Innholdsfortegnelse for September - October 2019/ No.47 i American Fine Art Magazine

LOUIS M. SALERNO Owner Questroyal Fine Art Nineteenth- and early-20th-century American paintings remain off their prerecession highs. However, commencing in 2018 to the present, there has been a marked improvement in both interest and in acquisitions of certain genres. Our annual Hudson River School show was well-attended and total sales were nearly on par with prior peak years. The mid-level works ($50,000 to $250,000) were sought after, and the lower priced examples found buyers. Interest in the over $300,000 price range was tepid primarily because many older collectors did not feel the need to improve collections built over several decades, while newer buyers are not yet confident enough to make expensive acquisitions. Modern works continue to be the most appealing, with Burchfield, Hartley and Avery commanding the most attention. These…

Ethan Lasser has been appointed chair for Art of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Lasser will oversee the MFA’s world-class collection of paintings, sculpture and decorative arts created throughout North, Central and South America over a 3,000-year timespan. In addition, Layla Bermeo has been named MFA Boston’s new Kristin and Roger Servison Associate Curator of Paintings, Art of the Americas… The Dallas Museum of Art has named Sue Canterbury its new Pauline Gill Sullivan Curator of American Art…James R. Wehn, has been named the Van Vleck Curator of Works on Paper at the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His responsibilities include overseeing the study, conservation and exhibition of the Chazen’s collection of prints, drawings and photographs…Paul R. Provost has been selected as…

In 1999, Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest gave a gift to the Michener Art Museum of 59 Pennsylvania Impressionist paintings that would prove to be transformative for the institution. “It was a game changer for this institution to have such a large gift, and such important works, all in one fell swoop—along with an endowment,” says the Michener’s executive director Kathleen V. Jameson. “It really transformed the Michener, and is in part why we have the focus that we have today on the Delaware Valley, and especially Bucks County.” The Delaware Valley works had a special meaning to the Lenfests. It’s where they made their life together as Gerry built up Suburban Cable, which he sold to Comcast in 2000. Gerry also grew up in the valley, on a pre-Revolutionary War…

N.C. Wyeth is as important to the canon of American storytelling as Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck and William Faulkner. And yet Wyeth never wrote a single book. The painter certainly illustrated many—including some classics, such as Treasure Island, Robin Hood and The Last of the Mohicans—and today his works are some of the most recognizable in American art. But “painter” doesn’t begin to encapsulate all that Wyeth accomplished in his career. At the New York City gallery Menconi + Schoelkopf, another word better captures all that the artist contributed to American art: storyteller. “It all came down to his ability to tell a story,” says gallery co-owner Andrew Schoelkopf. “That’s what we plan to focus on and convey in our new show of his work. He…

Cleveland, Ohio, is renowned for its cultural richness from the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art, to the Cleveland Orchestra and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In the late 19th century, lithography companies flourished in the city. Morgan Lithographic Company, for instance, produced posters for silent films and Ringling Brothers Circus and won awards for its work at world’s fairs in Paris and Chicago. The lithography business attracted talented artists from around the world according to Michael Wolf of WOLFS Gallery in Cleveland. “The influx of artists began a great arts community,” he says. “Informal schools sprang up and artists were mentoring other artists and having summer schools.” Wolf explains that a group of artists at the time became known as the Cleveland School…

The power of abstract art is multifaceted. As a means for exploration both creatively and personally, abstract expressionism has been marked by profound political choices for decades of black artists. On view from September 29, 2019 through January 19, 2020, Generations: A History of Black Abstract Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art examines the contributions that black artists have made to the development of this category of artwork from the 1940s to now. Drawing on the extensive collection of Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida—recognized for their unparalleled holdings of works by historic and contemporary black artists—Generations builds upon the previously touring Solidary & Solitary exhibition, doubling its scale and scope. “In this case, [the exhibition] has those objects at its core but we’re also adding new acquisitions to…

Top Western art once returns to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the home of the Jackson Hole Art Auction. The annual sale, which arrives near the end of the city-wide Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival, will again bring stunning Western, landscape, wildlife and sporting art to collectors. This year nearly 500 works will cross the auction block, including many important examples of wildlife art. “This year’s sale is shaping up beautifully. I can say unequivocally that this is the strongest selection of wildlife art we’ve ever had, and wildlife art is our signature category. It’s really an astonishing collection of artwork,” says auction partner Roxanne Hofmann Mowery, who adds that many of the works are coming from three highly curated private collections that feature many works fresh to the market. “The first…

A major work by William Louis Sonntag was recently gifted to the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State. The painting, Autumn Landscape, 1864, features a striking color palette, intricate brushwork and subtle light, offering a sense of tranquility and respite during the volatile Civil War years. “We are honored to add this major painting by a key figure in the Hudson River School to our collection of American art,” says Erin M. Coe, director of the Palmer Museum of Art. “Visitors from across Pennsylvania and beyond can experience this extraordinary gift, which greatly enhances our collection of 19th-century American landscape paintings.” Autumn Landscape was given to the museum by Hilary Peery Vesell in honor of her late father Dr. Elliot Vesell, who served for 32 years as the founding…

Water. Something we think about more and more as torrential rains and rising sea levels portend an uncertain future. The sea has always been a challenge. For centuries it was both a barrier and a beacon, linking yet separating the Old World and the New. For land-bound Europeans, it was to become a gateway to territorial expansion and the promise of prosperous enterprise. As the Atlantic colonies developed, the sea served as a defining element, influencing how life was lived. It offered economic well-being through trade. It also enabled speedy coastal transportation in the absence of roads and provided a life sustaining source of food. Successful merchants, among the first to be portrayed by the tiny contingent of professional and self-trained New World artists, were regularly shown with a glimpse…

Arrangement in Grey and Black, Number One, 1871, is the most famous painting by James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and one of the most recognized paintings in the world. If the title doesn’t ring a bell, it is better known as Whistler’s Mother. Although it is a portrait of his mother, it is more a tour de force of carefully modulated tones of thinly painted gray and black. Whistler wrote, “Paint should not be applied thick. It should be like a breath on the surface of a pane of glass.” At the other end of the scale of Whistler’s output is his grand Peacock Room in Blue and White, designed and built as a remodel of the dining room of a British shipping magnate, Frederick Leyland (1831-1892), in 1876 to…

George Bellows (1882-1925) was born in Columbus, Ohio, and went to Ohio State University where he was scouted to play for the Cincinnati Reds baseball team. He opted instead to go to New York, where he studied with Robert Henri and was instrumental in organizing the Armory Show in 1913. He was well known for his gritty scenes of New York and boxing matches where the audience is as interesting as the pugilists themselves. After the Armory Show and the death of his father shortly after its close, Bellows and his family went to Monhegan Island, Maine, for the summer. He had visited Monhegan with Henri in 1911 and Maine later became a summer retreat for several years. In 1913 he painted Between Moon and Sun, a scene that shows…

Gustave Baumann (1881-1971) was born in Germany and moved to Chicago with his family in 1891. A printmaker and a painter, his work prior to moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1918 had a more somber palette. After an earlier visit to Santa Fe and Taos he wrote that he had “learned too late that a palette and theories regarding color east of the Mississippi should all be tossed in the river as you cross the bridge. My summer’s work looked very sad indeed. I felt I wanted another try at this obstreperous material.” His palette became bolder as he absorbed the Southwest and the coast of California. He mixed his own inks, carved the blocks and pulled the editions of, usually, 125 prints. Commenting on the blocks, he…

Founded in 1935, the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project created jobs for unemployed artists afflicted by the Great Depression. Not only did the program—part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal—create new work and art for the public, it also provided women with the opportunity to be a part of documenting the journey out of the harshest economic downturn in U.S. history. On view through September 8 at the Georgia Museum of Art, Women of the WPA takes a closer look at these works as well as the stories of the women who created them. Although the Federal Art Project created new opportunities for many women, it failed to acknowledge others. “I noticed in my research that on a number of works we received, women’s names were misspelled or missing…

What’s always enticed collector Gil Waldman about Western art is its diversity in style, subject matter and beauty. “Western art isn’t just about cowboys and Indians, although that certainly is one aspect. It unquestionably can be as important as any other genre of American art, with complex themes and unique perspectives,” he says. “I particularly delight in finding works by artists from the eastern U.S. and Europe who came west of the Mississippi to record their personal impressions, then returned home—Albert Bierstadt, Robert Henri, Valentine Bromley—as well as those who made the West their home—the Taos Society of Artists, Charles Russell, Leon Gaspard. Each conveyed their perceptions in their own distinctive style.” Examples from Waldman’s stunning collection will be on view starting September 10 at Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of…

DENVER ART MUSEUM www.denverartmuseum.org A major touring exhibition will begin at the Denver Art Museum this spring that interweaves the legacies of Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington. The master artists, who were born and died in close proximity to each other—Homer from 1836 to 1910 and Remington from 1861 to 1909—shared many connections in their themes and techniques. Natural Forces: Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington will highlight these connections through 60 eminent works that capture the American spirit at the turn of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. CASCADIA ART MUSEUM www.cascadiaartmuseum.org The artwork of Andrew L. Hofmeister, an instructor at Washington State University, will be displayed in an exhibition at Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds, Washington. The exhibition, which runs until October 13, will feature a selection of…

Peter King was 13 and a student at National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan, when he bought his first landscape painting. “After camp we went to one of the local arts colonies,” he says. “I saw a kind of dirty, horizontal landscape of a sunset, trees and water—things that I love. I bought it for $15. My friend asked, ‘Why are you buying that piece of junk?’ I love landscapes. I took it home and cleaned it up.” Later, he worked at Interlochen in the summers and began to acquire land near the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, where he later built a summer home. He says, “In spite of the fact that in the last two decades I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to acquire wellexecuted if not…

In 1946, abstract painter Rolph Scarlett painted Red Form, a 52-by-62-inch work that featured a bold symphony of shapes arranged over a gloomy field of shadow. The work would soon go to the permanent collection at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. “Permanent” turned out not to be the case, though, when the work was deaccessioned from the museum and ended up in a private collection in the 1970s, where it would stay for more than four decades. The work is now the centerpiece of a new exhibition, Fifty Years of American Art, at Debra Force Fine Art in New York. The show will present 35 works by key figures of 20th-century American art, artists such as George Copeland Ault, Milton Avery, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Jacob Lawrence and Grace…

Every year, the Boston International Fine Art Show sees more and more visitors attend the landmark show. “It’s a combination of things that draws people to Boston. Certainly the history, the Freedom Trail, the history of the American Revolution,” says BIFAS co-producer Tony Fusco of Fusco & Four. “There’s a buzz about Boston in the air, it’s a beautiful city, and we have great institutions.” The annual show, celebrating its 23rd year this October 24 to 27, is a gathering for both seasoned art collectors and those simply looking to learn more about historic art. “It’s important to me personally that people come to the show not just thinking, ‘They want to sell me a painting.’ We do this because we love it. Because we have a passion for it.…

At one point in time, oceans and waterways were simply another cog in the industrial machine—a means for the transportation of goods and people in need of traveling long distances to places separated by large bodies of water. By the mid-19th century, however, sailing and aquatic transportation began to evolve into something entirely different. A shift from what was once considered the highways of industry and commerce, sailing developed into a leisurely pastime for the wealthy. After the Civil War, more and more Americans were finding the time to take pleasure cruises, and for the British upper class, the expensive hobby—referred to as yachting—was popular since the late 18th century. The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, draws from a collection of key paintings, photographs, furnishings, racing trophies,…

With a standing-room-only crowd, and auction workers fielding bids from their personal cell phones due to packed phone lines, the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction started with a bang just two lots into the July 27 sale in Reno, Nevada. A Carl Rungius etching on paper, Over the Pass, was estimated at $4,000 to $6,000, and when the dust settled after frantic bidding the piece had sold for $95,200. It was a foreshadowing lot—by the end of night, the auction would realize $17 million. “We’re feeling really great right now,” says auction partner Mike Overby. “We are very happy with the sale. We sold all of our big paintings, and then pretty much everything else, too. In fact, it’s been pretty easy here afterwards because everything ran so smoothly during the…