploration of visual and material qualities of the paintings without the trappings of explicit narrative.” Although Praybe’s compositions may appear effortless, any artist will tell you that coordinating this many elements on multiple planes convincingly takes years of practice, technical skill, and a highly developed sense of design. Praybe has those qualifications and more, having earned a B.F.A. in painting from Maryland Institute College of Art and then an M.F.A. in painting from the New York Studio School. Now based near Annapolis, he has 15 years’ experience exhibiting in group and solo exhibitions in New York City and other major markets, and teaches and lectures at universities, academies, and art centers nationwide. Praybe is represented by First Street Gallery (New York City), Peterson Contemporary Art (Bend, Oregon), and Tregony Gallery (Truro, Cornwall, England), where his work will be in the group exhibition Assemble: 22 (February 7–20).
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TELVIN WALLACE (b. 1997) grew up in what he calls the last rest area before the beach — a town of 3,000 people named Warsaw, North Carolina. He has since relocated to New York City, where he is building a career exploring his personal experiences in paint. Growing up, the 2019 North Carolina Central University graduate always had a pencil in hand, and he recalls drawing from toddlerhood. Wallace didn’t start painting until 2016, however, when Prof. Kenneth Rogers introduced him to the work of a master artist that transformed his trajectory. He was on the path to a career in graphic design when Rogers showed him some paintings by Simmie Lee Knox (b. 1935). The moment he learned about Knox — the first Black artist to obtain a presidential portrait commission (both Bill and Hillary Clinton sat for him) — Wallace began to reconsider his path. When another professor, Chad Hughes, encouraged him to explore narrative painting — conveying stories rather than placing figures on a plain background — he began to work in oils and develop his current style. He stopped recreating photographs from the Internet and started building deeply personal pieces from scratch. Ultimately, Prof. Hughes played a key role in Wallace’s decision to paint full-time, inviting him to visit his space at the Golden Belt Artists’ Studios in downtown Durham, where he connected with other creatives on a regular basis. Just seeing other artists at work, Wallace explains, inspired him.
After earning his B.F.A. in studio art, Wallace took a year off and then enrolled in the M.F.A. program at the New York Academy of Art. Now in his second year, he credits his growth to the people and techniques he has encountered there. “It has become much easier to figure out what I’m going for,” Wallace notes. In his recent Hell Hath No Fury, Wallace showcases two women beheading a man who was modeled by the artist himself. All are dressed in deep blues that contrast powerfully with the brown-toned bodies and background, and with the sumptuous swath of golden fabric. Light pours in from top left, hitting the killer’s shoulder, creating a shadow beneath her arm, and highlighting the figures’ separation. Wallace has succeeded in producing an overarching sense of depth, resulting in part from the juxtaposition of warm and cool colors he admires so much in Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes (1598–99, Palazzo Barberini, Rome). Now his distinctive take on this timelessly compelling narrative is on view through January 17 at Charlotte’s Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts & Culture in Visual Vanguard: An Exhibition of Contemporary Black Carolina Artists. Wallace is self-represented.
TELVIN WALLACE (b. 1997), Hell Hath No Fury, 2021, oil on linen, 56 x 64 in., private collection, photo © Tyrus Ortega Gaines
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BY DANIEL GRANT
T O D A Y ’ S M A S T E R S
JOHANNA HARMON
LEARNING HER OWN WAY
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999 was a year of firsts for the then 30-year-old painter Johanna Harmon (b. 1968). It marked the first time she had visited a large city (Boston), savored her first bowl of New England clam chowder, boarded her first ferry, and taken her first subway ride. That subway brought her to the first major art institution she had ever visited — the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. More important to Harmon as an artist was the exhibition she saw there, a retrospective of oil paintings, watercolors, and mural studies by John Singer Sargent — 160 works in all. A number of those Sargents stayed in her memory, such as the portraits of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (which Harmon describes as a “powerful composition of soft tones, lost and found edges”) and Miss Elsie Palmer (“the low-key tones, coupled with her central pose and deep-set eyes, convey emotion, mood, and mystery”). She was also struck by Paul Helleu Sketching with His Wife (“selective placement of chromatic colors that lead your eye around this quiet complementary colored painting”) and Madame Gautreau Drinking a Toast (“a unique composition and use of color temperature to turn the form”). There was another portrait of Gautreau in the exhibition, usually called Madame X, which was a succès de scandale when first exhibited in Paris in 1884. Gautreau looks away from the viewer in a haughty manner; before Sargent made some revisions, her inebriation was suggested by the slipping of a shoulder strap on her gown, which retains its plunging neckline. A contemporary critic complained that the picture was “offensive in its insolent ugliness and defiance of every rule of art.” (Indeed, the portrait was widely ridiculed, so Sargent kept it in his studio for the next 25 years before selling it to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.)
The Clearing, 2013, oil on linen, 34 x 22 in., private collection
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A Sense of Calm, 2013, oil on linen, 20 x 14 in., private collection
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Dreaming, 2015, oil on mounted linen, 10 x 16 in., private collection
For someone not accustomed to this kind of city, this kind of museum, this kind of exhibition, it was a lot to take in. “After walking through room after room of Sargent’s art, I was so overwhelmed I actually had to sit down to collect myself,” Harmon recalls. “The sheer volume of work, the variety of subjects and mediums, his prolific nature — it all just demanded respect. And I actually wondered if the man ever slept.” APART FROM ART Harmon had grown up in Tempe, Arizona, and now lives with her husband in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, about 15 miles south of Denver. These are places you can find on a map, but neither possesses big-deal art museums. In the single-parent home in which she was raised (“fairly poor and very dysfunctional”), there was little to no exposure to art. Harmon notes, “I have a vague memory of being introduced to Scottsdale’s Artwalk when I was around 10,” and she made drawings of trees, animals, and people to fill up the lonely hours, as her two brothers were considerably older and not often around. “There was a period of time when my
Tradition, 2013, oil on linen, 22 x 22 in., private collection
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(LEFT) The Reading Nook, 2013, oil on mounted linen, 15 x 8 1/4 in., private collection (RIGHT) Kindred Spirits, 2007, oil on linen, 28 x 18 in., private collection
drawing skills evolved into designing clothes. And I would sew and wear them.” Even so, studying art in college was not in Harmon’s plans. After some time at a community college, she joined a local architectural design firm, working as a project coordinator and client contact for the exhibit and real estate division. She also had become a licensed cosmetologist during her senior year of high school and “did hair on the side.” Life might have continued in this ho-hum vein, but she met an artist named Tom Haas (b. 1952) who was working at the same design firm and taking classes at the Scottsdale Artists’ School. Recognizing a kindred spirit who sought more than just a paycheck, Haas recommended that Harmon look into the school for herself. Over a five-year period, starting in 1995, she took classes there, and that was a life-changer. “As soon as I opened the school door,” Harmon remembers, “I began looking at the paintings lining the halls, and I wept. I felt like my whole world had just finally come together. And I knew, from that moment on, that I wanted to become the best possible artist I could be. And I really never felt more at home. From then on, I spent every free moment going to their open studios and 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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taking classes at night. I took every class I could, and I spent my vacations taking workshops.” All while still working at the design firm and doing hair to pay for those classes and workshops. In the years ahead, Harmon studied at Scottsdale, as well as the Art Students League of Denver and the Fechin Art Institute in Taos, New Mexico, continually finding ways to develop her painting skills. “The most significant impact on my work,” she says, “came around 2007: after being on a League waitlist for years, I finally got a call to take a class with Quang Ho. I was invited to his ‘Taking your work to the next level’ workshop. On the first day, we were to bring in a few paintings for review. Quang explained where everyone was succeeding and what areas needed improvement and why. While reviewing one of my [figurative] paintings, he showed me how I didn’t have a clear visual intention. Basically, the figure was describing the passage of light on form and the surrounding landscape consisted of flat tonal/value shapes more akin to an overcast day. He encouraged me to make the painting stronger by carrying the same light and shadow elements.” The instructors at non-degree-granting schools such as Scottsdale, the League, and Fechin have a lot to teach. There is technique,
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His Favorite Chair, 2017, oil on mounted linen, 6 x 8 in., Newbury Fine Arts, Boston
of course, and also some anatomy, some discussion of materials, some color theory, some composition, and some recent or older art history. (Degree-granting college and university art departments generally have mandatory courses in all of these subjects.) These instructors cannot assume that their students are well-versed, or even have heard of, major artists of the past and present. Harmon recalls, “At Scottsdale around 1996, I was introduced to Anders Zorn, Abbott Handerson Thayer, Joaquín Sorolla, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, John Singer Sargent, and others through a detailed slide presentation that Daniel Gerhartz gave during my first workshop with him.” She continues, “Dan would carve out a morning or afternoon for a presentation meticulously describing the masters’ elements and intentions, projecting beautiful slides of museum-owned works. He would show how the masters used the darkest darks, lightest lights, conservation and keying of values, temperature shifts to turn form, use of color, chromatic notes, texture, soft/sharp/lost and found edges. Dan’s presentations, demos, generosity of spirit, and enthusiasm drew me to study with him repeatedly. He opened my eyes and inspired me more than any other living artist.” DRAWING FROM THE PAST In fact, that fateful 1999 trip to Boston — initially planned to visit an artist with whom she had bonded at Fechin — was timed to coincide with the MFA’s retrospective of Sargent, an artist Harmon had heretofore experienced only via slide projector. Today one can discern a bit of Sargent in Harmon’s many paintings of young women, seemingly lost in thought and looking toward something the viewer cannot see. Sargent painted scenes of (European) streets and regular people moving along them, but he is best known for likenesses of the privileged few living the good life. “Sargent’s work reflects his world and time,” Harmon observes, but her art often reflects a greater interest in the world Sargent knew than her own. Her oil painting The Clearing, for instance, shows a young woman in a long, ruffled dress walking into the woods, while The Reading Nook presents a similarly clad woman searching for something to read in a private library. They could both be characters in a Willa Cather novel. No one in Harmon’s visual world is distracted by cell phones or dressed
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for anything other than attending a fancy party or dreamily preparing for bed. Perhaps, Harmon muses, in contrast to our own place and time, Sargent’s world “was just visually beautiful.” This is not to say that Harmon is averse to the “cutting-edge” contemporary art we see in museums and galleries today — works generally less interested in emotion than social critique, irony, or comments about other art. Today she regularly visits major art museums, but what she sees there is unlikely to “change the trajectory I’m on,” she says. “To be authentic, you must follow your own path. You can’t listen to other people’s opinions about who you want or need to be.” This is also not to say that Harmon never references modern life; rather, she dresses up the present to look of a piece with the world that Daniel Gerhartz and other instructors opened up for her. Her oil painting A Sense of Calm shows a young red-haired woman, wearing a white jacket and vertically striped dress, leaning against a window frame and looking downward, seeming to ponder something. (A lot of Harmon paintings appear to illustrate a story at which we can only guess.) Again, this could be a Cather character, or maybe even one from George Eliot or Jane Austen, but in fact the model was a stranger Harmon met in a Starbucks. The artist recalls, “She was interacting with someone I later learned was her sister. I was just observing her. The enthusiasm and liveliness about her intrigued me.” To be sure, there is little enthusiasm or liveliness in A Sense of Calm, but that may not matter. It turns out that, in real life, this model was leveraging animatronics to augment learning in children with early challenges such as autism. That’s interesting, but, more importantly, Harmon thought this woman has an interesting face and holds herself in an interesting way. Painting is a visual medium, after all. Harmon cannot afford to be shy about approaching strangers who look interesting, such as the coffee barista in Boulder, Colorado, whom she convinced to pose for Threshold, which shows a man standing outside a door. This painting might be mistaken for something created more than a century ago but for the colorful wristband he is wearing. The world that Sargent, Thayer, Sorolla and other 19th-century masters captured offers many temptations. Today, Harmon notes, “Everything just seems so temporary. Back then, things were made with craft and time — they were meant to last. And I just think things were quieter then.” What is of the current moment may not be the look of Harmon’s paintings but, rather, the emotional and intellectual connections she makes with her models. She adds, “Recently I even had a model ask me to be her birthing partner. And I actually cut the umbilical cord and helped deliver her little girl.” The artist as doula. To Harmon’s mind, the figures she paints are actual people but also, for her purposes, shapes in a space. “I really abstract it out. I look at things purely as shapes, values, unique specific shapes, arrangements of shapes, color, texture, edges. I don’t necessarily view it as the human form.” Her thinking may align with that of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who originally titled his most famous painting (now known as Whistler’s Mother) Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1. FULL CIRCLE Harmon’s instructors made an impression on her, but she also made an impression on them. Painter Charles Warren Mundy recalls, “When I first met her at Scottsdale, then at En Plein Air Masters in France, it was apparent Johanna was going to become a great painter, because of the commitment I saw during my instruction, and later the effort and passion she continues to manifest.” Not having college-level training in studio art did not strike Mundy or another of her workshop instructors, Daniel Sprick, as a drawback in Harmon’s ability to fulfill her artistic potential. “What I have seen,” Sprick notes, “is that
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Threshold, 2012, oil on linen, 24 x 24 in., private collection
more effective painting and sculpture instruction can be found outside of the university system than in it, especially in the last 20 years as ateliers have emerged throughout the U.S. and Europe.” He adds that “there are many reports from students who have graduated from prestigious university programs that all they learned there was how to talk about art in cryptic and incomprehensible ways.” In 2000, after five years of classes at Scottsdale Artists’ School, various workshops elsewhere, and, more importantly, the sense that painting was what she wanted to pursue full-time, Harmon — with the support of her husband, whom she had married three years earlier — decided to forgo her salaried and temp jobs in favor of a career in art, with the idea that they could “revisit the decision in 12 months.” Within a year, she was invited by Denver’s Merrill-Johnson Gallery of Fine Art to join its stable. It closed after the owners 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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turned their attention elsewhere, so now Harmon is represented by McLarry Fine Art (Santa Fe) and Newbury Fine Arts (Boston). Newbury director Elizabeth Novick notes that her clients, many of them European, lean toward figurative art and “find Johanna’s work quite fresh.” It seems, then, that Harmon has happily come full circle — back to Boston, where she first experienced Sargent’s artistry in person 23 years ago. Information: johannaharmon.com DANIEL GRANT is the author of The Business of Being an Artist and other books published by Skyhorse Press.
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BY MICHAEL J. PEARCE
T O D A Y ’ S M A S T E R S
MARIA KREYN’S PAINTED PERFORMANCES FOR ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER
B
efore the COVID-19 storm whipped up its tragic drama on the global stage, the career of artist Maria Kreyn (b. 1987) was flying high. Long ago the Russianborn American had abandoned her austere, abstract studies of mathematics and philosophy at the University of Chicago and ventured to cold Norway, where she joined master painter Odd Nerdrum’s clan of apprentices and acolytes. Kreyn even borrowed his creaking house in volcanic Iceland, where she painted through nightless summer days and endless winter nights. Nerdrum was a generous host, but ultimately Kreyn broke away from her long-robed mentor and settled into a high-ceilinged Brooklyn studio. There she began exploring her inner world, producing tall baroque canvases of surreally floating savage dogs intertwined above abandoned bodies and detached hands, all indigo and charcoal-stained, with veiled bodies hidden by cloth and dripped paint. She has shown these works to applause in Europe and America. In 2019, Nick Foulkes penned an article about Kreyn for Vanity Fair, accompanied by Maryam Eisler’s photograph of the artist draped across a polished mahogany chair wearing a golden silk gown, glossy as a catwalk model, with tumbling Pre-Raphaelite locks. Behind Kreyn hung her own paintings, and by her feet a flamboyant bouquet of flowers, all carefully arranged beneath a classical stone arch — virtually a theater proscenium — that framed her painting Embrace I (The Horizon). That sensual picture shows a woman from behind, wrapped in a golden fabric, being undressed and embraced by another female model. The Vanity Fair piece stitched Kreyn into the sparkling tapestry of global wealth, encouraging many readers to learn more about the artist and her work. They might have found her paintings difficult to place, for she is a hybrid creature of art history and Victorian fantasia, merging Caravaggio’s dark dramas and the sanded, scraped inventions
Embrace I (The Horizon), 2018, oil on canvas, 60 x 42 in., private collection
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Lady Macbeth, 2020, oil on canvas, 62 x 80 in.
Looking downstairs toward the lobby of London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane
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As You Like It, 2020, oil on canvas, 62 x 80 in.
of Nerdrum’s postmodern mythology with the ghostly mists of ectoplasm at salon seances and the physiology of dancing ballerinas. Her pictures are properly postmodern, mining the Old Master imagery of religious sentiment, contrasting it with disrupted figures and painterly gestures, allowing the messy marks and studio splashes of practical painting to tremble against the illusory power of refined technique. They are romantic scenes of drama and violence, but also of tenderness and the loving touch. A UNIQUE COMMISSION That issue of Vanity Fair landed in the hands of London musical maestro Andrew Lloyd Webber, who had returned to New York to promote his long-running Broadway production The Phantom of the Opera. He was entranced. He is a lifelong collector of Pre-Raphaelite art (as a boy, he missed the chance to buy Frederic Leighton’s Flaming June for only £50), and one of Kreyn’s paintings struck him as a completely contemporary take on the timeless theme of Ophelia. He e-mailed Kreyn, but she thought the message was fake and deleted it. Later in 2019 his assistants
A landing with Romeo and Juliet (left) and As You Like It (right)
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Hamlet, 2020, oil on canvas, 110 x 80 in.
Othello, 2020, oil on canvas, 110 x 80 in.
found her and convinced her he was truly interested. She clearly recalls their first early-morning phone call, which came just after she had finished a long night of painting. Lloyd Webber proceeded to invite Kreyn to paint eight large canvases for London’s 358-year-old Theatre Royal Drury Lane, which he owned and was renovating into a spectacular venue with luxurious yet comfortable cafes and bars, as well as a beautiful garden. In 1957, when the great Shakespearean actor John Gielgud learned that a musical production would open at Drury Lane after he finished his run as Prospero in The Tempest, he snapped his staff in two, predicting that Shakespeare would never be performed there again. Determined to bring the Bard back to this hallowed space, Lloyd Webber visited Kreyn’s Brooklyn studio and declared, “Let’s base this cycle on Shakespeare. I’d like you to make it dangerous and apocalyptic, with your soul on the line.” And the impresario wanted three more things: Kreyn’s paintings had to be finished by the theater’s public reopening; they must remain there permanently; and Kreyn must keep the project secret. On visiting London, Kreyn found the theater a magnificent wreck. High towers of scaffolding filled its auditorium, and the lobby had been stripped down to bare plaster. Lloyd Webber’s renovation ultimately cost £60 million. “It was so intense,” Kreyn recalls, “daunting and intimidating. It was all hardhats, gloves, boots, goggles, yellow vests. The project team walked me through the building and said, ‘Here are your walls.’ They were massive walls, and then they asked, ‘Can you do all this in a year?’”
Lips tightly sealed, Kreyn immediately began her research. She was determined to make her scenes emotionally challenging, to save Shakespeare from the conventionally decorative. “I picked eight plays,” Kreyn explains. “My intention was not to illustrate specific scenes or key moments, but to relay the emotional thrust of the whole play. I was working with the language, but by the time I had interpreted what I wanted, it didn’t necessarily relate to a particular moment. Trevor Nunn was one of my mentors for the project; he has directed all of the Shakespearean plays for theater or film, so he had a lot to contribute in terms of the emotional content.” As soon as they were finished, Kreyn’s eight paintings were crated and shipped across the Atlantic to London. Then, like Shakespearean characters buffeted by mighty forces beyond their control, we all fell under the dark incantations of dreary COVID-19, which delayed the theater’s reopening until the autumn of 2021. For Kreyn, “It was a seemingly interminable wait between the paintings leaving my home and the theater’s reopening.” Now her paintings hang near masterpieces from Lloyd Webber’s Pre-Raphaelite collection, and theatergoers are under her spell.
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EIGHT PLAYS, EIGHT APPROACHES Lady Macbeth dips deeply in the well of Shakespearean emotion. Within Kreyn’s octet, this scene most closely represents the fresh aesthetics of millennial painting, with its bright coloring, pleasure in repeated imagery, and open emotion. This manipulative, lush-lipped Lady in Red is lost in horror — wide-eyed, vulnerable, vicious — her
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2020, oil on canvas, 62 x 80 in.
The Tempest, 2020, oil on canvas, 62 x 80 in.
loose hands dipping into liquid darkness, haunted by the ghosts of her past self. When Shakespeare’s plays were first performed, young men played the roles of women, and much of the humor in As You Like It stems from its muddlingly crossgendered love story; a young man would have performed the role of beautiful Rosalind, who pretends to be a man. A man as a woman as a man. It’s a gay delight, and Kreyn relishes its dance between the genders. She has painted androgyny before in her lovely images of breastless dancers, but this scene offered the chance to explore androgyny further. In Kreyn’s cleverly imaginative composition, Rosalind is held in the tender embrace of Phebe, who leans in for a kiss. Rosalind’s actual, passionate female identity appears in the pool below, echoing another Kreyn painting that depicts a female model twice. Elsewhere, the beautiful blond/e boygirl Hamlet both enters and exits downstage
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King Lear, 2020, oil on canvas, 110 x 80 in.
from a mourning figure Kreyn has painted before — partially draped in a shroud and half-obscured beneath a cloudy torrent falling from above. Kreyn is at her best when at her least illustrative. Both As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet are descriptive and, frankly, not her finest work; here the pressure of deadlines clearly stretched her reach. Kreyn’s previous paintings of ink-stained hands are among her most beautiful, but those in Othello betray her hurry and lack the remarkable finesse of which she is capable. Nevertheless, this is an impressive display of Kreyn’s ability to capture emotion: this Iago personifies malicious deception, this Othello is the embodiment of a jealous and beguiled mark, this Desdemona is the epitome of innocence. Disembodied hands — which also appear in As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and King Lear — suggest the action of outside forces upon the destinies of characters in the frame. These are all paintings of performers moved and manipulated by power. Having studied philosophy, Kreyn has certainly painted solipsism before — the idea that our personal experience of reality is the only experience we can judge, that everything beyond our own experience is unknowable. 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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She is rightly intrigued that Shakespeare’s characters are moved by energies they cannot understand. They are pushed into difficult decisions they are unprepared to make, subjected to bewildering events beyond their control, just as actors are directed into poses they might not anticipate. “Andrew Lloyd Webber gave me an enormous amount of creative freedom to do what I thought was best,” Kreyn notes. “It was a fantastic, challenging, wild project.” His investment in such liberty has paid off, for three of Kreyn’s eight paintings are exceptional displays of her virtuosic imagination and technical skill. She is at her finest when a little anarchy touches her, when creativity born of chaos infiltrates. A Midsummer Night’s Dream enters the realm of spectacular visionary painting: Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius slumber under a hallucinatory dreamscape of ruby-colored opiate poppies, golden bubbles, and silvery ellipses. At center, a milky ovoid hides the ethereal fairy queen Titania and her king Oberon, winged and smoky in the blue glow of magic. At top right, Puck’s disembodied hand pours a translucent love potion into Lysander’s eyes. Kreyn does it again with her magnificent King Lear, who falls naked, framed in a night sky that seems to weep, prevented from crashing to earth — only just — by two disembodied hands. His mad face and lost identity melt upward toward an androgynous Cordelia, posed like Christ in the Pietà and wrapped in Kreyn’s favorite golden fabric. Her left arm dangles down toward the inverted crucifixion of her fooled, foolish father. More disembodied hands tend to Cordelia’s body and link her swooping garment down toward earth and Lear. This melancholy image is completely open, ready for us to read like a cryptic tarot card. Here Kreyn is truly mighty, an ideal guide through this apocalyptic, uncannily postmodern tragedy. Finally, in The Tempest, Kreyn shows naked Prospero conjuring the storm that casts his enemies onto his fantastical island. Shakespeare gives Prospero the power to make shipwrecks of their souls and roil their lives’ restless waters. Alone among Kreyn’s eight paintings, here is a promise of agency, of control. Prospero’s arching figure rejoices in the thunderheads that toss the ship; this is the manipulative spirit that moves people around like dolls, and this is the painting where Kreyn gains complete authority. Her other painted inquiries into uncertain solipsism are surpassed by this definitive statement of Prospero’s power to shape destinies, making it the very best of her remarkable octet. Lloyd Webber sent Kreyn in search of Shakespeare. In finding him, she found her own voice — shouting, gleeful, potent. Information: mariakreyn.com, lwtheatres.co.uk. All photos of Kreyn’s Shakespeare paintings and the Theatre Royal Drury Lane © Philip Vile MICHAEL J. PEARCE, Ph.D. is the author of Art in the Age of Emergence (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015) and professor of art at California Lutheran University.
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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
HOSPITALITY ENDURES COOKING, DINING, WINING F
or centuries, artists have depicted people preparing and enjoying food and drink, be they at home, at work, on the town, or sitting al fresco. To create or consume a meal or tipple is part of being human, so it makes sense that collectors love to display reminders of these pleasant activities on their walls. Artists now are no less interested in the themes of consumption and hospitality than their forerunners were. Though subtle critiques are sometimes embedded in the resulting images, most contemporary artists are drawn to cafes, bars, restaurants, and kitchens for their visual appeal instead. If anything, interest in this genre has soared as ever more Americans discover how to cook well for themselves, and therefore how to appreciate fine dining when they go out on the town. Growing familiarity with ingredients and methods of making means viewers are actually more discerning about pictorial details than their parents and grandparents were, a fact that keeps smart artists on their proverbial toes. Illustrated here is an array of superb recent artworks made in this timeless genre. Enjoy, and bon appetit! KELLY COMPTON is a contributing writer to Fine Art Connoisseur. SUZIE BAKER (b. 1970), Eastern Shore Flavor, 2021, oil on linen, 16 x 16 in., private collection
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(ABOVE LEFT) TONY ARMENDARIZ (b. 1964), Feeding Nairobi, 2020, watercolor on paper, 18 x 24 in., private collection to Think About, 2019, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 in., private collection
(ABOVE RIGHT) AIMEE ERICKSON (b. 1967), Something
(BELOW) NARELLE ZELLER (b. 1978), Bury Me with a Mandarin, 2018, oil on ACM panel, 23 3/5 x 31 1/2 in.,
33 Contemporary Gallery (Chicago)
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(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) JOHN CAGGIANO (b. 1949), Joe’s Inn, 2018, oil on linen panel, 12 x 12 in., available from the artist
LISA CUNNINGHAM (b. 1964), Speciali di
Oggi, 2021, pastel on paper mounted on board, 18 x 24 in., Patricia Hutton Galleries (Doylestown, Pennsylvania)
TRACY EVERLY (b. 1968), Trattoria Pesce Pasta, 2020,
oil on linen panel, 16 x 20 in., available from the artist
MANON SANDER (b. 1967),
Sunnyside Up, 2019, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 in., available through the artist
NICOLE
FINGER (b. 1966), Sauced, 2018, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in., Victory Contemporary (Santa Fe)
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(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) THALIA STRATTON (b. 1957), Waiter in Repose II, 2019, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 in., available through the artist
JILL BANKS (b. 1958), After Hours, 2020, oil on linen, 36
x 24 in., available from the artist
RAY HASSARD (b. 1949), Food,
Glorious Food, 2014, pastel on panel, 16 x 12 in., private collection NANCIE KING MERTZ (b. 1952), If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen, 2017, pastel on uArt 400, 10 x 10 in., available through the artist
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DOUG WEBB (b. 1946), The Wedding Cake, 2010, acrylic on linen, 16 x 12 in., collection of Eileen Kaminsky
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(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) LORI PUTNAM (b. 1962), Celebrate Diversity, 2021, oil on linen, 11 x 14 in., Meyer Vogl Gallery (Charleston)
MARY ASLIN (b. 1962), The Important Things, 2015, pastel on canvas
mounted on board, 26 x 23 in., private collection 2018, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 in., private collection board, 10 x 8 in., private collection
LAURIE HENDRICKS (b. 1950), Caffè Vicola del Cinque, ALAN FETTERMAN (b. 1958), The Apple, 2009, oil on
STEPHANIE SPAY (b. 1975), Olfactory Transport, 2021, oil on linen,
18 x 24 in., on view at the Richmond Art Museum (Indiana) through January 8
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BY DANA PILSON
H I S T O R I C M A S T E R S
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH’S
LADY IN GREEN C lad in a diaphanous green gown, with bits of lace at her elbows and a bow at her waist, a graceful young woman is engrossed in her book. Light plays upon her fashionably bobbed hair, and her pale skin is luminous against the dark brocade of the Renaissance-style chair on which she sits. It may come as a surprise to learn that the sculptor of the iconic seated figure of Abraham Lincoln inside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., was also a talented portrait painter. As a means of relaxation, Daniel Chester French (1850–1931) created portraits of his family and friends beneath the north-facing skylight in the reception room of his studio at Chesterwood, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In Memories of a Sculptor’s Wife, Mary French commented that her husband’s “greatest amusement was to play at portrait painting … he painted all the girls who came to visit us. He was quite wonderful at catching a likeness, which showed of course, his trained hand and eye in another line of work.”1 The young lady depicted here, Marjorie Lamond, was a close friend of French’s daughter, Margaret, who was at the center of Stockbridge’s lively social scene. Every year Margaret held a highly anticipated costume party in her father’s studio. In August 1913, she and Marjorie cavorted around Chesterwood’s grounds in their party outfits: Margaret was dressed as the goddess Diana and Marjorie as a bacchante. French took a multitude of photographs of the young women as they posed near the fountain and by the garden arch. Marjorie was a frequent visitor to Chesterwood, and at some point during the summer of 1913 she posed for this portrait in the studio reception room. Marjorie was the daughter of Felix Lamond, who had been the organist and master of choristers at New York City’s Trinity Chapel, where he had established a school of music. He was also the music critic for the New York Herald. In 1914, a year after French painted her por-
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trait, Marjorie married Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr., a conservationist who later became president of the New York Zoological Society. In 1915, Felix Lamond and his wife, Margaret, asked French to design the gardens at their Stockbridge summer estate, Fair Acres. French also designed for them an arbor and a neoclassical summer-house, which was embellished with flower garlands painted by Margaret French, who had studied at the New York School of Applied Design for Women and would eventually become known as a portrait sculptor.
A LONGSTANDING INTEREST Back in the mid-1880s, French’s career as a sculptor was well established. His first public commission, The Minute Man in Concord, Massachusetts (1874), had been a great success. Upon his return from study in Italy in 1876, French won numerous commissions for allegorical sculpture groups to adorn new institutional buildings. In 1883, he was asked to sculpt a figure of John Harvard for Harvard University. Unveiled the following year, the idealized portrait of the university’s founder was well received: “If he never does another work, this immortalizes him,” exclaimed the head of the foundry where the Harvard figure was cast. In January 1885, French took an artistic diversion by starting painting lessons with the Ohio-born artist Joseph Rodefer DeCamp (1858–1923). A skilled portraitist, DeCamp had accompanied his teacher, Frank Duveneck, to study at Munich’s Royal Academy. DeCamp had also spent time in Florence before returning to the U.S. in 1883, where he later found fame as a member of the “Boston School,” a group of painters who specialized in images of women engaged in genteel pursuits such as reading, writing letters, playing music, and having tea within well-appointed, aesthetic interiors. Excited about these first lessons, French wrote his father from Boston, “At last I am a painter! Mr. DeCamp ... started me in Monday afternoon
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DANIEL
CHESTER
FRENCH
(1850–1931), Portrait of Marjorie Lamond,
1913,
oil
on
canvas,
23 1/2 x 19 1/2 in., Chesterwood, gift of the Daniel Chester French Foundation, NT 69.38.733
and I have been painting a girl’s head every afternoon this week—from life. It is great fun and DeCamp is so good a painter that I have the satisfaction of knowing that I am going right. This is what I have wanted for a good while and as I could not go abroad, it is a good thing that abroad should come to me. DeCamp is fresh from the foreign schools.”2 Three months later, French hoped that DeCamp would “spend part of the summer at Concord & continue painting.”3 In 1890, French asked his brother, William M.R. French, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, if the institution was in need of a painting instructor. “If you are, I can recommend DeCamp as an excellent teacher,—he taught me to paint!”4 Although in great demand as a sculptor, French would continue to paint portraits in his leisure time. In the summer of 1893, while visiting the Cornish artists’ colony in New Hampshire, he dabbled in pastels, making portraits of his wife and daughter. Young Margaret proved to be a willing model, and French’s portraits of her in oils and pastels document not only her growth from child to young woman, but also his increasing skills in both media. After 1897, French spent almost every summer at Chesterwood, where he relaxed by painting portraits of family members, friends, and models. In 1911, he wrote to his close friend and former student, the sculptor Evelyn Beatrice Longman, “I have found time to get in quite a little painting and I can see that I am gaining on the thing quite fast. If I were twenty instead of sixty, I think I might make a portrait painter of myself. It is great fun.”5 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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Chesterwood, the historic home, studio, and gardens of Daniel Chester French, is the main repository for French’s oil paintings, and his pastel portraits are held at Williams College’s Chapin Library in nearby Williamstown, Massachusetts. On view now in Chesterwood’s Study Collection Gallery are two accomplished portraits of Margaret French, as well as French’s masterful portrait of his niece Dorothy Schoonmaker. Please visit Chesterwood’s website later this winter to enjoy a new online exhibition featuring French’s portraits in oils and pastels. Information: chesterwood.org
DANA PILSON is a curatorial researcher at Chesterwood and a frequent contributor to Fine Art Connoisseur. Endnotes 1 Mary Adams French, Memories of a Sculptor’s Wife, 1928, p. 246. 2 Daniel Chester French (DCF) to Henry Flagg French (HFF), 22 January 1885. 3 DCF to HFF, 19 March 1885. 4 DCF to William M.R. French, 14 March 1890. 5 DCF to Evelyn Beatrice Longman, 23 July 1911.
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BY PETER TRIPPI
H I S T O R I C M A S T E R S
ROMUALDO LOCATELLI: MASTERY AND MYSTERY
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models and of picturesque villagers, especially from the mountainous island of Sardinia. In 1927, he took a long art-making tour of Tunisia and Libya, where he mastered depicting yet another kind of natural light. In 1933 Locatelli moved to Rome, and in the capital his career burned even more brightly. By 1938 he was moving at the apex of Italian art, albeit of a traditional kind: King Vittorio Emanuele III had purchased a painting, and Locatelli had been commissioned to make portraits of Crown Prince Umberto’s children, Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s daughter, and a Vatican cardinal, among others. That year he also married his former model, Erminia, who acted as his interpreter because Locatelli had a severe stammer. Not surprisingly, he preferred painting to speaking, and found the attention and negotiations stressful. During an exhibition opening in Rome, a well-connected couple living in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) offered to set Locatelli up there for an extended stay. Eager to
ometimes a book arrives and unexpectedly opens your eyes to an unfamiliar world. Such was my reaction when art historian Gianni Orsini kindly sent me his impressive 2019 publication about the fascinating Italian painter Romualdo Locatelli, who was born in 1905 and probably died in 1943. The word “probably” is only one of his story’s many intriguing aspects. Romualdo (“Aldo”) Locatelli was born in the northern Italian city of Bergamo and grew up helping his father, an accomplished decorative artist, create fresco paintings in the region’s churches. He studied art at Bergamo’s Accademia Carrara, which was aesthetically conservative, uninterested in futurism or other avant-garde approaches then underway. In fact, we see throughout Locatelli’s work the influence of the much older, Rome-based master Antonio Mancini (1852–1930), who won fame for what Orsini rightly calls “impressionism with modernist touches and impasto technique.” By 1925, Locatelli was a rising 20-yearold portraitist, nominated for a prestigious national prize and residing in the larger, richer city of Milan, where he could better advance his career. Beyond portraiture, he was successfully selling scenes of female
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Il Dolore (Pain), 1925, oil on canvas, 83 x 52 1/2 in., Collection Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo
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Balinese Dancer, 1939, oil on canvas, 51 1/8 x 35 1/2 in., private collection, Indonesia
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Mother and Child, 1939, oil on canvas, laid on board, 35 2/5 x 27 3/5 in., private collection, Indonesia
“get away” from Europe’s political tensions and to experience yet another kind of natural light, he set sail with his wife in December 1938, reaching Batavia (now Jakarta) in January 1939. There the couple socialized with elite members of the colonial and expatriate communities, who commissioned him to paint expensive portraits. Locatelli loved what he found: in 1939 he praised the region’s “eternal green under an eternal sun, and the people wearing the sun’s smile on their faces always. Truly, I feel as if in Paradise.” By September 1939 the Locatellis had relocated to the famously scenic and cultured island of Bali, where the happy artist created as many as three paintings per week, usually working life-size with expressively bold brushwork. Always fascinated by feminine beauty, Locatelli quickly grasped why Balinese women are renowned for their beauty. His sensuous nudes are sometimes explicit, and though the youth of the models might make
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us uncomfortable today, they are never pornographic. Perhaps more appealing to modern eyes are his scenes of girls, and some boys, dancing in colorful local costumes; the impression of dynamic movement is compelling and often veers toward abstraction. As soon as Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, the Locatellis sailed to the American-controlled Philippines; had they remained in the Dutch East Indies, they would probably have been interned because their homeland was allied with Germany. After a hectic summer exploring havens in Shanghai and Tokyo, they settled in Manila, where they moved again in high social circles. (For example, Locatelli was commissioned to paint the daughters of President Quezon.) With the likelihood of a Pacific war growing, the artist knew he should sail to the U.S., but foolishly remained in Manila to paint just one more prestigious portrait. Sure enough, the attack on Manila began in December 1941, shortly after Pearl Harbor, and many of Locatelli’s works were destroyed in a warehouse when a bomb hit it. Although Japan and Italy were allies, and although Locatelli was apolitical, Manila’s Japanese occupiers surely felt he had been overly friendly with the American military elite and thus was not trustworthy. In 1942 he painted what was probably his final portrait, perhaps under duress, of the city’s Japanese commandant, Lt. Gen. Masaharu Homma, who in 1946 was condemned and executed for his role in the gruesome Bataan Death March. According to Erminia, in 1943 Locatelli, then 37, went out hunting north of Manila and never came home. Orsini has devoted an entire chapter to the disappearance, presenting newly surfaced sources suggesting that he actually disappeared or was arrested in 1942, and might have been killed by the Japanese. All in all, his fate remains a mystery, and today in Italy, if he is remembered at all, it is somewhat as Americans might recall the vanished aviator Amelia Earhart. After enduring hardships in the Philippines, Erminia immigrated to the U.S., remarried, and published an account of her 1938–46 experiences before her death in 2005. A COMPLEX LEGACY The afterlife of Locatelli’s art is as intriguing as his actual life. In 1941, he managed to ship 18 paintings — made in both Italy and Southeast Asia — from Manila to New York, where 13 were exhibited on his behalf at
Harrowing a Field in Java, 1939, oil on canvas, 39 2/5 x 106 3/4 in., formerly in the collection of President Sukarno, Indonesia
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Reaping Rice, 1939, oil on canvas, 35 3/5 x 59 4/5 in., formerly in the collection of President Sukarno, Indonesia
Douthitt Gallery that autumn. This was terrible timing, of course, because few New Yorkers knew the artist or recognized his subject matter, nor had the dealer done any proper promotion. Amazingly, five were purchased, and the rest remained with the gallery, which never paid the Locatellis. Because the artist was a citizen of an enemy nation, the remaining 13 works were confiscated by the U.S. government and auctioned in 1944, most for a pittance. It is tantalizing to consider that most of these paintings probably remain in private U.S. collections, with the Indonesian scenes possibly worth $300,000–$750,000 each on the international market. (In March 2019, a Balinese scene — Smoking, which measures 34 1/2 x 22 3/4 in. — sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for more than US$660,000.) For all of the reasons outlined above, Locatelli’s paintings from Java and Bali are particularly rare and valuable. Locating them is challenging, and now one must beware of forgeries. It may surprise us to learn that the man who successfully led Indonesia’s struggle for independence from the Netherlands, President Sukarno (1901–1970), loved the Locatellis that he found in the late 1940s and are currently displayed at two presidential palaces. Harrowing a Field in Java and Reaping Rice had been bought from a 1939 Jakarta exhibition, most probably by the final Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, and in the 1960s Sukarno commissioned replicas of these kinds of paintings for the public to enjoy. Not surprisingly, younger Indonesian artists proceeded to absorb Locatelli’s methods, and in the
Portrait of a Javanese Girl, possibly Launa, 28 4/5 x 22 1/4 in., private collection, The Netherlands
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Javanese Shepherd, 1939, oil on canvas, 46 1/2 x 35 2/5 in., private collection, The Netherlands
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Balinese Dancer, 1939, oil on canvas, 35 3/5 x 35 3/5 in., private collection, Indonesia
1990s the French expatriate Didier Hamel further revitalized Indonesians’ awareness of the Italian through his Duta Fine Arts Foundation. The recent book’s Dutch author, Gianni Orsini, has an interesting connection to Locatelli. In 1893 his Italian great-grandfather, a sculptor, settled in Batavia, where Orsini’s grandfather and father were born and raised. Initially Orsini collected European artists who had worked in what is now Indonesia, and as an art historian himself, it was inevitable that he would research them, too. Since 2005, Orsini has published books and articles on at least a dozen of them, and he devoted five years to tracing Locatelli’s life and art. Previous biographies have explored the artist’s Italian and North African scenes, so this is the first to focus on the final four years. Titled Romualdo Locatelli: Eternal Green under an Eternal Sun, it was published in 2019 by Wilco Art Books, which has produced a handsome 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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196-page volume in a large format (12 x 10 inches) that does justice to the artist’s large paintings. Inside, Orsini has identified almost 40 Indonesian scenes and illustrated 18 never published before. More urgently, if you are a North American collector with a Locatelli painting, it may well have come through that unfortunate 1944 auction in New York. If so, consider contacting Orsini to tell him: you may be pleasantly surprised by how he replies. Information: wilco-artbooks.nl, gianniorsini.com, gianni.orsini@hotmail.com PETER TRIPPI is editor-in-chief of Fine Art Connoisseur.
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BY M A R GA R E T TA S . F R E D E R I C K A N D H E AT H E R C A M P B E L L C OY L E
BEHINDTHESCENES
IN DELAWARE, CONNECTING THE PAST AND PRESENT
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adical Beauty,” the entrance signage declares. At left hangs a meticulously painted, sumptuously framed picture of a woman brushing her voluminous red hair in a boudoir filled with flowers and luxurious objets d’art. To the right is an enlarged photograph of factories belching smoke into the Staffordshire sky. This unexpected juxtaposition introduces visitors to the Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Collection of Pre-Raphaelite Art at the Delaware Art Museum (“DelArt”) in Wilmington. Unveiled late last summer, this silent yet
lively conversation between images and words is part of the museum’s sweeping reimagining of its historical collections. DelArt was founded in 1912 as the Wilmington Society of Fine Arts — a group of people eager to preserve the work and legacy of the local illustrator Howard Pyle, who had died unexpectedly the previous year. Although lacking a permanent space, they organized displays in various locations throughout the city, including the Hotel du Pont and the public library. Works by Pyle and his students — many of whom (like N.C. Wyeth and Frank Schoonover) were successful illustrators — formed
The entrance to the reinstalled Pre-Raphaelite galleries; at left is Rossetti’s painting Lady Lilith and at right Millais’s The Waterfall. Between them is an enlarged period photograph of the Staffordshire Pottery Mills.
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DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828–1882), La Bella Mano, 1875, oil on canvas, 62 x 46 in., Delaware Art Museum, Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935
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DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828–1882), Found, unfinished (designed 1853, begun 1859), oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x 31 15/16 in., Delaware Art Museum, Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935
program partners to participate in focused conversations inside the galleries. They shared what they liked and disliked, what they understood, and what confused them. They told us they loved the salonstyle display of American art and the inspiring story of Howard Pyle. They were curious about exactly how large oil paintings were transformed into illustrations in books and magazines a century ago. Many found the Pre-Raphaelites hard to relate to at first. The project team carefully considered these and other findings and began testing new approaches to interpreting the artworks. AN UNFAMILIAR LEGACY When the museum’s collection of Pre-Raphaelite art first went on view in 1938, these painters were relatively unknown in the U.S. American collectors of earlier generations had favored French and British academic works, completely overlooking these very different British fine and decorative artists who had rebelled against traditional training and styles between 1850 and the 1920s.
the core of the fledgling collection. In 1935, a gift of land and a major group of Pre-Raphaelite artworks were offered by Mary and Joseph Bancroft, the widow and son of the Quaker cotton mill owner Samuel Bancroft. The community raised funds to construct a museum building on the donated site. Opened in 1938, that Georgian Revival structure still forms the heart of DelArt’s entrance and exhibition space. The collection of American art and illustration grew gradually by gift and occasional purchase through the mid-20th century. Starting in the 1960s, Helen Farr Sloan — widow of the American realist painter John Sloan — became a significant patron, eventually donating more than 4,500 works, including 2,600 by Sloan himself. Her generosity, along with many gifts from community members and some key purchases, helped build a survey of American art that has particular strength in realist painting. Today the collection numbers more than 12,000 works, with a strong representation of contemporary art. Over the past decade, the galleries of modern and contemporary art have been refreshed periodically, allowing the curators to share their recent acquisitions and new scholarship, yet the eight galleries dedicated to Pre-Raphaelite art, illustration, and American art before 1920 needed updating. In 2017 DelArt launched a multi-year reinterpretation and reinstallation plan for these spaces — which cover approximately 8,500 square feet, about one-third of the museum’s total exhibition space. We completed it this summer after a year-long, pandemic-related delay. The goal set by the in-house team of curators and educators, led by Heather Campbell Coyle (chief curator) and Amelia Wiggins (assistant director of learning and engagement), was to reframe these collections in a way that would better connect the past with the present, illuminating societal and cultural concerns shared across centuries. To reimagine our displays, museum staff members started by asking the community for input, inviting more than 100 members and
WILLIAM WISE (1847–1889), Academic Study of a Seated Male Nude, 1869, oil on canvas laid on board, 14 3/4 x 10 5/8 in., Delaware Art Museum, F.V. du Pont Acquisition Fund, 2021
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The reinstalled display of decorative artworks features a mix of metalwork, glass, furniture, and ceramics.
The founding Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of seven young male artists and writers who came together in London in 1847 in mutual support of new directions in contemporary art and in defiance of London’s established art institutions. Its three leading members were the artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt. The Brotherhood’s members were very much concerned with the “modern” world in which they lived, especially social problems brought about by the Industrial Revolution, and their subject matter often reflects that interest. In addressing this seismic social transformation, the Pre-Raphaelite artists focused on topics that are still being negotiated today — not least pollution, women’s rights, and racism. Our team’s exchanges with community members revealed a lack of clarity about the historical context in which these artworks were created. Staff realized that it was crucial to establish the social and artistic world of the Pre-Raphaelites in a format easy for present-day visitors to comprehend. Unfortunately, DelArt’s collections cannot provide examples of the art against which the PreRaphaelites were rebelling — for instance, paintings by the Renaissance master Raphael, or even the Victorian academic paintings that once delighted viewers at London’s popular Royal Academy exhibitions. We were also unable to show examples of what positively inspired the Pre-Raphaelites, such as early Renaissance paintings by Duccio, Giotto, or Botticelli. Thanks, however, to the creativity of our exhibition designer, Keith Ragone, an elementary didactic with reproductions of these missing images has provided visitors with the information and imagery they need.
RAPHAELLE PEALE (1774–1825), Absalom Jones, 1810, oil on paper mounted to board, 30 x 25 in., Delaware Art Museum, gift of Absalom Jones School, 1971
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EDWARD MITCHELL BANNISTER (1828–1901), Morning on the River, Providence, Rhode Island, c. 1890–91, oil on linen canvas, 20 x 30 in., Delaware Art Museum, Acquisition Fund, 2020
Our next step was to draw out the numerous cultural and societal links across centuries that had resonated with our focus groups. For instance, in the first gallery we now address industrial pollution through a discussion of Pre-Raphaelite landscape painting. The preponderance of landscape subjects taken up by these painters represent their attempt to capture a geography rapidly transformed by the growth of cities and factories. Millais painted The Waterfall, set in the Trossach hills of Scotland, with detailed, almost botanical, fidelity — a documentary zeal that may well have felt essential to him given the intensity of industrial encroachment.
Now placed alongside the already-mentioned photograph of the filthy Staffordshire Pottery Mills, the painting makes this point abundantly clear. DelArt’s collection is rich with Rossetti paintings from the late 1860s onward, when Rosetti’s style shifted from detailed Ruskin-inspired renderings to richer tonalities with the soft focus typical of the Venetian masters. Today’s audiences, particularly the more feminist among us, find these images — at best — provocative, overly sexualized creations for the male gaze. In the new installation, our team suggests that they might instead be read as a response to the rapidly changing role of women in society. The late 19th century marked the beginning of the women’s movement as ever more British females began working professionally, pursuing the right to keep their own assets separate from their husbands’, and pushing for the right to vote that they finally won in 1918. Later Rossetti works such as La Bella Mano — lush interiors painted in a Titianesque style — can be read, then, as escapist visions, filled with symbols and underlying dialogues. By comparing La Bella Mano with Rossetti’s much earlier and meticulously rendered Found — a painting about a “fallen” woman that he never completed despite his repeated attempts and eager buyers — we begin to perceive La Bella Mano as his guarded, or conflicted, response to the sea change occurring in women’s social status.
The expanded salon-style display of American paintings from the Gilded Age
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TELLING OVERLOOKED STORIES Evidence of non-white participants in the Victorian art world has also generally been overlooked in most museums. Models of color, for instance, appear in numerous finished works, yet we have little documentation of their lives as individuals. A recent DelArt acquisition, William Wise’s oil sketch titled Academic Study of a Seated Male Nude, provides a rare piece of evidence through the tiny brushstrokes the artist applied at upper right — color tests he made while working out the tonalities of light playing over the model’s skin. Visitors are reminded that this was the heyday of the British Empire, when an island off the coast of Europe governed colonies all over the world and held views about pre-industrialized societies that were patronizing at best. Though slavery was abolished in the UK in 1833, attitudes toward Black people took much longer to change. The concept of empire is further emphasized in our new display of decorative arts. The two chairs that formed part of the suite of furniture that William Morris designed and jointly decorated with Rossetti in the 1850s help launch our exploration of the Arts and Crafts Movement through a broad array of artist-designed, handcrafted works, including pottery, furniture, jewelry, and metalwork. Their diversity of styles reflects not only the medievalism that inspired Morris, but also the huge range of aesthetics that were being imported to London from all corners of the empire. Similar themes are addressed in the galleries devoted to American art and illustration, now retitled “Picturing America,” which have been enhanced through close attention to historical context. The centerpiece of the introductory gallery has long been Raphaelle Peale’s 1810 portrait of Absalom Jones, who was born enslaved in Delaware but became a religious and educational leader in Philadelphia. New interpretive panels situate Jones’s extraordinary life story (and those of other portrait sitters in this room) within Delaware’s history as home to both enslavers and abolitionists. In another room, stellar new acquisitions by Mary Lizzie Macomber and the Black artist Edward Mitchell Bannister offer a more inclusive narrative of art production in the late 19th century. This spacious gallery features an expanded salon-style display, anchored by didactics explaining the tradition of juried exhibitions that inspired this installation. (Not only does the text explain the crowded Paris salons, it also asks visitors to consider, “If you were an artist, where would you want your picture hung?”) Visitors move from this Gilded Age gallery into the urban realism of John Sloan and The Eight in the early 20th century, emphasizing the contrast between the gritty scenes of the Ashcan School and the genteel ambience they rebelled against. Launched in the Pre-Raphaelite galleries, the theme of artistic revolution — which had tested well with our focus groups — is revisited here. The increased space devoted to Sloan and his circle allows for exploration of more facets of his career, including his work as an illustrator and social activist promoting the rights of women and workers. The “Picturing America” galleries conclude by asking visitors to consider artists as activists — another prompt inspired by our planning-stage conversations with community members. As one might expect given the museum’s origin, the final portion of our reinstallation is the large gallery dedicated to Howard Pyle and American illustration. This display draws on the museum’s founding collection of work by Pyle and his students, and also benefits from the museum’s rich library and archive of related materials. Books and magazines accompany original drawn and painted illustrations, and 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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The entrance to the Howard Pyle gallery features photographs of Pyle’s Wilmington studio, his palette, easel, stool, and studio chair.
archival photographs of Pyle in his studio form a backdrop for his easel, palette, and studio furnishings. The broader illustration installation highlights work by women and African American artists. Also here is a new video featuring working illustrators, scholars, and community members reflecting on the values crystallized by these “Golden Age” illustrations, most of which were produced for massmarket publications aimed at white, middle-class readers between the 1880s and the 1940s. The film’s presenters offer thought-provoking perspectives that question these images and their ideals of a not-sodistant past. Reinstalling all of these galleries has given our curators and educators an opportunity to reimagine the possibilities of a centuryold collection of British and American art. Like those of most regional museums, DelArt’s collection reflects art produced, exhibited, and collected in its region. Its holdings are idiosyncratic, with unexpected strengths and weaknesses. By collaborating with our community on this project, the museum has highlighted the living connections between past and present, as well as its collections’ relevance to those links. Information: delart.org. All installation photos were taken for DelArt by Carson Zullinger. MARGARETTA S. FREDERICK is Annette Woolard-Provine Curator of the Bancroft Pre-Raphaelite Collection at the Delaware Art Museum. HEATHER CAMPBELL COYLE is Chief Curator and Curator of American Art at the Delaware Art Museum. 2 0 2 2
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I N S I D E T R A C K
BY LOUISE NICHOLSON
BRITAIN’S COUNTRY HOUSES
OLD HOMES, NEW LIFE
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lose your Downton Abbey costume trunk, turn off the Brideshead Revisited movies. Living in a British country house in 2022 is a reality check, admittedly with spectacular fringe benefits — lashings of quality art and architecture, sophisticated historical settings no decorator could create, and rolling estates of breathtaking beauty. A further reality is that the young families living in them today are often not the sons or daughters of the last owner. Rather, they are relatives who have chosen to take on a challenge: to make these extraordinary packages of house, art, and land — mostly now held in trusts — economically viable for today, relevant to their local communities, accessible to the general public, and enduring for the future. While researching the recent book Old Homes, New Life: The Resurgence of the British Country House, author Clive Aslet — who has seen inside more of these properties than almost anyone else — met a dozen entrepreneurial custodians. His collaborator Dylan Thomas has captured in photographs the fairytale settings where kids dress up in their ancestors’ armor to play valiant knights, teens rest their fashionable boots on a marble bust of Emperor Hadrian, and running a summer jazz festival in the park means you get to do your own gig.
BURTON AGNES HALL In 1989 Simon Cunliffe-Lister inherited Burton Agnes Hall at the age of 12 from a remote cousin, Marcus Wickham-Boynton, who had inherited it only because his elder brother died during the Second World War. It is a mystical place, located a two-hour drive northeast of York. The estate has not been sold since 1173 and its Tudor mansion, completed in 1603, is little changed since its last additions in the 18th century. Its designer was Robert Smythson, Master Mason to Queen Elizabeth I, and many of its evocative paneled rooms have ravishing plaster ceilings and fireplaces. When Simon and his soon-to-be wife, Olivia, took a holiday in their 20s, they discussed the fate of Burton Agnes while on a Peruvian mountaintop and agreed to give up everything for it. Simon’s mother had been looking after the estate till then, creating the spectacular walled garden that now
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has some 3,000 plants. The next year, 2005, the couple moved in — that is, they moved into the Old Rectory beside the great house, where they could have a family home, no staff, and privacy. “We came because we felt we had energy and years to give,” reasons Simon. “It meant more to us than working to increase the share value of large corporations in London.” Simon and Olivia now manage the whole estate hands-on and with an eagle eye — electrical fittings have to be
Islay, Olivia, Simon, Inigo, Otis, and Sholto Cunliffe-Lister at work in Burton Agnes Hall’s walled garden
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Some of the French paintings and decorative artworks bought for Burton Agnes Hall by Marcus Wickham-Boynton in the mid-20th century
custom-made, there is a full-time joiner to nurture all of the wooden furniture and woodwork, picture rails have replaced hammering nails into the paneling. Their aim is to leave Burton Agnes better than they found it. Olivia calls it “maintaining a legacy of souls.” “This thing is churning through time,” Simon observes. “We have a brief moment with it. I never get a sense of grandeur about myself. It’s a big beast with its own momentum; it’s a whole community.” Fortunately, Marcus (the previous owner) had the skills and dedication required to manage the land, mend the house, and — after he terminated negotiations with the National Trust — create a preservation trust for the whole estate. Marcus also restored the monumental topfloor Long Gallery with its plaster barrel-vaulted ceiling, furnishing it with his own well-judged group of paintings that move from Renoir, Gauguin, and Matisse to Augustus John, Walter Sickert, and Duncan Grant. “Marcus broke the mold,” Simon notes. “You come to this Elizabethan stately home expecting dark portraits and are met with bright, vivid color!’ He and Olivia are going further, commissioning site-specific art: Colin Reid’s glass sculpture (inspired by the gatehouse), John Makepeace’s furniture for the Long Gallery, and Giles Rayner’s water sculpture for a pond. One room in the house is now a gallery space where Yorkshire artist Jill Welham recently exhibited her
Burton Agnes’s great hall features a screen with superb plasterwork and a trove of Jacobean emblems, religious allegories, and unexplained figures. It appears to illustrate the journey of a knight toward the Heavenly City.
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have to run to stay still, then hand it to the next generation. These houses need youth and energy.” He reckons his children, aged 5 through 15, are already in tune with the visitors: “We all want people to feel that they are part of our project.” Inside the house there are no ropes holding people back from the experience. Simon also wants to keep his children’s feet on the ground: “They are part of our entire lives daily; Olivia and I do not disappear into a business office. We are all in the playground with the visitors, eyes open; we eat a piece of pizza and collapse on the grassy bank.”
At Burton Agnes Hall, the King’s State Bedroom is lined with old paneling inserted from elsewhere in the house by Sir Griffith Boynton in the early 18th century. The fragile beauty of its wood and textiles requires constant nurturing by the present owners.
photographs made using a camera-less technique. Burton Agnes costs $270,000 a year to run, and the estate has some 50 staff. So its income-generating arable farmland is vital. So, too, are its 50,000 annual visitors. With five children, Simon and Olivia know what makes a good family outing. They stage family festivals on the grounds for Easter and Halloween, but their favorite is the jazz festival, when about 700 people come and camp for the weekend. Simon performs on piano and saxophone. “It’s not a muddy rave, not a smart opera, just wonderful musicians and a great atmosphere,” he says. After 16 years at Burton Agnes “so far,” Simon feels like he’s running “a modern business.” He says, “These houses have always had to move with the times; rooms were added or given new uses. Our goal is to build something sustainable for the house, its contents, and the estate. For that, we
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MADRESFIELD COURT In a different way, family life has also determined how Lucy and John ChenevixTrench have chosen to live at idyllic Madresfield Court, which seems to float in its bucolic, romantic landscape at the foot of Worcestershire’s rolling Malvern Hills. The hills, vales, and lazily twisting River Severn have inspired English composers
The chapel at Madresfield Court was given by Lettice, Lady Beauchamp, to the 7th Earl as a wedding present on their marriage in 1902.
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Crafts masterpieces: a radiant chapel and a restrained library with Greek mottos and symbolism. The chapel was Lady Lettice’s wedding gift to her husband in 1902, but took so long to complete that all seven of their children (plus an angelic nanny) had to be incorporated into the murals painted by Henry Payne. “It’s like living inside an exquisite work of art,” Lucy says. “We protect it, rewire it, insulate it.” Why did she and her husband decide to take on such a mammoth job a decade ago, with a family of four young children? “We thought it would be interesting,” she replies, adding, “And we did not want to shirk our responsibility, or it might be lost to the National Trust or English Heritage. Absolutely not! It would have been a poor show if we’d not come.” And so they did. Lucy says, “It felt like home on day one, as soon as we opened the first box, full of children’s shoes. Ours are the first children to live here for a hundred years.” Lucy and John made some key decisions. One was to live in the whole house, so they
At Madresfield Court, marble busts are displayed against tapestry and paneling in the ante room.
Edward Elgar and Gustav Holst, the poet-composer Ivor Gurney, the Arts and Crafts trailblazers William Morris, C.R. Ashbee, and Gordon Russell, and painters ranging from John Singer Sargent to the brothers Paul and John Nash. Lucy did not grow up at Madresfield, but it’s been in her Lygon family for some 900 years, even if not by direct descent. As she says, “It’s all about the Lygon vein running throughout.” Lucy is the 27th generation to live here, and inherited from her mother. There are only a few early buildings remaining because, in the 1860s, Henry Lygon, 5th Earl Beauchamp, embarked on a total remodeling designed by P.C. Hardwick. When the earl died two years later, the 6th Earl scooped up the project and slowly completed it. Then the 7th Earl and his wife, Lady Lettice Grosvenor, overhauled the interior and employed Ashbee and his Guild of Handicraft to create radical and daringly modern Arts and F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
The Miller family in the Vanbrugh Hall at Grimsthorpe Castle
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Grimsthorpe Castle’s Tapestry Drawing Room is a rare example of an intact interior design from between the World Wars. In the 1920s it was hung with Soho tapestries by Eloise, Countess of Ancaster. The London decorating firm of Keeble Ltd created the rich chocolate color of the walls and pilasters, heightened by gilding.
relocated the kitchen to be nearer the main rooms. “Nowadays … the heartbeat of family life is in the kitchen,” says John. Lucy adds, “Despite the art, it’s a house without an ego; it’s forgiving, nurturing, a happy house.” Another key decision was about privacy, which they value. So, when the house is open to the public for 40 days each year (a condition for their tax advantages), this is mainly when the children are at school or the family is away. When there are no visitors, the children can practice piano in the centerpiece staircase hall without anyone peering at them. Their parents host music concerts (“My great-aunt was very close to Elgar,” Lucy says) and offer retreats for ballet choreographers and their teams. The financials had to be totally re-thought, too. “Madresfield Court was unsustainable, as it had never been given careful thought,” Lucy recalls. “For us, the estate and the house are one. Everything is carefully considered.” Today it is managed by the Elmley Foundation, a registered charity. “We want to make it sustainable in every which way we can for the community,” Lucy says with quiet passion. “It’s all about the soil, bringing health into the soil with traditional breeds, ancient grains. We’re moving towards being 100 percent organic.” Now they want to produce top-quality, slow-grown beef. They hope to sell farm produce and open a restaurant, a small hotel, and perhaps a spa, all in keeping with their aims: “We want to be relevant and useful to the immediate community.” Inside the house, British interior designers Todhunter Earle have helped rationalize the rooms and their contents. “Some items went on the bonfire, some to the auction house, and then we carefully placed the rest,” says Lucy. Then, they started to add. Lucy is a wood and stone sculptor, so
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the Arts and Crafts rooms have been “inspirational, without a doubt. My woodcarvings are scattered through the house!” The couple are adding other artists’ work, too, “slowly, with consideration.” A new cast iron bridge by Johnnie Jourdan of Britannia Architectural Metalwork was a present to John; metal gates are being made by Jonathan Clift, a local blacksmith, to Lucy’s designs; the stained-glass windows added to the chapel for their 20th wedding anniversary are by Simon Howard. Lucy concludes, “This is a really long game we are playing. We’re committed to it for future generations.” GRIMSTHORPE CASTLE As if one country estate were not enough, Sebastian and Emma Miller have recently taken on two: Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire and Drummond Castle in Perthshire, Scotland. To do this, they’ve moved into an apartment at Grimsthorpe, which has been home to the Willoughby family since 1516. In a remodeling project that lasted much of the 18th century, it was mostly rebuilt as a grand classical mansion to the designs of John Vanbrugh, with a fine Palladian chapel and formal gardens leading into rolling parkland “improved” by Capability Brown. A string of discerning collector-owners have added a feast of art — Brussels tapestries designed by David Teniers, portraits by Joshua Reynolds, Anthony Van Dyck, and Francisco de Zurbarán, Chinese wallpapers, and quantities of royal-related furnishings including George IV’s throne and Queen Victoria’s footstool. A purpose-built gallery designed by Stuart McKnight (who created Westminster Abbey’s acclaimed new galleries) will open in the summer of 2023, using oak from the estate and local Ancaster limestone. It will spotlight artworks which, Emma hopes, will breathe new life into how visitors enjoy the house’s somewhat static displays. And it will reveal a significant yet little-known collection — including works by Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, and Frank Auerbach — assembled by the present owner, Jane HeathcoteDrummond-Willoughby, 28th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby. A trainbearer and maid of honor for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953, she inherited Grimsthorpe in 1983, when she was 49, and has never married.
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Grimsthorpe Castle’s State Dining Room is hung with early 18th-century Brussels tapestries. Over the chimneypiece is Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of Clementina, Lady Willoughby de Eresby.
She has, Emma Miller notes, “kept it going in the most amazing way… She has an incredible memory and eye for detail.” Now Sebastian, Lady Willoughby’s first cousin once removed, has come to ease her life. He brings years of global experience in the army, while Emma, already a competent army wife who’d moved house 20 times, has earned an art history degree to better understand the collection. “It’s quite a contrast,” Sebastian says, but it’s still about teamwork and solving dramatic problems. His job as managing trustee of the Grimsthorpe and Drummond Castle Trust is huge: to haul both properties into the 21st century. “I thought it was a critical moment,” he explains. “Lady Willoughby is of an age where she’s keen to take a back seat. I could come in and provide forwardlooking impetus.” He intends to modernize the properties and the farming, and also to lure more visitors. “There must be love and emotion in it, too. I spent a long time running round these corridors as a child. It was scary, as it’s enormous! I came with my parents from our ramshackle shooting lodge house.” Sebastian’s goal is that, within five years, both properties will provide enough surplus to restore and maintain the houses, contents, and estates. “We don’t want to leave either of them to the state or the National Trust. We want to maintain their independence and freedom for the future, to make our own informed choices.” To that end, Sebastian and Emma’s daughter Hermione has already trained to become a land agent. Grimsthorpe, Sebastian admits, is a challenge. “Before I arrived it had been in bubble wrap. It’s my job to cut that off, do it up, bring it alive. We need to up our game, so that people can enjoy it.” Currently, the house draws only 2,000 visitors per year. More art shows are being scheduled to celebrate the exceptional textiles, the estate’s rare plants and butterflies (it 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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has been designated a UK Site of Special Scientific Interest), and the dress Lady Willoughby wore to the coronation. In the house, curtains have been drawn back to let in light, space-controlling ropes removed, and there are plans for visitors to interact with conservators. A good restaurant, camping and glamping in the park, a forest festival, an old pub transformed into a small hotel — all are on the to-do list. There’s an American aspect to explore, too. When the New York heiress Eloise Breese married Grimthorpe’s owner in 1905, the house had lain empty for decades. She brought in the Arts & Crafts architect Detmar Blow to make building alterations and applied her own fashionable East Coast taste to improve the interiors. Just for example, she gave the Tapestry Drawing Room its dramatic chocolate brown walls picked out with sparkling gilding, and the Chinese Drawing Room its black and chinoiserie decoration. Eloise’s daughter-in-law, Nancy (daughter of William Waldorf Astor), brought her southern Virginia taste, choosing the British designers Colefax and Fowler, whose soft furnishings are still in place — especially their signature lampshades, which are said to resemble housemaids’ skirts. And Nancy’s daughter is the three-quarters-American Lady Willoughby. Sebastian and Emma don’t mind if Grimsthorpe plays to American visitors’ Downton Abbey dreams. “They get a keyhole peek at private life in an extraordinary place with the dogs running about,” says Sebastian. “If they only realized it’s a pile of damp rooms with high electricity bills!” Information: Sumptuously illustrated and running 306 pages, Old Homes, New Life is the first volume published by Clive Aslet and Dylan Thomas’s new imprint, Triglyph Books (London, triglyphbooks.com). All photos illustrated here © Dylan Thomas. LOUISE NICHOLSON is an art historian, lecturer, and writer who lived in New York and explored the U.S. for 19 years. Now living in England, she frequently visits the U.S. and India. 2 0 2 2
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BY JEANNE SCHINTO
THE PHILADELPHIA (MURALS) STORY
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ou don’t have to be in Philadelphia for long before you start noticing the murals. Every city has at least a few. Some have hundreds. But all told — large, small, outdoors, indoors, in subway stations, and everywhere in between — Philly has more than 3,000. That they exist in such abundance is thanks to Mural Arts Philadelphia (MAP). Born of an anti-graffiti program for youth 38 years ago, MAP has grown into America’s largest public-arts organization and a national model. Occasionally it commissions a name artist to create a mural. Early on, Keith Haring (1958–1990) painted one on the side of a house in South Philly. Completed in 1987 and restored in 2013, it is a quintessential Haring composition of gyrating, roly-poly stick figures and one of his barking dogs. In 2019, Amy Sherald (b. 1973), Michelle Obama’s official portraitist, designed a likeness of a 19-year-old North Philly woman, Najee SpencerYoung, that was painted on the side of a six-story Target store. “I call her ‘Philadelphia’s Mona Lisa, ”’ says Tish Byrne, who leads walking tours of the city’s murals. Posed against an aquamarine background, Spencer-Young wears a coat boldly printed in black-and-white flowers and a hat cocked to one side. Her face is serene. Her African American skin is silvery gray — Sherald’s signature way of, as she has said, removing “color” from “race.” More often, though, a mural is produced by a public-art specialist. Either way, input is solicited from residents of the community where the mural will reside. Often those residents, including children and teams of students, help with the execution. So do recovering addicts, unhoused people, incarcerated individuals, those re-entering society from prison, and those struggling with physical or mental health. In this way, 50 to 75 murals are added each year. Meanwhile, others are destroyed or obstructed by new development, lost due to property owners’ decisions, or simply erased by the elements.
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Some art lovers aren’t keen on murals. They’re more about politics than paint, they argue. Nonetheless, the community-building aspects of murals are considered by MAP to be just as important as their aesthetics. “Mural Arts Philadelphia is a multi-tasker,” Jane Golden, its founder and still its executive director, told a crowd at an unveiling this past October. “People ask me, ‘Is it an arts program? Is it a social services program?’ Who cares? We want to stretch art as far as it will go.” Later, in an interview, Golden says, “We believe that art can be useful. We believe that it can be beautiful. It’s not an either-or.” Fortuitously, at Stanford University in the 1970s Golden studied both studio art and political science, as if her career path were preordained. “GRAFFITI CITY” The story of Philly’s murals begins with graffiti. In the 1960s, the city was being defaced epically by graffiti writers. It was happening in other cities, too. Kids were spray-painting buildings, buses, bridge girders, and everything else with their balloon-lettered pseudonyms. It is often pointed out that graffiti writing is as old as cave painting. However, a Philadelphian, Darryl McCray (b. 1953), is regularly cited as the world’s first modern graffiti writer. He began his “career” in 1965 while housed in a juvenile corrections facility, where the cooks nicknamed him “Cornbread” — one of his favorite foods. As the story goes, he wrote the moniker throughout the place. When released, he wrote it all over the city. When he “tagged” an elephant at the Philadelphia Zoo with “Cornbread Lives,” the media made him a celebrity. To be sure, the graffiti writers of that period had a certain energy. The most prolific of them made you wonder: How were they everywhere? How did they get their tags up so high? It could be awe-inspiring, but mostly it was awful, especially if your property was being vandalized. Then it became alarming when, in the 1970s, graffiti writing became associated with gangs.
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AMY SHERALD (b. 1973), Untitled, 1108 Sansom Street, 2019, photo: Steve Weinik
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MEG SALIGMAN (b. 1965), Common Threads, 525 North Broad Street, 1997, restored KENT TWITCHELL (b. 1942), Dr. J., 1226 Ridge Avenue, 1990, photo: Jack Ramsdale
2010, photo: Steve Weinik
In 1984, W. Wilson Goode was elected mayor partly as a result of his anti-graffiti platform. Laws restricting spray-paint sales to minors had been useless against shoplifters. No more effective was legislation making penalties for graffiti writing severe. Meanwhile, Jane Golden, a New Jersey native, had moved back east due to ill health. She had been working as a muralist in Los Angeles with Judith Baca (the “Mother of American Muralism”), who founded that city’s first mural program in 1974. After Goode’s win, he offered Golden a part-time job helping to establish an Anti-Graffiti Network. The idea was that graffiti writers, to earn amnesty from prosecution for past infractions, would whitewash graffiti — their own or others’. But when Golden realized that some graffiti writers had genuine talent, she transformed the network into an entity that wasn’t “anti” anything. Instead, it was pro-art.
shoes instead of team uniform and sneakers. He wanted people, especially youth, to see Erving as a man of many parts, not just an athlete. To execute his design, Twitchell implemented a novel technique. He painted the image on squares of so-called parachute cloth, a non-woven polyester fabric. He used acrylic gel to affix the squares to the building’s stucco surface. This allowed him to do a lot of the work in California and also to render Dr. J in exquisite, realistic detail: his trousers’ creases and wrinkles, metal-rimmed aviator glasses, gold bracelet, folded pocket handkerchief — and the illusion of his cast shadow. The success of the Dr. J mural gave the program art-world credibility, making it easier for Golden to secure subsequent grants and foundation money. Then, in 1996, the nonprofit Philadelphia Mural Arts Advocates was incorporated to support it. A steadier money stream meant the muralists could erect proper scaffolding. They could rent mobile elevating work platforms (“cherry pickers”) and other heavy equipment. And they could use paint formulated for murals instead of the cheap cans found at the back of the hardware store. In 2001, MAP moved its headquarters to the former studio-residence of the great painter and educator Thomas Eakins (1844–1916). By then, its after-school and summer art education programs had been inaugurated. So had its partnership with the city’s Department of Human Services. Bringing the art-making process to “underserved” groups has shaped much of what the organization has done ever since.
THE “DR. J” EFFECT Mayor Goode eventually hired Golden full-time and a mural-making program was formed. By 1990, however, she wanted to improve the quality and variety of what was being produced. The early murals were “always spirited,” but not always good, she told the crowd at the unveiling in October. Realizing she needed a “breakthrough mural,” she convinced California muralist Kent Twitchell (b. 1942) to produce one. Twitchell had mentored Golden when she was working on the West Coast. His usual fee was more than $40,000, but he agreed to paint one for Golden for $2,000 — the amount of a small grant she had secured. The result was a three-story likeness of basketball star Julius Erving. Born in New York City, “Dr. J” played for the Philadelphia 76ers from 1976 through 1987. It was Twitchell’s idea that he paint Erving in a business suit and dress
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“GO BIG” Meg Saligman (b. 1965), a Philadelphian for more than 30 years but originally from Olean, New York, has produced public artworks worldwide. She
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CESAR VIVEROS (b. 1968), The Sacred Now: Faith and Family in the 21st Century, 1012 West Thompson Street, 2015, photo: Steve Weinik
DAVID MCSHANE (b. 1965), Jackie Robinson, 2803 North Broad Street, 1997, restored EDGAR “SANER” FLORES (b. 1981), Philos Adelphos (detail), 440 Poplar Street, 2015,
2015. Visible above the rooftop is part of James Burns’s North Philadelphia Beacon
photo: Steve Weinik
Project, 2701 North Broad Street, 2013. Photo: Steve Weinik
is also the one who, having been taught by Twitchell how to do the parachutecloth method of mural-making, adapted it for wide use. Dramatic, polychromatic, almost, one could say, operatic, Saligman’s works often depict multiple characters, some real, others imagined. And they are huge. A selfdescribed “mega-scale muralist,” she has painted three of the largest murals in the country, the largest of which, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, measures 44,000 square feet. One of her Philadelphia works is the eight-story Common Threads, a commingling of 31 figures, some based on high school students, others on Saligman’s grandmother’s collection of china figurines. At top center is Tameka Jones at age 17, when she was studying at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts. Looking out across the city meditatively, the young woman of color with her long, braided hair contrasts sharply with the antique fashions and effete poses of the figurines. Yet the piece’s title seems to say we are all connected across cultures and time through our common humanity. 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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Saligman completed Common Threads in 1997, after eight months’ work. She painted directly on the wall because its surface wouldn’t take parachute cloth. (Others, among them Sherald’s Najee Spencer-Young, have been painted directly for the same reason.) These projects are plein air to the extreme: weather must be reckoned with. What’s more, every day is studio-critique day when anyone walking, jogging, or driving by can stop and voice an opinion. Yet the muralists say interacting with passersby, some of whom don’t get many opportunities to engage with art or artists, can be the most rewarding part of public mural-making. Three months into her work on Common Threads, Saligman was paid a visit by Cesar Viveros (b. 1968), newly arrived from Mexico. “He came by every day after that,” she recalls. “Eventually I took him on as a volunteer. He finished Common Threads with me, then worked with me for 10 years. Now he’s on his own and doing great things in North Philly.” One of Viveros’s works in that neighborhood is The Sacred Now, designed and executed in time for the World Meeting of Families and Pope Francis’s visit in 2 0 2 2
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PHILLIP ADAMS (b. 1978), Leviathan Main Belting, 1241 Carpenter Street, 2016, photo: Steve Weinik
PHILLIP
ADAMS (b. 1978), Baldwin Locomotive Works, 417 North 20th Street, 2019, photo: Steve Weinik
Currently communities apply to have a mural created by MAP. The demand is great in neighborhoods where loss of Philly’s core industries has resulted in urban ruins. MAP then finds the funding necessary. Before work can begin, though, community meetings determine the mural’s subject matter and style. Balancing the two — art values and social values — is often complicated, even before technical aspects of the project are addressed. “Sometimes these values can actually be in conflict,” Golden says. But a process that allows time for plenty of discourse is the way to bring them into proper balance. It is, however, “not mural by committee,” Saligman observes. “I am a painter of what the community brings to me. But you want your artist to create something only they could create with that community.” Rather than being a “vessel for a vision,” she considers herself “a vessel with a vision.”
2015. It consists of 153 individual painted panels, installed across the facade of a Catholic school. The public was invited to a series of “community paint days,” a concept Saligman pioneered. As she explains it, an artist creates a design, transfers it to multiple sections, and labels each; the community colors them in paint-by-numbers style. They are then applied to the wall. In this way, approximately 2,000 people helped paint The Sacred Now, and Pope Francis signed it. That same year, Mexican street artist Edgar “Saner” Flores (b. 1981) visited Philadelphia to open his gallery exhibition Fragments of the Soul — murals, illustrations, video projections, and paintings created on material salvaged in Philly. During his stay, using only spray paint, he created Philos Adelphos (“Brotherly Love”) on the side of a three-story apartment building in the North Liberties neighborhood. The image shows a man and woman in turquoise masquerade masks embracing behind a foreground of fuchsiacolored leaves. Above them, a liberty bell bears the city motto of his title. It took Flores only three days to complete this mural. It is far more common for the mural-making process to take months, as Saligman’s works do, or even longer, if the community design phase is protracted.
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PHILLY’S MANY FRANKS One of Philly’s best loved murals has become, like Saligman’s Common Threads, a landmark. On the side of a North Philly residence, it is Jackie Robinson, completed in 1997 by David McShane (b. 1965), a long-time MAP staff artist who trained as an oil painter and has done more than 200 murals in Philadelphia alone. In 1947, Robinson had become the first African American to play Major League Baseball. McShane executed his tribute to the Brooklyn Dodgers star in what he calls “an abstract series of hard-edged shapes.” He painted them directly on the building’s surface and entirely in five shades of gray. His technique resulted in a picture that appears to be black and white. McShane says the palette and its effect were meant as a reminder of the racial division that Robinson helped overcome. He also wanted it to hark back to the era of news photographs before color printing. Indeed, he based his design on news images of Robinson — characteristically stealing home, which he did most memorably during the 1955 World Series, won by the Dodgers against the Yankees. Another celebrated work by McShane, in the Midtown Village neighborhood, is Famous Franks, a montage of Philadelphia’s many Franks and others who share the name. McShane painted it in 2001 on wooden signpainter’s panels fitted to cover the windows of a bar known as Dirty Frank’s. Naturally Ben Franklin is among the group; so are Frankie Avalon, Frankenstein’s monster, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Frank Zappa, Frank Sinatra, Saint Francis of Assisi (for whom the artist used his twin brother, Frank, as a model), Frank Perdue, and Frank Lloyd Wright. And when Pope Francis visited, McShane added him. Frank Rizzo, the city’s police commissioner who was elected mayor in 1972, did not find a place in McShane’s pantheon. The gay community in that neighborhood vociferously nixed him, citing Rizzo’s bigoted views and actions. Rizzo was, however, painted by another muralist in 1995 in South Philly’s Italian Market area after MAP received petitions advocating for it.
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RICHARD WILSON (b. 1974), Will Smith, 4545 West Girard Avenue, 2018, photo courtesy of the artist
incubators. Its owner, Steven Krupnick, worked on the design with Adams; they then introduced the concept to the community. The trompe l’oeil depiction of gears, belts, and other symbols of industry — part charcoal, part Benjamin Moore paint — wraps around the whole four-story building. The most recent mural in Adams’s series, completed in 2019, is Baldwin Locomotive Works. It’s on the side of a building in the Logan Park neighborhood once dominated by the manufacturer. Adams used the parachute-cloth method to paint a head-on view of the experimental steam Baldwin 60000 Locomotive (now housed at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute). Area residents used the same method to paint a foreground of pink azaleas during a community paint day in nearby Baldwin Park. That section includes an acknowledgement of Philly’s earlier past: references to the Lenni Lenape, the Indigenous people who lived on this land before colonization.
The image of the deeply polarizing figure was frequently vandalized, however, and during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, A Tribute to Frank Rizzo was whitewashed by the building’s owner. REMEMBRANCE OF INDUSTRIAL THINGS PAST Frank Rizzo ruled when the city was in the throes of the socioeconomic upheaval that followed the loss of its traditional industries. Phillip Adams (b. 1978) has chronicled those industries in a mural series, Industrious Light. Mills, factories, and warehouses, some abandoned, others repurposed, have been his “canvases.” He completed the first, Ortlieb’s Brewery, in 2014. Drawing directly with charcoal on a massive wall overlooking the defunct brewery’s remains, Adams depicted the tools of the brewing trade. He says he chose charcoal because, being carbon, it linked the mural’s medium to the materials of the industrial past. Charcoal is also conducive to spontaneity: “You can make changes until you seal it.” As an added bonus, charcoal doesn’t fade, as even high-quality exterior paint does. “The longevity of art in the public sphere has been one of the more interesting things for me to think about during my work on these projects,” Adams notes. In 2017, new construction blocked a clear view of Ortlieb’s Brewery. By then, Adams had completed an homage to Leviathan Belting, a company whose massive leather belts were used to run machinery for all kinds of industries. The site is a former Leviathan warehouse, which now contains studio spaces for artists and makers, as well as offices for small-business 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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“CITY OF MURALS” Steve Powers (b. 1968) was a teenaged graffiti writer when the Anti-Graffiti Network was launched. Twenty-five years later, in the summer of 2009, the West Philly native returned as an established studio artist. He brought 1,200 cans of spray paint, 800 gallons of paint, and 20 assistants. Together they create a series of 50 rooftop murals facing an elevated portion of Philly’s subway line. The result, A Love Letter for You, transformed a 20-block stretch with lines like “Forever Begins When You Say Yes.” In 2018, another former graffiti writer, London’s Richard Wilson (b. 1974), took it upon himself to paint a mural of West Philly native and actor Will Smith. Wilson has said he got the inspiration for its style from the official presidential portrait of Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley (b. 1977). “I added some leaves as a clear reference [to the Wiley image],” he told TV news when it was unveiled. At 65 feet high, the Smith mural is seen daily by students attending a nearby kindergarten-through-eighth-grade charter school. Wilson worked with the school and with MAP to secure this West Philly site and offer community engagement on the project. In a documentary, the artist recalled that Twitchell’s Dr. J inspired him as a kid, citing “what that did to ignite the fire and desire for elevation” in him. The plan is that the Smith mural will be similarly inspiring. Today, graffiti artists, as opposed to graffiti writers (persistent as ever, alas), show their work in museums. So do muralists, as they have done since well before the heyday of Diego Rivera (1886–1957). In 2013 MAP got its own museum recognition when the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts mounted Beyond the Paint, a retrospective exhibition of the organization that has earned Philly an official new nickname: “City of Murals.” It also has an unofficial one, “The Motown of Murals,” coined by Meg Saligman, who credits Jane Golden for making Philly a place that welcomes artists, allowing them to have careers, mentor others, and make a difference. In addition, the city welcomes all art lovers to come discover its wealth of murals for themselves. Information: muralarts.org JEANNE SCHINTO, based in Andover, Massachusetts, has been an independent writer since 1973. 2 0 2 2
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GREAT ART NATIONWIDE
E V E N T S P R E V I E W
A NEW TAKE ON AN OLD TRADITION
JANE JONES’S HYPERREALIST FLORAL PAINTINGS Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts Spring, Texas pearlmfa.org January 29–May 14
and direct over time. This exhibition presents paintings with the ideas of risk and protection but goes further to express my concern about changes to, and destruction of, this planet due to climate change.” Curated and organized by scholar David J. Wagner, the exhibition will move on from suburban Houston to the Dane G. Hansen Memorial Museum in Logan, Kansas
(May 27–July 17, 2022), Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina (August 15– November 15, 2022), Chicago’s Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum (January 21–April 21, 2023), the Holland Museum in Holland, Michigan (May 5– July 2, 2023), and the Evelyn Burrow Museum in Hanceville, Alabama (August 1– October 31, 2023). Check the tour’s latest schedule at janejonesartist.com.
JANE
It’s long, but the title of a new solo exhibition at Texas’s Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts says it all — Cultivating the Dutch Tradition in the 21st Century: Jane Jones’s Hyperrealist Floral Paintings. On view soon will be 25 still lifes this talented artist has painted since 2012. Well before she published the book Classic Still Life Painting in 2004, Jones admired the great 17th-century Dutch floral painters, including women such as Maria van Oosterwyck, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Rachel Ruysch. She brings to this timeless genre a decidedly contemporary approach informed by both the precision of photorealism and the bright, clear light of the Denver area, where Jones was born and still resides. In her work, the artist banishes extraneous details in order to focus on the elegance of flowers, juxtaposing their organic forms with the geometric rigidity of their vases, of the stones she sometimes includes, and even of the square or rectangular canvas itself. Unlike the average photorealist, Jones channels her Old Masterly forerunners by applying the many layers of glazing that make the scenes glow. Perhaps not surprisingly, Jones earned degrees in both art history and biology. She notes that her scientific familiarity with cells, plants, animals, and ecosystems gave her “a glimpse into the awesome power of living things and an incredible respect for them,” as well as an appreciation of the “importance of precision when observing nature.” The resulting paintings highlight the “everyday triumphs of nature” and the “power, beauty, and fragility of life, none of which” — she emphasizes— “should ever be taken for granted.” Jones’s art also incorporates symbolism, which, she explains, “has become more pointed
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JONES
(b.
1953),
Survivors, 2016, oil on canvas, 74 x 47 in., collection of the artist
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THE ART OF TIME HOROLOGY IN ART Horological Society of New York New York City hs-ny.org/exhibitions through April 30
Artists have enthusiastically depicted clocks and watches ever since mechanical timepieces were invented seven centuries ago. Often these objects appear in artworks as reminders of human mortality or as symbols of affluence, discipline, occupation, or technological sophistication. Now the Horological Society of New York (HSNY) is presenting a rare exhibition of more than 60 examples, Horology in Art, nearly all on loan from its member Bob Frishman. Based in Massachusetts, he has been a clock restorer and writer-lecturer on horology for more than 30 years. This is the second exhibition Frishman has mounted at HSNY; the first, presented in 2019, featured 50 unusual watches, clocks, instruments, and related ephemera — also from his own rich collection. On view now — just for example — are a folk portrait of a mother and child holding a pocket watch; Anatol Kovarsky’s preparatory watercolor for a New Yorker magazine cover showing a watchmaker; a portrait miniature on ivory in which a young woman’s watch and chain are visible; and the watercolor by Provincetown artist John Whorf illustrated here. Among the canonical artists represented in the
show’s prints section are Jan Steen, Giovanni Piranesi, Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth, and Salvador Dalí. The vintage photographs include daguerreotypes, cabinet cards, cartes de visites, glass lantern slides, and several of Mathew Brady’s Civil War-era portraits. Frishman has also gathered digital images of more than 2,000 other examples, now projected in a continuous slideshow inside the exhibition. To mark this occasion, Frishman has prepared a 16-page illustrated catalogue that opens with some recollections from his two-decade-long search for these items. The publication also includes a treasure-hunt list of a dozen horology-in-art paintings on regular view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
ANIMALS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
JOHN WHORF (1903–1959), Abandoned Farm, No. 2, c. 1940, watercolor on paper, 14 x 22 in., collection of Bob Frishman, Massachusetts
with thumbnail images and gallery numbers to help readers locate them easily. Among the artists represented in that group are Rubens, Ingres, and Eakins. To schedule a visit to the Society’s midtown Manhattan space, e-mail info@hs-ny.org or register via its website. And watch that site for announcements of educational programming that will occur at the Society in February.
JULIA
ROGERS
(b.
1962),
Golden Light, 2021, oil on linen, 36 x 45 in.
SOUTHEASTERN WILDLIFE EXPOSITION Charleston sewe.com February 17–20
Having had to cancel its 2021 in-person events, the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition (SEWE) is more than ready to celebrate its 40th anniversary and fill the streets of downtown Charleston with animal lovers of all stripes. Once again, SEWE will program a fine art gallery and an exhibition of artisans and craftsmen alongside its popular demonstrations of dogs and birds of prey in action, plus lively displays by conservation organizations and the South Carolina Department of Agriculture. All of these activities highlight the urgent need to protect wildlife and preserve our natural resources. F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
The art exhibition features approximately 100 painters and sculptors — both established and emerging. Kathleen Dunphy has been named Special Guest Artist, and an entire section will be devoted to the 2021 Featured Artist, Mark Horton, who had to forgo his display last year, of course.
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This year’s Featured Artist is Julia Rogers, whose painting Golden Light is illustrated here and will be available for bidding at the auction during the VIP preview gala and sale on February 17. Rogers sees swans as symbols of purity of spirit, strength, and rebirth. “I wanted to express a feeling of weightlessness, light, and air,” she explains. “In this composition, I sought to show the repeating pattern in the curvature of the necks while the swans stretch and preen, all highlighted by the warm sunlight streaming from above right.”
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COLLEAGUES & FRIENDS FAMILY REUNION: PORTRAITS BY TIMOTHY J. CLARK Howard University Gallery of Art Washington, D.C. art.howard.edu/gallery-art January 22–March 7
Best known for his large-scale watercolors, the American artist Timothy J. Clark (b. 1951) is the subject of a solo exhibition at the Howard University Gallery of Art this season. Titled Family Reunion: Portraits by Timothy J. Clark, the show features more than 20 watercolors and drawings that convey Clark’s deep insights into an array of talented musicians, artists, and other sitters of color he has befriended over many years. Most of the portraits were started before the pandemic — some entirely from memory — but were finalized in 2021 in anticipation of this display. Among Clark’s sitters are such distinguished jazz musicians as Teddy Buckner, Art Davis, Jack McVea, and Michael White, visual artists like Gaye Ellington, Dennis Lewis, James Little, and Faith Ringgold, the entrepreneur Tony Forte, and the designer Jenn Torres Forte. The exhibition has been selected and organized by Howard’s gallery director, Dr. Lisa Farrington, who herself appears in several works, and who chose to include a few superb still lifes as well. (Farrington authored the main essay in Pomegranate Press’s 2008 monograph on Clark.) Born in Santa Ana, California, Clark was hooked on art from his first class. Luckily, he found teachers who helped him look at art from traditional and modernist perspectives: at 18, he entered Los Angeles’s Art Center College of Design, where he was mentored by Harry Carmean in a department led by the modernist Lorser Feitelson. Here, says Clark, he got solid skills, so he moved on to get concepts from Hal Kramer, Don Graham, and Emerson Woelffer at the nearby Chouinard Art Institute as it was merged into what is now CalArts. Clark capped his education with a Master’s in painting at California State University, Long Beach, where he worked with Joyce Tremain, but the real learning came — as it must — through experience in the studio. Clark notes that Abstract Expressionism and photography were widely revered during his student years, and his career might well have blossomed more easily had he pursued one of those directions. Yet Clark “believed then, as I believe now, that there is a place for emotional and aesthetic figurative painting in today’s world.” Time has proved him right, yet it is revealing that Clark prefers the word “figurative” to “realist”: in keeping with his modern-
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ist training, he is just as interested in formal effects as in subjects, and wants viewers to apprehend both fully. The presentation of this show at a major university is all the more appropriate, as Clark has taught regularly since he was 21. He currently divides the year between studios in New York City, West Bath (Maine), and Capistrano Beach (California), and looks forward to traveling abroad again as soon as public health conditions allow.
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TIMOTHY J. CLARK (b. 1951), Dr. Michael White, 2020, watercolor on paper, 24 1/4 x 18 1/2 in., available through the artist
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START THE YEAR WITH ART
ART IN THE WEST
DENNIS DOHENY (b. 1956), Along the Tuolumne, 2021, oil
MASTERS IN THEIR FIELD
on linen, 28 x 34 in.
LOS ANGELES theautry.org/masters February 12–March 27
The Autry Museum of the American West is set to host its 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. Their subject matter ranges from landscapes, seascapes, and wildlife to figures, portraits, and historical themes. Among the talents participating are Tony Abeyta, Autumn Borts-Medlock, George Carlson, Mick Doellinger, Teresa Elliott, Tammy Garcia, R. Tom Gilleon, Logan Maxwell Hagege, Doug Hyde, Brett Allen Johnson, Jeremy Lipking, Eric Merrell, Dean L. Mitchell, Terri Kelly Moyers, Daniel W.
Pinkham, Kyle Polzin, Jason Rich, and Dustin Van Wechel. Since Masters of the American West launched in 1998, its proceeds have provided essential support for the Autry’s educational programs, exhibitions, and more than 100 public events annually. This year everyone is welcome to see the exhibition between Feb-
UNDER THE BIG TENTS
ruary 12 and March 27, but those wanting to acquire artwork must attend (or place a bid) during the big sale on February 26. Details on how to participate are available on the website. As its name suggests, the Autry is dedicated to exploring the stories, experiences, and perceptions of the diverse peoples of the West. Its collection of more than 500,000 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.
MATT
SIEVERS
(b.
1981),
In
the
Moment, 2021, oil on canvas, 60 x 60 in.
SCOTTSDALE celebrateart.com January 15–March 27
Now entering its 32nd year, Celebration of Fine Art is Arizona’s longest-running art show. It brings together 100 artists from across America, all invited to spend 10 weeks creating pieces in front of visitors. Their works range widely in both aesthetics and mediums. Guests are invited to ask questions as the artists work, and these encounters are complemented by weekly demonstrations of woodturning, welding, kiln firing, and glass blowing, as well as exhibitors’ talks every Friday. Everyone is welcome to explore the one-acre sculpture garden, which features nearly 100 pieces, and to enjoy meals and wine in the cafe on site. In 1991, inspired by California’s Laguna Beach Festival of Arts, Tom and Ann Morrow collaborated with Scottsdale officials and the community to open CFA’s “big white F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
tents” for the first time. Now encompassing 40,000 square feet of covered space, the event is carried on by Tom’s daughter Susan Morrow Potje and her husband, Jake. Susan Potje notes, “There’s no place where art comes to
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life like the Celebration of Fine Art.” For those who cannot make it to Scottsdale, visit the website to browse and buy CFA artists’ newest creations.
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THE TOAST OF DENVER DENVER coorswesternart.com January 8–23
Featuring 60 artists from across America, Canada, and Europe, the 29th annual Coors Western Art Exhibit & Sale will again tempt collectors with an eclectic mix of contemporary realist artworks capturing the Western way of life. This year’s featured artist is David Griffin, a Coors participant for the last 13 years. Illustrated here is his Signature Work, Only a Matter of Time, 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.)
DAVID GRIFFIN (b. 1952), Only a Matter of Time, 2021, oil on linen, 30 x 40 in.
Griffin grew up in Lubbock and, after studying fine art at Texas Tech University, found success in the world of professional illustration during the 1970s and ’80s. In 1990, he turned to painting full-time and now
splits the year between Dallas and Cordillera, Colorado. Though works such as Only a Matter of Time clearly draw upon Griffin’s close observation of nature, there is also something vaguely mysterious — even symbolist — about this scene, which captures an incoming storm seen from miles away. On January 4, the ticketed gala will offer Coors patrons the privilege of seeing and buying exhibited artworks early. 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 sciences. This season, Coors curator Rose Fredrick is hosting a series of free Zoom conversations that bring viewers into the fascinating studio environments of the show’s participating artists. Please visit the website for registration details.
A BRIGHT SPOT ON THE CALENDAR
ASHWINI BHARATHULA (b. 1984), Louis, 2020, oil on
SCOTTSDALE scottsdaleartschool.org February 7–March 11
panel, 12 x 9 in., winner of last year’s People’s Choice Award
The Scottsdale Artists’ School is poised to open The Best and the Brightest, the annual benefit show and sale highlighting artworks created by its top students living around the world. Any artist who had taken a workshop, program, or online class there since January 2017 was invited to submit works, all of which have been juried in. During the free opening reception on February 10, guests will be able to buy right from the wall. On view will be more than 100 works, and awards will be presented in six categories: oil, drawing, pastel, sculpture, small works, and water media. The school’s executive director, Trudy Hays, is quick to praise the “professional quality of SAS students” and laughs that she does “not envy the team assembled to jury the pieces because they have a difficult assignment.” Illustrated here is the winner of last year’s People’s Choice Award, Ashwini Bharathula’s luminous portrait of Louis. For those who cannot attend in person, be sure to view and buy works directly from the school’s website.
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SHARING ART NATIONWIDE TULSA gilcrease.org 2022–2024
Formally known as the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, the Gilcrease Museum is owned by the city of Tulsa and managed in partnership with the University of Tulsa. Its outstanding collection of more than 350,000 items contains artifacts reflecting hundreds of indigenous cultures throughout the Americas, as well as American paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, especially ones related to the West.
The Gilcrease closed this past summer for construction of its new 83,500-squarefoot building, which will open in 2024. Rather than storing everything out of public view, however, the museum has loaned key works to sister institutions after careful consultations with each. Now on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, Arkansas) are 13 Gilcrease paintings and one sculpture, including the haunting scene by Walter Ufer that is illustrated here. At Oklahoma City’s National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum are 17 paintings and two sculptures, and the Gilcrease has loaned two works to the temporary exhibition Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo. That project explores the exchange between the French-trained American artist Jules Tavernier (1844–1889)
and the Pomo community of Elem at Clear Lake in Northern California. (It closed recently at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and is now on view at the de Young Museum in San Francisco until April 17.) The Gilcrease’s other loans range widely, from John Wesley Jarvis’s Black Hawk and His Son Whirling Thunder (1833) and Watching the Breakers (1891) by Winslow Homer, to La Anunciación del Nahual (1946) by José Chávez Morado and Willard Stone’s Our Atomic Baby (1946). All of these loans are expected to raise awareness of the Gilcrease among museum visitors in California, New York, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Ideally, they will head to Tulsa to see the Gilcrease’s spectacular new home once it is ready in 2024. WALTER UFER (1876–1936), Hunger, 1919, oil on canvas, 50 1/2 x 50 1/2 in., collection of the Gilcrease Museum, on temporary loan to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
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JOSEPH LORUSSO (b. 1966), A Mischievous Look, 2003, oil on board, 15 1/2 x 12 in.
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BY PETER TRIPPI
H I D D E N C O L L E C T I O N
SA AD & JA NA N H A BBA
BUYING ART THEY
Love
S
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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ometimes collecting art is much more about falling in love than about research or prestige. The sheer joy of buying and living with art permeated the air recently when I visited the distinguished gastroenterologist Saad F. Habba, M.D., and his wife, Janan, at their homes in New Jersey and Manhattan. Originally from Iraq, they have lived in Europe and then the U.S. for most of their lives, though they also keep a house in London in order to enjoy the city’s cultural riches and visit family members there. Saad Habba is a graduate of Ireland’s Royal College of Surgeons and has been practicing medicine for more than 40 years. Formerly chief of gastroenterological endoscopy at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, he is in private practice and has been renowned in his field since 2000, when he identified what is now called Habba Syndrome, which links chronic diarrhea to gall bladder dysfunction. Then, a decade ago, he pioneered the idea that irritable bowel syndrome is a collection of
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Janan Habba
Saad F. Habba, M.D.
different conditions rather than a single diagnosis. These findings and the resulting protocols have improved the well-being of tens of thousands of patients ever since. Saad has accrued a range of professional and civic honors in the U.S. and Europe, but it seems he is (rightly) most proud of his longtime membership in the Sovereign Order of Malta, the lay religious order of the Catholic Church founded in 1113. Today its members are active in 120 countries caring for people in need through medical, social, and humanitarian programs. This November, Saad was granted the Grand Cross of Malta, the order’s highest rank and one usually reserved for its officers as well as heads of state and royalty. In recognition of this honor, Ireland’s chief herald and the Irish government have granted him permission to add supporters to his coat of arms, which they originally bestowed on him in 2011. Saad laughs that it was almost preordained that he become a Knight of Malta. Several years
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(THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) ANONYM OUS, Lady with Teal Sleeves (?), c. 1880–1910, oil on canvas, 27 1/2 x 21 3/4 in.
BARBARA ANN VOROB (1940–2010),
Untitled, c. 1984, black alabaster, 7 x 7 x 5 1/2 in.
BRITT
ASLANIAN SIKIRIC (b. 1969), Woman with Golden Hair, 2019, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in.
FAEQ HASSAN
(1914–1992), Al Khayala, 1989, oil on canvas, 39 x 58 1/2 in. (OPPOSITE PAGE, TOP) PIERRE PAUL ALOUIS HUNIN (1808–1855), Departing for the War (?), 1851, oil on canvas, 45 x 72 in.
(OPPOSITE PAGE, BOTTOM LEFT) FAEQ
HASSAN (1914–1992), Chai Khana, 1990, oil on canvas, 39 x 49 in.
(OPPOSITE PAGE, BOTTOM RIGHT) Quiet
Desperation, c. 1950–80, oil on cardboard, 16 3/4 x 10 1/2 in.
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It is clear that the past matters to the Habbas given the number of historic works in their collection. At a Toronto gallery, they bought a tall painting (almost six feet high) by “L. Boudin,” who presents a handsome classical ruin, almost certainly located in 18th-century Italy, from which peasant women have hung laundry to dry. A minor drama plays out in the foreground, where one figure seems to have collapsed in the lap of another. Even more dramatic is the six-foot-wide tableau painted in 1851 by Pierre Paul Alouis Hunin, a Flemish artist based in Brussels who was once renowned for historical genre scenes painted in the academic manner. Here we observe a frenzied burst of activity in a European town of that era; it would seem that young men are heading off to war and these are their final moments at home. At center, a nattily uniformed officer leans against a staircase, clearly skeptical of the drunken carousing and tearful farewells playing out all around him. By coincidence, the Habbas have hung in the same room another large academic painting with a similar theme; copied by “H. Coroenne” after “M. Klocke, Munich,” it shows a young boy being seized from the home of his frantic family to become an army conscript. Saad and Janan Habba are also the proud owners of a sequence of elegantly dressed ladies painted by different historical artists. I was particularly taken by the anonymous portrait of a blond lady wearing a black gown with brilliant teal sleeves; though it is hard to tell with the naked eye if the sleeves were reworked later, there is something of the ascetic, FranLOOKING BACK cophilic Welsh artist Gwen John (1876–1939) Two works in the collection are particularly in this image, or more likely someone in her meaningful given the Habbas’ Iraqi herit- circle. Moving forward through time, the Habage: large paintings presented by Faeq Hassan bas’ visitors can admire James Reed’s vision of (1914–1992) in gratitude for Saad’s having helped a lady wearing a large hat, R. Evenst’s view of a the adult son of the artist. Usually cited as the lady seen from back, and the contemporary masfather of Iraqi modern art, Hassan is a fascinat- ter Joseph Lorusso’s frank, head-on portrait of ing figure who deserves to be better known in a young woman with her right hand resting on the U.S. Illustrated here are both of these paint- her shoulder. Saad recalls buying this work, and ings. In one, we see a cafe in which six men sit another Lorusso scene of a man reading in a cafe, drinking chai, Iraqis’ favorite form of tea; one at a Scottsdale gallery two decades ago. patron enjoys a hookah pipe while an attendant prepares another glass beyond. Here each face ART WITH HEART tells a story, and indeed two of the men at left The Habbas’ sense of whimsy comes across in are immersed in what must be a fascinating tale, several of their artworks. Most striking is an with one rubbing his worry beads. The other anonymous portrait painted on cardboard and Hassan scene depicts two men riding Arabian inscribed by the artist with the words Quiet stallions through the desert, an iconic motif in Desperation. It shows an older man in profile the Middle East where horses and equestrian with a halo around his head, pen in hand and prowess are revered. (The Habbas own a paint- index finger at his lip, seemingly lost in creaing of a horse seen from head on, created by an tive thought. The quality of the draftsmanship is superb, which makes it all the more remarkunknown contemporary artist.) Also reflecting the Habbas’s native region is a able that Saad picked this up for $20 in a New black-and-gold, Art Deco-style clock by Jaeger- Jersey antique shop. This scene provokes almost Le Coultre once owned by the last king of Iraq, as much speculation among viewers as the large Faisal II (1935–1958), who was executed during painting of a couple seated in a rowboat. Both a coup, as well as several fine rugs woven in Teh- are rowing, but he stares intently at her while ran. In New Jersey they have even displayed one she stares enigmatically at us. What exactly is rug on a wall so that visitors can better appreci- happening here, we wonder? Alas, it’s a question ate its illustration of a narrative by the medieval Saad did not get answered when he acquired the scene from a gallery in the historic quarter Persian poet Omar Khayyam.
ago, a generous friend gave him a medal struck in 1757; on one side appears the cross of the Order of Malta and on the other the name of its Grand Master at that time. But Saad was thunderstruck when he learned that this coin-sized piece, called a grano by Italians, is in fact called a habba by the Maltese themselves. Kismet! Both Saad and Janan enjoy visiting art museums and galleries wherever they go, especially in New York City where they spend most weekends. The couple are not artistic themselves, though Janan made impressive drawings before they started their family in 1978; most of her works have an Art Deco sensibility in the spirit of Erté (1892–1990). It was in 1988 that Saad felt he could finally afford to buy some proper fine art. While attending a conference in Hawaii, he spent what was then a considerable sum on two large scenes of female nudes posed in nature, painted by Lau Chun (b. 1942), a gifted Chinese-born Hawaiian artist influenced by French impressionism. They still hang together in the largest room at the Habbas’ New Jersey home. Ever since, the couple have simply bought what they love, without particular concern for investment value, provenance, or even the artist’s critical reputation. Fine Art Connoisseur does not usually illustrate artworks without citing exactly who made them and when, but in this case, lacking some of those details is not a problem. Rather, we celebrate the fact that the Habbas enjoy their art in a purely visual way, and we also hope that perhaps some sharp-eyed reader will identify a work or two in the process.
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of Québec. More conventionally whimsical is a watercolor painted by the 20th-century British artist G. Marler, who depicts an old couple holding hands, hobbling into the sea with their canes in order to get their feet wet. Saad recalls buying it in London nearly 40 years ago. Acquired on other travels are two paintings by Cándido Bidó (1936–2011), a leading Dominican artist best remembered for brightly colored scenes of his compatriots in natural settings. On that trip to the Dominican Republic, Saad also purchased a densely patterned market scene that was driven across the border from Haiti just for him. Hanging nearby is a striking oil painting the Habbas found in Taormina, on the island of Sicily, painted by Tullio Corassi and showing the head of a sad-eyed male peasant. Another feature of this collection are the works created by several of Saad’s talented New Jersey acquaintances. Particularly prominent are five figurative oil paintings by Britt Aslanian Sikiric; illustrated here is her “portrait” of a lady clearly inspired by the elongated facial structures of Amedeo Modligiani, who in turn had looked back to ancient Cycladic figurines. The homage cycle spins on when we learn that the artist took some of her iridescent colors and patterning from Gustav Klimt. Similarly, Sikiric’s painting of a man with a red tie was directly inspired by The Thinker, a haunting likeness created by the unfairly overlooked American artist Gershon Benjamin (1899–1985) in the late 1940s. A patient of Dr. Habba’s represented in the collection is the late Barbara Ann Vorob. Illustrated here is her black alabaster sculpture of a draped figure, seemingly in mourning — the first of several tabletop-size sculptures she gave to Saad, who has kept this one on his office desk for 37 years now. Vorob also presented her physician with a luminous white alabaster of a female nude sleeping on a cloud, as well as the melancholy figure of a woman carrying a heavy load on her back. Finally, New Jersey artist Sandra Cerchio has painted a portrait of the Habbas together, and also a scene of waves on the beach. One story is especially insightful in suggesting how enthusiastic and intuitive the Habbas’ collecting can be. While sitting in traffic in the Manhattan neighborhood of Tribeca, Saad spotted a five-foot-high acrylic painting of a man’s head — Felix by the Quebeçois artist Guy Mourand (b. 1958) — in the window of an art gallery. Finding parking anywhere near the Holland Tunnel is nigh impossible, but somehow Saad managed it and raced into the gallery to purchase the work and arrange for its delivery. Indeed, when the Habbas see a work they love, they must have it right away. That impulse is one worth honoring and nurturing, and we only hope that more collectors will embrace their joyful approach to art. Peter Trippi is editor-in-chief of Fine Art Connoisseur. All photos by Kevin Noble, Brooklyn.
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(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) L. BOUDIN, Classical Ruin (?), 18th century (?), oil on canvas, 69 1/2 x 34 1/2 in. JAMES REED, Lady with a Large Hat (?), c. 1900–20, oil on canvas, 9 1/2 x 8 in.
CÁNDIDO BIDÓ (1936–2011), Joven
con Crotos (Young Woman with Croton Flowers), 1989, acrylic on canvas, 16 x 12 in.
ANONYMOUS, Couple
in a Rowboat (?), c. 1980–1995, oil on canvas, 42 x 66 in.
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O F F T H E W A L L S
Perry Vásquez (b. 1959), Landscape 3/3, 2021, oil on canvas, 96 1/2 x 28 1/2 in.
swaying violently, often ablaze, or perhaps morphed into cell towers that only look like trees. Vásquez explains, “I recall being shaken the first time I saw a burning palm tree. My response was to investigate the meaning of this phenomenon through painting and to work through my feelings of awe and dread…. Our species can choose to protect and nurture life on our planet or we can waste it. The choice is ours.”
A RT I ST S & G A L L E R I E S
Alyssa Monks (b. 1978), Watch the Only Way Out Disappear, 2021, oil on linen, 54 x 54 in.
Samuel L. Margolies (1897–1974), Man’s Canyons, 1936, etching and aquatint on paper, 11 7/8 x 8 13/16 in., The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection, 83.4.32
New York City
forumgallery.com through January 8 On view at Forum Gallery are 16 figurative paintings made during the pandemic by the Brooklyn-based artist Alyssa Monks. They sustain her renowned interest in expressively painted, psychologically charged portrayals of women posed behind transparent surfaces such as glass and plastic, but now Monks has turned from models to herself as the central subject. The works range widely in size, from 12 x 18 inches to 62 x 90 inches, most conveying a mood of anxiety that belies the exhibition’s ironic title, It’s All Under Control. Monks writes, “At times, the recent global and national devastation, division, and so many disappointments felt like a surreal projection of my own mental states in the isolation of the last 18 months. I began to explore the human reliance on control and predictability, and how our deepest suffering comes from our attachment to security, virtue, identity, and the logic of cause and effect. The glass barrier in these paintings between subject and viewer is clouded with vapor that obscures and abstracts the subject. This barrier underlines the personal and community-wide preoccupation with virus-laden respiratory droplets and the isolation it creates. Some works are more ambiguous than others, amplifying the state of disorientation in the face of terrifying unfamiliarity.” As expected, remarkable works are now emerging from artists’ studios after almost two years of relative confinement. Monks’s are surely among the most compelling.
San Diego
sparksgallery.com through January 9 Sparks Gallery is presenting Oasis, an exhibition of recent works by the Southern California artist Perry Vásquez (b. 1959). At its heart is a powerful series of paintings of palm trees, which are ubiquitous in his region and normally symbolize nourishment, shelter, and bounty. Instead, the artist has framed their regal forms in peculiar or dire scenarios,
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wolfsonian.org through April 24
Brandon Soloff (b. 1973), Cassandra, 2016, oil on canvas, 31 x 25 in.
New York City salmagundi.org January 10–28
The Salmagundi Club is opening 2022 with The New York Figurative Show, highlighting the human form in all its permutations. Presenting an array of works in various media, including drawings, paintings, photographs, and sculpture, this display explores the range of figurative practices thriving in artists’ studios today. The competition was open to both Salmagundi members and non-members working worldwide, be they established or emerging. The selections were made by members of the club’s art committee in collaboration with guest adviser Patricia Watwood. The awards jurors will be artists Max Ginsburg and Colleen Barry, who will present a $4,000 first prize, a $1,500 second prize, a $750 third prize, and a $500 award from Vanessa Rothe Fine Art (Laguna Beach). A ticketed panel discussion involving Colleen Barry, Vanessa Rothe, Patricia Watwood, and others will occur on January 14. J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y
On view at the Wolfsonian, part of Florida International University, is the intriguing exhibition Aerial Vision. It features more than 100 paintings, prints, drawings, design objects, magazine covers, and other items — drawn primarily from the museum’s rich collection — that reveal how airplanes, skyscrapers, elevators, and other early 20th-century inventions allowed mankind to gaze up, look down, and move with speed to new heights. These technological advances forever changed the way we humans see the world around us. The resulting imagery ranges from the mundane (e.g., window washing scenes) to the reverent (“the cult of the airplane pilot”), and from the breathtaking (bird’s-eye views of cities) to the fantastical (skyscraper airports). These themes interested people all over the world, from the Italian Futurists to the designers of Japanese aviationthemed board games. Their reactions varied, too, from a sense of awe, power, or privilege to anxiety and fear — perhaps of aerial bombardment, or maybe of the long shadows cast on city streets by skyscrapers towering above them. Today we take many of these ideas for granted, but a century ago, it was all new and being worked out in art and design. Miami is an ideal city to consider these themes, given its history as an aviation center connecting the U.S. and Latin America.
Worcester, Massachusetts worcesterart.org through March 13
The Worcester Art Museum is the first museum to present a new exhibition of masterworks, Love Stories from the National Portrait Gallery, London, which will then visit other U.S. cities. Home to the world’s most extensive 2 0 2 2
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merchant class, intellectual elite, and — most famously — the court of King Henry VIII. Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98-1543) developed his signature style in Basel and London amid a rich culture of erudition, luxury, and wit. He portrayed his contemporaries with technical skill and attention to detail while offering profound insights into their unique personalities, often via revealing props such as animals, jewels, letters, and books. Now Holbein’s oil paintings and chalk drawings are presented alongside his designs for personal emblems and metalwork, as well as jeweled hat badges and portrait medals. The first major Holbein exhibition ever mounted in the U.S., this project features more than 50 objects from nearly 30 lenders worldwide. It is accompanied by Getty Publications’ 192-page catalogue, edited by lead curator Anne T. Woollett. The show will soon move to its second and final venue, New York City’s Morgan Library & Museum (February 11–May 15).
George Frederic Watts (1817–1904), Ellen Terry (Choosing), 1864, oil on strawboard, 18 5/8 x 13 7/8 in., accepted in lieu of tax by H.M. Government and allocated to the NPG, 1975, 5048
portraiture collection, the NPG is currently closed for redevelopment, and so it is sharing many treasures with colleague institutions worldwide. On view are approximately 100 paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures that reflect a range of love stories, from romance, obsession, and infatuation to tragedy and loss. Among the lovers depicted are such historical figures as Emma Hamilton and Lord Nelson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, and Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, but also more modern ones such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono and David and Victoria Beckham. The artists who depicted them include such starry names as Anthony van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds, Lee Miller, and David Hockney. Many of these works rarely leave London, and several have never been seen in the U.S. The project is accompanied by a handsome catalogue published by the NPG.
Dean Mitchell (b. 1957), Quincy Plant Worker, 2011, watercolor on paper, 19 3/4 x 14 1/2 in., Huntsville Museum of Art, museum purchase in honor of Anne Pollard, funds provided by the Dr. John Rison Jones, Jr. Acquisition Fund and the Susy and Robert Thurber Acquisition Fund
Zoom visit with Mitchell in his studio, scheduled for February 11. Then, on March 10, attend his in-person talk at the museum, which will be followed by a reception.
Maria Schalcken (1645/50–before 1700), Self-Portrait of the Artist in Her Studio, c. 1680, oil on panel, 17 3/8 x 13 1/2 in., MFA Boston, gift of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, 2019.2094
Huntsville, Alabama
Boston
The Huntsville Museum of Art is presenting the exhibition Encounters: Dean Mitchell, devoted to the master watercolorist who grew up in, and has spent much of his life depicting, the area around the town of Quincy in Florida’s Panhandle. On view are his portraits, figures, landscapes, and still lifes, all reflecting the artist’s superb sense of design and capacity to convey emotional depth while avoiding sentimentality. Not all of the works are in watercolors; some are in egg temperas, oils, and pastels. Most of Mitchell’s sitters are African American. He explains, “Artists are observers of life, and it is natural that I would first gravitate to the space which I occupy. The neighborhoods I was raised in were segregated. Most of my teachers were Black. Churches I attended were Black, so it is natural for me as an artist to create works that reflect my own personal experience.” The exhibition is accompanied by a 24-page catalogue, and everyone is invited to pre-register for a free
In the 17th century, global commerce fueled the economy of the Netherlands; prosperous citizens commissioned and collected art in great volume and the period’s artistic high points remain deeply admired today. Now the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has renovated a suite of seven galleries as the focus of its new Center for Netherlandish Art (CNA). The achievements of artists in the Dutch Republic and Flanders are revealed through nearly 100 paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, Hals, Van Dyck, and others, along with works on paper and decorative artworks. Organized thematically, this installation explores such subjects as women artists and patrons; the growth of a modern art market; and the connections between still life paintings, the sugar trade, and slavery. The CNA is the first resource of its kind in the U.S., established with initial endowment funds from the collectors Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and Susan and Matthew Weatherbie, who also gave many of the paintings on display.
hsvmuseum.org through March 20
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mfa.org Ongoing
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543), A Member of the Wedigh Family, 1533, oil on panel, 16 9/16 x 12 13/16 in., Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, photo: Bildagentur / Jörg P. Anders / Art Resource, NY Ex.2021.1.43
Los Angeles
getty.edu through January 9 The J. Paul Getty Museum has mounted the exhibition Holbein: Capturing Character, which features the stillastonishing portraits painted and drawn by the German artist that illuminate fascinating figures from Europe’s
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School of Fine Art, then shuttled between the two countries before settling in the UK, where she is extremely well known. Her name is less familiar abroad, and so the Kunstmuseum has collaborated with Tate Britain to assemble more than 70 paintings, etchings, drawings, and collages dating from the 1960s through today. Rego’s large, deftly drawn figurative paintings underscore power relations, sexuality, and mythology, often alluding to the artist’s own struggles, including years of depression, as well as societal problems like discrimination against women.
David Hockney (b. 1937), View from the Mayflower Hotel, New York City (Evening), 2002, watercolor and white crayon on paper, 23 1/4 x 18 in. © David Hockney
New York City
nyhistory.org through February 27 The New-York Historical Society is presenting the exhibition Scenes of New York City, which features the 130 paintings, works on paper, and sculpture that Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld have promised to it from their extraordinary collection of New York City scenes. Ranging in date from the mid-19th through the 21st centuries, the show is a visual love letter to Gotham, replete with its heartstopping skyscrapers, humming bridges, and pell-mell of global humanity. The Hirschfelds’ gift includes works by 82 artists not previously represented in the Society’s collections, among them Charles Burchfield, Marc Chagall, Keith Haring, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O’Keeffe, Mark Rothko, and Andy Warhol. Accompanying the project is a handsome catalogue published by D Giles Limited (London) and edited by Roberta J.M. Olson, the Society’s curator of drawings emerita.
Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975), Shallow Creek, 1938–39, oil and egg tempera on canvas mounted on board, 36 x 25 in., bequest of James R. and Barbara R. Palmer, 2019.31 © 2021 T.H. and R.P. Benton Trusts / licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Winslow Homer, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe, and George Tooker.
The Art Gallery of Ontario has organized the exhibition Picasso: Painting the Blue Period. It focuses on the paintings, works on paper, and sculpture the young Spaniard made between 1901 and 1904, when he fashioned a distinctive style by adapting the artistic lessons he had learned in Paris to the social and political climate of economically struggling Barcelona, where he lived. The project has grown from a series of technical studies performed on several key paintings, offering new insights on their hidden compositions, motifs, and alterations, plus hitherto unknown information on Picasso’s materials and process. The accompanying catalogue (Delmonico Books) brings art history and conservation science together in a fascinating, and still too rare, way. The show will move on to the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., where it will be on view from February 26 through June 12.
palmermuseum.psu.edu January 29–April 24
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ago.ca through January 16
University Park, Pennsylvania At Pennsylvania State University, the Palmer Museum of Art is rapidly approaching its 50th anniversary. Its leaders are busy constructing an impressive new building, but that won’t prevent them from using the current one to host a year-long series of celebratory projects. They will kick it off with the exhibition An American Place, which presents highlights from the superb collection of American art bequeathed by the museum’s lead philanthropist, Barbara Palmer (1926–2019). Assembled over three decades with her husband, James, this trove contains paintings, works on paper, and sculpture dating from the 1870s through the 1970s. Among the artists represented are Milton Avery, Romare Bearden, Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Burchfield, Paul Cadmus, Mary Cassatt, Frederic Edwin Church,
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), The Blue Room, 1901, oil on canvas, 19 7/8 x 24 1/4 in., Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., acquired 1927 © Pablo Picasso Estate / SOCAN (2021)
Toledo, Ohio
toledomuseum.org Ongoing Paula Rego (b. 1935), Angel, 1998, pastel on paper mounted on aluminum, 70 7/8 x 51 1/8 in., private collection
The Hague
kunstmuseum.nl through March 20 The Kunstmuseum Den Haag has opened the largest retrospective ever devoted to the artist Paula Rego (b. 1935). She grew up in Portugal and studied at London’s Slade J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y
The Toledo Museum of Art recently reinstalled its Cloister Gallery, which contains one of North America’s finest collections of medieval art. Originally dedicated in 1933, this space is distinguished by three French arcades and a Venetian wellhead, all carefully cleaned over the past year. Objects off public view for decades have been conserved and redisplayed, along with new casework, lighting, and security. Together these enhancements offer a more accurate and inclusive narrative of art made during the Middle Ages, 2 0 2 2
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Years of Women’s Artistic Networks at PAFA. Unusually for an American institution, PAFA has been promoting women artists since its first annual exhibition in 1811, and this project explores the many female talents who showed, studied, and taught there right up until 1945. On view are more than 80 works by approximately 50 artists, most drawn from PAFA’s rich collection, including many recent acquisitions. Illustrated here is a superb, if unfamiliar, self-portrait by Margaret Foster Richardson. She presents herself with paintbrushes in hand, striding forward into the light, gazing at us self-confidently. Remarkable in her era would have been the decision to paint herself wearing eyeglasses, a no-nonsense hairstyle, a painter’s smock, and a rather masculine collar and tie. Clearly this woman has big things to paint and no time for fussiness. Anonymous (French), Polyptych: The Virgin and Christ Child, c. 1280–90, ivory with traces of polychrome and gilding, 11 1/2 in. x 10 1/2 in., Toledo Museum of Art, purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1950.304
Childe Hassam (1859–1935), Wainscott Links, 1907, oil on canvas, 23 1/2 x 29 in., Norton Museum of Art, gift of Doris and Shouky Shaheen
artists represented are William Glackens, Childe Hassam, Jane Peterson, Edward Henry Potthast, John Henry Twachtman, Guy Wiggins, Andrew Wyeth, and Jamie Wyeth. This show is hanging alongside another fascinating exhibition Jane Peterson: Impressions of Light and Water (on view through June 12). It celebrates the Norton’s eight oils and watercolors by this leading figure in Palm Beach’s art community, who worked there on and off from the 1910s through the 1950s. Peterson’s masterful rendering of South Florida sunshine contrasts with her evocation of Europe, especially the silvery atmosphere of her favorite place, Venice.
which spanned the years 500 to 1500. The approximately 100 works on view address themes such as religious plurality and devotion, the legacies of Rome, the role of women in the arts, and cultural interaction and exchange. The accompanying publication will be available for purchase this spring.
Morton Kaish (b. 1927), Trophy, 1957, lithograph on paper, 25 x 19 in.
New York City
Aurelio Amendola (b. 1938), Detail of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, 2021, photographic print on baryta paper with silver salts mounted on aluminum, 27 1/2 x 39 1/2 in.
museum.syr.edu through February 5 The Louise and Bernard Palitz Gallery at Syracuse University’s Lubin House is hosting the exhibition Morton Kaish: A Print Retrospective. Organized by director and chief curator Vanja Malloy alongside Kaish himself (who graduated from Syracuse in 1949), it surveys this artist’s longstanding love of printmaking over seven decades. On view are 31 prints in various media, starting with a drawing made in 1945, through his experimental years in Italy, and culminating in the dramatic color of his current Butterflies series.
Margaret Foster Richardson (1881–1945), A Motion Picture, 1912, oil on canvas, 40 3/4 x 23 1/8 in., gift of the Henry D. Gilpin Fund, 1913.13
Philadelphia
pafa.org through July 24 The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) has proudly organized the exhibition Women in Motion: 150 F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
West Palm Beach
Palm Beach
fourarts.org through January 30 The Society of the Four Arts is exhibiting 30 striking black-and-white photographs by the Italian artist Aurelio Amendola featuring details of iconic sculptures by two historic masters. Among Michelangelo’s works are David, Pietà, Moses, Victory, and tomb figures from the Medici Chapel. Gian Lorenzo Bernini is represented by Damned Soul, David, Apollo and Daphne, Rape of Proserpina, and Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius.
norton.org through May 1
The Norton Museum of Art is exhibiting a dozen works donated in 2020 by a seasonal resident of Palm Beach, Shouky Shaheen, and his late wife, Doris. Mostly landscapes, these oils and watercolors have enhanced the museum’s already deep holdings of American impressionism from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The
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CAR L B R E TZ K E Raindrop Abstract 39 x 31.5” Oil
carl@carlbretzke.com
carlbretzke.com
P E T E R S W I F T SYM METRICAL RE ALISM
O f fic ial League 4 8 ” by 4 8 ” Ac r ylic on c anvas
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In honor of an eternal love and in memory of the most beautiful tragic love story in Slovenia. Nik Anikis, the Neo-Renaissance Painter from Slovenia. Unconditional Love 23.62 x 19.69 in | 60 x 50 cm Oil on canvas, 2021 Learn about this mesmerizing true story here: www.anikis.com/mathilde
S usan Hediger Matteson
Winter’s Muse Oil 11 x 14 $1075.00
Featured in: California Art Club Exhibition • Excellence in Traditional Fine Art Competition • Winter Solace
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CHANTEL LYNN BARBER
“Using expressive brushwork Chantel does more than capture a likeness in her figurative work. Her bold paint application lends a sense of movement and emotion to each piece, elevating it beyond a predictable rendering and into compelling art” - Kim VanDerHoek
“Come and Find Me” 20x16, acrylic on panel Available through the artist
Give someone you love the gift of a commissioned portrait: chantellynnbarber.com 901.438.2420
BRIAN KEELER Modern Mythology
At the North Star Art Gallery Ithaca, NY
The Hemlock Cup oil on linen 36x40 (left) Study for Socrates red chalk and paste 20x22 (top right) Lamenting for Socrates red chalk and pastel 30x22 (bottom right)
743 Snyder Hill Rd • Ithaca, NY 14850 • 607.323.7684 • www.northstarartgallery.com • info@northstarartgallery.com
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WILLIAM A. SCHNEIDER
Revealing the Soul AISM, OPAM, PSA-MP, IAPS-MC
“Near North Rain” Oil on Linen on Panel, 24x18 Available at Reinert Fine Art Charleston, SC (843) 694-2445
Please see website for blog and workshop information
WWW.SCHNEIDERART.COM
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HEATHER ARENAS AWA WAOWM
Community, 18x24, oil on cradled birch
Visit www.heatherarenas.com for upcoming events and workshops. Email artist@heatherarenas.com for available work and commissions.
ADRA BROWN
TRISH BECKHAM
Between the Light and the Dark, 20 x 18 in. oil on linen
Weekend at the Royal Palm, 12 x 12 in. oil on panel
3700 South Dixie Highway #7 West Palm Beach, FL 33405 561.832.3233 www.marywoernerfinearts.com
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AIDA GARRITY Member of the prestigious Salmagundi Art Club, National Arts Club, the Players Club, and Portrait Society of America.
Roses, 8x10, Oil
Time for Tea, 8x10, Oil
w w w. a i d a b g a r r i t y. c o m 614-832-1422 | aida.garrity@gmail.com
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JILL BANKS AWA | WAOW | WSLP
Capturing Life in Oils Toward Heaven (detail) Oil on linen 24” x 24” $4350 FREE Shipping in Continental US
Enrich Your Collection
JillBanks.com Jill@JillBanks.com 703.403.7435 jillbanks1 JillBanksStudio
The Artful Deposit Gallery Celebrating our
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Anniversary artfuldeposit.com Bordentown City, NJ Gallerist, CJ Mugavero artfuldeposit@gmail.com (609) 298-6970 Rosie Sparacio - Rosie Pose Photography
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www.nancytankersley.com 410-253-3641
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The Path, 48 x 60 oil
Contact info: alanfetterman.com 215-345-7769
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Learn from the Experienced Camille PRZEWODEK
Camille Przewodek exposes the long-held secret of painting the “light key of nature,” which is the quality of light on a subject as determined by factors such as light, time of day, and atmospheric conditions. This video course allows you to experience a breakthrough — color, shadow, and natural light. Rooted in the world-renowned tradition of Monet, Hawthorne, and Hensche, Camille teaches in a way that will allow you to learn and apply your newly acquired skills right away — revolutionizing the way you paint! Camille guides you, step-by-step, in painting a sunny morning landscape. You’ll be capturing the illusion of light on structure and form, not getting hung up in the details, and you’ll be painting faster and more efficiently. CAMILLE PRZEWODEK: A COLORIST’S GUIDE TO PAINTING™, KYLE BUCKLAND: COURAGEOUS COLOR™, LANDSCAPE MASTERS SERIES™, STREAMLINE PREMIUM ART INSTRUCTION™, ©/™ STREAMLINE PUBLISHING, INC. 2022. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. HOME USE LICENSE ONLY: DO NOT COPY, DISTRIBUTE, RENT, OR PERFORM. FOR LICENSING INFORMATION, CONTACT 877-867-0324 OR LICENSING@STREAMLINEPUBLISHING.COM.
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Learn from the Experienced
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Kyle BUCKLAND
Have more fun painting when you learn the 6 elements of design! In this video workshop, artist Mary Garrish shows how to save time and frustration when you start with a strong foundation. Through her examples and step-by-step demonstration you’ll learn to use line, shape, value, color, edges, and texture to create great paintings every time! Shortcut years of wondering what went wrong when you follow Mary’s method of study, and approach your easel with enthusiasm!
Dive headfirst into color as award-winning artist Kyle Buckland shows you how to confidently mix expressive color using an easy-to-understand palette. Kyle will equip you to overcome any hesitation you might experience when choosing bold color combinations. Further, he’ll demonstrate how to control color so you can evoke the desired emotional response to your paintings. Kyle covers it all in this course: his simple palette and the tools you’ll need to get started, how to describe color accurately to achieve your desired emotion, and all throughout, how to develop your own signature style.
Gavin GLAKAS Gavin Glakas has an approach to pushing and experimenting with vibrant, exciting color that is logical and understandable. And most importantly, it’s easy to actually use in your paintings. He even shows how you can exaggerate some elements, minimize others, and distort object shapes, all while enhancing the realism you create and the story you are telling.
KYLE BUCKLAND: COURAGEOUS COLOR™, MARY GARRISH: 6 ELEMENTS OF DESIGN™, GAVIN GLAKAS: PAINTING THE NIGHT™, ART WORKSHOP SERIES™, MODERN MASTERS SERIES™, STREAMLINE PREMIUM ART INSTRUCTION™, ©/™ STREAMLINE PUBLISHING, INC. 2022. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. HOME USE LICENSE ONLY: DO NOT COPY, DISTRIBUTE, RENT, OR PERFORM. FOR LICENSING INFORMATION, CONTACT 877-867-0324 OR LICENSING@STREAMLINEPUBLISHING.COM.
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Farthing, Kathleen Gray........... 14
Peabody Essex Museum.......... 34
Arenas, Heather....................... 107
Ferguson, Diana....................... 17
Pollak, Laura............................. 7
Armendariz, Tony..................... 108
Florence Griswold Museum..... 36
Schneider, William A................ 106
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Autry Museum of the American
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Hillis, Catherine........................ 15
Basham, Jill.............................. 10
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Hockaday Museum of Art........ 33
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Kling, Chris............................... 15
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Lighthouse ArtCenter.............. 13
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Lorusso, Joseph....................... 11
Teare, Brad............................... 4
C.M. Russell Museum............... 30
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VanDerHoek, Kim..................... 103
California Museum of Fine Art.31
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Wagner, Jill Stefani................... 14
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Zhang, Yu (Miraclism).............. 5
SEWE/Southeastern Wildlife Exposition................................ 18 Sneary, Richard........................ 14 Starwalt, Jen............................. 19 Steamboat Art Museum........... 35 Stewart, Jenny......................... 17 Stratton, Thalia......................... 9 Swift, Peter............................... 102
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PAU L I N E R O C H E (b. 1 9 6 1), M ixi n g, 2 0 1 5, oil on linen, 18 x 18 in., private collection
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Edward Cucuel IMPRESSIONIST MASTER
This original oil is a superior example of Edward Cucuel’s aesthetic, characterized by a uniquely vibrant palette and rich impasto used to depict women at leisure in sun-dappled landscapes. Early 20th century. Signed (lower right). Canvas: 28”h x 321/8”w; Frame: 361/8”h x 39 3/8”w. #31-4284
622 Royal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130 • 888-981-8852 • info@rauantiques.com • msrau.com
Becky Pashia, Hidden Lake, 40 x 40 in.
celebration of fine art
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visit celebrateart.com Live Event:
Jan. 15–Mar. 27, 2022 | Open Daily 10am–6pm Loop 101 & Hayden rd, Scottsdale, Az 480.443.7695
Learn about our juried artists, view their work and add to your collection by experiencing our show virtually at celebrateart.com. See it all in person, in Scottsdale, through March. Where Art Lovers & Artists Connect
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