Innholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2018/ No. 37 i American Fine Art Magazine

A rare early painting by Morris Louis was acquired by the National Gallery of Art at the board of trustees meeting in October 2017. It was brought into the collection alongside two bound volumes by Giovanni Francesco Costa, a 1928 drawing by Stuart Davis,and a handcrafted album by ringl + pit. Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art, comments, “We are delighted with the acquisition of these important works by Morris Louis, Giovanni Francesco Costa, Stuart Davis and ringl + pit, among others. We are grateful as well to our many donors whose generosity continues to strengthen the gallery’s collection.” The 1948 work by Louis, titled Sub-Marine, is one of very few of his early paintings still existing today. After he developed his signature staining technique…

Plus ca change. The art world was rocked by a staggering $450,000,000 price scored at auction in November for the “last Leonardo,” and there are increasing news stories about museums being challenged over issues of political correctness and management diversity. These are, to some degree, old stories and both have interesting precedents at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I caught a glimpse of the Leonardo at Christie’s, but the view was obscured by dozens of spectators snapping pictures with their phones before exiting through a side door without direct access to the hundreds of works of art on view in the adjacent galleries. (In this day of the internet, they could surely have gotten a much better image of the painting online, but there would be little…

I spent my last birthday at Thomas Cole’s house and studio in Catskill, New York. The house, doubling as it did as his showroom—galleries as we know them did not exist in the United States much before the Civil War, and artists’ associations such as the National Academy of Design (which Cole had helped to found) only held annual exhibitions—was an architectural marvel in its humble way. The studios—one in the house, one a separate building designed with windows to catch soft northern light— were filled with replicas of classical casts, miniature horses and figures, collections of seashells and rocks, pigments, and a giant color wheel of Cole’s own devising. His poems were there, hymns to nature mostly, and his musical instruments—Cole often played the recorder as he rambled through…

Henry James wrote, “Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.” Isabella Stewart Gardner lived life to the fullest and had the means to do it. Her art advisor, Bernard Berenson, wrote, “She lives at a rate and intensity, with a reality that makes other lives seem pale, thin and shadowy.” The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, once her home in Boston, is the site of the exhibition Henry James and American Painting through January 21. The exhibition illustrates the relationships among the luminaries of the turn of the 20th century with works by John Singer Sargent, John La Farge, Lilla Cabot Perry and others. As part of its contemporary installations, the Gardner…

National Gallery of Art • 6th and Constitution Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 20565 • t: (202) 737-4315 • www.nga.gov 1924-2013 In Outliers and American Vanguard Art, the National Gallery of Art aims to dissolve the boundaries between self-taught artists and the establishment. Focusing on periods of social and cultural upheaval, the exhibition features 250 works from 80 artists, both schooled and unschooled, and demonstrates how the avant-garde penetrated and intersected with the mainstream art world. The show begins with the interwar years, when, following the Great Depression and the upheaval that followed, the boundaries between traditional and vanguard art became more porous, and there was more acceptance for people from marginalized groups. Works from this period will be presented in conjunction with works by Charles Sheeler and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. The…

Crocker Art Museum • 216 O Street • Sacramento, CA 95814 t: (916) 808-7000 • www.crockerart.org 1942-1955 In 1936, when he was 14, Richard Diebenkorn’s grandmother, Florence Stephens, took him to the California Palace of the Legion of Honor to see a traveling retrospective exhibition of the work of Vincent van Gogh. Twelve years later, he would have his first one man show at the Legion of Honor. His grandmother was supportive of his talent, giving him art books as well as a set of 88 postcards depicting the entire 230-footlong Bayeux Tapestry created in the 1070s and depicting the events leading up to the Norman Conquest in 1066. Diebenkorn (1922-1993) was fascinated by the horizontal bands of its composition, a device that would show up in his works repeatedly…

Michener Art Museum • 138 S. Pine Street • Doylestown, PA 18901 t: (215) 340-9800 • www.michenerartmuseum.org 1904-1997 Thirty years ago, an exhibition, An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art, brought focused on the influences of the males in the great American artistic lineage—N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth. The women in the family had an important influence, however and established their own reputations as artists. Andrew and Henriette’s sister Carolyn introduced Jamie to oils, and Henriette’s husband, Peter Hurd, introduced N.C. and Andrew to egg tempera. An exhibition, Magical & Real: Henriette Wyeth and Peter Hurd, A Retrospective, rectifies part of the omission. On view at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, from January 21 to May 6, it will travel to the Roswell…

The Boston International Fine Art Show welcomed galleries and art dealers from across the United States and Europe to the Cyclorama at Boston Center for the Arts for its 21st annual show, which took place October 19 through 22. Nearly 400 people attended the opening night preview gala, which was sponsored by the internationally known Israeli jewelry company Yvel and Boston-based Cutting Edge Homes Architects + Builders. Both companies also had spots on the floor. The weekend featured booths from 40 dealers of both historic and contemporary art, including Martha Richardson Fine Art, Vose Galleries, Avery Galleries and Questroyal Fine Art. Attending the show for the first time, Florida-based Art Concept Alternative reported strong sales. Six special programs were also offered to attendees, including a keynote presentation and book signing…

February 7-9 James D. Julia Auctioneers 203 Skowhegan Road Fairfield, ME 04937 t: (207) 453-7125 www.jamesdjulia.com Celestial Sphere, by Paul Manship, is one of the most recognized public sculptures in the world. The 12-foot piece, which was created to honor the founding father of the League of Nations, President Woodrow Wilson, was installed in 1939 at the Geneva, Switzerland, headquarters of what is now known as the United Nations. It features 85 separately modeled constellations, while a smaller 5-foot version with 66 constellations was produced for the Aero Memorial in Aviator Park in Philadelphia and a 20- inch version dated 1934 is on display at Harvard University’s Fogg Museum. During James D. Julia’s February 7 to 9 Fine Art, Asian & Antiques Auction, a bronze relief model for the sculpture…

Thomas Moran and Norman Rockwell, each representing iconic periods of American art—landscape painting for Moran, and the Golden Age of Illustration for Rockwell—helped bring in $34.1 million at Christie’s November 21 American art sale in New York City. “We were very pleased. We saw satisfying results from every category,” says William Haydock, the head of Christie’s American art department, who added that the market for American art is going to continue to go up. “For our collectors, anytime the stock market is doing what it’s doing now, we’re certainly going to see renewed strength. What we’re seeing now is very encouraging.” Rockwell’s What Makes it Tick? (The Watchmaker) was the star of the sale when it sold for nearly $7.3 million, well above its $6 million high estimate. The work,…

David Geffen has pledged a historic $150 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, making it the largest single cash gift from an individual in the museum’s history. The commitment goes towards a Peter Zumthor-designed building for the museum’s permanent collection, which will be called the David Geffen Galleries in honor of the extraordinary gift... The Ringling has raised nearly $2 million towards its $5 million goal to preserve the historic residence of John and Mable Ringling. Known as Ca’ d’Zan, the 36,000-square-foot winter residence was completed in 1926 and inspired by the couple’s trips to Venice... The Jewish Museum in New York has appointed Darsie Alexander as its chief curator. Norman L. Kleeblatt announced in December 2016 he was leaving the museum after 40 years, and Alexander…

The great jazz trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker (1929-1988) wrote the lyrics, “I fall in love too easily/I fall in love too fast.” They are lines often quoted by one of our collectors but unlike Baker’s assertion that such a love can’t last, the collectors’ love for the work they purchase is long lasting. Keith Sherman’s company provides public relations and marketing services for the entertainment industry. Roy Goldberg, MD, is a geriatrician. Despite their busy and different careers, Sherman and Goldberg share a passion for American art of the early 20th century especially the period of the WPA and the 1939 New York World’s Fair in particular. There is a room in their country house devoted to art and artifacts of the World’s Fair—over 1,000 pieces. In the pre-internet…

Denver Art Museum • 100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway • Denver, CO 80204 t: (720) 865-5000 • www.denverartmuseum.org 1850-1900 In the mid- to late-19th century, women artists from all over the world, including Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt and Cecilia Beaux, migrated to Paris to further their art careers. This migration is the subject of a new traveling exhibition titled Her Paris: Women Artists in the Age of Impressionism, organized by the American Federation of Arts and debuting at the Denver Art Museum. The exhibition is organized in seven sections, not chronologically, but by theme. As visitors move through the space they will see paintings portraying women at work; education, including studies done at the Louvre; women’s life, which includes interiors and subjects who were family and friends of the artists;…

Provincetown Art Association and Museum • 460 Commercial Street Provincetown, MA 02657 • t: (508) 478-1750 • www.paam.org 1930-1967 In 2013, in preparation for its centennial celebration the following year, Provincetown Art Association and Museum launched a campaign to collect 100 significant works of art for its permanent collection. Being located on Cape Cod, the museum’s visitors often asked about the work of Edward Hopper who moved to Truro with his wife, Josephine, in 1930 and lived there for nearly 40 years. At the time, the museum owned a landscape by Josephine. They were then donated two drawings by Edward: a female nude from the Herman Maril Foundation and, several months later, Robert Duffy gifted a 1901 male nude drawing Come 2016, an unprecedented acquisition was announced at the museum.…

January 15-February 23 Debra Force Fine Art, Inc. 13 E. 69th Street, Suite 4F New York, NY 10021 t: (212) 734-3636 www.debraforce.com American artwork of the 19th century is often filled with a sense of narrative, allowing viewers to be captured by the subject matter before them. In the upcoming show Inside and Out: 19th Century American Genre, Marine, and Still Life Paintings at Debra Force Fine Art in New York City, approximately 35 works in the three themes will take viewers on individual journeys through the artists’ eyes. The show, on view January 15 through February 23, will include pieces by luminaries of their themes as well as lesser-known names. Romanticism painter William Bradford is most recognized for his Arctic seascapes that are often filled with icebergs and ships.…

Just as the shops up and down Madison Avenue are changing their window displays to reflect the holiday cheer, the private dealers located up and down the street come together to host Just Off Madison. With all the switching of dates at the auction houses this fall, this year’s Just Off Madison event took place Sunday evening, November 12. Beginning at Jonathan Boos on 64th Street and extending all the way to Conner • Rosenkranz on 74th Street, this year’s version of the event was one of the best-attended with people scurrying in from the cold autumn evening to see works by artists such as Winslow Homer, Arthur Dove, Edward Hopper, John Marin, Gerald Cassidy, Stuart Davis and Marsden Hartley. “This year the dealers have a wide variety of quality…

January 20, noon Texas Art Auction Wildman Art Framing 1715 Market Center Boulevard Dallas, TX 75207 t: (214) 720-4044 www.daviddike.com Each January, David Dike Fine Art hosts its annual Texas Art Auction featuring a selection of artwork of artists from and associated with the Lone Star State. This year’s sale, taking place at noon January 20 at Wildman Art Framing in Dallas, will feature turn-of-the-century and midcentury offerings, with some of the biggest names in Texas art having work come available. Featured in this year’s auction are 402 lots, making it one of the largest the gallery has hosted. “As always, we start the sale with works on paper—limited edition blackand- white prints, lithographs, color prints, serigraphs,” says Anne Kelly Lewis, director and fine art appraiser at David Dike Fine…

On November 13, Sotheby’s American art auction racked up $19.4 million in sales, with many of the works showing historic and iconic subjects from around the country—Native Americans on horseback, New Mexican pueblos, magnificent landscapes, Saturday Evening Post paintings from the Golden Age of Illustration and impressionist images of girls amid lush garden scenery. The top lot was Albert Bierstadt’s Indians Crossing the Columbia River, estimated at $1.5 million to $2.5 million, which sold for nearly $2.2 million. The luminist landscape, with its orange and yellow sunset cascading around the silhouetted figures rowing over glass-like water, was joined by several other important landscapes from the West: Marsden Hartley’s New Mexico Recollections (est. $700/1,000,000) that sold for $615,000, Ernest L. Blumenschein’s Eagle Nest Lake (est. $300/500,000) that sold for $471,000, Maynard…

The Santa Fe Art Auction closed its 2017 sale on November 11 with $1.96 million in sales and an 86 percent sell-through rate. The auction, which featured a wide variety of Western art, drew special attention to modernist works from New Mexico, which was a bastion of contemporary influence for artists in the early- and mid-20th century. Top lots included Georgia O’Keeffe’s No. 36 – Special (Nicotine Flower) (est. $300/500,000) that sold for $351,000; John Sloan’s East at Sunset, Camino Monte Sol (est. $80/120,000) that sold for $81,900; and Emil Bisttram’s Red Rain (est. $40/60,000) that sold for $70,200. Other top modernist artists reprented in the sale include Doel Reed, Andrew Dasburg, Josef Bakos, Willard Nash, Fremont Ellis, B.J.O. Nordfeldt, Gene Kloss, Gustave Baumann, Kenneth Adams and many others. Tying…

JANUARY 1-FEBRUARY 28 • Dorothy Eisner: The Cranberry Island Years GLEASON FINE ART Boothbay Harbor, ME www.gleasonfineart.com THROUGH JANUARY 2 Frederic Remington at The Met THE MET FIFTH AVENUE New York, NY www.metmuseum.org THROUGH JANUARY 7 Marks of Genius JOSLYN ART MUSEUM Omaha, NE www.joslyn.org THROUGH JANUARY 7 Views of the Baltic Sea: Contemporary Photographs from Greifswald, Germany THE MARINERS’ MUSEUM AND PARK Newport News, VA www.marinersmuseum.org THROUGH JANUARY 7 Dedicated, Displayed, Discovered MICHENER ART MUSEUM Doylestown, PA www.michenerartmuseum.org THROUGH JANUARY 7 E. Charlton Fortune: The Colorful Spirit PASADENA MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA ART Pasadena, CA www.pmcaonline.org THROUGH JANUARY 7 Richard Diebenkorn: Beginnings, 1942-1955 CROCKER ART MUSEUM Sacramento, CA www.crockerart.org JANUARY 10-14 The LA Art Show LOS ANGELES CONVENTION CENTER Los Angeles, CA www.laartshow.com JANUARY 11-14 FOG Design + Art FORT…

In late 2014, two noteworthy, undated, plein air or nearplein air oil paintings by Frederic E. Church (1826- 1900) came to—brighter—light, both through the art market. Both of similar, modest sizes, one of them currently highlights a major exhibition of Church’s works, Frederic Church: A Painter’s Pilgrimage, organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts. Each scene portrays a favorite place of his, at a propitious period of his career: the Niagara-Horseshoe Falls region of New York and Ontario, Canada; autumn 1856 or, more likely, autumn 1858; and ancient Roman Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, spring 1868. Privately owned, the Horseshoe Falls picture resurfaced with limited modern display résumé in the Pacific Northwest. Auctioned at Doyle’s, New York, on April 1, 2015, and purchased by the Detroit Institute of Arts,…

Cape Ann Museum • 27 Pleasant Street • Gloucester, MA 01930 (978) 283-0455 • www.capeannmuseum.org 1830-1865 Through early March, the Cape Ann Museum is holding its special exhibition Drawn from Nature & on Stone: The Lithographs of Fitz Henry Lane. As the first comprehensive exhibition focusing on the 19th century American artist as a printmaker, the show investigates Lane’s lithographs and explores the intersection of his work in oil and print, as well as his success at creating illustrations for sheet music, business cards and stationery, advertising materials and book illustrations. The exhibition will hang through March 4 at the museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865) has long been recognized as one of America’s most important artists of the mid-19th century. First trained in lithography in Boston, by…

Smithsonian American Art Museum • F Street NW & 8th Street NW Washington, D.C. 20004 • t: (202) 633-1000 • www.americanart.si.edu 1926-1949 The early decades of the first half of the 20th century were a hotbed of artistic innovation, cross-cultural influences and the development of national artistic identities. In Mexico the great muralists Diego Rivera (1886-1957), José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) and David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), came through the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The manifesto of the Union of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors, of which they were part, states, “We repudiate the so-called easel painting and all the art of ultra-intellectual circles, because it is aristocratic and we glorify the expression of Monumental Art because it is a public possession.” Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991) was an easel painter. He painted murals…

The Park Avenue Armory • 643 Park Avenue • New York, NY 10065 t: (212) 987-0446 • www.winterantiquesshow.com 1919-2018 Nearly a century ago, Judge John Barton Payne gave 50 works and a $100,000 matching grant for the founding of an art museum. Working together with Virginia governor John Garland Pollard, the pair established a temporary installation, with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in its current form opening its doors in 1936. Collecting for the Commonwealth/Preserving the Nation: Celebrating a Century of Art Patronage at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts celebrates the collection that has accrued since Payne’s first 1919 donation and will be on view as a loan exhibition at the Winter Antiques Show. The museum’s director Alex Nyerges notes, “It seems particularly fitting that we should recognize…

On November 12 to 15 The American Art Fair returned to the Bohemian National Hall in New York City for its 10th anniversary show. A record number of collectors and curators from around the country attended the fair, which is focused specifically on 19th- and 20th-century American artwork. The private opening gala, where attendees are offered the first look at the show, saw nearly 600 guests pass through the doors, while the first public day broke attendance records. Highlighting the four-day show are the carefully curated exhibitions from the 17 participating dealers. These exhibitors often specialize in specific areas within the historic fine art market, providing a well-rounded and knowledgeable experience for attendees. Each brings to market strong examples of artwork that span a number of styles and periods. Still…

SCOTTSDALE, AZ SCOTTSDALE ART AUCTION JANUARY 1920 Leanin’ Tree Museum Collection This January 19 and 20, Scottsdale Art Auction will bring to market an unprecedented grouping of artwork in its Scottsdale, Arizona, showroom for the Leaning Tree’ Museum Collection sale. The auction, featuring more than 500 lots, is the chance for collectors to acquire museum-quality work from the recently closed Leanin’ Tree Museum of Western Art of Boulder, Colorado. The museum’s collection, put together by founder Ed Trumble, was last seen by the public on Labor Day, the last public exhibition day for the now-shuttered museum that opened in 1974 as part of the Leanin’ Tree greeting card company, which will continue operating. In March, the then-92-year-old Trumble sent a letter to his friends and patrons indicating the museum would…

Modernism performed well across the board at Bonhams’ November 20 sale of American art. In total, the auction achieved $1.2 million in sales. The two top lots in the sale came from Marsden Hartley—his Dogtown (est. $200/300,000) fetched $262,500 while his Green and Purple Grapes achieved $115,000, squarely within its estimate of $100,000 to $150,000. A suite of Charles Burchfield works also produced favorable results, with his Trees in a Field (est. $30/50,000) achieving $37,500. Burchfield’s Trillium and Rock Ledge went for $18,750, and his March Sunlight closed at $10,625. Two lots by Robert Vickrey performed well—his Boy with Chalk sold for $15,000 and Nun Walking on a Brick Road achieved $17,500. “There was quite a bit of interest in our selection of Wolf Kahn paintings and all performed well…

MONROVIA, CA JOHN MORAN AUCTIONEERS OCTOBER 24, 2017 California & American Fine Art Auction $1 million On October 24, John Moran Auctioneers brought to market 200 lots of fine art by California and American artists. The sale included names such as Guy Rose, Ben Abril, Edgar Payne, Maynard Dixon, Phil Dike and more, attracting a large crowd for the sale. Highlights included a circa 1939 painting by Abril that depicted Grand Central Public Market on Hill Street in Los Angeles, which had a presale estimate of $8,000 to $12,000. The work set a new world auction record for the artist when it achieved $27,000. Selling for the same price was a watercolor by Emil J. Kosa Jr. depicting figures on a California ranch near the coastline (est. $4/6,000). According to…