GR EAT COLLECTOR S | FR ANK DUV ENECK | CAPTUR ING ARCHITECTUR E | ALINA GR ASMANN
APRIL 20 21 VOLUME 18 ISSUE 2
A PR IL 2 021
John Porter Lasater
Carl Bretzke
DOOR
COUNTY
Tara Will
Brienne Brown
Zufar Bikbov
PLEIN AIR
PRESENTED BY PENINSULA SCHOOL OF ART
Events July 25-31 | Exhibition and Sale through Aug. 14
The Midwest's Premier Outdoor Painting Event 40 INVITED PLEIN AIR MASTERS Kurt Brian Anderson • Greg Barnes • Beth Bathe • Zufar Bikbov • Carla Bosch • Richard Boyer Carl Bretzke • Jay Brooks • Brienne Brown • Brian Buckrell • Shar Coulson • Joshua Cunningham TJ Cunningham • James Faecke • Jake Gaedtke • Debra Joy Groesser • Stephanie Hartshorn Tim Horn • Qiang Huang • Jane Hunt • Charlie Hunter • Shelby Keefe • Mat Barber Kennedy John Porter Lasater • Christopher Leeper • Jim McVicker • Spencer Meagher • Alison Leigh Menke Dan Mondloch • Kathie Odom • DK Palecek • Craig Reynolds • Jason Sacran Brian Sindler • Steve Stauffer • William Suys • Kim VanDerHoek • Tara Will
COMPLETE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS ONLINE PeninsulaSchoolofArt.org/2021DCPAF
PENINSULA SCHOOL OF ART Door County, WI | 920.868.3455
Anders Zorn (Swedish, 1860–1920), Frida, 1914, etching on paper, 7 3/4 x 6 in., private collection. Quote from James Earle Fraser and Laura Gardin Fraser Papers, “Augustus Saint-Gaudens,” draft, box 61, pp. 3–4, Syracuse University Library. Thanks to William E. Hagans.
“When it comes to etching, nearly everyone fumbles except Zorn.”
— Gari Melchers (1860–1932)
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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Alessandro Tomassetti | Policy of Truth, 2021 | oil on aluminum | 18 x 14 in
Heather Brunetti | Specter, 2021 | oil on panel | 30 x 24 in
Sara Gallagher | Ripple, 2021 | graphite on paper | 14 x 14 in
Patricia Schappler | Bird of Paradise, 2021 | oil on board | 32 x 24 in
www.33contemporary.com | www.poetsandartists.com
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
A S S O C I AT E P U B L I S H E R
A nne W. Brow n abrown@streamlinepublishing.com 435.772.0504 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 David Masello Louise Nicholson Charles Raskob 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 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 MUSEUM & AUCTION MARKETING SPECIALIST
A lexandra Lawson 202.834.6395 alawson@streamlinepublishing.com 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
Br uce Bingham bbingham@streamlinepublishing.com 51 2 .669.8 0 81 Mar y G reen mgreen@streamlinepublishing.com 508.230.9928
Quiet Strength, 20x16, Oil Paint (Aluminum Composite Material)
Lauren Piemont l p i e m o n t @ s t r e a m l i n e p u b l i s h i n g .c o m 7 0 4 .6 1 8 .0 6 9 4
w w w.jrussellwells.com 847-361-5124 • jrw@jrussellwells.com
Gina Ward g ward@streamlinepublishing.com 9 2 0 .743 . 2 4 0 5
Studio located in: Barrington, IL Follow me on Instagram
E D I TO R , F I N E A R T TO DAY
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
PJ Garoutte Pathways of a Painting artist’s Life Opening Reception Friday, April 9, 10am-6pm
PJ Garoutte, Bouquet for my Angel, 24x24 Oil on Canvas
April 9 - MAy 1, 2021
225 CAnyon roAd
info@MAnitougAlleries.CoM
331 SE Mizner Blvd. Boca Raton, FL 33432 Ph: 561.655. 8778 • Fa x : 561.655.616 4
JILL BANKS
CHAIRMAN/PUBLISHER/CEO B. Eric Rhoads
Capturing Life in Oils
bericrhoads@gmail.com Tw i t t e r : @ e r i c r h o a d s
AWA | WAOW | WSLP
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 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
Just Picked oil 30 x 40 in
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 acr uickshank@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).
Attention retailers: If you would like to carry Fine Art Connoisseur in your store, please contact Tom Elmo at 561.655.8778.
Green Parasol oil 36 x 24 in
Tulips and the Pepsi Truck oil 36 x 36 in
JillBanks.com
Jill@JillBanks.com 703.403.7435 jillbanks1 JillBanksStudio Subscribe and follow for happier news and fresh art 010
M A R C H / A P R I L
Copyright ©2021 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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F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
Aiden Kringen, Intimation, 48 x 60 in.
celebration of fine art
visit celebrateart.com Live Event:
Jan. 16-MaR. 28, 2021 | Open Daily 10am-6pm Loop 101 & Hayden rd, Scottsdale, Az 480.443.7695 For Tickets:
celebrateart.com
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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We highlight the talents of Monica Ikegwu, Jeremy Miranda, and Anna Wypych.
By Betsy Thomas
ARTISTS MAKING THEIR MARK: THREE TO WATCH
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HUGH LANE: IRELAND’S ART MODERNIZER
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GREAT ART WORLDWIDE
We survey seven top-notch projects occurring this spring.
DAVID REMFRY: AT HOME AND ABROAD
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By Louise Nicholson
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SPRING IS IN THE AIR
BUILD IT AND THEY WILL DEPICT IT By Max Gillies
There are at least four great reasons to visit the American West this season.
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THE NEXT WAY TO ENJOY ART?
ALINA GRASMANN: SOMEPLACE IN BETWEEN
By Daniel Grant
By Charles Moore
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OUT WEST WITH JEREMY LIPKING
CELEBRATING AMERICA’S GREAT COLLECTORS
By Matthias Anderson
WHEN AMERICAN ARTISTS FELL FOR SPAIN By Matthias Anderson
ON THE COVER Michael John Hunt (b. 1941), Charlie’s (detail), 2020, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 32 in. (overall), available from The Hunt Gallery (Sandwich, England); for details, please see page 64 or visit thehuntgallery.com.
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Loryn and Doug Brazier Jill DeTemple and Gordon O’Brien Marion and George Howard Toni and Steve Kellenberg David Lile and Fred Ehlers Tim McLaughlin Toni Moran Leslie Pritchard Keith and Allison Sullivan Libby and Dan Whipple
REDISCOVERING FRANK DUVENECK By Kelly Compton
Fine Art Connoisseur is also available in a digital edition. Please visit fineartconnoisseur.com for details.
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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
Carol Strock Wasson PSA • AWA • CPPM
The Art Museum of Greater Lafayette exhibition: Journey through the landscape: Paintings by Carol Strock Wasson December 18 - April 18, 2021 < carolstrockwasson.com < www.artlafayette.org
Flooded Field 3 18x28 pastel
Light and Snow 30x40 pastel
framed light through the barn 16x20 pastel
Last Light 1 16x20 pastel
A signature member of American Women Artists, Pastel Society of America, a Master member of Chicago Pastel Painters and has achieved Master Circle Status with International Association of Pastel Societies. Her work encompasses the genre of the rural area she lives in, focusing on color, shape, and design in the plein air tradition as well as in the studio. Her work can be seen and purchased at www.carolstrockwasson.com. Studio visits are welcomed. Online workshop spots available on her website, individual class, or group classes.
Strock Wasson Studio 317 N Columbia Union City, IN 47390 www.carolstrockwasson.com 937.459.6492 Cell Phone
Between Charlotte and Mary Lou, 60 x 108 oil, painted on location by Ryan Jensen.
ensen.
Recieve my newsletter, subscribe at
RyanJensen artwork.com
P U B L I S H E R ’ S
CONVEYING THE REAL EMOTION OF ART
F DANIEL E. GREENE (1934–2020), Publisher B. Eric Rhoads, 2005, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in.
016
rom childhood I remember the celebration when my Uncle Hugh bought one of the first televisions in our town. The extended family gathered around that small screen, about the size of a book, with its scratchy blackand-white images. We eventually got one, too, and then the first color TV when it came out, making Bonanza so much more enjoyable. Of course, screens have evolved to take over our lives, commanding our eyes every second of the day. I go from working on a big monitor in my office to looking at a bigger screen for entertainment at home, all while looking at the small screen in my hand as I scroll through hundreds of comments and videos. I can remember clearly the first time I saw a giant flat-screen television, about 15 years ago. It was at a friend’s Christmas party, and he was using an app to display a famous painting on the screen, which would then flip to another, and then another. Having seen those paintings in person, it was an interesting experience for me, as they were all illuminated much better than in the museums, and every telling detail was visible. I immediately went to the store and spent a crazy sum on a big plasma screen; I’m still embarrassed to say how much, but it was a lot. (Today I can buy a bigger and better screen for a twentieth of the price.) Although I used that new TV to watch the usual programming, I was particularly keen to have fine art images scrolling across its screen, even when it was not in use, because I love art so much. (Someone even manufactured a TV with a gold frame for just this purpose.) And though I was initially enthusiastic about gazing at masterpieces that I could never own myself, I found this feature tedious over time — not nearly as gratifying as the actual painting of equal scale I had hanging on an adjacent wall. It got old fast. M A R C H / A P R I L
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Now this idea is back. You can project the usual historical masterpieces, but you can also lease newer images created by living artists. I am all for anything that helps artists make some extra income (much as they do by selling prints or giclées), but I think this new phase may well fall to the same place I fell 15 years ago. Flat. I don’t want to be the guy who poohpoohs new ideas, as I’m often wrong about what will catch on. But I do want to ensure that people know they can afford to own original artworks. There is nothing quite as elegant as a home adorned with original art, with images not compromised by the limitations of your TV’s size, shape, or clarity. My first experience visiting such a home was literally lifechanging, and — just like that moment I saw my first flat-screen — I made it my priority to obtain original artworks. Today education and awareness are the key problems. I’m seeing amazing artists and artworks on social media, and discovering new creative visions we want to feature editorially. But most of us are not getting that all-important in-person viewing experience. I once visited a Colorado artist who was seeking to be featured in the magazine. He sent me digital images that looked flat and uninteresting, but when I saw them in person, they just came alive. Another time, I saw a web advertisement for a John Singer Sargent painting on view at a museum in our town. It was nice, but in person that portrait looked 600 percent better and brought tears to my eyes. There is simply no substitute for inperson viewing — something we need to help all screen viewers understand. Art is truly an emotional experience. Though I love that screens large and small can disseminate art to millions of people who would never otherwise see it, I hope all artists and all galleries will remind their friends and followers that “art is best experienced in person.” There is just nothing like studying the arc of a brushstroke and the way light hits its surface. This responsibility lies with all of us. Let’s get everyone we know to visit galleries, museums, fairs, auctions, and artists’ studios — once it’s safe to do so again. Once you become addicted to art in person, nothing else will do. Editor’s Note: For more on this topic, please see Daniel Grant’s article on page 94.
B. ERIC RHOADS Chairman/Publisher bericrhoads@gmail.com 561.923.8481 facebook.com/eric.rhoads @ericrhoads 2 0 2 1
F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
DAVINA PERL
davinaperlfineart.com New studio in Lucca, Italy
The Trippe Gallery Paintings Sculpture Photography
All The King’s Men : Watergate Chess Set, 1/1, bronze by Jessica DeStefano
Home Lights by John Brandon Sills, oil 48x36
Full Blown by Stephen Haynes, oil 24x18
Two Birds by Nancy Tankersley, oil 24x24
Early Summer Trees by Jill Basham, oil 11x11
The Trippe Gallery thetrippegallery.com
Downstream by Cynthia Rosen, oil 38x18
Sentinels of Chesapeake Bay, by Stephen Griffin, oil 36x 30
23 N Harrison Street • Easton, Maryland • tripphilder@icloud.com • 410-310-8727 • thetrippegallery.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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y favorite issue of the year is the one that highlights real-world collectors of contemporary realist art. This is that issue, and we hope you will enjoy “meeting” the individuals and couples who have so generously opened their doors (see pages 96–115). These folks now join 72 others we have profiled since 2015, and we are honored and grateful to welcome them to this community. Why do we do this? First, people need role models, in any walk of life. We play football better after watching Tom Brady, and we cook more effectively after Rachael Ray demonstrates the recipe. It’s harder with art collecting because there is no single way to do it, and unfortunately the best-known collectors are financiers and movie stars paying millions at auction for a Koons or a KAWS. Good for them, but that’s collecting warehoused-investment assets with your ears, not art-to-livewith with your eyes. I’m far more intrigued by celebrities who collect items of comparatively low value: just for example, Tom Hanks buys antique typewriters, Angelina Jolie goes for medieval and Renaissance knives, and Claudia Schiffer seeks out mounted beetles, butterflies, and spiders. Great, but this is a fine art magazine, and besides, buying anything when you’re a hundred-millionaire is not particularly difficult. The real trick is to buy wonderful “unbranded” art on a regular budget, away from the limelight and the art advisers who think about this stuff all day. The folks highlighted in this issue buy art with their eyes and hearts, living with and enjoying it, sometimes enhancing their lives further by getting to know the artists who made it. The hardest step in this issue’s preparation is asking the collectors to choose just two artworks to illustrate in their profiles. That’s
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like choosing among your kids, but the collectors do it bravely, and they understand why we ask them to. It’s simple: we can dedicate only two pages to each collector, and if we were to fill them with seven or eight “favorite” images, there wouldn’t be room for the words. Besides, each artwork would look more like a postage stamp than a painting. And so we go smaller (in number) and bigger (in photo size), reminding everyone that these two images don’t represent the whole collection, only evoke it. Finally, two practical points. First, to the artists: never let your artwork leave the studio without photographing it to a high (publishable) standard. Artworks are your legacy, and if you don’t record them properly for future reference, you are trusting your legacy to a world that will never care like you do. While preparing our collector issues, I have been shocked by the difficulty of rounding up good photos of artworks. One cannot expect every collector to have great shots (though their insurers would appreciate that), but surprisingly few artists have them either. Second, please note the lively profile of Toni Moran on page 108. She underscores how important it is for collectors to document the artworks they own, including photographing them. And once you’ve done that, I ask you to consider sharing the images with museum curators and living artists. This can now be done via at least two firms: Vastari (vastari.com/solutions/collectors) and Artwork Archive (artworkarchive.com/collectors/ showcase-your-art-collection). Both offer safe, discreet ways to let “the right people” know what you have so they can research, publish, and perhaps borrow your art. It costs very little, and joining the network is an ideal way to connect with others who love art, too. Thank you again to our wonderful collectors and artists for all they contribute to the vitality of our field.
F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
TRIPPI PHOTO: FRANCIS HILLS
COLLECTING FOR THE RIGHT REASONS
PatriciaAGriffin.com
Ascension of the Masses 48x144’’ oil on linen
February 6- April 24 2021 Hudgens Center for the Arts, GA co-sposored by Georgia Audubon
Three Billion
Facing the Universe:
The Cosmos Within
An online virtual exhibition through April 24 Curated by David Hummer & Didi Menendez
Nick Gebhart Girl with the silver lip ring
Kate Van Doren A life within her
IBPC International Biennial Portrait Competition
A physical exhibition April 29 - June 26 Deadline to Enter March 20 Curated by David Hummer
Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art 309 McClellan Street Wausau WI 54403 715-298-4470 wmoca.org
LILIYA MUGLIA
PORTRAIT OF FOLK WOMEN FROM A FORGOTTEN TIME
Study For Blood Moon R e d C h a l k o n To n e d P a p e r , 1 0 ” x 1 2 ” Study For Blood Moon R e d C h a l k o n To n e d P a p e r , 1 0 ” x 1 2 ”
Blood Moon, Oil on Canvas
T A K I N G
C O M M I S S I O N S
Study For Olya R e d C h a l k o n To n e d P a p e r , 1 0 ” x 1 2 ”
20”x28”
O N
P E R I O D
P A I N T I N G S
MUGLIA-ART.COM | INFO@MUGLIA-ART.COM | 416-434-9442 |
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: MUGLIA.ART |
D R A W I N G S
: LILIYA MUGLIA
2021 FACULTY Watercolor Live presented artists around the world the opportunity to engage with and learn from the top painters working in watercolor today. With roughly 1,700 in attendance from 40 countries, the virtual event showcased the range and diversity of effects possible with the medium. We want to thank our phenomenal faculty for helping to make the first Watercolor Live a success!
SHUANG LI
Escondido, California Icy Creek, Boulder, 12 x 6 in., watercolor on paper info@shuangliwatercolors.com www.shuangliwatercolors.com Represented by Forest & Ocean Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
STEPHEN ZHANG
Plano, Texas Stone Road, 36 x 48 in., watercolor on paper Available through the artist stephenzhang@verizon.net www.stephenzhangart.com
IAIN STEWART
Opelika, Alabama Oh to be Back in the Land of Coca-Cola, 21 x 12 in., watercolor on paper mail@stewartwatercolors.com | 404.622.4631 www.stewartwatercolors.com
ANDY EVANSEN
Hastings, Minnesota Fresh Snow on Hastings, 11 x 15 in., watercolor Available through the artist evansenartstudio@gmail.com www.evansenartstudio.com Represented by Howell Gallery, Oklahoma City, OK
GLEN KNOWLES
Palmdale, California Meditating Gardens, 18 x 24 in., watercolor en plein air knowles4@qnet.com 661.273.2935 www.glenknowlesfineart.com Represented by californiawatercolor.com
MATTHEW BIRD
Baltimore, Maryland Coal Miner’s Daughter, 14 x 24 in., watercolor on paper Available through the artist matthew@matthewbird.com 410.581.9988 www.matthewbird.com
2021 FACULTY
ANGUS MCEWAN
SHERYL FLETCHER COON
Palm Coast, Florida, and Shorewood, Illinois Faces of War, 20 x 24 in., transparent watercolor Available through the artist twsaexhibition@aol.com 815.354.1173
LAURIN MCCRACKEN
Fort Worth, Texas Three Magnolias with Silver, 20 x 26 in., watercolor Available through the artist laurinmc@aol.com 817.773.2163 www.lauringallery.com
Dundee, Scotland, UK Ties that Bind, 36.5 x 49.5 cm, watercolor Available through the artist art@angusmcewan.com +447790110006 www.angusmcewan.com Represented by Plus One Gallery, London, England; Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland; Smithy Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland
JEAN PEDERSON
Calgary, Alberta One Hare Too Many, 48 x 48 in., mixed media Available through the artist artform@telus.net | www.jeanpederson.com Represented by The Collectors’ Gallery, Calgary, Alberta
TERRY DENSON St. Petersburg, Florida Cactus Light, 18 x 36 in., watercolor Available through the artist terry@terrydenson.com www.terrydenson.com Paintings That Light Up Your World
BRENDA SWENSON
South Pasadena, California Pigments of Your Imagination, 13 x 16 in., watercolor Available through the artist swensonsart@gmail.com www.swensonsart.net
JOHN SALMINEN
Duluth, Minnesota Yellow Awning, 36 x 36 in., transparent watercolor Available after May 1 (in AWS traveling exhibition until then) johnandkathysalminen@gmail.com www.johnsalminen.com
2021 FACULTY
DAN MARSHALL
Denver, Colorado The Coming Storm, 16 x 20 in., watercolor danmarshallart@gmail.com www.danmarshallart.com
LINDA DALY BAKER, AWS-DF, NWS
Charleston, South Carolina Soho Shadows, 22 x 30 in., transparent watercolor Available through the artist lindabakerartmentor@gmail.com www.lindabakerartmentor.com
KIM MINICHIELLO
Windermere, Florida Miyako Odori, 38 x 26 in., watercolor Available through the artist kimminichielloart@me.com www.kimminichiello.com
KEIKO TANABE
Carlsbad, California Autumn Rain, 22 x 30 in., watercolor Available through the artist ktanabeart@gmail.com www.ktanabefineart.com
BIRGIT O’CONNOR Bolinas, California
Nun on Bourbon St, 15 x 22 in., watercolor birgitoconnor@sbcglobal.net 415.868.0105 www.birgitoconnor.com
LARRY MOORE
MICHAEL HOLTER
Plano, Texas Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, 12 x 16 in., watercolor Available through the artist michael@michaelholter.com | 972.965.2078 www.michaelholter.com Represented by Davis & Blevins Gallery, Saint Jo, TX
Charleston, South Carolina The Family of Man, 14 x 12 in., gouache on paper larry@larrymoorestudios.com 407.222.8585 www.larrymoorestudios.com Represented by Horton Hayes Fine Art, Charleston, SC; Gallery Wild, Jackson, WY
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MUSKEGON MUSEUM
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AMERICAN T ONALIST S OCIET Y Fostering the Tradition and Art Form of Contemporary American Tonalism
Rachel Warner
Specializing in Custom Tonalist Commissions
‘Between Worlds’ 36 x 36 in.
rachelwarnerart@ymail.com FB / Instagram / 406 253 5351
Karen Vance
“Winter’s Light - Ovando, Montana” 12h” x 24w” Oil on linen by Karen Vance karen@karenvanceart - www.karenvanceart.com
Visit the 2020 Online Juried Showcase Exhibit at www.AmericanTonalistSociety.com
BRAD TEARE
D
eep in the Rocky Mountains, a stream flows by towering cottonwoods, that shift through a spectrum of yellows and reds. Painting from plein air sketches, The fleeting colors are captured in thicks strokes of vibrating color. color.
Big Cottonwood Canyon, 30” x 30”, oil on canas
D
eep in the Rocky Mountains, a stream flows by towering cottonwoods that shift through a spectrum of yellows and reds. Painted from plein air sketches, the fleeting colors are captured in thick strokes of vibrating color.
BRAD TEARE discovered his love for thick paint at a Van Gogh exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. Surprised at the impact the paintings had in person, he began exploring texture by painting with palette knives in rich, multi-hued strokes. His studio, located between Yellowstone to the north and Arches to the south, provides scenery for a lifetime of painting.
Palace Ave. Gallery • 123 West Palace Avenue Santa Fe, NM 87501 • 505.986.0440 info@manitougalleries.com
Teare paints outside to capture vibrant color. Above: Cottonwood Canyon, oil, 30 x 30”
March 13 - 27 Online Art Auction
March 27 Night of Artists 20th Anniversary Exhibition Opening Celebration & Grand Live Auction
March 28 - May 9 Public Exhibition & Fixed Price Sale
Celebrating its 20th Anniversary both in-person and online, Night of Artists features nearly 300 new works of painting, sculpture and mixed media by over 75 of the country’s leading contemporary Western artists. Don’t miss the opportunity to support the Briscoe’s mission and experience one of the largest Western art exhibition and sales in the United States.
Purchase tickets and register to bid at briscoemuseum.org/noa.
Chad Poppleton, Before the Branding, Oil, 22” x 40” Krystii Melaine, Tsemehot-o, The One I Love Cheyenne, Oil on linen panel, 42” x 22”
Two Sale Events in 2021 to Benefit the C.M. Russell Museum
Sealed Bid Sale MARCH 19, 2021
Exclusively in 2021, The Russell is proud to offer a unique opportunity to bid on a selection of important historic works. Confidential sealed bids will be accepted until Charlie Russell's birthday on March 19. For more information on the available works of art as well as bidding procedures, visit cmrussell.org/the-russell.
E.I. Couse, Turkey Hunter in the Aspens, oil, 20 x 24 inches
W.H.D. Koerner, Indians Attacking Stagecoach, oil, 40 x 50 inches
C.M. Russell, A Desperate Stand, oil, 24 x 36 inches
C.M. Russell, Pony Dance, watercolor, 10 x 14 inches
G.C. Delano, The Hunter, oil, 22 x 40 inches
C.M. Russell, The Run, oil, 11 x 18 inches
C.M. Russell, Carson Defeats the French Bully in Horseback Duel, ink wash, 11 x 20 inches
G.C. Delano, Moonlight Stampede, oil, 30 x 40 inches
O.C. Seltzer, Indian War Party, oil, 23 x 14 inches
Live Auc tion AUG US T 20 -2 1 , 202 1
Join us at The Russell: An Exhibition and Sale to Benefit the C.M. Russell Museum on a new date this year. The Russell is widely recognized as one of the most prestigious and fun western art events in the world. It is set to impress once again, offering competitive bidding for significant works by highly-acclaimed historic and contemporary Western artists. NOW ACCEPTING CONSIGNMENTS Contact Duane Braaten, Director of Art and Philanthropy, at dbraaten@cmrussell.org or 406-604-4751. 400 13 th Street North | Great Falls, Montana | (406) 727–8787 | CMRussell.org/the-russell
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DALI HIGA
ANASTASIA
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DALI HIGA
CALIFORNIA MUSEUM OF FINE ART www.californiamuseumoffineart.com
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Jack Dorsey Art Auction Legendary northwest artist and patriarch of the Dorsey family of artists, JACK DORSEY, celebrates his 81st birthday with an online auction of his beautiful acrylic, oil and watercolor paintings.
March 12-31, 2021 www.sunnyshorestudio.com
With works in the permanent collections of the
Represented by Astoria Fine Art, Jackson WY
Whitney Western Art Museum
Huey’s Fine Art, Santa Fe NM
National Museum of Wildlife Art
Row House Gallery, Milford OH
Mark Eberhard www.markeberhard.com
Woodson Art Museum
eberhardad2.indd 1
1/28/21 2:40 PM
Karen Ann Hitt
An Original Hitt
1 March 2021
Solo Exhibit Opens
Update: date moved from 15 February 2021 Represented by
Hughes Gallery
333 Park Ave., Boca Grande, FL
941.964.4723 • HughesGallery.net
kanorighitt@gmail.com 941.586.0207
AnOriginalHitt.com
Discover @anoriginalhitt
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8th Annual
April 28 - May 9 12-Day Festival Virtual and Live Events Open to All - Most Free Special Festival Section: Landscape Design & Outdoor Life Friday May 7, 2021 Boston Design Week Awards 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award: Miguel Gómez-Ibáñez 2021 Producers’ Choice Award: The Society of Arts and Crafts Other Awards: Call for Nominations Open Until March 15
BostonDesignweek.com/Awards Register now for our eNews for Priority Announcements
Produced by: Fusco & Four/Ventures, LLC Sponsored by:
BostonDesignWeek.com Photo courtesy of: Craig Tevolitz, Platemark Design, Boston
GIVE THE GIFT OF PAIN Daniel SPRICK
PORTRAITS
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ortraits with Daniel Sprick is your opportunity to experience portraits through the lens of Daniel’s unique thought process, giving you insights that could transform the way you approach your painting. Dan is also going to teach you how to have a strong foundation for your painting, no matter what your preferred subject is.
You’ll see the materials, tools, and types of paint he uses to create his masterpieces. You’ll discover his techniques for how to create a harmonious and expressive picture that brings out the hidden beauty of your subject. And he’s also going to give you a masterclass on the value of values, color temperature, and “edge control” that is going to cement your understanding of portrait painting even more. You’ll learn how to work from generalities (big shapes), and how to slowly “sculpt” them into more specific depictions.
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NTING LIKE A MASTER Nikolai BLOKHIN
Kathleen HUDSON
Kathleen Hudson shows you how to accurately capture a beautiful storm — a scene where the atmosphere changes in mere seconds and the shifting shadows play tricks on your eyes. Watch and learn as Kathleen expertly paints the light and movement of the heavy atmosphere as the storm travels briskly across a wide vista. Such a painting takes special preparation and skilled brushwork and Kathleen is the perfect instructor to demonstrate the energy and excitement that comes with a powerful storm.
For the first time, Russian artist Nikolai Blokhin has recorded his tightly-held techniques of 19th century Russian masters, giving you the opportunity to apply these age-old traditions in your own artwork. As Nikolai works through a large demonstration painting, Old Harlequin, you’ll feel as though you’re present in his grand studio space as he sorts through piles of paint tubes and searches his vast collection of brushes for just the right one. You’ll feel so close to Nikolai and his work that you’ll want to have the final painting for yourself, just to revel in this feeling forever.
Rose FRANTZEN
One look at Rose Frantzen’s work and you’ll get a sense of what makes her one of today’s most unique artists. Electrifying expressions balanced with mastered disciplines, Rose is highly respected for creating thought-provoking artwork that thrills her followers and pleases her loyal collectors. Freely sharing her fascinating approach to painting, let Rose help you find your own style and voice. Soon, you’ll be spontaneously painting from the depths of your soul.
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C O L L E C T O R S S H O W C A S E
W
e purchase art because it fills a void, makes us smile, recalls a memory, or changes the space in which we spend our days. Well-known New York collectors Dr. Marvin and Natalie Gliedman collected for distraction … wandering the galleries of Madison Avenue was “a release,” an escape into something cerebral and ineffable. “I have the impression that they often found themselves standing in front of some work of art and just falling in love with it,” writes Stephen Jones, a specialist in Christie’s Post War & Contemporary Art department. “They had no advisers, gave no thought to investment, they just collected for the sheer love of it.”* Whether you collect from articles or advertisements you see here in Fine Art Connoisseur or via the myriad of possibilities in your community or online, we hope this showcase may increase your collection, or is the incentive to begin purchasing art.
*Christie’s Online Magazine, No. 244
North Star Art Gallery presents
BRIAN KEELER OPA, PSA
Eurythmic Light:
American Landscapes Exhibition, March through April
Ellis Hollow- Winter Light” oil on panel 24” x 30”
743 Snyder Hill Rd • Ithaca, NY 14850 • 607.323.7684 • www.northstarartgallery.com • Follow us on Instagram @northstarartgallery
C O L L E C T O R S S H O W C A S E
C O L L E C T O R S S H O W C A S E
Ceres Gallery
CeresGallerynh CeresGalleryNH
23 Ceres Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801 • Tel: 603-294-0657 • Email: ceresgallerynh@gmail.com • Website: www.ceresgallery.net
Representing Fine Artists Locally and Internationally on the Portsmouth waterfront
C O L L E C T O R S S H O W C A S E
llery.net
JESSICA BIANCO
Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada Fears for Humanity, 80 x 80 cm, oil on canvas Available through the artist biancofineart@outlook.com | www.biancofineart.com Gallery inquiries welcome
ANDRES LOPEZ
C O L L E C T O R S S H O W C A S E
Miami, Florida Look Art Me, 36 x 36 x 1 1/2 in., oil on linen Available through the artist andreslopezfineart@gmail.com www.andreslopezfineart.com Represented by Jack Meier Gallery, Houston, TX; and UGallery.com
NIK ANIKIS
Sevnica, Slovenia Curse of Triton, 51 x 51 in., oil on canvas Available through the artist info@anikis.com | +38640476266 | www.anikis.com Gallery inquiries welcome
SUSAN NEESE
Fair Play, Missouri Firenze L’entrata, 24 x 18 in., oil on canvas Available through the artist www.susanneese.com Visit website for gallery representation
JULIE RIKER
Camp Hill, Pennsylvania Gather ’Round, 24 x 24 in., oil on linen Available through the artist www.julieriker.com Gallery inquiries welcome
C O L L E C T O R S S H O W C A S E
HEATHER ARENAS AWA, WAOWM Myakka City, Florida A Small Offering, 36 x 48 in., oil on cradled wood Available through the artist artist@heatherarenas.com | 720.281.4632 | www.heatherarenas.com Visit website for gallery representation
NINA COBB WALKER WAOW
El Paso, Texas Foreboding, 24 x 36 in., oil on canvas Available through the artist or Cate Zane Gallery, www.catezane.com ninawalker63@gmail.com | 915.755.7554 | www.ninacobbwalker.com Represented by Cate Zane Gallery, Austin, TX
STEPHEN HAYNES
Irwin, Pennsylvania Cold Snap, 20 x 24 in., oil on canvas Available through the artist smhaynes77@gmail.com | 412.378.1682 | www.stephenhaynes.com Represented by Trippe Gallery, Easton, MD
C O L L E C T O R S S H O W C A S E
STAN MILLER
Spokane, Washington San Marco Evening Rain, 32 x 23 in., egg tempera on panel Available through the artist stan@stanmiller.net | 509.768.9354 www.stanmiller.net
DAVID MARTY
Edmonds, Washington Gently Swaying, 30 x 24 in., oil on canvas Available through the artist david@davidmarty.com 425.275.8773 www.davidmarty.com Represented by Cole Gallery, Edmonds, WA; Dick Idol Signature Gallery, Whitefish, MT; West Lives On Gallery, Jackson, WY
CATHERINE JOHNSTON Tulsa, Oklahoma Hope, 5 ft. 6 in., bronze Shown here in Clarehouse Garden tulsacjohnston@gmail.com 918.645.8548
There is a lot of superb art being made these days. This column shines light on a trio of gifted individuals. JEREMY MIRANDA (b. 1980) is an environmentalist, but not in the strict textbook sense. As an artist who waxes poetic about his immediate surroundings through paint, he endeavors to make sense of, and bring broader meaning to, the everyday spaces and places we inhabit. In particular, he’s interested in closely observing the play of light and intricate color patterns he sees around him in the hope of unearthing some quiet corner or hidden narrative. While environmentalists try to solve such problems as how to eliminate pollution and protect nature, Miranda is helping to solve such visual dilemmas as cursory glances and our tendency to overlook. A recent painting titled Home Remedy is a good example. The brightly blazing fire in the foreground could symbolize numerous things, and often the artist leaves interpretation up to the viewer, but this simple activity took on additional meaning in pandemic times. “Backyard fires have become a kind of lifeline as of late,” Miranda shares about this piece completed in 2020. “It is based on the first gathering we had with other people during the first few months of the pandemic, when things felt especially dark and confusing. I felt so thankful for this fire because it allowed us to crawl out of hiding for just a moment, and I wanted to convey not only the physical heat of that night but also the emotional and spiritual warmth.” Like many of Miranda’s works, Home Remedy is painted in acrylic with strong geometric shapes, sensitively considered color, and effective design. His style has similarities to both the Ashcan School and the Bay Area Artists, in that these painters were deeply attuned to the daily activities and unique characteristics of their specific cities and towns. Miranda also shares stylistic sensibilities with the contemporary group known as Perceptual Painters, who offer their direct and personal response to the visible world with a focus on space, volume, color, and shape. Miranda learned his technique from a variety of sources, including earning a B.F.A. in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Today he makes his home and studio in Kittery, Maine, with his wife, the artist and surface designer Michelle Morin, and their two children.
JEREMY MIRANDA (b. 1980), Home Remedy, 2020, acrylic on panel, 54 x 48 in., private collection
MIRANDA is represented by William Baczek Fine Art (Northampton, Massachusetts), Sebastian Foster (Austin), Nahcotta Gallery (Portsmouth, New Hampshire), Room 68 (Provincetown, Massachusetts), and Dianna Witte Gallery (Toronto). 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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ANNA WYPYCH (b. 1986) is one of those artists whose paintings become more interesting the more you know about her. A painter based in Gdynia, Poland, Wypych has always marched to the beat of her own drum and has never liked to blend in with the crowd. She reads copious amounts of poetry and philosophy, and concepts and ideas inspired by those readings or her own ruminations often become the starting point of her mesmerizing paintings. As a full-time artist who is also a mother and wife, Wypych typically paints women displaying multifaceted strengths, such as determination, passion, and positivity. In her painting That Obvious Truth … There Are Many of You — which was part of her Point of Change … Thought solo exhibition at Denver’s Abend Gallery this past December — Wypych turned her attention to nature and the elements, which she describes as offering solace and life-changing realizations during difficult times. After listening to podcasts in which two different artists mentioned the inherent duality in females, she knew she wanted to explore this concept further. Deep in the forest of her imagination emerged a wandering woman displaying the dualities Wypych wished to express. She went to work bringing this vision to life, and wrote a poem with the same title to accompany the painting. (Its text appears below.) “That sentence sounded like a spell in my head,” the artist explains. “Simultaneously, there are many like you, meaning that you are not alone, and there are many versions of you within you. You are a complex multi-dimensional entity that cannot be easily defined or crossed out.”
Somewhere in between… she went for a wander, to draw a breath alone in the woods flame they are coming, versions of women go simultaneously I am many. We are many.
ANNA WYPYCH (b. 1986), That Obvious Truth … There Are Many of You, 2020, oil on canvas, 39 x 24 in., Abend Gallery (Denver).
Wypych describes her painting technique as traditional with elements of hyperrealism, surrealism, and imagination, and she draws an interesting parallel between the places she and her art reside. “I live on the coast of the beautiful Baltic sea,” she says, “and my art traditions are like Poland, located somewhere between traditional eastern Europe and the modern West.” Wypych graduated from the Academy of Arts in Gdansk in 2011 and has since participated in numerous exhibitions and competitions, winning several awards and honors. This March, she will be part of a group exhibition at Principle Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia, as well as an exhibition celebrating International Women’s Day at the Museu Europeu d’Art Modern (MEAM) in Barcelona. WYPYCH is represented by Abend Gallery (Denver), AnArte Gallery (San Antonio), and Principle Gallery (Alexandria, Virginia).
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MONICA IKEGWU (b. 1998) was born and raised in Baltimore, a place that has played a powerful role in both her life and art. She believes that “Baltimore has a certain energy, and the people here have contagious personalities that make me want to capture them on canvas.” Her earliest paintings often depicted her siblings and other family members, who continue to inspire her as they progress through life. During middle and high school, Ikegwu experimented with pencils and charcoals, but an “aha” moment came sophomore year when she took a required course in painting. She had originally planned to attend nursing school, but a substantial scholarship to Baltimore’s Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) proved irresistible, and her work evolved significantly during her four years there earning a B.F.A. degree. Ikegwu has long juxtaposed the seemingly three-dimensional figures of her models against two-dimensional design elements in the background. Initially she experimented with cutting stenciled patterns in plastic and painting them onto her backgrounds. But when Ikegwu discovered that the results were too often compared with the renowned artist Kehinde Wiley (b. 1977), she decided to leave her backgrounds blank. Today she uses paint to evoke textured fabrics visible behind the models, who are now less likely to be family members than other students or even strangers. Ikegwu is open to taking almost anyone on as a model and sees the artist-model relationship as a collaboration: models are free to dress as they like, though she reserves the right
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MONICA IKEGWU (b. 1998), We Gon See You Later, 2019, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in., private collection
to take certain liberties, such as altering their garments’ coloring to better complement their skin tones. Though she began exhibiting in 2018, Ikegwu’s breakthrough came the following year with her first solo show at Los Angeles’s Band of Vices gallery, which she titled We’ve Always Been Here. That entire show sold out on opening night, and her senior thesis show at MICA last year was also a success. This past autumn Ikegwu matriculated at the New York Academy of Art, which offers two years of training that culminate with a M.F.A. degree. Though Ikegwu’s art will surely evolve in New York, it is likely to remain focused on the issues and subtleties she notices within the Black community and in her own life. The resulting images are especially meaningful to a community that has been woefully underrepresented in contemporary painting, and we look forward to seeing where Ikegwu takes them next. — Charles Moore IKEGWU is self-represented.
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BY LOUISE NICHOLSON
T O D A Y ’ S M A S T E R S
DAVID REMFRY
AT HOME AND ABROAD
T
he soft sensibility that radiates from David Remfry belies a strength of purpose that has taken him from struggling teenage art student to one of Britain’s most respected artists. “I was always going to be an artist,” he remembers, smiling out from his London studio during our pandemic-necessitated Zoom conversation. From the start, Remfry resisted the pressure to train as a teacher in order to earn his living. “I’d seen that route. Whatever I did” — one job was sweeping up cockroaches at night in a seedy hotel — “I made sure I always had eight hours a day back in the studio being an artist.” It paid off. Remfry is equally esteemed in Britain and the U.S., where he lived for 18 years. His work is in more than 20 museums, from London to Florida to Minnesota. And he still avoids teaching, despite having served as professor of drawing at the Royal Academy Schools from 2016 to 2018: “I just swanned around, as my role was one of encouragement,” he giggles with a touch of schoolboy naughtiness. ENGLAND/AMERICA Born in 1942, Remfry had a childhood that reflected the times. His father left war-ravaged Britain to try his luck in India but returned and, with more success, brought his family to Kingstonupon-Hull in northeastern England. There he ran a car-rental business; the comedians Laurel and Hardy became clients during one of their UK tours. Remfry recalls that “Hull had been flattened by the German Luftwaffe, and it was desperately poor. I was the rich kid at school.” At 17, he enrolled at the local art school. It was at this time that he started drawing and painting the Ronettes, a stylish trio of girls from Manhattan’s Spanish Harlem who sang regularly on British television. “I fell in love with them in 1963,” Remfry says. “I painted them incessantly. I’m very interested in the number three. Three women, three graces, the three disgraces — I’ve drawn them, too,” he smiles conspiratorially. This obsession continued when Remfry bought a van from his father, piled about 100 paintings into it (mostly of the
The Ronettes, 1965–66, oil on board, 78 x 48 in., private collection, UK; photo: Marcus Leith
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(ABOVE) Four Figures Dancing, 1999, watercolor on paper [diptych], 60 x 60 in.,
(BELOW) Dancers, 2001, watercolor on paper [two panels], 40 x 100 in., collection of
private collection, Philadelphia; photo: Christopher Burke Studio
the artist; photo: Prudence Cuming
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Jean Muir (1928–1995), 1981, watercolor on paper, 40 3/8 x 27 1/8 in., National Portrait Gallery, London; photo: Prudence Cuming
Ronettes), drove to London, and took a room there. He rode the Underground regularly, but was too shy to draw his fellow passengers. So he just looked. “I have a pretty good memory, and I could draw what I’d seen with crispness for a day or longer.” Remfry continued to paint the Ronettes, even though this did not advance his career: “I was completely unsuccessful in getting my work shown.” But he would later develop the Ronettes idea into his signature huge watercolors of women dancing, so full of swaying hips and rolling shoulders that people who see them involuntarily start to dance. In 2002, Florida’s Boca Raton Museum of Art mounted an 80-work exhibition of Remfry’s dancers, painted over a span of 17 years. In 1978, sunlight broke through the clouds. Bravely, Remfry made a cold call to Gillian Raffles at her Mercury Gallery on London’s Cork Street. “She spent a long time looking, then said, ‘I like this work very much. I will give you a show, and I’ll represent you even if the work doesn’t sell.’” He grins at the memory: “I was off to the races!” Sure enough, Raffles would give Remfry a show every two years until she retired in 1997. That same year, Remfry made his first visit to New York City, one that seemed unsuccessful. “I stayed in a loft on Mercer Street in SoHo. I loved New York. I was looking for a gallery there, just like 20,000 other artists.” Not having secured one, he came home to London and fell ill for six months, during which two pivotal events occurred. First, he switched from oils to watercolors because he could use them in bed, and they became his preferred medium for the next 35 years. Second, Remfry got a call from Joan Ankrum, who ran a successful gallery in Los Angeles. Someone in New York had shown her his work, and now she wanted to give him a show. This proved to be Remfry’s springboard into the U.S. In 1980, Remfry landed at LAX airport with the contents of his show. “I took a cab to a motel in Hollywood, and the woman behind the payment grille had a pistol beside her.” At the gallery, Ankrum and Remfry spread his pictures on the floor. “We had to decide on the hang and the frames. She explained that they must have gold leaf, otherwise people in Hollywood wouldn’t buy them.” But as the artworks lay unframed on the floor, people visiting the gallery started snapping them up. By the time the show opened, it was already sold out. Remfry remembers that “Sidney Poitier arrived and said, ‘Next time I’ll meet you off the plane and get one.’” It was at the Ankrum show that Remfry met Vincent Price and his actress wife, Coral Browne, who recommended him to Joan Rivers. This led to his living at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas for a month, painting a portrait of her before her nightly shows. Remfry also met Hal Kant, the Grateful Dead’s lawyer, who not only commissioned a portrait of his wife but also guaranteed Remfry’s mortgage on the London apartment where he lives and works today.
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The Ankrum show also initiated Remfry’s rise on America’s East Coast. A collector from New York saw the exhibition and started to buy his work. Remfry now applied himself to the business of being an artist. “The ’80s were about self-discipline,” he recalls. “Making art is a lonely life, like a writer’s. There’s only you and it.” Next, he needed more New York patrons: “I got off my backside and got a commission to paint a couple dancing. He was a little smaller than she was. She said, ‘Don’t worry; he’ll stand on his wallet.’” A steady stream of commissions followed through word of mouth. Back in Britain, a solo show at Middlesbrough Art Gallery led to the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) buying Remfry’s watercolor of the fashion designer Jean Muir, his first work to enter a public collection. The NPG then suggested he paint an official portrait of Margaret Thatcher, but he declined. First, he did not admire her politics, and second, he would have been required to paint mostly from M A R C H / A P R I L
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Andrea, 1996, graphite and wash on paper, 40 3/4 x 25 in., Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; photo: Beth Phillips
Uma Thurman and later directed the film Chelsea Walls (2001) about a day in the hotel’s life. The lobby was filled with resident artists’ works. “They were Stanley’s choice,” Remfry says, “and I always had a piece there.” Out on the streets of the city, its “wildness” excited the British artist. “It was fearless and naughty, even in the depths of the AIDS crisis,” he recalls. Clubs such as Lucky Cheng’s drag cabaret were “definitely right out there, in a lovely way. I made a humungous number of drawings in them.” Then came September 11, 2001, which “changed everything. The city lost its vitality,” Remfry mourns. “It just stopped. Giuliani became a terrible influence, and it became dominated by money. Bloomberg was responsible, so many buildings were pulled down, and there was no room for creative people.” Yet Remfry continued to paint prolifically. Today he says, “I’m sorting through those years now, and I can’t believe the volume of work I produced.” In addition to private commissions, he painted neighbors and friends and made a series investigating the relationship between dogs and their owners. A solo show at MoMA PS1 was followed by Remfry’s close involvement in Art Transplant, an exhibition of British artists held at the British Consulate. By 2001 Remfry had mounted a dozen or so solo shows in Los Angeles, New York, and Florida. That year he was awarded the MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) — a major honor given by the Queen — for services to British art in America. The next year, after a cold call from the fashion designer Stella McCartney, who had spotted his ’70s work in a magazine, Remfry made drawings for her first advertising campaign. “She was very brave,” he recollects. “We had a little moment when I wouldn’t show her what I was doing. I never show work until it’s finished. But it worked out OK.” Remfry gets up from his Zoom screen and returns with a wooden giraffe sporting a bow of green ribbon. “Stella gave this to me and said, ‘Friends for life.’”
photographs (‘That’s not how I work”) rather than live sittings, a practice he still maintains. But the NPG did acquire a second Remfry in 1984, an oil portrait of the actor John Gielgud, who happily sat about 20 times at the studio. Remfry’s 18-year-long sojourn in New York began in 1995 by serendipity: Midtown’s Tatistcheff Gallery offered him a solo show provided all of its paintings were created in New York. He and his partner, Caroline Hansberry, moved into the Chelsea Hotel, renowned for its bohemian residents and remarkable manager, Stanley Bard. Remfry rented a big, light-filled studio nearby and later got one in the hotel itself. “Every day was a pleasure,” he remembers fondly. “The hotel vibe was not competitive — but I’m only competitive with myself anyway.” Bertolt Brecht’s son came to write at the hotel every day, and Ethan Hawke moved in after his divorce from 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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ROYAL ACADEMICIAN After the Chelsea Hotel was sold and its bohemian life destroyed, Remfry and Hansberry eventually returned to London. In 2014, echoing Rex Whistler’s beloved murals in Tate Britain’s restaurant, Remfry completed 26 paintings for the Golden Jubilee Tea Room at Fortnum & Mason, the landmark store on Piccadilly. It stands opposite Burlington House, home to the Royal Academy of Arts, the preeminent institution for British artists. Founded in 1768 with King George III as patron and artist Joshua Reynolds as president, its purpose is to promote the creation and appreciation of the visual arts. Its first exhibition of contemporary art — a competitive show open to all artists — was mounted in 1769 and has been a major annual London event ever since, now called the Summer Exhibition. Membership in the Royal Academy is restricted to 80 practicing artists who each have the title Royal Academician (RA) and are responsible for the institution’s well-being. The achieving of membership is shrouded in tradition and secrecy: the artists do not even know they are being proposed. The proposer must get supporters and then — only after one of the 80 Academicians has died or reached the age of 75 (and thus become
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In Sync, 2018, oil on canvas, 40 x 31 1/2 in., collection of the artist; photo: Marcus Leith
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Quiet Rooms, 2019, oil on canvas, 47 x 47 in., newly acquired
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Government Art Collection (purchased from the Royal Academy’s Summer/Winter Exhibition, 2020); photo: Marcus Leith
a Senior Academician) — the rest vote on who among the proposed artists should take the slot. When he was younger, Remfry says he “absolutely excoriated the institution. Then I gained respect for it by meeting some of the good, really good, members like James Fitton, Hugh Casson, Carel Weight. Moreover, its stuffiness began to dissipate with the show A New Spirit in Painting [1981].” Yet Remfry had started submitting pictures to the Summer Exhibition a decade earlier: “The first was actually bought by an RA. I’ve been exhibiting there for 50 years!” Then, in 2006, while he was attending the Epsom Races, Remfry received his first text on a new mobile phone. It was from Mike Rooney RA and it read, “You’re in. Rah, Rah!” Remfry was astonished: “I could have cried. It was just amazing.” One of the duties of an Academician is serving on the selection committee for the Summer Exhibition. Remfry has done it four times. “It’s really rather wonderful,” he says. The RAs can exhibit up to six works of their own. Everyone else submits in competition, anonymously. The first stage is now digitized, when some 17,000 entries are cut down to 2,000. “Of those, about 1,000 will be hung, but that includes Academicians’ works. I choose works I like. Every time, once we receive the names of the artists we selected, I find that 70% or more of the works I’ve chosen are by women artists. I think this is because their work is strong. There might be a little message there,” he adds with a wry smile. Remfry continues to draw and paint with admirable discipline. When he was elected to the Royal Watercolour Society in 1987, he had ambivalent views on the medium. “I’d always thought of it as inferior, that oil painting was more muscular. But watercolor is beguiling, and it’s also capricious. I like the challenge of it. I’ve worked at an 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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unusual scale, sometimes 15 feet wide and 5 feet high.” He buys sheets of Arches paper measuring 60 by 40 inches from John Purcell Paper in London, then pastes them together. He confides, “I go to the shop from time to time just to smell the paper; Arches is my friend.” Once again, he briefly leaves his Zoom screen, returning with a big piece of paper and rattling it to demonstrate its strength. Remfry also paints in oils, “lots of them, in a more contained size.” Many are interiors and increasingly abstract. “I’m interested in light sources; it’s an evolving thing.” He pauses, picks up his laptop to show me a few hanging in his studio, then sits down to develop his thoughts: “I’m full on with oil painting. I love the smell of linseed oil and turpentine. Really! Oil is gutsier, more visceral.” When the University of Lincoln awarded Remfry an honorary doctorate of arts in 2007, he was asked to give advice to the budding artists attending the ceremony. He replied that he does not offer such advice, but he had two things to say: “Whatever you choose to do, practice it every day. And practice kindness, as this is the thing that is enhancing for you and everyone.” The first observation is practical, the second philosophical. David Remfry’s pictures are clearly the result of both. Information: davidremfry.com 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.
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BY MAX GILLIES
T O D A Y ’ S M A S T E R S
BUILD IT AND THEY WILL DEPICT IT A s much as we all love painting, sculpture, drawing, and printmaking, the most public of all visual art forms is architecture. Whether we want to or not, we must look at the buildings around us: we cannot turn them toward the wall or hide them in a closet if they prove to be unattractive. That’s one reason great architects are so appreciated, even by people born centuries later who don’t know their names yet can patently see the artistry they conveyed through stone, brick, or steel. This season we invited artists across America to show us which buildings they have been examining from the outside (rather than the inside, where so many of us have been confined lately). We were thrilled with the images they shared, ranging from famous historical monuments like Notre Dame de Paris to a long-abandoned warehouse that still evokes the industrial heyday in which it was constructed. Most prominent, of course, are the residential buildings we call “home,” be they right downtown or in the middle of nowhere. Enjoy this portfolio of our built environment, and please tell us if you happen to stumble upon another artist’s rendition of a site illustrated here. Why? Because it is always interesting to see how one building can be completely re-envisioned through someone else’s eyes. MAX GILLIES is a contributing writer to Fine Art Connoisseur.
LORI ZUMMO (b. 1962), Brownstone Reflections, 2009, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in., private collection, photo courtesy Cavalier Galleries (New York City)
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(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) RICHARD BOYER (b. 1958), Overhead Wires on Market Street, 2020, oil on board, 60 x 40 in., New Masters Gallery (Carmel, California) THOMAS BUCCI (b. 1959), Rust Belt Rain, 2020, watercolor on paper, 11 x 15 in., available through the artist
ESTHER BELER WODRICH (b. 1975), St. Paul’s Cathedral,
2015, watercolor on paper, 14 x 8 1/2 in., available through the artist STEPHANIE BUER (b. 1982), Splatball City, 2012, charcoal on paper, 30 x 38 in., private collection
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(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) MICHAEL JOHN HUNT (b. 1941), Charlie’s, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 32 in., Hunt Gallery (Sandwich, England) Time Traveler: The Ximenez House (St. Augustine), 2018, watercolor on paper, 20 x 14 in., private collection gouache on cold press illustration board, 6 x 6 in., private collection
CATHERINE HILLIS (b. 1953),
TIFFANIE MANG (b. 1991), Old Town at Sunset (Gdansk), 2019,
PHILIPPE GANDIOL (b. 1951), Sunny on Top, 2019, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 in., private collection
SHELBY
KEEFE (b. 1958), Caught in Old Havana, 2016, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 in., collection of the artist
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(TOP) ERNEST E. BURDEN III (b. 1963), The World Awaits, 2020, graphite on paper, 12 x 18 in., available from the artist
(ABOVE LEFT) JOHN S. CAGGIANO (b. 1949),
Twisted Root, 2017, oil on linen panel, 12 x 16 in., available from the artist
(ABOVE
RIGHT) LISA CUNNINGHAM (b. 1964), Seaside Cottage, 2020, pastel on board, 16 x 20 in., Patricia Hutton Galleries (Doylestown, Pennsylvania)
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(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) NANCIE KING MERTZ (b. 1952), Door Dusting at the Doge, 2019, pastel on paper, 20 x 16 1/2 in., Art De Triumph, Chicago
STAN MILLER
(b. 1949), French Window Flowers, 2012, egg tempera on paper, 34 x 23 in., private collection
SUSAN NEESE
(b. 1949), Firenze L’entrata, 2019, oil on canvas, 24 x 18 in., available through the artist
JULIE RIKER (b. 1969), Orvieto
Entry, 2019, oil on linen panel, 9 x 12 in., private collection
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RICHARD RUSSELL SNEARY (b. 1940), 12th Street Viaduct, 2020, watercolor on paper, 14 x 10 in., private collection
IAIN STEWART (b. 1971), Our Lady of Paris, 2020, watercolor on paper, 14 x 20 in., available
through the artist collection
JOVE WANG (b. 1962), San Marco Evening, 2014, oil on linen, 20 x 24 in., private
DOUG WEBB (b. 1946), Quick Fix, 2005, acrylic on linen, 50 x 40 in., 33 Contemporary
Gallery (Chicago)
THALIA STRATTON (b. 1957), The Castro, 2018, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in., Studio
Seven Arts (Pleasanton, California)
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BY CHARLES MOORE
T O D A Y ’ S M A S T E R S
ALINA GRASMANN
SOMEPLACE
IN BETWEEN
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iewers in search of experiential art need look no further than Alina Grasmann’s paintings from Sculpting in Time, the solo show that New York City’s Fridman Gallery devoted to her recently. Born in 1989, Grasmann grew up on the outskirts of Munich, the German city where she now lives and works. Earlier in life, Grasmann studied at Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts, including a stint at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, yet somehow her work is distinctly American. Thus it’s only fitting that New York was where Grasmann chose to present Sculpting in Time, which actually contained two new series of large paintings — a curated blend of places both real and imaginary, emblematic of the artist’s fascination with American mythology. The first series — titled The Montauk Project, after a conspiracy theory of the same name — explores this exclusive beach community at the eastern tip of Long Island. Though the area is beautiful and quaint, Grasmann chose to focus on the secret government work that allegedly took place there — experiments with psychological warfare techniques and the possibilities of teleportation, mind control, and staged landings on the moon. The Swiss writer Max Frisch (1911–1991) set his novel Montauk here, and Grasmann, an avid reader, has long admired his knack for blending fact and fiction. So began her own exposé, in which she depicts abandoned eateries, hotels, and other immaculate sites devoid of life. In each painting, the lights are blazing and it seems as though the residents were just there, but now, for reasons unknown, they have disappeared. The eeriness of this moment in time — in this unique place, quite literally captured — plays a critical role in what makes Grasmann’s canvases so compelling. In the Fridman exhibition’s second series, also titled Sculpting in Time, Grasmann showcased spaces inside a sandstone-hued building in the desert town of Arcosanti, Arizona — a hamlet established in 1970 almost 70 miles north of Phoenix by Italian architect Paolo Soleri (1919–2013), who studied
The Montauk Project (how do you know), 2019, oil on canvas, 55 x 39 in., Fridman Gallery, New York City
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under Frank Lloyd Wright and carried out his mentor’s vision of living largely in nature. Though Soleri built only 1 percent of his designs, Grasmann brings the entire place to life — yet its spaces are devoid of human life. In each room, she guides us through an imaginarium of objects, subtle symbols inviting us to fill in the blanks with our own subjective meanings. We can appreciate the beauty of the building, of course, but also its decay. Sculpting in Time 1, for instance, depicts a balcony with chairs around a table adorned with fresh poppies. We wonder what happened to the residents, and then our sense of dread, of disruption, grows as we notice that flames are engulfing a house in the distance. Eerie and ethereal, Grasmann’s scenes are clearly inspired by architecture, the constant that pulls everything together. Indeed, it is architecture and film that have fueled her vision over the years. Sculpting in Time is the title of the manifesto penned by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986): both he and Grasmann offer compositions that combine movement and stillness to hold viewers’ attention. David Lynch’s, Alfred Hitchcock’s, and the Coen brothers’ directorial takes on
The Montauk Project (you are a monster), 2019, oil on canvas, 39 x 55 in., Fridman Gallery, New York City
Sculpting in Time 4, 2020, oil on canvas, 51 x 70 in., Fridman Gallery, New York City
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Sculpting in Time 1, 2020, oil on canvas, 51 x 70 in., Fridman Gallery, New York City
the American landscape also speak to Grasmann, who admires Michelangelo Antonioni’s films as well. After a hard day of painting, she often watches movies by these and other masters in their original language, with English subtitles if needed, allowing herself to escape into their worlds at night. Architecture was the career path Grasmann’s father once considered pursuing; as a girl, she would sit with him drawing houses, over and over again. Today her approach is rooted in the same sense of place. She likes to visit the areas she will paint only after researching them — via books and films — and getting a feel for what she might experience once there. When she is actually in towns like Montauk and Arcosanti, Grasmann takes photographs of captivating scenes that play with light and shadows. These photos are the raw materials she will later manipulate — consciously, thoughtfully — before starting work on her paintings. Late in 2018, Grasmann began selecting the photos she would consult to make the paintings exhibited at Fridman this past winter. First she altered them with Adobe Photoshop, adjusting their textures, compositions, and lighting as needed. She began each painting with a gray primer (a blend of white primer and black gesso) to ensure that the underlying tone is more neutral than what conventional white primers offer. Next she used chalk to draw the composition, then painted those elements that appear farthest away before homing in on what is closer, and perhaps less comfortable. As for choosing which spaces to depict, Grasmann says she is simply drawn to them — first through reading and watching films, then in person, and finally in her photographs. She notes that American architecture is distinctive: “a little bit artificial, sometimes very temporary.”
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(This makes sense coming from a European who grew up among buildings that often date back many centuries.) Yet Grasmann does not merely record actual American spaces, but alters them into new ones, working in a sort of fever dream to arrive at images that suit her objectives. “On the one hand, the place exists,” she explains, “but on the other, it’s like it doesn’t exist. It’s something in between.” At the Fridman Gallery, Grasmann arranged for J.S. Bach’s choral prelude BWV 639 (Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ) to play at designated times, such as 11:11, 3:33, 4:44, and 5:55. Per her fascination with conspiracy theories, these times lent themselves to chilling speculations and wishful thoughts, and this specific song had already played a prominent role in Tarkovsky’s 1972 film Solaris. Grasmann saw it as aligned with all of her show’s paintings, as it contains three simultaneous melodies that together create a polyphonic harmony akin to her images. Indeed, by understanding her paintings as harmonies, viewers can discern three of Grasmann’s strands for themselves: her exploration of the history of place, the ideas conveyed by her favorite films, and her own memories and experiences. Together they comprise a form of subjective reinvention that resonates powerfully on canvas. Information: alinagrasmann.com, fridmangallery.com CHARLES MOORE is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University and a curatorial resident at Artis/International Studio & Curatorial Program. He is a regular contributor to Artnet and Artsy Editorial. M A R C H / A P R I L
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BY M AT T H I A S A N D E R S O N
T O D A Y ’ S M A S T E R S
OUT WEST WITH JEREMY LIPKING
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n Scottsdale, Arizona, Legacy Gallery is preparing to exhibit 17 new oil paintings by Jeremy Lipking (b. 1975), on view March 12–21. Titled Silence & Sagebrush, the show will highlight the California artist’s extraordinarily lifelike — yet always painterly — visions of women and children, most set within iconic landscapes of the American West. Though he now lives in the mountains, Lipking grew up in Los Angeles’s urbane artistic community. He could not help but become interested in art through his father, the well-known illustrator Ronald Lipking, who taught him the basics, brought him to museums, and encouraged him to study his private collection of paintings by such Western masters as Frederic Remington and the Taos Society of Artists. The Lipking family spent many summers in the Eastern Sierra Mountains, where the boy could examine nature close-up while his father painted outdoors. Lipking did not take art classes in high school, but in 1997 he undertook 18 months’ study at the California Art Institute, drawing with the illustrators Glen Orbik and Norm Nason and benefitting from critiques offered by such masters as David A Leffel and Max Turner. He learned to paint primarily on his own, gaining much inspiration from 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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A Mother’s Blessing, 2020, oil on linen, 30 x 40 in.
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Sierra’s Path, 2020, oil on linen, 40 x 24 in.
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Desert Song, 2020, oil on linen, 36 x 40 in.
Sharing Secrets, 2020, oil on linen, 36 x 24 in.
Richard Schmid’s best-selling book Alla Prima (1999), which underscores the significance of values and edges. (The two men have since painted side by side several times.) At the tender age of 25, Lipking won the top prize at the California Art Club’s 2001 Gold Medal exhibition with his painting Shady Grove, and his career took off quickly. He originally focused his energies on landscapes, but Lipking has become best known for his images of young women and girls — nude or clothed, indoors or out, timeless or tattooed. Normally he makes a quick painting from the model and also photographs her, then develops the final composition in his studio. Lipking is unusually attuned to the important lessons historical masters can teach us today, absorbing their imagery through books and visits to museums wherever he travels. He particularly appreciates such California impressionists as Edgar Payne, and also cosmopolitans like John Singer Sargent and Joaquín Sorolla. He has drawn especially admiring comparisons with the Swedish master Anders Zorn for his expertise in painting nudes outdoors. Lipking’s greatest gift is to focus selectively — to present palpable flesh, formed of finely blended strokes, that he sets convincingly against brushier, slightly blurred backgrounds — in a manner that replicates how our eyes actually see. He admits readily that this capacity owes much to such 19th-century French masters as William Bouguereau, Émile Friant, Jules Bastien-Lepage, and P.-A.-J. DagnanBouveret. Lipking notes that he was deeply inspired by Prof. Gabriel Weisberg’s book Beyond Impressionism: The Naturalist Impulse (1992), and by Dean A. Porter’s Taos Artists and Their Patrons, 1898–1950 (1999). He travels widely in the U.S. and abroad, but Lipking’s heart remains firmly in the American West. Given Legacy Gallery’s longstanding association with the region, Silence & Sagebrush will surely prove to be a hit there this season. Information: legacygallery.com, lipking.com. Lipking’s primary representative is Arcadia Contemporary (arcadiacontemporary.com). One Lipking painting is available for purchase at Vanessa Rothe Fine Art (vanessarothefineart.com). Matthias Anderson is a contributing writer to Fine Art Connoisseur. 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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BY M AT T H I A S A N D E R S O N
H I S T O R I C M A S T E R S
WHEN AMERICAN ARTISTS FELL FOR SPAIN ROBERT FREDERICK BLUM (1857–1903), Spanish Courtyard, 1883, oil on canvas, 29 5/16 x 40 3/8 in., Cincinnati Art Museum
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(ABOVE) WILLIAM MERRITT CHASE (1849–1916), Carmencita, 1890, oil on canvas, 69 7/8 x 40 7/8 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
(RIGHT) ROBERT HENRI
(1865–1929), Betalo Rubino, Dramatic Dancer, 1916, oil on canvas, 77 1/4 x 37 1/4 in., Saint Louis Art Museum
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dmirers of 19th-century art already know that French artists such as Manet, Bonnat, and Gérôme visited Spain, and that American talents like Eakins, Homer, and Sargent went to France, yet somehow there has never been a major exhibition exploring Americans’ interest in Spain. At last, that gap has been filled by Americans in Spain: Painting and Travel, 1820–1920, an intriguing show on view through May 16 at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. Its final venue will be the Milwaukee Art Museum (June 11–October 3). Much credit is due to the project’s co-organizers, Corey Piper (Chrysler) and Brandon Ruud (Milwaukee), who have stepped back to survey not only the artworks that resulted, but also the societal and political forces at play during this era. By the time the Civil War began in 1861, most Americans imagined Spain — if they thought of it at all — through the romantic fiction of the writer Washington Irving (1783–1859), whose successful Tales of the
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Alhambra (1832) had dwelled on the kingdom’s Moorish (read “exotic”) history. But many privileged Americans decided to dodge the unpleasantness of the War Between the States by spending several years in Europe, including Spain, a momentum that surged after the Union prevailed and continued right up until World War I. Although Spain never outpaced France or Italy as a “Grand Tour” destination, it became particularly popular among American artists, who wanted to experience both its fantasies and its realities. With brush and pen they captured its natural scenery, lush gardens, impressive architecture, and remnants of Islamic culture, as well as prototypes like matadors and flamenco dancers, the people’s “quaint” customs (including Roman Catholic rituals), and the shabby yet charming lives of the poor. These artists also flocked to Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado in order to study and copy the masterpieces of such Spanish talents as El Greco, Murillo, Ribera, Velázquez, Zurbarán, and Goya. Co-curator
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(CLOCKWISE) MARY CASSATT (1844–1926), Spanish Girl Leaning on a Window Sill, c. 1872, oil on canvas, 24 3/8 x 19 in., Collection of Manuel Piñanes García-Olías, Madrid
JOAQUIN
SOROLLA Y BASTIDA (1863–1923), Hall of the Ambassadors, Alhambra, Granada, 1909, oil on canvas, 41 x 32 in., J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
CHILDE HASSAM (1859–1935),
Plaza de la Merced, Ronda, 1910, oil on panel, 25 1/2 x 20 1/2 in., Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Corey Piper notes, “These connections were perhaps most evident in the genre of portraiture, like William Merritt Chase’s Carmencita or Robert Henri’s El Matador, which adapt the stylistic conventions of Velázquez’s royal portraits to strikingly modern subjects from the realm of popular culture.” Thanks to a partnership with Marquette University, exhibition visitors are even being transported to Madrid via a 3-D visualization that recreates the galleries at the Prado during this period. To convey these and other points, the exhibition presents more than 100 paintings, photographs, and prints demonstrating how Americans absorbed Spanish subjects and styles into their own work. It also considers how these works were received back at home, and how Spanish art began being collected in America as a result of the new enthusiasm. The works on view have been drawn not only from the Chrysler and Milwaukee collections, but also from the Prado itself, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and elsewhere. The American talents highlighted include both famous names and ones that have (unfortunately) slipped somewhat out of view; among them are Robert Frederick Blum, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Samuel Colman, Walter Gay, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, Frederick MacMonnies, John Singer Sargent, and Edwin Lord Weeks. Also featured are gifted Spanish contemporaries including Mariano Fortuny, Joaquín Sorolla, and Ignacio Zuloaga. Believe it or not, women artists found Spain more accommodating than other European lands to which they traveled. In her late 20s, Cassatt visited the country by herself, a life experience visualized by her painting
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ERNEST LAWSON (1873–1939), Segovia, c. 1916, oil on canvas, 20 x 25 in., Minneapolis Institute of Art
Spanish Girl Leaning on a Window Sill. Now in a private Madrid collection, this work has never been shown in the U.S. before. Piper notes, “For several months Cassatt established a studio in an important historical building in Seville, where she painted a small group of figural works like Spanish Girl Leaning on a Window Sill that demonstrated her engagement with Old Masters like Goya and Murillo, as well as her own growing command of the techniques of painterly realism. Cassatt left the painting behind in Seville, where it likely came into the possession of a fellow Spanish artist, Manuel Barrera, who had aided her during her time in the city.” Such surprises often stem from major research projects like this one, which also helps visitors understand Spain’s challenging economic, political, and diplomatic conditions in the late 19th century. (It was a conflation of these factors that led, in part, to its disastrous loss of colonial territories during the Spanish-American War of 1898.) Piper and Ruud were wise to include an array of ephemeral materials that help visualize this context. Piper notes, “American artists experienced Spain from the point of view of tourists, and the history and imagery of travel serve as a common thread throughout the exhibition. Artists called upon a wide variety of travel images drawn from photographs, guidebooks, and prints that guided their 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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movement throughout Spain and helped shape their choice of subjects.” To better understand these points, visitors can use their mobile devices inside the galleries to access an interactive feature showing the key sites favored by the artist-travelers. By the end of their visit, viewers will surely want to book their next trip to Spain, which really cannot come soon enough. Alas, the COVID19 pandemic is raging there almost as savagely as in the U.S., so we must wait a while. In the meantime, Americans in Spain: Painting and Travel, 1820–1920 is a superb alternative, so please catch it if you can. Information: chrysler.org, mam.org. The exhibition is accompanied by an attractive catalogue published by Yale University Press (224 pages, 200 color illustrations). It contains essays by the co-curators and by scholars Eugenia Afinoguénova, M. Elizabeth Boone, Valerie Ann Leeds, and Francesc Quílez Corella. If you visit the Chrysler before May 30, be sure to also catch the national touring exhibition about a seven-panel mural, In Exaltation of Flowers, created by Edward Steichen between 1910 and 1913. Several years ago, it was purchased from New York’s Museum of Modern Art (which had not shown it for decades) by Art Bridges, a foundation founded in 2017 by philanthropist Alice Walton. Art Bridges underwrote the mural’s conservation at the Dallas Museum of Art, where it was first unveiled. MATTHIAS ANDERSON is a contributing writer to Fine Art Connoisseur.
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B Y K E L LY C O M P T O N
H I S T O R I C M A S T E R S
REDISCOVERING
FRANK DUVENECK
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hough domestic travel is challenging this season, anyone who can should visit Cincinnati before March 28 to experience the exhibition Frank Duveneck: American Master. A century after his death, this extraordinary talent is nowhere near as appreciated as he should be, and the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) is the ideal institution to rectify this oversight because it is the world’s leading repository of Duveneck’s work. This is his first comprehensive retrospective in more than 30 years, organized over many years by the CAM’s curator of American art, Julie Aronson, who has undertaken new research and set many misconceptions straight. She has selected over 90 works from her museum’s holdings and borrowed 35 more from collections across the U.S. These works range from oil paintings, drawings, watercolors, and pastels to etchings, monotypes, and even sculpture. GENIUS RECOGNIZED Frank Duveneck (1848–1919) lived a quintessentially American story of near-rags to near-riches. He was born in Covington, Kentucky (just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati), to parents who had immigrated from the Westphalia region of Germany. His father, the cobbler Bernard Decker, died of cholera within a year of the boy’s birth, so his domestic-worker mother, Katherine, married the entrepreneur Joseph Duveneck, who gave Frank his surname. The lad grew up speaking both German and English; by 15 he had begun studying art under a local painter and apprenticed with a firm that decorated Catholic churches around North America. In 1869, he took the bold step of enrolling in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he learned to paint in the then-fashionable manner of the 17thcentury Dutch master Frans Hals; this was realism with a dark palette and slashing brushwork, best appreciated in the astounding Whistling Boy, illustrated here, which Duveneck created when he was only 24.
Self-Portrait, c. 1877, oil on canvas, 29 5/16 x 23 11/16 in., Cincinnati Art Museum, gift of the artist, 1915.122
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(ABOVE LEFT) The Whistling Boy, 1872, oil on canvas, 27 7/8 x 21 1/8 in., Cincinnati Art Museum, gift of the artist, 1904.196
(ABOVE) Study for Guard of the Harem, c. 1879,
oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 20 in., Collection of the City School District of Cincinnati (LEFT) Beechwoods at Polling, Bavaria, c. 1878, oil on canvas, 45 1/2 x 37 in., Cincinnati Art Museum, gift of the artist, 1915.93
Having returned to Cincinnati in 1873, the young man kept busy with local work but also exhibited successfully in Boston, where he won praise from no less demanding a connoisseur than the writer (and terrible snob) Henry James. Duveneck headed back to Munich in 1875, and three years later he opened his own school operating there and, every summer, in the pretty village of Polling roughly 35 miles to the southwest. Handsome, gifted, and charismatic, he became a beloved teacher who attracted dozens of American students — nicknamed the Duveneck Boys — who ultimately included such outstanding talents as John White Alexander, Julius Rolshoven, and J.H. Twachtman. In 1878, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Otis Lyman Boott (1846–1888) visited Duveneck while he was working in Venice, having already purchased one of his portraits in her native Boston. Raised primarily in Europe by her widowed father, the wealthy composer Francis Boott, Lizzie was an accomplished and well-trained artist, too. The following year her father brought her to Munich to attend Duveneck’s classes, and the master promptly followed the Bootts home to Florence, where he began teaching the Duveneck Boys and others (including many women) in their villa. The resulting milieu enchanted Henry James and partly inspired his novels about Americans navigating the perils of European society, The Portrait of a Lady (1880–81) and The Golden Bowl (1904). Lizzie and Frank were engaged on and off between 1881 and 1886, so it is not surprising that her skeptical father required his prospective son-in-law to sign a prenuptial agreement in 1886, the year they finally married. Duveneck’s rise from cobbler’s son to Brahmin son-in-law was now complete, but his happiness vanished in 1888 when Lizzie died suddenly of pneumonia. 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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Doorway with Garlic Braids, c. 1885, oil on panel, 8 3/16 x 10 11/16 in., Cincinnati Art Museum, bequest of Mr. and Mrs. Walter J. Wichgar, 1932.81
Siesta, 1886, oil on canvas, 25 1/2
x 38 in., Cincinnati Art Museum, bequest of Mary O’Brien Gibson in memory of her parents, Cornelius and Anna Cook O’Brien, 2007.68
Duveneck and his father-in-law quickly brought the couple’s only child, Frankie, back to America, where he was raised by his mother’s family near Boston. The widower returned to his hometown of Covington and in 1890 started teaching at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where he became director of the faculty 15 years later. Until his death in 1919, Duveneck continued to enthrall his students, and also to mentor Cincinnati’s wealthy art collectors while gradually donating his own art and colleagues’ works that he owned to the Cincinnati Art Museum, which had been founded in 1881.
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Woman with Black Hat, 1890, pastel on paper, 19 15/16 x 16 9/16 in., Cincinnati Art Museum, gift of the artist, 1915.210
He worked closely with Joseph Henry Gest (who became the CAM’s director in 1902) to help form the remarkable collection of historical and contemporary works it owns today, including pieces by many Duveneck Boys. Although he attained every honor in American art, including election by his peers to membership in the National Academy of Design, Duveneck’s star faded dramatically in the 1910s. His passing in 1919 was soon forgotten everywhere but Ohio; to be forgotten was a fate that also awaited such contemporaries as John Singer Sargent, who died six years later. DIVERSE DELIGHTS One does not need to know Duveneck’s fascinating life story to marvel at the bold, confident handling he employed. This bravura is also present in the paintings of such European-trained Americans as William Merritt Chase, Walter Shirlaw, and Sargent; from the mid-1870s, each of these talents won attention for the lack of “finish” that made the 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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tidy brushwork and telling details of the Hudson River School and other “academic” modes appear old-fashioned. Duveneck gradually shifted in the 1880s away from the dark realism he had perfected in Munich toward the lighter hues of French impressionism, while also absorbing his Italian colleagues’ ideas while living in Florence and Venice. The exhibition on view now captures the full range of his production, including formal and informal portraits, Bavarian landscapes, Venetian scenes, depictions of Italian city and country folk, nudes, and — perhaps most famously — streetwise kids like The Whistling Boy. The CAM has complemented its retrospective with a smaller exhibition that sheds light on another important topic, Grand Experiment in Italy: Etchings by Duveneck and His Students. On view through April 4, this show was devised by the museum’s prints curator, Kristin L. Spangenberg, to highlight 18 rare etchings made by the master, including a trial proof of a previously unrecorded Venetian scene, The Riva of 1880. Duveneck was a
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Frank Duveneck (1848–1919) and Clement J. Barnhorn (1857-1935), Memorial to Elizabeth Boott Duveneck (detail), 1891, plaster, 28 3/4 x 40 7/16 x 85 9/16 in. (overall), Cincinnati Art Museum, gift of the artist, 1895.146
The Bridge of Sighs, No. 2, 1885, etching and
drypoint on paper (second state), platemark: 11 15/16 x 9 9/16 in., Cincinnati Art Museum, gift of the artist, 1915.517
leader in the international “etching revival,” through which painters channeled the freedom of Rembrandt’s etchings, arguing that the expressiveness this medium affords links it more closely to drawing than to conventional reproductive printmaking. His timing was superb, for the greatest American etcher of all — James Abbott McNeill Whistler — was making his famous Venice Suite in 1880 when Duveneck arrived there with his students. One of his “Boys,” Otto Henry Bacher, even brought along his homemade press, which he allowed his peers to use. As if all this were not enough, the CAM’s remarkable Cincinnati Wing now contains a gallery temporarily reinstalled under the heading More Duveneck Paintings from the Vault. On view there are 35 more works hung densely (“salon-style”) to maximize visitors’ enjoyment of the museum’s unparalleled Duveneck holdings. Information: cincinnatiartmuseum.org. To “flip” through several of Duveneck’s sketchbooks, visit cld.bz/3f4tA6p. The exhibition is accompanied by a handsome 280-page catalogue featuring 224 color illustrations. Edited by organizing curator Julie Aronson, it contains an introduction by Barbara Dayer Gallati and essays by Sarah Burns, André Dombrowski, Elizabeth A. Simmons, Kristin L. Spangenberg, and Colm Tóibín. It has been co-published by the museum and D Giles Ltd, London (gilesltd.com). KELLY COMPTON is a contributing writer to Fine Art Connoisseur.
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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
BY BETSY THOMAS
BEHINDTHESCENES
HUGH LANE
IRELAND’S ART MODERNIZER
O
n May 1, 1915, a 39-year-old Old Masters dealer, “of slight build, with a high forehead” and “wearing a pearl tie pin,” boarded a steamship in New York Harbor bound for England, where he lived. Along with the personal belongings of Hugh Lane, the ship’s manifest listed “one case of paintings.”1 Sadly, Lane and 1,958 other passengers and crew would never disembark in Liverpool. On May 7, the RMS Lusitania was struck by a German torpedo, sinking in sight of Ireland’s southwestern coast, near Cork, the county where Lane was born. While the primary objective of Lane’s trip to America — the sale to Henry Clay Frick of Titian’s Portrait of a Man in a Red Cap and Holbein’s Thomas Cromwell — had been successful, the young dealer’s efforts to court American collectors never gained traction, one
(LEFT) ANTONIO MANCINI (1852–1930), Portrait of Hugh Lane, 1904, oil on canvas, 89 x 46 in., Dublin City Gallery: The Hugh Lane
(BELOW) GEORGE GRANTHAM BAIN (1865–1944), RMS Lusitania, c. 1907–13,
photograph, George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
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reason his name barely resonates in the U.S. today. Yet Sir Hugh Lane (1875–1915) remains a complicated and fascinating figure who thoroughly rewards our attention. One compelling clue to the man is the mysterious crate of paintings aboard the Lusitania, which was valued for insurance purposes at 4 million British pounds. Ongoing rumors that it contained museum-quality masterpieces by the likes of Rubens and Rembrandt raises the larger question: why would a dealer bring such pictures from art-hungry New York back to art-rich Europe? One theory is that Lane was escorting paintings owned by the dealer Joseph Duveen for their temporary loan to the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. Those who knew Lane well would not have found this type of “errand” out of character. After all, he was serving as that museum’s director during the 14 months before his death. If the idea of an art dealer running a major museum strikes us as problematic today, it only underscores the complexity of this man, whom many considered a chameleon of the art world. In the superb, full-length portrait of Lane painted by Antonio Mancini, he stares directly at the viewer, his face rendered with quick, agitated brushstrokes that convey his restless personality. In only 39 years, Lane played a multiplicity of roles — dealer, collector, benefactor, and museum director. While maintaining a respectable business handling the Old Masters, he championed, above all else, the public display of modern art. Paradoxically, it was Lane’s involvement in the non-commercial side of art — as
(LEFT) TITIAN (c. 1488–1576), Portrait of a Man in a Red Cap, c. 1510, oil on canvas, 32 3/8 x 28 in., Frick Collection, New York
(BELOW) BERTHE
MORISOT (1841–1895), Summer’s Day, c. 1879, oil on canvas, 18 x 29 1/2 in., National Gallery, London (Sir Hugh Lane Bequest)
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PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841–1919), The Umbrellas, c. 1881–86, oil on canvas, 71 x 45 1/4 in., National Gallery, London (Sir Hugh Lane Bequest)
a driving force behind the establishment of public collections — that has defined his legacy and put Ireland firmly on the map of global culture. A DISCERNING EYE As a dealer, Lane had a penchant for spotting gems beneath dusty surfaces. After a stint in a Bond Street gallery, he “differentiated himself from the trade by assuming the guise of the connoisseurial gentleman dealer.”2 Lane’s London residence, Lindsey House, functioned as a gallery where he could live among the artworks like collectors do. The American writer Theodore Dreiser called it “a delightful palace of art” where clients were welcomed into elegantly appointed interiors with a rotating selection of British, Italian, and Dutch paintings set among fine furniture and artifacts. Lane’s dealing in Old Masters ran parallel to his ostensibly peculiar desire to purchase modern European art. At the urging of his friend the Dublin-born, London-based painter William Orpen, he enthusiastically bought French Impressionist works for himself. During multiple visits to the respected Paris dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, Lane acquired significant paintings that made him one of Britain’s earliest collectors of Impressionism: Morisot’s Summer’s Day, Degas’s On the Beach, Renoir’s The Umbrellas, and Manet’s Music in the Tuileries Gardens and Eva Gonzalès would rate as outstanding acquisitions in any era. A marker of this esteem for modern French art is Orpen’s large painting of 1909, Homage to Manet, which shows a group of men in Lane’s home. Reading aloud from a newspaper at left is the critic George Moore; Lane appears at far right with his hand to his face. (The other men are, left to right, the artist Philip Wilson Steer, the critic D.S. MacColl, and the artists Walter Sickert and Henry Tonks.) Hanging above them on the wall is Manet’s large 1870 portrait of the artist Eva Gonzalès. Lane’s personal interest in French art was tied to an agenda he surely considered the most important of his career: establishing (and donating to) the first public gallery of modern art in Dublin. But what motivated him to make French Impressionism the centerpiece of this effort? Lane remained resolute in his support of such daring modern art at a time when few people in Britain took notice of it. His initiative was informed by the unique insights he had developed while wearing so many different “hats.” First, from his vantage point as a dealer, Lane observed that the art market was increasingly woven into the tapestry of global trade, ever more defined by the widening reach of the British Empire and its newly minted millionaires, who should and would become patrons of the arts. Modernity, and modern art, were themselves woven into the fabric of such commerce. SecF I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
ond, the French works anchored a philanthropic initiative through which Lane sought to encourage donations by Irish artists and others to a new Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, and thus to deepen the civic pride of Dubliners and all Irish people. Curatorially, Lane believed that contemporary art best reflected the restlessness of modern Western society and saw it as a wellspring to tap. On an ideological level, he thought that the freshness of modern art would not only educate the general public, but also nurture a distinctive
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new school of painting in Ireland. His thinking had been profoundly shaped by his famous aunt, the dramatist Augusta, Lady Gregory, a key figure in the Celtic Revival. Around this time, the most interesting Irish artists went abroad to seek training, rather than entering traditional academies at home. For example, Nathaniel Hone the Younger studied in France with Thomas Couture; infused with light, his landscapes incorporate techniques he had gleaned from the Barbizon painters. Walter Osborne also honed his craft on the Continent.
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WILLIAM ORPEN (1878–1931), Homage to Manet, 1909, oil on canvas, 64 1/8 x 51 1 /8 in., Manchester Art Gallery, England
Alert to the influences Irishmen were absorbing in France, Lane was convinced that French art could infuse his country with sophistication while also connecting Dublin to the rest of Europe, from which it had long been shielded by London’s imperialist interventions. As early as 1904, he organized exhibitions representing a range of artists, including Irish and French ones, in both London and Dublin. Lane also supported living Irish artists such as John Butler Yeats, recognizing their talent and the need to display their works long-term. He hoped these activities would coalesce as essential ingredients baked into a plan to shape a collection that would mobilize a sense of national identity.3 Lane played his hand aggressively with the city government — formally known as the Dublin Corporation — to establish a permanent home for the collection, pushing for specific provisions on its location and selection of architect. He even made the promised gift of 39 French paintings contingent on his satisfaction with the future deal. Lane encountered headwinds of various types but managed to secure enough government support to display his pictures in a temporary location on Harcourt Street. In 1908, the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art opened its doors there, free to all visitors and featuring 285 works, many donated by Lane and various contemporary artists. When it came time to hang them, Lane used techniques that had succeeded at Lindsey House, displaying them alongside three-dimensional objects of all kinds. This tactic
EDOUARD MANET (1832–1883), Music in the Tulieries Garden, 1862, oil on canvas, 30 x 46 1/2 in., National Gallery, London (Sir Hugh Lane Bequest)
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Dublin City Gallery: The Hugh Lane is located in the 18th-century Charlemont House on Parnell Square.
WILLIAM ORPEN (1878–1931), Self-Portrait, 1913, oil on canvas, 48 3/8 x 35 3/8 in., Saint Louis Art Museum
centered on the idea that careful staging was at the heart of successful public engagement. For his services to art, Lane was knighted by King Edward VII in 1909. ENDURING CHALLENGES Despite strong lobbying by Lane’s supporters in artistic and literary circles, the search for a permanent home collapsed in 1913. Lane had overplayed his hand by relying on the Impressionists for leverage. He saw his gift as transformational, but the civic authorities — dominated by conservative Catholic factions — did not share his enthusiasm. Disappointingly, the wider public remained ambivalent about the French pictures, sensing that they somehow conflicted with Ireland’s uniqueness, despite Lane’s argument that a national identity could be constructed from both native origins and a pan-European viewpoint.4 In 1913, feeling rebuffed, Lane bequeathed all 39 French paintings to the National Gallery in London. In May 1915, news of Lane’s tragic death reverberated around the world, but the most jarring aftershock was the discovery of his recent “codicil of forgiveness” that reversed the earlier bequest by redirecting it to Dublin. Alas, this signed document had no legal standing because it had never been witnessed. Since 1915, often against the backdrop of tense Anglo-Irish relations, this legal limbo has produced various negotiated agreements that split the collection into groups rotated between London and Dublin, though official ownership remains with the former. The bequest has stirred an ongoing debate on ownership and a long-running campaign by Dublin to recover the paintings that, once spurned, have now accrued significant commercial value and become powerful symbols of Irish national pride. 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 latest sharing agreement officially expired in 2019, so naturally the Lane Bequest was on the agenda of a September 2019 meeting of the trustees of London’s National Gallery.5 (No resolution has been announced since then, and the situation has only grown more complicated in light of Brexit: the Republic of Ireland remains in the European Union while Britain has left it.) Whatever the outcome, the Dublin City Gallery: The Hugh Lane has since 1933 stood proudly in its permanent home on Parnell Square, filled with the many non-French artworks that Lane acquired or attracted, plus others collected since his death. It is a testament to its idiosyncratic founder, who has been aptly described as “an art dealer who never wanted to sell a painting, a collector who immediately gave his art away, a donor who capriciously changed his will and instigated a legal dispute between two museums.”6 Lane’s capacity to triangulate the roles of dealer, donor, and director — to play the art-world equivalent of hopscotch — proved instrumental in developing a modern framework for public collections. His fingerprints can even be found in South Africa, where he helped establish the first public art museums in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Today art professionals often employ similar forms of shape-shifting amid ever-blurring lines. Though Lane did not live to see his dream completely fulfilled, his spirit of inclusion and generosity lives on. Today “The Hugh Lane” is free to visit and features a dynamic program of exhibitions and events, a perpetual reminder of his role in the formation of modern Ireland. Information: When in Dublin, visit hughlane.ie. For more, read Morna O’Neill’s book Hugh Lane: The Art Market and the Art Museum, 1893–1915 (2018, Yale University Press) or watch Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s drama-documentary film Citizen Lane (2018). BETSY THOMAS is a private art adviser and appraiser based in New York. She teaches and lectures on a range of topics related to the art market and collecting with a focus on 19th- and 20th-century artists. NOTES 1 Robert O’Byrne, Hugh Lane, 1875–1915 (2000, Lilliput Press), 243. 2 Morna O’Neill, Hugh Lane: The Art Market and the Art Museum, 1893–1915 (2018, Yale University Press), 164. 3 Ibid., 70–75. 4 Ibid., 72–81. 5 National Gallery, London, Minutes of the Board Meeting, Thursday, 19 September 2019, Item 12.1. 6 O’Neill, 8.
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GREAT ART WORLDWIDE
E V E N T S P R E V I E W
WHEN TIME STANDS STILL
JULIETTE ARISTIDES: A LIFE’S WORK Customs House Museum & Cultural Center Clarksville, Tennessee customshousemuseum.org through March 31
On view at the Customs House Museum this season is an exhibition of recent still life, interior, and figure paintings by Juliette Aristides (b. 1971), founder and instructor of the Classical Atelier at Seattle’s Gage Academy of Fine Art. Almost all the works were made during 2020, which the artist describes as “a year of solitude and introspection set against a backdrop of intense disruption — a pendulum of extremes. My body of work is centered on a deep appreciation for the simple and unchanging parts of my everyday life. This collection of paintings, in their stillness and silence, is a record and a gift of that particular time. The aim of many art forms, from poetry to painting, is to return home and see it as if for the first time. As William Steig once said, ‘Art … has the power to make any spot on earth the living center of the universe.’” Customs House curator Terri Jordan adds that Aristides “is one of the best contemporary painters of light.” She goes on, “Her ability to portray that bit of afternoon sun hitting a windowsill and reflecting on a pewter pot is unmatched. You can feel the warmth in her paintings, and also a sense of time standing still for the viewer’s tranquil gaze. Her scenes tend to draw you into your own memories.” Indeed, paintings such as The Atelier, illustrated here, underscore Aristides’s understanding of light and its effect on everyday surfaces: note how the gleam of sunlight highlights the wooden table’s polish and the soft curving silhouette of the sculpture at left.
JULIETTE ARISTIDES (b. 1971), The Atelier, 2020, oil on panel, 24 x 17 in.
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PORTRAITS FOR ALL
EQUITY PORTRAIT STUDIO New York Artists Equity Association New York City nyartistsequity.org/the-portrait-studio
Operated by the New York Artists Equity Association, the Equity Gallery has long championed an egalitarian accessibility to both art appreciation and acquisition by showcasing works with broad appeal and modest prices. Director Michael Gormley and his colleagues recently took a long, hard look at the field of commissioned portrait painting and realized that the Internet could be deployed to strengthen the creative connections between portraitists and patrons. Working from reference photographs is standard practice among portraitists, who generally take photos of the sitter themselves. Alas, the current necessity of social distancing and travel restrictions has made this crucial step impractical, if not impossible. The newly launched Equity Portrait Studio works around the problem cleverly: the client uploads a set of reference photos of the sitter that she or he has taken, thereby reducing costs and speeding up the process. To help with this phase, Equity has produced a free step-by-step “portrait photographing” video for clients to consult. The program has launched with four gifted portraitists — Brooks Frederick, Kristin
Kunc, Hyeseung Marriage-Song, and Patricia Watwood — all of whom employ an alla prima approach that emphasizes lively brushwork. Commissioning a head and shoulders portrait (measuring 11 x 14 or 12 x 12 inches) from one of these artists costs $3,500, not including framing and delivery. Please visit the initiative’s website to learn more.
HYESEUNG MARRIAGE-SONG (b. 1978), Chris, 2020, oil on canvas, 11 x 14 in.
THE ENDURING ORCHID PATRICIA LASPINO (b. 1955), Obsession,
PATRICIA LASPINO: GLOBAL GARDEN, RESONANT BEAUTY
2016,
oil
on
canvas, 36 x 60 in.
Stamford Museum & Nature Center Stamford, Connecticut stamfordmuseum.org and orchidallianceproject.com through April 25
Over her 40-year career, the artist Patricia Laspino has developed a signature style that entwines dozens of layers of transparent oil glazes over a sculptural groundwork of botanical impressions. On view now at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center is a major exhibition of her large oil paintings, as well as etchings and drawings. Laspino’s artworks are the cornerstone of her Orchid Alliance Project, which highlights the interconnectedness of humanity and nature and underscores the urgency of sound environmental stewardship. “Laspino’s work marries together art and science, making them tangible in a way that people can receive and perceive,” says Jillian F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
Casey, the center’s curator of collections and exhibitions. “Her orchid paintings explore and inform the viewer of the complex interdependencies and careful balances inherent in environments of orchids, which include every continent except for Antarctica.” Many of us don’t realize that thousands of orchid species and hybrids have been cul-
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tivated by humans for more than 2,500 years. Laspino believes that exploring ancient attitudes about orchids and their function, through the lens of art and culture, may shed some light on the power that orchids still have over us.
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HIGHLIGHTING WOMEN
PATRICIA WATWOOD (b. 1971), The Dance of Life and Death, 2021, oil on linen, 40 x 30 in.
WOMEN PAINTING Museu Europeu d’Art Modern Barcelona meam.es March 8–May 2
In Barcelona, the Museu Europeu d’Art Modern (MEAM) is set to open — on International Women’s Day — an exhibition of recent paintings by approximately 70 women living around the world. Accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, the show will include such American talents as Kelly Birkenruth, Stephanie Deshpande, Nanette Fleur, Nadine Robbins, and Patricia Watwood. Illustrated here is Watwood’s The Dance of Life and Death. She explains, “I began this work just before the world shut down early in 2020. The import and emotions of the central figure took on new meaning as we all witnessed death, protest, struggle, and fear. Our interconnectedness and fragility sunk into our hearts as never before. What is the place of art and beauty in a world of death and struggle? What is the meaning of joy
and ecstasy when the fragile world seems on the edge of collapse? The central figure expresses my deep desire for freedom, dance, sensuality, joy, and love. She represents my dogged conviction that art is essential in reminding us why we struggle. The conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Aquarius on December 21, 2020 (the winter equinox) seemed like an intergalactic sign for our global crisis. The symbols of Jupiter and Saturn here call for expansive and imaginative vision combined with structure and discipline, and signal that our culture is entering a time of tumultuous transformation and rapid change.” This is powerful, thoughtprovoking art, and many more examples will be on view in Barcelona this spring.
TRANSCENDING CHALLENGES 3 AMERICANS Arnot Art Museum Elmira, New York arnotartmuseum.org through August 28
Renowned for its collection of contemporary realist art, the Arnot Art Museum in 2009 launched an exhibition series titled 3 Americans that is mounted every three years. The artists selected for the current edition are the figure and still life painter Nadine Robbins, the landscapist and portraitist Bruce Muirhead, and Richard Masters, who makes monumental, monochromatic drawings of cityscapes. Robbins’s participation is particularly noteworthy given the challenges she has faced recently. Trained at the State University of New York at New Paltz and now based 30 miles away in Rhinebeck, Robbins is presenting 15 works in Elmira. She explains, “In 2018, I was diagnosed with inflammation of the optic nerve, which destroyed most of the vision in my right eye. Without depth perception, I lost the ability to anticipate when my brush would strike the canvas, and I thought I would never paint again. Though
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I was depressed and fearful, I developed a new, more pointillist approach to hyperrealism,” an approach embodied by such new works as Burger Hill, illustrated here. As ever, Robbins remains committed to sharing the stories of individuals from all walks of life, especially those defying societal norms involving gendered notions of identity, behavior, and sexuality.
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NADINE ROBBINS (b. 1966), Burger Hill, 2020, oil on linen, 48 x 72 in., available through Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts (Binghamton, New York)
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OIL PAINTERS HEAD TO CALIFORNIA OIL PAINTERS OF AMERICA 30TH NATIONAL JURIED EXHIBITION OF TRADITIONAL OILS California Center for the Arts Escondido, California oilpaintersofamerica.com and artcenter.org April 9–May 16
The nonprofit organization Oil Painters of America (OPA) will co-host its 30th National Juried Exhibition of Traditional Oils at the California Center for the Arts this spring. More than 1,000 professional artist members from across the U.S. and Canada vied for only 200 spots on the show’s checklist. Among the OPA Master Signature artists participating are Daud Akhriev, Kathy Anderson, Nikolo Balkanski, Cindy Baron, Ken Cadwallader, John Michael Carter, James Crandall, Nancy S. Crookston, Louis Escobedo, Daniel Gerhartz, Albert Handell, Nancy Howe, Robert Johnson, Calvin Liang, Huihan Liu, Ned Mueller, William Schneider, Michael Situ, Craig Tennant, James Tennison, Deborah Tilby, Jan Peng, Jeffrey R. Watts, and Christopher Zhang. In addition, works by five newly elected Master Signature artists will be on view: Johanna Harmon, David Mueller, Camille Przewodek, Mary Qian, and Deborah Tilby. One of OPA’s leading members, Jeffrey R. Watts of San Diego, will serve as juror of awards, distributing approximately $100,000 in awards, including the Gold Medal accompanied by a $25,000 cash prize. Enhancing the show will be a display of winning works from OPA’s first annual Student Art Competition, which focuses on artists aged 14 to 22. Naturally the pandemic has made definitive planning for in-person events uncertain, so please check the organizers’ websites, where you will find all of the exhibitions’ artworks illustrated and available for purchase.
HEAVENLY VISIONS SAINTS & SYMBOLS Seraphim Press Ltd England alastaircarew-cox.com
The British architectural photographer Alastair Carew-Cox has a passion for Victorian glass. In 2012, the world welcomed the volume on PreRaphaelite stained glass (1850–70) he created with scholar William Waters. In 2017 came their book about the subsequent two decades. F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
NANCY HOWE (b. 1950), Frank Conversations, 2020, oil on linen, 28 x 22 in.
Now their trilogy has been completed with Saints & Symbols, The Stained Glass of Ford Madox Brown, William De Morgan, John George Sowerby, Walter Crane, and Frederic Shields. Its 304 pages, glowing with more than 500 previously unpublished photographs, reveal that these five artists were active on the periphery of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and all strongly influenced by William Morris. Sadly, their work
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in stained glass has not been much investigated until now. Most of their windows appear in the new book, with emphasis on details difficult to see with the naked eye. The publishers have kindly offered readers of Fine Art Connoisseur a discount on this book and also on the limited remaining number of the earlier volumes. To learn more, please send an email to a_carewcox@yahoo.co.uk. The cover of Saints & Symbols
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ART IN THE WEST
SPRING IS IN THE AIR
EDGAR PAYNE (1883–1947), Burning the Hogan, 1930s, oil on canvas, 28 x 34 in., estimate: $200,000–$300,000
BEST IN THE SOUTHWEST SCOTTSDALE scottsdaleartauction.com April 9–10
Returning this spring is the Scottsdale Art Auction, one of America’s leading sales of Western art. Its lots encompass every genre, from
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landscape and wildlife to figurative and still life. The auction was founded in 2005 by Michael Frost of New York City’s J. N. Bartfield Galleries, Jack Morris of Morris Whiteside Galleries in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and Brad Richardson of Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale. On offer are more than 400 works, including such historical masters as Albert Bierstadt, W. Herbert Dunton, William Gollings, Bert G. Phillips, Charles M. Russell, Charles Schreyvogel, and Joseph H. Sharp.
A highlight are two major wildlife pieces by Carl Rungius. The contemporary lots represent such talents as Bill Anton, Martin Grelle, Logan Maxwell Hagege, Mark Maggiori, Kyle Polzin, and Morgan Weistling. Illustrated here is a fine, and quite late, scene by Edgar Payne. It reveals his masterful use of expressive color and application of fully loaded brushstrokes, qualities that make an ostensibly old-fashioned scene unexpectedly modern.
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GO, COWGIRLS WICKENBURG, ARIZONA westernmuseum.org March 26–September 5
The Desert Caballeros Western Museum is much admired for preserving and exhibiting the art and history of the Southwest and desert frontier. Sixteen years ago, it launched Cowgirl Up! Art from the Other Half of the West, an invitational exhibition and sale that — in the male-dominated field of Western art — turned
the spotlight squarely on women’s perspectives. CU! remains a leading national event for women artists, and its 16th edition will feature more than 60 emerging and established artists, selected from over 300 applicants. Their paintings, drawings, and sculpture are made in a range of techniques, styles, and mediums. They will be available for purchase in person and online, and the proceeds will benefit both the artists and museum. STEPHANIE REVENNAUGH (b. 1973), Portent, 2021, bronze and steel (edition of 33), 17 x 17 x 7 in.
On March 27, the museum will host its Grand Live Auction and Celebration both online and in person with a socially distanced format. Conducted by auctioneer Troy Black, it will feature more than 30 major new works. For those not in the room, a “Home on the Range” ticket allows one couple to participate in the auction, watch a gallery tour, and nibble from a charcuterie board sent to their home in advance. From March 28 through May 9, all unsold works will be available at fixed prices. Finally, the museum’s fourth annual Collectors Summit will feature three lively conversations exploring the Western art market, all conducted in-person and viewable online. Their dates are March 16, 18, and 23.
CELEBRATING 20 YEARS SAN ANTONIO briscoemuseum.org March 13–May 9
The Briscoe Western Art Museum will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Night of Artists, its primary fundraiser of the year. The fun begins with the online auction running March 13–27; on offer are nearly 300 new paintings, sculptures, and mixed media works by more than 75 leading Western artists. These participants include Tom Browning, C. Michael Dudash, Teresa Elliott, Martin Grelle, George Hallmark, Mark Maggiori, Howard Post, Paul Rhymer, Billy Schenck, and Michael Ome Untiedt. Their works encompass landscapes, wildlife, portraiture, and scenes of Native Americans and cowboys.
XIANG ZHANG (b. 1954), Going Up, 2020, oil on linen, 40 x 32 in.
WESTERN ART WEEK ENDURES GREAT FALLS, MONTANA marchinmontana.com and bitterrootframes.com Mid-March
Every March, lovers of Western art gather in Great Falls to honor the birthday of the great artist Charles M. Russell (1864–1926). For the past 34 years, the March in Montana Auction and Dealer Show has offered an array of fine art, collectibles, antiques, and books. Produced by Coeur d’Alene Galleries and the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, it will run March 18–20. Running concurrently (March 17–20) will be the third annual Montana Masters Show and Sale, which offers top names in Western art including Todd Connor, C. Michael Dudash, Charles Fritz, John Gawne, Carol Hagan, Don Oelze, and Randy Van Beek. This lively event is produced by Bitterroot Frames and Publishing (Hamilton, Montana). F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
BRENT COTTON (b. 1972), Whitetail Heaven, 2019, oil on linen, 20 x 30 in., available in Montana Masters
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BY DANIEL GRANT
THE NEXT WAY TO ENJOY ART? Three rooms — three ways to enjoy Enplug’s offerings
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rt has much to recommend it, but perhaps its biggest drawback is that it costs something, and some of it can be quite expensive. That can be just as much of a problem for the artists who create it as for the people who would like to own it, but now a Los Angeles-based tech company has a kindof solution. Enplug, which was founded in 2012 and creates digital signage software that facilitates secure communication between businesses and nonprofit organizations and their employees and customers, has developed a free platform to which artists upload images that homeowners then display on their television or computer screens. There is no direct link between digital signage software and displaying art, but Enplug’s chief executive officer, Nanxi Liu, says she loves art and
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has become “more involved in the local art scene in Los Angeles.” That involvement has led her to befriend numerous artists and realize “that they are having a hard time reaching people,” particularly during the pandemic lockdowns. This led her to wonder how tech might be able to “promote artists and art during the time while people are stuck at home.” She says, “Most people have a flat-screen TV now, so instead of just showing news and whatnot, what if it can show art, too?” Liu notes that displaying artwork through Enplug is similar to streaming a television program. The content, be it a TV show or digitized artwork, lives in the cloud and can only be displayed when the television is connected to the Internet. This is a form of borrowing imagery and, for the individual artists’ protection, “the viewer cannot download, M A R C H / A P R I L
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Artcast offers an array of images to enjoy.
$3,000 (roughly double what a standard TV with similar specifications would cost), and there’s a subscription cost of $6 per month and additional fees for each streamed artwork. For those uninterested in spending large amounts of money on new equipment, a non-smart TV would require connection to a personal computer via an HDMI cable, or one could use a WiFi stick such as Google Chromecast or Roku or Amazon Fire Stick to wirelessly cast images to the television. Until recently, these images accidentally burned themselves into the screens if they were left on too long, but that problem seems to have been solved. On all of these devices, the screened images get compressed but generally look good, or good enough. As flat-screens become ever wider, however, it makes sense to pre-test the art images to ensure that the quality does not deteriorate. THE FINE PRINT Enplug’s Liu notes that her firm is not interested in monetizing the product by charging end users, but, in this day and age, it is safe to assume that their personal data is likely to be mined now or in the future, or possibly sold to, or shared with, a third party. As with any such domestic device (think Amazon’s Alexa), users must weigh these risks for themselves. Liu claims that Enplug has “thousands of artworks” available for streaming, but most are actually from museums whose images are in the public domain; she herself mentioned the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum during our recent conversation. “We have a couple of contemporary artists, and we’re trying to welcome and get more of them on the platform.” (Interested artists are welcome to visit the artists’ page on Enplug’s website to learn more.) Similarly, Artcast is seeking to build up its reservoir of contemporary artworks. As with Enplug, its participating artists do not receive royalties or other payments when their images are streamed, but information about the artists (including links to their websites) is offered to users, who may ultimately (hopefully) go on to purchase their original works. If such sales do occur, no commission is required by the provider. This approach to free exposure may not be to every artist’s liking, as it allows viewers to make use of their images without compensation, with only a hope that sales will result. In fact, some of the dilemmas highlighted here are already being debated, most recently by a 3-year-old organization called Working Artists and the Greater Economy that objects to having contemporary artists’ work displayed for free in galleries and museums. As usual, the tech industry has moved swiftly (and legally) around such potential roadblocks, so now it remains to all of us, as viewers and consumers, to decide if we want to participate.
The Samsung Frame; photo: Kelly in the City
share, or sell the content that is being displayed, so the artists’ copyright remains intact.” Interested art lovers can go to Enplug’s “dashboard,” where they see all of the artworks available for selection. Then, Liu says, “They choose and schedule multiple artworks to create their own playlist. They can even select different frames.” For those with more than one screen at home, the art images can run on all or some of those screens. EVER MORE OPTIONS Enplug is the newest entry in a growing field of companies offering the opportunity to project artworks onto screens in one’s home, office, restaurant, club, lounge, bar, hospital, or university. Google’s Chromecast, for instance, allows subscribers to display art on a smart TV by uploading photographs or other art images to a gallery in Google Photos, then switching to Ambient mode. Apple TV+ lets users upload images to an album in iCloud, then choose iCloud integration in their settings and select images from the album as screen savers. (The uploaded images require iCloud storage, which costs an additional $2–$4 per month.) Artcast offers consumers several options — Apple TV+, Roku, or Amazon Fire TV — as well as a library of images from commercial galleries, museums, and individual artists’ own uploads for a monthly subscription of $2.99–$4.99. Yet another option is the Samsung Frame, a smart flat-screen TV with a wooden frame that gives the impression of looking at a framed painting when an artwork is streamed on it. This is more of a niche item because of its significantly higher cost; the hardware ranges from $600 to nearly 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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Information: enplug.com/apps/art, google.com/chromecast, apple.com/tv, artcast. tv, samsung.com, wageforwork.com EDITOR’S NOTE: As a publication dedicated to enjoying and understanding original works of art, Fine Art Connoisseur is not generally in favor of replacing direct encounters with art with virtual ones. We have decided to publish this article, however, because our readers deserve and need to know what’s happening in this fast-changing terrain so they are able to make up their own minds. DANIEL GRANT is the author of The Business of Being an Artist and other books published by Skyhorse Press.
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LORYN AND DOUG BRAZIER Loryn Brazier
Loryn and Doug Brazier live happily among the 55 artworks that adorn their elegant home in a historic neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. Art has long been a passion for Loryn, who recalls, “Since I was the kid in elementary school who could draw, I was always the one designated to decorate the blackboard.” She went on to become an illustrator and own an advertising agency, then launched a career painting portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and figurative subjects — one so successful that her works are in the collections of such
museums as the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Somehow Loryn also found time to run her own Richmond gallery for 23 years; there she represented other talented artists and in 2012 founded the annual Plein Air Richmond competition and festival. Since the 1990s she has also been a popular instructor and regularly invites other accomplished artists to teach in her studio. Loryn and Doug, who is a real estate appraiser, started collecting in the mid-1980s upon returning from
a year of travel in Europe, where she had started painting. Doug says their first acquisition together was an etching by the Swedish master Anders Zorn (1860–1920) “for which I spent a lot of time searching.” Since then, the Braziers’ collection has grown to include paintings by such contemporary talents as Michael Albrechtsen, Anne Blair Brown, Kim English, Trey Finney, Ed Hatch, Addison Hodges, Charles Iarrobino, Robert Johnson, P.A. Jones, Mark Laguë, Annie Harris Massie, Larry Moore, Michael Shane Neal,
Doug Brazier
ANNIE HARRIS MASSIE (b. 1961), Snowy Day in Brownsburg #1, 2001, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 in.
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EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER (1926–2019), Pria de Rocha, 1972, oil on canvas, 32 x 34 in., photo courtesy Estate of Everett Raymond Kinstler
Jason Saunders, Sylvia Trybek, Charlotte Wharton, Dawn Whitelaw, and Cathy Yrizarry. Loryn explains, “I met several of these artists when I owned the gallery and was looking out for other people to represent or to teach workshops in my studio. The remainder were introduced to us while Doug and I visited galleries in Richmond, Washington, D.C., Annapolis, New York City, Connecticut, Charleston, Nashville, Carmel, Santa Fe, France, and Rome.” Illustrated here is Pria de Rocha, a sunlit coastal scene painted by the late, great Everett Raymond Kinstler (1926–2019). Loryn rememF I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
bers, “I met Ev when I was a student in 1988, an encounter that developed into a close friendship and many years of his offering helpful advice about both my paintings and my career. I always loved Pria de Rocha, but it had sold years before. Then a California woman in a retirement home contacted my gallery to sell it on her behalf. You can imagine my reply, and the rest is history!” The Braziers’ appreciation for the continuum of artistic inspiration is evident in at least one compelling juxtaposition: Not only do they own Kinstler’s Pria de Rocha, they also have a work by another of his students, Michel Shane Neal, as well as a painting by James Montgomery
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Flagg (1877–1960), who created “Uncle Sam” during World War I and later taught Kinstler himself. Loryn is particularly fond of the many Russian artists who endured the Soviet period and kept making superb traditional paintings, with or without encouragement from the regime. “My absolute favorite,” she points out, “was painted in 1956 in oils on cardboard and depicts the head and shoulders of a young soldier. It’s unclear who made it, but we definitely bought it at a gallery in Georgetown (Washington, D.C.). As a portraitist and teacher, I refer to this painting constantly as a source of inspiration, and I also just love living with it.”
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JILL DETEMPLE AND GORDON O’BRIEN Jill DeTemple and Gordon O’Brien are living proof that art can enhance your life in varied ways. “Our parents did not collect art,” they recall, and although Jill enjoyed studying art history and even painting during college,
her family encouraged her to pursue a business career. Together the couple have built a successful real estate investment business, while Gordon conducts a separate career as chief financial officer of a large manufacturer.
Jill DeTemple
Gordon O’Brien
D. ELEINNE BASA (b. 1967), Luce di Firenze, 2018, oil on linen, 36 x 28 in.
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They split their time between two homes — one in northern Virginia near Washington, D.C, and the other on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Before Jill and Gordon met in Chicago, they had each acquired a few artworks, but art was definitely not a priority. In fact, Gordon lived in the Windy City for 15 years and never visited its famous Art Institute. Early in their marriage, they bought a couple of gicleés by the Iranian artist Hessam Abrishami, but not much more. A breakthrough came in 2010, shortly after Jill and Gordon purchased their getaway home on the Eastern Shore, when they discovered Plein Air Easton (PAE). Created in 2004 as a way to keep the town of Easton hopping during the hot, humid month of July, this invitational has become one of America’s leading plein air painting festivals. Driving along a country road with their two young daughters, Jill stopped the car to offer cold water to the warmlooking artist John Brandon Sills as he painted a field of sunflowers. He told them all about PAE, and soon the couple were buying the very scene Sills had been developing that hot day. Over the years, Jill and Gordon have become enthusiastic PAE patrons — sponsoring awards, hosting receptions in their home (“Sometimes we have to kick those artists out at midnight!”), and welcoming their family members to join them. Indeed, Gordon’s mother flies in all the way from Australia, and Jill’s sister often comes from San Francisco. Jill and Gordon keep in regular touch with PAE’s organizers and “alumni,” among them the artist Jason F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
CHARLES WARREN (“C.W.”) MUNDY (b. 1945), Roses and Flow Blue, 2019, oil on linen, 16 x 16 in.
Sacran, who won first prize in 2015. When that winning work got snapped up by the New Jersey collectors Leslie Lobell and Eric Timsak (now good friends with Jill and Gordon), the collectors told Sacran they wanted to buy what he considered his best piece. “Sorry, it’s not for sale,” he replied, but two years later he called Jill and Gordon and they made an offer on a marvelous portrait of his wife’s grandfather. They think so highly of Sacran that they were honored to lend it back later for his museum retrospective in Arkansas. The good vibes in Easton ultimately led Jill and Gordon to visit New York’s Salmagundi Club, where its former chairman (and PAE patron) Tim Newton organizes the superb American Masters exhibition and sale every two years. At its 2018 edition, the Florentine painting by D. Eleinne Basa illustrated here won the artists’ choice award, by which time Jill and Gordon had already purchased it. That same weekend they were delighted to meet the Indiana artist Charles Warren (“C.W.”) Mundy and his wife, Rebecca, and today the four remain close. Through these and various other events, Jill and Gordon have assembled an outstanding F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
collection of works by living artists including Daniel Ambrose, Scott Lloyd Anderson, Olena Babak, Garin Baker, Suzie Baker, Cindy Baron, D. Eleinne Basa, Justine Basa, Jill Basham, Beth Bathe, Tim Beall (formerly Bell), Suchitra Bhosle, Zufar Bikbov, Brian Blood, Christopher Blossom, Mark Boedges, Gavin Brooks, Michael Budden, Samantha Buller, G. Russell Case, Hiu Lai Chong, Henry Coe, Aimee Erickson, Dan Ferguson, Greg Gandy, Ellen Gavin, Jennifer Gennari, Max Ginsburg, Nyle Gordon, James Hajicek, Nancy Hammond, William Harrison, Jean Hirons, Quang Ho, Hai-ou Hou, Neal Hughes, Charlie Hunter, Debra Huse, Ignat Ignatov, Ken Karlic, Tim Kelly, Michael Klein, Andre Kohn, Melanie Landrith, Patrick Lee, Malcolm T. Liepke, Clare Malloy, Jeremy Mann, Gilbert Marosi, Stephanie Marzella, Mick McAndrews, Sherrie McGraw, Joseph McGurl, Patrick McPhee, Nikolay Mikushkin, Edward Minoff, Jennifer Moses, C.W. Mundy, Craig Nelson, Charles Newman, Ken Newman, Kate O’Brien, Kathie Odom, Derek Penix, Dennis Perrin, Ruth Pettus, Crista Pisano, Andre Pleau, Edmond Praybe, Craig Reynolds, Daniel Riesmeyer, Ewa Rzeznik, Jason Sacran, Jared Sanders,
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Patrick Saunders, Beth Clary Schwier, Dennis Sheehan, David Shepherd, Rachelle Siegrist, Wes Siegrist, John Brandon Sills, Mian Situ, Matt Smith, Jason Tako, Tomutsu Takishima, Nancy Tankersley, Carol Lee Thompson, Stephanie Paige Thomson, Lane Timothy, Bob Upton, Kim VanDerHoek, Stewart White, and Cindy Ziegler. Jill and Gordon say they always enjoy meeting “their” artists as well as others who collect those artists’ work. In fact, they hope more art organizations will develop programs that bring collectors together to see each other’s treasures and exchange ideas and information. When traveling, they try to fit in visits to the studios of artists they admire, and they have hosted several artists in the guest cottage adjacent to their Virginia home. More broadly, Jill now serves on the board of Oil Painters of America. Jill and Gordon definitely do not bypass art museums anymore. Jill laughs, “Now if they move a painting at the National Gallery, I notice it and wonder why. Last year we headed to Baltimore to attend a football game, but before it began, we hopped in a taxi and enjoyed an hour at the wonderful Baltimore Museum of Art, which somehow we had never visited before.” Over the past three years, Jill and Gordon have spent more time learning about 19th-century artists and acquiring their works, partly because they enjoy the research and the investment opportunities involved, and also because they now discern the clear aesthetic continuum that connects living artists with their forerunners. Thanks to the Internet, the couple can bid at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and regional auctioneers worldwide, and they appreciate the departmental experts letting them know when something appropriate is coming up. This parallel collection now encompasses works by the Danish master Carl Holsøe (1863–1935), Frenchman LéonAugustin Lhermitte, his compatriot J.-B.-C. Corot, plus assorted treasures by such talents as Lebasque, Martin, Friant, Seago, and even Andrew Wyeth. Until recently, Jill and Gordon’s Virginia home had too many beloved artworks resting on the floor and leaning against walls, so they undertook a major renovation that encompassed large new storage closets, proper gallery lighting, and a picture-rail system that allows them to rotate artworks easily. Now that they can view and appreciate their acquisitions better, surely more are on the horizon.
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MARION AND GEORGE HOWARD Marion Howard
Marion and George Howard became enthusiastic art collectors for a very specific reason, and have pursued their passion in a very effective way. Marion explains, “I grew interested in art in 1995 after my daughter went off to college. I needed a hobby and signed up for art lessons at a local community center near our home in Houston.” Clearly she caught the art bug then because Marion has never
stopped painting or attending events that bring gifted artists and their admirers together. Over the years, Marion and George have attended many conferences, workshops, and demos, which they relish as “great opportunities to discover artists and acquire their work.” Much of their collection has been acquired from the artists themselves after the Howards watched
them paint that picture. In this era that prioritizes “experiences” over “things,” witnessing a talented person magically transform simple materials like paint and canvas into a unique expression rates highly, and then bringing that creation home focuses the owners’ memories in powerful ways. Every time those owners look at that canvas, they intuitively replay moments from its birth, adding
George Howard
ROBERT MOORE (b. 1957), Winter Joy, 2005, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in.
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QUANG HO (b. 1963), Young Chef, 2007, oil on panel, 24 x 24 in.
another layer of joy to the already gratifying feeling that ownership endows. “One of the advantages of acquiring art through workshops is that one has time to develop relationships with the artists,” Marion observes. “Now we enjoy long-standing friendships with several of them,” a point underscored by the nine oils and four watercolors they own by Quang Ho. The one illustrated here was purchased through Houston’s impressive Jack Meier Gallery, but another one — measuring 3 x 5 feet — was commissioned by the Howards directly from the artist. In 2019, Marion and George traveled to France to study with Ho, and — health regulations permitting — they look forward to being with him again in Scotland this July. In fact, the first acquisition the Howards made after observing a workshop was the other painting illustrated here, Robert Moore’s expressive Winter Joy, which took him several days to create because it measures 4 x 5 feet. At F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
two different editions of the Plein Air Convention & Expo (which is hosted by this magazine’s owner, Streamline Publishing), the Howards watched Charles Warren (“C.W.”) Mundy create a painting, and also the late, great Ken Auster (1949–2016). Marion fondly remembers watching Sherrie McGraw paint a small but compelling portrait of the artist Neil Patterson, then serving as president of Oil Painters of America (OPA), during one of that organization’s conferences. Beyond the artists mentioned above, the Howards own works created by such masters as Carolyn Anderson, Dan Beck, Ryan S. Brown, Scott Burdick, Kim English, William Kalwick, Huihan Liu, Kyle Ma, Nura Mascarenas, E. Melinda Morrison, Mikael Olson, Derek Penix, Lori Putnam, Peggi Kroll-Roberts, Cynthia Rosen, Maggie Siner, Adrienne Stein, and Sylvia Trybek. Among the deceased artists represented are Ann Armstrong, Lajos Markos, and Anne Templeton.
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“Because the work of assembling a collection is never finished, wall space eventually becomes an issue,” Marion admits. “George and I compounded the problem recently by moving from a large home to a smaller house with less wall space in order to be nearer my daughter. Now difficult choices must be made when it comes to hanging the pictures. Some things will just have to be stored and then rotated in and out every so often.” When pressed on how she manages to regularly secure prized works created right before the eyes of an audience that can sometimes number 900 people, Marion confides: “Well, I usually race up on to the stage as soon as the event has ended. But once I arranged to meet OPA’s featured artist the night before the demonstration and purchased the artwork even before it had been painted.” Now that is dedicated collecting.
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TONI AND STEVE KELLENBERG Toni Kellenberg
Toni and Steve Kellenberg are beloved members of the lively and historic arts community in Laguna Beach, California. When the couple met in 1992, Steve was already living there, and it made sense to remain when they married two years later. A landscape architect and urban planner with clients worldwide, Steve still enjoys drawing plans by hand,
and Toni became more interested in art as they started traveling together, always making a beeline to the local galleries and museums. It was at the 2003 edition of the famous Laguna Festival of Arts that the Kellenbergs bought their first landscape painting together. They had recently acquired some land in the Sierra Foothills and dreamed of
building a home there, so Jeff Horn’s painting of an oak tree instantly reminded them of that region’s magnificent oaks. As intended, it now hangs in that second home. Since then, the Kellenbergs have bought from both artists and galleries, yet most of their acquisitions come through festivals, particularly the annual Laguna Beach
Steve Kellenberg
JESSE POWELL (b. 1977), The Late Show, Laguna Beach, 2015, oil on linen, 24 x 30 in.
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JEFF HORN (b. 1947), The Oak at Warner Ranch, 2003, oil on linen mounted on wood, 10 x 12 in.
Plein Air Painting Invitational. Toni notes, “We enjoy the opportunities to meet artists, watch them paint, and become familiar with their work in a more connected and meaningful way. We rarely buy anything that we both don’t get excited about, and when the paintings get home, we think of them as friends hanging on the walls: each has a person, relationship, and experience attached to it.” This circle of friendship has been reinforced over the last eight years through Toni’s service on the board of trustees of the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association, and indeed many of the artists represented in their collection have participated in LPAPA activities. They include Ken Auster, Suzie Baker, Cindy Baron, Zufar Bikbov, Carl Bretzke, Josh Clare, Rick J. Delanty, Jennifer Diehl, Aimee Erickson, Dan Graziano, Jeff Horn, Jane Hunt, Charlie Hunter, Debra Huse, Mark Kerckoff, Peggi Kroll-Roberts, John Lasater, Daniel Marshall, Jim McVicker, Terry Miura, Dan Mondloch, Michael Obermeyer, Kathie Odom, Jason Sacran, Aaron Schuerr, Jeff Sewell, Michele Usibelli, and many others. Most of their works were painted in plein air, so naturally the Kellenbergs “appreciate the spontaneity of a small plein air study as much as the larger, more ‘finished’ studio work. We especially enjoy studying the thick brushstrokes that are abstract when viewed up close, but magically come together as a beautifully detailed scene when you step back.” F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
Like many collectors, the Kellenbergs find it difficult to choose a favorite work, but, when pressed, they identify Jesse Powell’s nocturne The Late Show, Laguna Beach. Toni recalls, “We purchased it during the 2015 Laguna Invitational Collectors Gala, where it won the Irvine Museum Award and later hung in an exhibition there. Jesse became one of the first living artists included in that museum’s permanent collection. Beyond all the accolades, we just never tire of looking at The Late Show; it’s as captivating today as it was the first time we saw it.” As for the various events mentioned above, the Kellenbergs “always look forward to reconnecting with the artists in our collection while making new friends at the same time. We are also fortunate to have become friends with a number of collectors — or should we say ‘fellow art addicts’? We are particularly in awe of the extraordinary collections of Jay and Mary Linda Strotkamp, Jean and Linda Stern, and Garrett and Linda Pack.” All would surely agree with Toni when she admits to “not having enough wall space, even with a second home. We are incredibly fortunate and grateful to be able to fill our walls with such wonderful original works of art that we can enjoy every day.” The Kellenbergs fondly remember the year their collecting moved to a new level of both friendship and collegiality. When Toni took her first outdoor painting workshop with Ken Auster, he advised her to learn drawing to achieve better results. So she enrolled in a
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drawing class with a “J. Horn,” who turned out to be the very same Jeff Horn who painted that marvelous oak tree the Kellenbergs had already acquired. After Toni finished Jeff’s class with a “solid A” and took his painting workshops, they all became friends and Horn visited the foothills home to teach Toni and paint on the land. Toni recalls, “Steve and I had never witnessed anyone so excited about getting up before dawn to ‘go to work’!” There the trio discussed the Sierra Foothill Conservancy, which preserves more than 50,000 acres of beautiful land and cattle ranches, including the Kellenbergs’ property. Soon Jeff, Toni, and the conservancy staff were organizing a group of artists who had already participated in the Laguna Invitational; they included John Burton, John Cosby, Gil Dellinger, Kathleen Dunphy, Kim Lordier, Clark Mitchell, Jesse Powell, Ray Roberts, Randall Sexton, Bryan Mark Taylor, and Elizabeth Tolley, all of whom are represented in the Kellenbergs’ collection. Over the next year, these talents came to stay at the Kellenbergs’ country home and paint on their land, as well as on other preserves. Toni recalls, “Not only were lifelong friendships formed, but also an entirely new relationship of appreciating the art and the artist was formed. This ‘turning point’ happened more than a decade ago, and we are forever grateful for it, and for how much the art and friendships continue to enrich our lives.”
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DAVID LILE AND FRED EHLERS David Lile
Fred Ehlers
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David Lile and Fred Ehlers split their time between Atlanta and Palm Springs, where both homes are filled with art they love. David explains, “We came to appreciate art in our 30s and more so in our early 40s while building a new home and wanting to start an art collection together. We suddenly realized we had a lot of wall space and it was going to take time to find pieces that had meaning to us.” He continues, “Our collecting journey began as we were building a house in Norfolk, Virginia. We visited Atlanta regularly to meet with our designer, and one weekend she took us to see a gallery show of new works by Thomas Darnell. She thought we would love one of his paintings of roses, but it was actually his landscapes that grabbed our attention. We proceeded to buy Pouzels Sunset, which has just the right proportion of landscape to sky. As on that day, most of our acquisitions are pieces that somehow spoke to us as soon as we saw them. That may sound strange, but something just clicks.” David and Fred are grateful for the friendly guidance they have received from smaller galleries. David recalls, “We started dealing with Matre Gallery in Atlanta because it was the sole representative of Steve Penley, whose art Fred loved as soon as he spotted it in a restaurant. There we bought Penley’s painting of Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, which remains Fred’s favorite to this day. We developed a friendship with the gallery manager, who began contacting us when she came across something we might like. She also recommended a local
ROLAND KULLA (b. 1947), Triboro, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 in.
framer, who pointed us to another Atlanta gallery, and soon our network started to grow.” Atlanta is not the couple’s only hunting ground, however. David adds, M A R C H / A P R I L
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“At that time we were visiting New York City several times a year, so we spent an afternoon walking around Chelsea to see if something in the windows might grab our attention. George F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
THOMAS JEFFERSON KITTS (b. 1961), Five Palms (Indian Canyon), 2019, oil on linen, 48 x 72 in.
Billis Gallery quickly became our favorite, partly because George took us into the storeroom and pulled pieces out for us. He also owns a Los Angeles gallery we stop in during visits there, and he introduced us to the Red Dot fair he helps organize in Miami. We found another of our favorites, CK Contemporary, while wandering the streets of San Francisco. At each of these galleries, friendships have developed and our tastes have become known. When they sign a new artist they think we might like, we get a phone call or e-mail.” Today the couple’s collection includes works by such talented painters as Rosalyn Bodycomb, Dana Brown, Scott Carlyle, McWillie Chambers, Carol Inez Charney, Robert Cottingham, Thomas Darnell, Rick Dula, Juan Escauriaza, Nicholas Evans-Cato, Alice Federico, F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
Linden Frederick, Drew Galloway, Robert Gamblin, Susan Grossman, Danny Heller, Scott Hill, James Hollingsworth, Scott Ingram, Thomas Jefferson Kitts, Roland Kulla, Vincent LaForet, Adam Normandin, Elizabeth O’Reilly, Steve Penley, Joseph Peragine, Robert Sagerman, Tim Saternow, William Steiger, Christopher Stott, Sarah Williams, and Karen Woods. The collection also has sculptures by Gustavo Torres, Mike Wsol, and Tim Yankosky, as well as photographs by the historical masters Berenice Abbott and O. Winston Link. Two experiences underscore the joys and perils of collecting through galleries. In 2019, David and Fred were walking by Brian Marki Fine Art in Palm Springs when they spotted the staff stretching a newly arrived painting on the floor. Intrigued, they asked them
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to tack the canvas up on the wall, and they instantly fell in love. That picture is Thomas Jefferson Kitts’s Five Palms (Indian Canyon), illustrated here. But sometimes things don’t go so well. David remembers, “One weekend we were visiting New York City and heard that Forum Gallery was exhibiting paintings by Linden Frederick, whose work we already liked. In the gallery we kept circling back to one particular piece. We knew we wanted it but decided to think about it. Two days later we called Forum and learned that the piece had been purchased. A few days after that, Fred’s former boss told him all about a great Frederick painting he just picked up in New York! That taught us: if we see something we like, get it.” Indeed, these are words all serious collectors must live by.
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TIM MCLAUGHLIN Tim McLaughlin
GRAYDON PARRISH (b.
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Tim McLaughlin came to collect of Art (Hartford) and Florence Gris- than all the pre-med courses I took. But contemporary artworks thanks to wold Museum (Old Lyme). He notes, medical school in Baltimore, a surgihis long-standing passion for histori- “My wife, Marian Kellner, and I are cal residency, and then my orthopedic cal ones. A resident of Farmington, incredibly fortunate to be surrounded practice proved so absorbing that I Connecticut, the retired orthope- by so many opportunities to see great rarely had the time or energy for anydic surgeon is a committed museum art. We can just walk up the street to thing more than occasional visits to booster: he once chaired the board of the Hill-Stead Museum to enjoy best- museums. And I did not have enough the New Britain Museum of Ameri- of-type Monet haystacks, Degas bal- money to acquire art until my career can Art and now serves as a trustee of lerinas, Manet portraits, and works took off in my late 30s.” Tim’s first serious art purchase the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum by Puvis de Chavannes and Whistler. Even in these was inspired by American Paradise, COVID times, we a 1987 exhibition of Hudson River are nourished by School paintings he enjoyed at the experiencing fine art Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The following year, he up close.” Growing up in rural was exploring the Hartford Armory Maryland, Tim collected Antique Show when he fell for an 1861 fossils, bird’s nests, and landscape painted by Asher B. Durand, other natural specimens, which looked just right in the 19ththen turned his atten- century house Tim had purchased. tion to coins and military Over time Tim began to read ever miniatures. Art was in the more books and articles and to acquire house, too: “My family paintings by Hudson River masters had some paintings by my such as Cropsey, Gifford, and Kensett. father's grandfather, Frank Eventually he narrowed his focus to McKernan, who had been landscapes of Connecticut, the state he a student of Howard Pyle has called home for more than 35 years, along with N.C. Wyeth. I ultimately building a collection so sigeven drew mural-size Rev- nificant that the New Britain Museum olutionary War illustra- presented its highlights in a 2010 exhitions for my seventh-grade bition, American Reflections. In her history class, but later I essay for the accompanying catalogue, was encouraged by my Museum of Fine Arts, Boston curator parents to do something Erica Hirshler called the collection “selective, rather than encyclopedic,” ‘more useful’ for a living.” While attending col- and indeed it leaps nimbly across time lege in Washington, D.C., to encompass such diverse talents as Tim took an art history sur- Earl, Whistler, and Hassam. After he retired seven years ago, vey course that required him to visit the capital’s Tim enrolled in the University of Hartgreat art museums. He ford’s Hartford Art School, where recalls, “That experi- he took every possible course in acaence probably influ- demic drawing and painting. Today enced me more he paints with a group at the Lyme Art M A R C H / A P R I L
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Association using professional models, and also outdoors. “Now,” he explains, “I collect only art that informs my own painting and stimulates me to achieve greater mastery of oils on canvas.” Among the latest acquisitions are a nude by William McGregor Paxton (1930) and a portrait by Philip de Laszlo (1924). Tim has navigated the art market deftly. First and foremost, he credits his mentor, Jeff Cooley of Cooley Gallery (Old Lyme), who handles superb historical and contemporary American art and has always been, in Tim’s words, “honest, friendly, and fun.” He has also bought well from Vose Galleries in Boston and Adelson, Questroyal, and Taylor-Graham in New York City. At auction he has bid most often at Sotheby’s, but also relies upon the Connecticut firms Shannon’s, Nadeau’s, and Winter Associates. Tim’s abiding love of historical American art opened the door to works created by living artists who revere the past while making their own modern statements. He aims particularly “to acquire works by artists who have taught me their approaches to making fine realist paintings.” For example, he owns several paintings by one of his Lyme teachers, Hollis Dunlap, who has “a contemporary vibe but also so deep a respect for technique that he would have been right at home in the 19th-century Ecole des Beaux-Arts.” Among the other teachers represented in the collection are Steven Assael, Jeremiah Patterson, and Jesús Villareal. In addition, Tim explains, “fundraisers in support of the New Britain Museum have introduced me to the excellent work of many contemporary artists and allowed me to acquire pieces I would not have found otherwise.” Among these talents are Walton Ford, Christopher Pugliese, Jacob Collins (represented by a preliminary study for the painting of Penelope he exhibited in New Britain), and James Prosek, “a brilliant writer, thinker, and artist whose career I have followed since he was a freshman at Yale.” In 2002, New Britain’s director Douglas Hyland introduced Tim to Graydon Parrish, whom the museum soon commissioned to paint The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy: September 11, 2001, an enormous and moving composition completed in 2006. Tim especially admired the roses Parrish had incorporated, so he later commissioned a close-up of a rose that would remind him of the magnum opus. During their planning conversations, the collector pointed the artist toward Martin Johnson Heade’s painting of a rose in the museum’s collection; today Tim is convinced that Parrish surpassed his 19th-century forerunner on every count. Regarding other collectors, Tim most admires those “who buy quietly and privately out of a compulsion to surround themselves with the beautiful, brilliant, and meaningful. They are not social climbers or ‘commodity traders,’ and they are so discreet that I can’t name them here, but I deeply appreciate their letting me visit their homes to see what they have.” Tim notes, “Lately we have been donating works to museums and to my daughter in order to make room for new acquisitions.” One artwork F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
HOLLIS DUNLAP (b. 1977), Study of Morgan, 2019, oil on panel, 20 x 16 in.
that won’t depart is a historical one with a powerfully contemporary resonance. Several years ago, Tim’s daughter spotted John Singer Sargent’s charcoal portrait of a handsome young man in a Vose Galleries catalogue. Tim marveled that it was “the very image of my son, Kevin, who had tragically succumbed to injuries sustained a few years before in a college dormitory fire. I could not afford the asking price, but I offered what I could, and, miraculously, the consigner accepted it. When we first displayed the drawing at home,
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numerous close friends and family members thought it was a commissioned portrait of Kevin until they realized it is dated 1921. Now it keeps Marian and me company in our dining room every night. Is this coincidence? Art miracles probably happen for a reason, and they are exactly why we keep looking.”
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TONI MORAN Toni Moran
Toni Moran of Las Vegas is the proud owner — with her husband, Dan — of 314 works, mostly paintings, by 146 artists. “I have acquired objects since childhood,” she recalls, “first seashells and coins, then crafts. My first painting was a detail of a tugboat made by another student at my high school. It cost $10, and I had to get an advance on my allowance. It knocked me out then and has ever since. Because it’s unsigned, I brought a photograph of it to a school reunion, but we couldn’t identify the artist. That disappointment reinforced my desire to document my artworks.”
RICHARD BOYER (b. 1958), Last Rays of Light, 2020, oil on panel, 30 x 30 in.
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Moran’s zeal for art grew out of “school trips to museums and through my mother’s interest; I recently realized that one of her books influenced me — a tattered copy of Modern American Paintings [1940]. And I still visit museums regularly; they aren’t frustrating for collectors because nothing’s for sale,” she laughs. During her career, Moran worked at six National Parks and two Park Service offices. “My first was Yellowstone, followed by Grand Canyon, where I envied older colleagues who owned paintings from the parks where they had worked and vacationed. Back in the mid-1970s, there were lots of Grand Teton paintings, but no Yellowstones in my price range. In fact, it was only recently that I purchased Orange and Blue, a hot spring painting by Isaiah Johns.” Moran recalls, “A turning point in my collecting journey came in the mid-1990s when I saw the California Impressionist paintings at the Fleischer Museum in Scottsdale. That led me to the Irvine Museum and to books by its director, Jean Stern. In 2005 I moved to San Francisco and discovered the Bay Area painters who worked in both plein air and studios.” It was around then that Moran decided to concentrate on living artists, partly to avoid the forgeries and misattributions often associated with deceased ones. An even more recent “aha” moment came in 2012 at the first Plein Air Convention & Expo, where Moran encountered many gifted artists new to her. “The internet changed everything,” she declares. “I usually discover art online and have purchased from M A R C H / A P R I L
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artists, galleries, regional and national auctioneers, eBay, and antique stores. I began to discover artists early in their careers before prices rose beyond my means. Internet searches led me to local auctioneers where I could bid on the secondary market, which is more affordable than galleries and helps me bolster the auction histories of artists I admire.” Moran appreciates how “tolerant” her husband is: “While Dan prefers photorealism, I am more flexible. I buy primarily representational works that remind me of places and events important to me, that have a feeling I respond to, a strong diagonal composition, or a degree of tonal serenity. While considering a purchase, I evaluate why it speaks to me, taking into account its coloring, composition, subject, and if I own a similar piece. For buying sight unseen, I began with artists whose work I knew, though I grew braver as COVID-19 curtailed in-person events.” When asked to identify a favorite source, Moran praises the three galleries in St. George, Utah, owned by Jane Bell Meyer: Illume, Authentique, and The Mission. “My delightful visits there are always an exercise in resistance because there are so many wonderful paintings. Also, Jane posts prices online, which I appreciate.” Stepping back, Moran observes thoughtfully, “When I look at my walls, I see my life in paint. Every painting has a story, and I enjoy rehanging them as pieces arrive. Since 2005, I have concentrated on California landscapes painted by living artists in order to give the collection a focus.” This means she owns 20 F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
KATHLEEN DUNPHY (b. 1963), Up the Pass, 2016, oil on linen, 24 x 18 in.
works by Victor A. Schiro, 19 by Kevin Courter, 17 by Tom Killion, and 11 by Kathleen Dunphy. “But I also buy scenes from places I’ve lived and visited throughout the West, such as the Colorado River raft trip that one of Richard Boyer’s Grand Canyon scenes evokes.” Over time Moran has diversified to include nine works by Tim Horn — renowned for “windshield views” of streets and vehicles — as well as industrial scenes and cityscapes, still lifes, and figures. It would fill a page to list all of the collection’s artists, so suffice it to say that the painters represented by more than one work are Kanna Aoki, Edwin Bertolet, C.G. Blaylock, Richard Boyer, Craig Clibon, Bill Cone, Christin Coy, Bill Cramer, Laura Cunningham, Suzanne D’Arcy, Don Eagling, Dan Goozee, Scott Grabowski, Debra Joy Groesser, Drew Hart, Mary Jabens, Wanda Kemper, Paul Kratter, Lindsey Kustusch, T. Allen Lawson, Richard Lindenberg, Taylor Lynde, Kyle Ma, Denis Milhomme, Douglas Morgan, Lisa Mozzini-McGill, Charles Muench, Stefan Pastuhov, Frank Serrano, Craig Stephens, Chuck Waldman, Karen White, F. Michael Wood, Zem Zembic, and Dennis Ziemienski. For more than one work on paper, the list grows to include Vern Clevenger, Mary Lehman, Shufu Miyamoto, Hajime Namiki, Terry Steinke, and John P. Weiss. And the sculptors represented most deeply are Corey Collins, Chris Deverill, Richard Myer, David Pollock, Kristine Taylor, and Steve Worthington. Naming favorites is a challenge, but Moran ultimately points to Kathleen Dunphy’s Up the Pass “for the weight of those foreground boulders against the backlit Sierra on Sonora Pass, which Dan and I have driven many times. I have visited Kathleen at her home/studio near there, and have enjoyed our many e-conversations.” Amazingly, Moran bought this masterwork online, sight unseen, from Trailside Galleries in Jackson. “When it arrived,” she remembers, “it took a while to figure out why I was disappointed. It was in a pale gold frame from Masterworks Frames [Orem, Utah] that made it look washed out on my white wall. I contacted the proprietor, Michael Graham, F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
who generously offered to exchange it for a dark frame with a gilt edge. When we brought the painting in, he asked all of his craftsmen to have a look; they had been making frames for Kathleen’s paintings for years, but had never seen one in person! That experience only enhanced our enjoyment, and I learned to ask about frames before buying.” Moran then points to Last Rays of Light, a large painting by Richard Boyer she bought from the American Impressionist Society’s 2020 show at Illume. She particularly admires “how the deep shadow of San Francisco’s downtown ‘canyon,’ together with the lights picked out on buildings and the car tail lights, lead our eye down to the brilliant reflection on the Transamerica Building and the bay beyond.” Before or after buying, Moran contacts the artists “to tell them why their pieces are important to me. They usually reply with stories of how they were created. Several delightful correspondences have developed, and when we are traveling freely again, I hope to meet more of them in person.” When possible, Moran asks artists “to write on the back of each painting
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their name, title, date, and place of creation. But I remain amazed at the number of artists who write only an inventory number, or nothing. Do they not understand that this deficit of information may be reflected in the prices those works fetch on the secondary market?” This provocative question highlights how profoundly Moran cares about her artworks and their creators: “I’m concerned about the legacies of artists who do not document their work. I hope they will be thinking 50-plus years out — when their work is dispersed, and when electronic records may no longer be accessible. That’s why I keep binders of receipts, correspondence, and articles that I hope will be valued by future owners. One of my projects during the pandemic is to write down why I love each work, how it fits into the collection, where we purchased it, etc.” Taking the longer view, Moran concludes, “My husband and I enjoy auctions, and one day I can imagine our collection going to auction so that others can enjoy it as much as we have.” That day is far off, but it’s terrific that the Morans recognize the powerful capacity for delight their treasures offer everyone.
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LESLIE PRITCHARD Leslie Pritchard
Leslie Pritchard is always eager to see and learn something new. For a decade she served on the board of Tulsa Town Hall (TTH), a leading nonprofit organization that brings fascinating visiting speakers to Oklahoma, and naturally many of these experts address artistic matters. As part of her new role as a TTH advisor, Leslie and her husband, the businessman Bob Pritchard, sponsored a lecture last season by Robert Edsel, who established the Monuments Men Foundation in 2007, and who has been covered often in Fine Art Connoisseur. Leslie began to appreciate art during high school, when a summer trip brought her and 80 other lucky students to six European countries. While traveling, she read Irving Stone’s famous 1934 novel about Vincent van Gogh, Lust for Life, and so it made sense that Leslie skipped Paris’s Musée du Louvre in favor of the Musée d’Orsay because that’s where Vincent’s paintings hang. She went on to take an art appreciation class in college, and after graduating she — like so many of us — adorned her home with framed posters of historical masterworks. In her 30s Leslie began to buy original art, including a painting by local artist Diane Ainsworth McDonald and another by her mother’s artist friend Jody Ellison. She also commissioned Gail Woodley to paint a portrait of her 2-year-old son, but it is only recently that she has been able to buy and commission more art, both at home in Tulsa and while traveling. A key ally in this adventure has been Mary Ann Doran at Tulsa’s M.A. Doran Gallery, which Leslie first visited when a friend brought her along to an opening. Since then, she has acquired major works by four of the
OTTO DUECKER (b. 1948), Bearded Iris, 2019, oil and mixed media on canvas, 28 x 16 in.
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gallery’s talented artists: Otto Duecker, Wendeline S. Matson, Marshall Noice, and Dennis Wojtkiewicz. Duecker was actually the art teacher at Leslie’s high school; she has always admired his artworks and is now pleased to own two of them. Doran has also encouraged her client to think beyond Tulsa and beyond what already exists. Just for example, when Leslie admired a flower painting by the Philadelphia artist Dennis Wojtkiewicz but felt it was just too large at four feet square, Doran rang him and commissioned one measuring three by three. Leslie had it hanging on her wall within a month, and everyone was happy. Through Doran, Leslie also commissioned the late artist James Zwadlo to create a memorable canvas that shows people seen from above as they pass each other on ascending and descending escalators. Leslie has gone out looking on her own, too. Because she loves hummingbirds, she purchased the Utah artist Greg Ragland’s painting of one from Biltmore Galleries in Scottsdale. Upon returning home, she scoured the internet and found a companion painting at Gallery Bergelli in Larkspur, California. She eventually made contact with Ragland and they struck up a friendship when he revealed that he visits Tulsa to see his grandmother, and now Leslie owns three of his works. Last winter Leslie and a friend visited Santa Fe, where at Manitou Galleries she fell for the Utah artist David Frederick Riley’s painting of a jackrabbit (illustrated here), which derives its distinctive bubbling effect from the mineral spirits he applies. Leslie has also purchased works directly from the California artist Holly Van Hart. Although the Pritchards have not hosted a party lately, they are looking forward to doing so again. “When guests visit our home,” Leslie confides, “they always comment on the art. It offers an ideal way for people to connect while looking together. We love that and we want to share that joy with others.” F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
DAVID FREDERICK RILEY (b. 1977), Tuned In, 2019, oil on canvas, 48 x 30 in.
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KEITH AND ALLISON SULLIVAN Allison Sullivan
Keith Sullivan
JILL BASHAM (b. 1965), September Night, 2018, oil on panel, 20 x 16 in.
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Keith and Allison Sullivan have, like so many art collectors, recalibrated their tastes as they move through life and changing environments. Keith explains, “Our interest in art developed as we set up our first home in the Baltimore area. That collection included several editioned prints by Paul McGehee, who is well known in the region for his luminous depictions of Maryland’s Eastern Shore and Baltimore’s historic harbor.” Allison picks up the story: “From there, our interests refined and evolved thanks to our first visits to the museums and galleries of Europe, especially in Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome. We acquired numerous pieces of primarily Impressionist art from local artists who beautifully captured the landscapes and cityscapes around them. Back in America, we purchased two paintings by Clemente Mimun, a gifted artist based in Palm Beach who was depicting flowers around that time.” Keith underscores “how much joy we always find in exploring galleries in the places we visit. We seek out art that speaks to us in different ways, sometimes evoking emotions or otherwise moving us.” Three years ago, the Sullivans relocated from the Baltimore area to Annapolis — Maryland’s picturesque portside capital — where they run an investment and advisory firm. Before moving in, they worked closely with an architect to renovate their home, which overlooks the water, so they could display much more art, including larger works. Excited by the opportunity to think bigger, they have purchased numerous pieces over the past three
years, including abstracted landscape paintings by Maria Zielinska (Park City, Utah) and works by two Baltimorean talents, the painter Patricia Bennett and glassmaker Joseph Corcoran. Keith notes, “We have discovered many works on our own, and especially through our close M A R C H / A P R I L
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collaboration with Nanny Trippe of the Trippe Gallery in Easton, Maryland.” The collection now has many works by artists associated with Trippe, including Jill Basham, Christopher Fish, Stephen Haynes, Hanna MacNaughtan, Lynn Mehta, John C. North, Crista Pisano, Cynthia Rosen, F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
JOHN BRANDON SILLS (b. 1960), By the Pond, 2019, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in.
Patrick Saunders, John Brandon Sills, and Stewart White. “Since most of the artists live in this region,” the Sullivans note, “our intention this past year was to host them socially in our home. Sadly, the pandemic has prevented us from forging that connection, but we are hopeful — as we all turn the page in 2021 — that we will actually be able F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
to extend that invitation and begin to develop closer relationships with the artists.” Like most Americans, the Sullivans are spending more time at home. Keith laughs, “We have literally almost run out of wall space and are now sharing some of the older pieces with family members. Recently we were delighted to commission a large portrait of Allison from
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the talented Maryland artist Stephen Griffin. Once it’s completed, we will definitely need to rearrange some of our walls in order to make room for it!” What a wonderful problem for any dedicated art lover to have.
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LIBBY AND DAN WHIPPLE Libby Whipple
Libby and Dan Whipple grew up seur’s European tours almost every in Indiana and now live near Indi- autumn. Art was an interest from early anapolis, but they are also enthusiastic globe-trotters who first met in on: as a child, Dan took lessons, and Austria as exchange students. They Libby enjoyed drawing with her have enjoyed visiting museums and parents, who were both quite adept. galleries worldwide ever since, and She recalls, “It wasn’t until I was in participate in Fine Art Connois- law school that I started painting
Dan Whipple
JEREMY LIPKING (b. 1975), Seated Figure in Cool Light, 2009, oil on linen, 16 x 12 in.
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as a break from reading.” Libby has gone on to become a superb painter and notes, “Collecting was a natural next step after attending art workshops and conferences and getting acquainted with other artists.” Today Dan is a leading ophthalmologist who has adorned his eye center’s waiting room with artworks created by Libby and their daughter, Katie. Libby remembers, “One of our first purchases was Michael Lynch’s Winter Sky — Roaring Fork Valley from Keating Fine Art in Basalt, Colorado. In 2003 we were on a vacation with our four children, and Dan and I needed a day to recoup while the kids were skiing. Gordon Keating didn’t just sell us a painting; he wanted to talk about art and asked what artists we liked. When I mentioned Richard Schmid, Gordon said that I should attend the Salon d’Arts charity gala in Denver that summer. I did, and that started connections with many wonderful artists including Scott Burdick, Raj Chaudhuri. Michelle Dunaway, Jeremy Lipking, and Susan Lyon.” Libby adds, “In fact, many of our paintings have been purchased at art events, such as Jeremy’s Seated Figure in Cool Light, which I watched him paint during a demo at Weekend with the Masters in 2009, and Rose Frantzen’s portrait of the artist Alexey Steele, which she painted on stage at the Portrait Society of America’s 2010 annual conference while they talked about art and philosophy. These works I’ve watched being created are especially meaningful.” Quite understandably, the Whipples confide that “the most loved artists in our collection are our daughter, F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
MICHAEL LYNCH (b. 1950), Winter Sky — Roaring Fork Valley, 2002–03, oil on linen, 34 x 32 in.
Katie G. Whipple, and her husband, Brendan Johnston.” Both trained at the Grand Central Atelier in New York City and are pursuing successful careers, Katie primarily painting flowers and Brendan painting and sculpting figures. Libby adds, “Eventually we hope to acquire one of Brendan’s breathtaking marble carvings, and some of the most meaningful pieces we own are portraits I’ve made of Katie through the years.” The Whipples are vocal champions for the arts in Indiana, so naturally their collection includes pieces by their Hoosier friends Mark Burkett (Libby says, “Blocks from his F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
As for kindred spirits, the Whipples printmaking are among my favorites”), Robert Eberle, Ron Mack, C.W. Mundy, David Seward, always enjoy chatting with other collectors and Stephanie Paige Thomson (whom Libby and learning about their adventures. Libby praises as “a young burst of energy and talent”). notes that she is particularly “eager to meet In addition to all of the artists mentioned Vincent and Laura Barletta, who, along with above, the Whipples’ collection includes works artist Michael Klein, are soon opening the New by Bill Anton, Casey Baugh, Gordon Brown, Salem Museum and Academy of Fine Art in Patrick Byrnes, Matthew Cornell, Nancy Massachusetts. I believe we have similar aesGuzik, Don Hamilton, Ron Hicks, Daniel Keys, thetics, and I admire that they are sharing their Michael Klein, Nicolas Martin, Dan McCaw, artworks with artists and the public to study Joseph McGurl, Jay Moore, Daniel Sprick, and learn from them.” Fine Art Connoisseur David Troncoso, Alex Venezia, Skip Whitcomb, looks forward to highlighting this new enterprise as soon as it has opened. Shane Wolf, Justin Wood, and Vincent Xeus.
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O F F T H E W A L L S
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Philip Koch (b. 1948), Truro Kitchen, 2016, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in.
Kira Nam Greene (b. 1967), Sun with a Beach Ball, 2018, oil, acrylic, and Flashe on linen, 30 x 24 in.
Philadelphia
studioincamminati.org March 17–May 9 For more than 18 years, Studio Incamminati, the school founded by artists Nelson and Leona Shanks, has championed contemporary realist art. Now it is presenting Rising Voices, a show of 29 works by the winner and 10 finalists of the 2019 Bennett Prize competition. Established by the collectors Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt and her husband, Stephen A. Bennett (who serves on Incamminati’s board), this initiative highlights the achievements of women figurative realist painters, who have been overlooked for too long.
Greenville, Delaware
Oceanside, California
somervillemanning.com April 9–May 8
Somerville Manning Gallery is mounting an exhibition by Philip Koch, who paints colorful landscapes and interiors from direct observation. His refusal to use reference photographs is, he laughs, “a little ironic since my grandfather John Capstaff invented the Kodachrome film process.” Koch shifted from abstraction to realism after seeing works by Edward Hopper, and has gone on to hold an unrivaled 17 residencies in Hopper’s former studio at Truro on Cape Cod.
oma-online.org through March 14
The Oceanside Museum of Art is about to close the exhibition Gifted: Collecting the Art of California at Gardena High School, 1919–1956. It displays a remarkable trove of early 20th-century art formed between 1919 and 1956 as the student body selected, purchased, and donated some 70 works of art to the school. When it relocated, the artworks were locked away, but now a dedicated nonprofit looks after them. Curator Susan M. Anderson has edited the 200-page illustrated catalogue that accompanies the project.
Santa Paula, California santapaulaartmuseum.org through May 30
Santa Fe
On view at the Santa Paula Art Museum is Silver Linings: Journey of Light, an exhibition of 35 recent oil paintings by the Swedish-born, California-based artist Anette Power. “In my life and in my art,” she explains, “light is synonymous with joy and an antidote to difficulties and darkness. I’m always looking for the silver lining.”
lewallengalleries.com through March 27 LewAllen Galleries is exhibiting more than 30 works from the estate of Edgar Foster Daniels (1932–2020), who lived in Santa Fe for 42 years and received the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2015. Featured are works by the New Mexico artists Susan Contreras, John Fincher, Harry Fonseca, and Susan Hertel, plus two from Daniels’s native North Carolina: Maude Gatewood and Danny Robinette. John Fincher (b. 1941), MGM Brush, early 1980s, oil on canvas, 10 x 8 in.
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Jessie Arms Botke (1883–1971), Cranes under a Giant Fern, c. 1943, oil and gold leaf on canvas, 40 x 32 in., Class of Summer 1943
Nicolas V. Sanchez (b. 1983), Vera Cruz (Folklorico Dancer 12), 2021, charcoal on paper, 8 x 10 in.
New York City sugarlift.com March 4–13
Sugarlift is exhibiting recent charcoal drawings by Nicolas V. Sanchez, who explores his Mexican-American family’s history and legacy. He previously rendered these subjects in prismatic watercolor and oil, and now is capturing them through the ephemeral, almost spectral, medium of charcoals. Shown here is a ballet folklorico dancer in a sweeping lace skirt and ornate accessories, glowing with a pearlescent inner light. M A R C H / A P R I L
Anette Power (b. 1969), Pork Chops, 2019, oil on linen panel, 11 x 14 in., available for purchase
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KATHIE ODOM
KATHIEOD OM.C OM AVAILABLE OIL PAINTINGS, GALLERY REPRESENTATION AND ARTIST’S STORY MAY BE FOUND AT
KATHIEODOM.COM
KATHIEOD OM.C OM
Mother, 20x30, Oil on Linen
RICHARD BOYER LAST LIGHT OVER SAN FRANCISCO OIL ON BOARD, 30 X 30” Available through NEW MASTERS GALLERY, CARMEL, CA
www.richardboyerart.net 801.970.2636 rboyer370@earthlink.net
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Beverly Ford Evans Sporting Art
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Wildlife
Light Behind the Clouds .
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12x24
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Landscape
oil on linen
Additional Oil Paintings . Gallery Representation www.beverlyfordevans.com M A R C H / A P R I L
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Poppy Balser (902) 247-1910 poppy@poppybalser.com poppybalser.com
Award Winning Paintings November 2020 Plein Air Salon
Deepening Reflections (detail) 24x 18”, 2020 Best Oil
Stately Lady (detail) 24x 18”, 2020 Best Vehicle
LAUREN TILDEN Dinah in March
Oil on Panel, 12x12
F.A.N. Gallery
221 Arch St., Philadelphia, PA 19106 215-922-5155
www.laurentilden.com Instagram: laurentildenart lauren@laurentilden.com
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AAA Certified Appraisals | Auction Representation | Private Sales
NEW YORK
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917-488-1385 BETSY@BTFAA.COM WWW.BTFAA.COM
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PHILIPPE GANDIOL
Jill S tefan i Wagn e r psa-mp Iaps/mC
Chasing the Light en Plein Air and in the Studio
Tvedten Fine art / J. petter Galleries / Castle Gallery Fine art / Fuller art House 2016, 2017, 2019 & 2021 plein air Convention pastel Faculty
The Pyramid, 40 x 30”, oil on linen
www.philippegandiol.com pgandiol@yahoo.com
j i l l w a g n e r a r t . c o m 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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Now represented by Trippe Gallery, Easton, MD
At the Edge of the Village, 20 x 24, oil
www.nancytankersley.com
“I love painting the wide open spaces of the marshes with a big sky above filled with light.”
To see more visit marygilkerson.com
Marsh, Sunset, oil on panel
M ARY BENTZ GIL KER S ON STUDIO@MARYGILKERSON.COM | 803.386.1702
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E rnest B urden III
As-Built: Architectural Portraits Prints & Drawings ernestburden.com +1 914 483 8910 eb @ ernestburden.com Manhattan Bridge II, 2019, graphite on paper, 12x18 in.
Manhattan Bridge IV, 2019, graphite on paper, 12x18 in.
Manhattan Bridge III, 2019, graphite on paper, 12x18 in.
DO N R A NKI N
TWA Constellation, 2020, graphite on paper, 9x12 in.
www.donrankinfineart.com
Works also on view at BARBARA MOORE FINE ART, Chadds Ford, PA Milking Time 27” x 13.5” Transparent watercolor on paper.Available via artist . $10,000
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TOM LINDEN
www.tomlindenfineart.com | tclinden@yahoo.com | 815-399-6399 Represented by Rivers End Gallery Waukesha, WI & Woodwalk Gallery Egg Harbor WI.
Quiet Over the Bay 12” x 36” oil on canvas
CHANTEL LYNN BARBER “My teaching slogan - ‘The power of the suggestive is much greater than the statement of reality’ - fits Chantel ‘to the T’ - so poetic and original with feeling!!!”- CW Mundy
“Whisper My Name” 9x12, acrylic on panel Available through the artist
Give someone you love the gift of a commissioned portrait
To view more of Chantel’s work and for workshops: chantellynnbarber.com
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| 901.438.2420 129
LISA CUNNINGHAM PSA
Represented by: Cooper & Smith Gallery, Essex, CT Patricia Hutton Galleries, Doylestown, PA
Seaside Charm, 24 x 18, pastel
l i s a c u n n ing h am f i ne ar t .c om l i s a @ l i s a c u n ni ng h am f i ne ar t .c om 5 70 - 9 54- 9 617
See why over 3,500 artists are members of North America’s leading art organization representing the finest representational oil painters across the United States, Canada and Mexico.
30th Annual National Exhibition of Traditional Oils
Craig Tennant OPAM
hosted by Escondido Museum at the California Center of Arts
April 9 - May 16, 2021 Over 250 traditional oil paintings in the representational style will be available and on display for purchase information contact the museum at 760.839.4175 Daniel Gerhartz OPAM
815·356·5987 130
James Tennison OPAM
www.oilpaintersofamerica.com M A R C H / A P R I L
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Cynthia Rosen
The Magic of Winter 24x36 oil $5800 Available at Gallery 46, Lake Placid, NY
www.c ynthiarosen.com | 802.345.8863
HARPER HENRY GALLERIES: Frame Of Reference Fine Art Whitefish, MT Mountain Trails Gallery Jackson, WY / Park City, UT
harperhenry.com Equus Ebony, 36x36, oil on canvas
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TOBI CLEMENT
TobiClementArtist.com facebook.com/TobiClementPastelArtist
Seduced by Southwest Skies “Twilight is the ephemeral time when light and dark meet—their romance expressed with an explosion of lustful color. I feel like a voyeur breathlessly watching in anticipation to see what will unfold.” —Tobi 2021 WORKSHOPS Pastel Art Retreat: Building a Foundation Three-day, four-night, all inclusive workshop, July 28-August 1. Pecos Benedictine Monastery, New Mexico Pastel Art Retreat: Chasing the Light Four-day, five-night, all inclusive workshop, September 15-20. Pecos Benedictine Monastery, New Mexico Represented by Canyon Road Contemporary Art Santa Fe, New Mexico
His Brazen Lust, 18 x 22, pastel
132
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PRISCILLA NELSON nelsonart.com • nelsonartllc@icloud.com • 480-636-1233
UNWIND 36x24 oil on panel
134
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DEBORAH ALLISON “Faith” oil on linen, 16”x18”
www.DeborahAllisonStudio.com deborahallison@hotmail.com (432) 294-3706
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“Last of the Winter’s Snow”
“Then Sings My Soul...”
30x40
oil on linen panel
9x12
oil on linen panel
“Spring Runoff” 18x24 oil
DebraJoyGroesserFineArt.com (gallery) ∙ DebraJoyGroesser.com (studio) 5615 S. 77th St., Ralston NE 68127 ∙ debra@debrajoygroesser.com ∙ 402.592.6552 136
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WILLIAM A. SCHNEIDER
Revealing the Soul AISM, OPAM, PSA-MP, IAPS-EP
“Red Heat” 30 x 20 Oil on Linen Available at Reinert Fine Art Charleston, SC (843) 694-2445 www.reinertfineart.com
Please see website for blog and workshop information
WWW.SCHNEIDERART.COM
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A Cape Ann gallery featuring a collection of past masters and premier living artists.
FOLLY COVE FINE ART 59 & 61 Main Street Rockport, MA www.follycovefineart.com inquiries@follycovefineart.com
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AIS, OPA, WSLP, MAPAPA
PULLET AND ROOSTER, 17x17 Plein Air; Oil on linen and baltic birch panel; Frame: Handmade, furniture finish with water gild inset
OWN THE STORY
The Spar Hill Farm location was used in Kate Winslet’s upcoming series Mare of Easttown. Once a duPont turkey farm, the architecture on the property served as a unique and timely backdrop integral to the storyline.
jacalynbeam.com 302-893-1775 instagram: jacalynbeam
SPAR HILL, 19x23 Plein Air; Oil on linen and baltic birch panel; Frame: Handcarved, water gild in gold
Gary Alsum Bronze Sculpture H O N O R I N G H E RO E S A M O N G U S! A QUARTER CENTURY SCULP TING MEMORIALS & MONUMENTS. CONTACT GARY ABOUT CRE ATING A L ASTING TRIBUTE TO A HERO OR LOVED ONE IN YOUR LIFE . Honor 77”H 28”W 27”D Commissioned for Veterans Memorial Park of Rector, Arkansas. (Available - Limited Edition of 7)
GALLERY PARTNERS: Nationalsculptorsguild.com (NSG Fellow since 1992) Knoxgalleries.com
garyalsum.com gary@garyalsum.com F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M
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AIDA GARRITY www.aidabgarrity.com | 614-832-1422 | aida.garrity@gmail.com
Hole No. 10, 24x30, Oil on linen
H L SC PAU
Golf Tournament Practice, 24x30, Oil on linen
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Aida Garrity: Dublin Golfscapes FEB RUA
Dublin Arts Council, Dublin, Ohio
RY 20 21 VOLUM E 18 ISSUE
These works will be exhibited at a solo show that will take place at the
UA R
1 Y 202
Fuel your passion. Subscribe today. FEBR
1
Dublin Arts Council from April 27 until June 7, 2021. www.dublinarts.org
800-610-5771 | fineartconnoisseur.com DE
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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
BOBBI MILLER
www.artistbobbimiller.com Cruising , 12” x 12” Mixed Media
Art of the Plains
APA Signature Show March 15 - May 22, 2021 Hosted by The Petrified Wood & Art Gallery 418 East 1st Street Ogallala, Nebraska
Opening & Closing Receptions March 15 and May 22, from 2-6 PM
Jammey Huggins, APA
“Dakota Blue”, Bronze Edition of 30 18”H x 8”W x 7”D www.jammey.com jammey@jammey.com
Mary Lambeth, APA "Sunny Two", watercolor 22.5"x30" www.marylambeth.com mary@marylambeth,com
www.americanplainsartists.com | www.petrifiedwoodgallery.com For more information contact 308.249.1488
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a rare chance to see and paint the real russia Sept. 12-26, 2021
W
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.
7 S SEATT LEF
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, 2021, but I can only take 50 people. Eric Rhoads, Publisher
to learn more or apply to attend visit paintrussia.com 142
ONLY
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NLY
7 S EATT
LEF
Diya Tantawi, MD, FACS Board Certified Plastic Surgeon
Anna Gasparyan, MD, FACS Board Certified Vascular Surgeon
BeautyRPS.com | 74-000 Country Club Dr, Ste G-3 Palm Desert, CA 92260 | Tel: 760-666-6121
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$30,000 ART COMPETITION
GRAND PRIZE WINNER RECEIVES $15,000 CASH AND THE COVER OF PLEIN AIR MAGAZINE 9th Annual Salon Grand Prize Winner – Dave Santillanes
$15 K
8th Annual Salon Grand Prize Winner – Tom Hughes
WIN NER SAL ON SANT ILLA NES DAVE
UP WITH WHAT’S LE OILS ? IXAB IN WAT ER-M S WEIG H 3 PRO GUID E THE 2021EVEN TS BON US: N AIR TO PLEI
December
E Z I N G A M A
2020 January 2021 Volum e 10, Issue 6
JANU ARY
2021
7th Annual Salon Grand Prize Winner – Jim Wodark
6th Annual Salon Grand Prize Winner – Kathleen Hudson
SAN D
AND SUR F, LOCATION FROM IDA ON TO FLOR MAIN E AUST RALI A TO MALTA , SAUN DERS LTA PATR ICK LYN ASSE OBER G, TANA BE, KEIK O ER: N WINN SALO ARK $15K JIM WOD
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E Z I N G A M A
JULY 20188.95 CAN. $6.95
U.S.
SALON CATEGORIES
Acrylic • Animals & Birds • Best Artist Over 65 • Artist Under 30 • Building • Drawing • Figure & Portrait • Best Floral • Landscape • Nocturne, Sunrise, Sunset • Oil • Outdoor Still Life • Pastel • Plein Air Work ONLY • Vehicle • Water • Watercolor • 144 Western
L FINLA INE IS
DEAD RCH MA T 31S
LAST CHANCE TO ENTER To enter, visit: PleinAirSalon.com
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GAZINE
om Hughes
een Hudson
E IS H T
d i r e c t o ry o f a d v e rt i s i n g Allison, Deborah............................. 133
Fusco Four Marketing.................... 43
Oil Painters of America.................. 130
American Impressionist Society.... 138
Gandiol, Philippe............................ 125
Paula Holtzclaw Fine Art................ 120
American Plains Artists.................. 141
Garrity, Aida................................... 140
Pederson, Jean............................... 28
American Tonalist Society............. 33
Gary Alsum Bronze Sculpture........ 139
Peninsula School of Art.................. 2
Anikis, Nik....................................... 50
Gary McCallum & Sons Studios..... 47
Perl, Davina.................................... 17
Arenas, Heather............................. 51
Gilkerson, Mary.............................. 127
Putnam, Lori................................... 124
Baker, Linda Daly............................ 30
Griffin, Patricia A............................ 23
Rankin, Don.................................... 128
Balser, Poppy.................................. 123
Griffiths, Scott................................ 133
Riker, Julie...................................... 50
Barber, Chantel Lynn..................... 129
Groesser, Debra Joy....................... 134
RJD Gallery..................................... 8-9
Basham, Jill.................................... 147
Hassard, Ray................................... 137
Rogo Marketing & Communications.....32
Beam, Jacalyn A............................. 139
Haynes, Stephen............................ 51
Rosen, Cynthia............................... 131
Beauty Refined............................... 143
Henry, Harper................................. 131
Salminen, John............................... 29
Betsy Thomas Fine Art Advisory LLC.....124
Hitt, Karen Ann............................... 42
Saunders, Patrick........................... 136
Bianco, Jessica............................... 49
Holter, Michael............................... 31
Schneider, William A...................... 135
Bingham, Bruce.............................. 135
Jensen, Ryan.................................. 14-15
Schwartz, Jean............................... 120
Bird, Matthew................................. 27
Jill E. Banks Art, LTD....................... 10
Scottsdale Art Auction................... 148
Black, Elizabeth.............................. 134
Johnston, Catherine....................... 52
SEWE/Southeastern Wildlife Exposition...21
Boyer, Richard................................ 121
Keefe, Shelby L.............................. 137
Sneary, Richard.............................. 126
Briscoe Western Art Museum........ 35
Knowles, Glen................................ 27
Springville Museum of Art............. 22
Brookgreen Gardens...................... 36
Koch, Philip.................................... 122
Stewart, Iain................................... 26
Burden, Ernest............................... 128
Li, Shuang...................................... 26
Strock-Wasson, Carol..................... 13
C.M. Russell Museum..................... 37
Linden, Tom.................................... 129
Swenson, Brenda........................... 29
California Museum of Fine Art....... 38
Lopez, Andres................................ 50
Tanabe, Keiko................................. 30
Celebration of Fine Art................... 11
Manitou Galleries........................... 7
Tankersley, Nancy.......................... 127
Ceres Gallery.................................. 48
Marshall, Dan.................................. 30
Teare, Brad..................................... 34
Clement, Tobi................................. 136
Marty, David................................... 52
Ten One Gallery.............................. 4
Coon, Sheryl Fletcher.................... 28
McCracken, Laurin......................... 28
Tilden, Lauren................................ 123
Cross Contemporary Partners....... 46
McEwan, Angus.............................. 28
Trippe Gallery, The......................... 18-19
Cunningham, Lisa.......................... 130
Miller, Bobbi................................... 141
Vienot, Joan................................... 143
Customs House Museum & Cultural
Miller, Stan..................................... 52
Vovk, Liliya Muglia.......................... 25
Center............................................ 126
Minichiello, Kim.............................. 30
Wagner, Jill Stefani......................... 125
Denson, Terry................................. 29
Moore, Larry................................... 31
Walker, Nina Cobb.......................... 51
Dorsey, Jed..................................... 39
National Sculpture Society............ 41
Wausau Museum Of Contemporary Art...24
Dulce Menendez............................ 5
Neese, Susan.................................. 50
Wells, J. Russell.............................. 6
Eberhard, Mark............................... 40
Nelson, Priscilla.............................. 132
Willing-Booher, Denise................... 132
Evans, Beverly Ford........................ 122
North Star Art Gallery.................... 46
Zhang, Stephen.............................. 26
Evansen, Andy................................ 27
O’Connor, Birgit............................. 31
Folly Cove Fine Art......................... 138
Odom, Kathie................................. 121
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C L A S S I C
K I M B E R LY D O W ( b . 1 9 6 8 ) Nevertheless 2 0 1 7, o i l o n p a n e l , 4 2 x 6 0 i n . Availab le th ro u gh 3 3 C o nte m p o rar y G alle r y (C hic a g o)
146
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Jill Basham
Fertile Ground Jill Basham 2021 oil on canvas 24’x36’
jillbasham.com
jillbasham2014@gmail.com Principle, Alexandria VA I Reinert, Charleston SC I Trippe, Easton MD Crown, Blowing Rock NC I Handwright, New Canaan CT
Scottsdale Art Auction Friday & Saturday, April 9-10, 2021
CArl runGius estimAte: $200,000 - 300,000
WilliAm GOllinGs 24'' x 18" Oil estimAte: $300,000 - 500,000
30'' x 40" Oil
Albert bierstAdt estimAte: $300,000 - 500,000
JOseph h. shArp estimAte: $125,000 - 175,000
22'' x 27" Oil
14'' x 19" Oil
Herbert Dunton 101/2'' x 8 1/2'' Oil Estimate: $30,000 - 50,000
Auctioning Over 400 Works of Important American Western, Wildlife and Sporting Art Session I - Friday, April 9th • 1:30 pm Session II - Saturday, April 10th • 12:00 pm For information please call (480) 945-0225 or visit www.scottsdaleartauction.com. Color Catalogue Avaiable, $40.
SA AS CRTOTAUT SCDT IAOLNE
SCOTTSDALE ART AUCTION
7176 MAIN STREET • SCOTTSDALE ARIZONA 85251
• 480 945-0225
•
www . scottsdaleartauction . com