Innholdsfortegnelse for May-June 2021/ No. 57 i American Fine Art Magazine

Welcome to our May/June issue! American Art Week in New York City is one of the major highlights of the issue. We take you through the American art sales at Christie’s, Bonhams and Sotheby’s. The auctions will have no in-person bidding, so please be sure to register and plan to attend the sales online. In addition, our article on Just Off Madison provides a look at what the private dealers, housed on and around Madison Avenue, will be exhibiting at their galleries for the daylong event. Collectors must schedule appointments to attend this year, so be sure to read our article to find out who is participating. In May, Dallas-based Heritage Auctions will host its American art sale, and in early June Freeman’s in Philadelphia will have a selection of…

APRIL 29 Fine Art Auction Shannon’s • Milford, CT www.shannons.com APRIL 30 Illustration Art Heritage Auctions • Dallas, TX www.ha.com MAY 2 The Spring Auction Grogan & Co. • Boston, MA www.groganco.com MAY 3 American & European Art Hindman • Chicago, IL www.hindmanauctions.com MAY 4 California & American Fine Art John Moran Auctioneers • Monrovia, CA www.johnmoran.com MAY 7 American Art Heritage Auctions • Dallas, TX www.ha.com MAY 18 American Art Christie’s • New York, NY www.christies.com MAY 18 Fields of Vision: The Private Collection of Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Christie’s • New York, NY www.christies.com MAY 19 American Art Sotheby’s • New York, NY www.sothebys.com MAY 20 American Art Bonhams • New York, NY www.bonhams.com MAY 20-22 Premier and Emporium Auctions Brunk Auctions • Asheville, NC www.brunkauctions.com MAY…

Despite the challenges of the past year, we continue to see interest in fresh-to-themarket works across multiple artistic styles. Since visits to the gallery have been difficult to impossible for many, we have concentrated our outreach efforts to clients through both print and digital media. Weekly email blasts and exhibition mailings, including postcards or brochures, have helped us stay connected to our clients and have prompted calls and/or emails from those who haven’t been in the gallery in the past few years. Print ads, our own website and other digital platforms have also produced more discussion about featured artworks than they have for us in previous years. The comfort level for buyers looking at works via images, video, installation shots and the like has grown significantly, and we have also…

While impressive auction results of historic American paintings and sculpture or an occasional celebrity collector may garner a newspaper headline now and then, there is no magazine, until now, that has offered complete and comprehensive coverage of the upcoming shows and events of this always-fascinating market that is so deeply tied to American history, society and culture. Previews of Upcoming Shows and Auctions The historic fine art of America’s greatest artists is in big demand and if you are serious about acquiring it, you need to know about it sooner so you can plan your collecting strategies. When you subscribe to American Fine Art Magazine you’ll know in advance what major works are coming to market because, every other month, you’ll have access to this valuable information when we email…

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, and part of that celebration is an exhibition that revisits pivotal moments in the museum’s history of collecting works on paper. An Expanding Vision: Six Decades of Works on Paper showcases a vast range of artistic styles and periods, curated by a team of former Carter Museum curators and directors alongside current staff, who all banded together to reflect on the importance of each artwork at the time that it entered the collection. “Over the decades, the museum has built an expansive collection of more than 8,000 prints, drawings and watercolors. We wanted to explore some of this rich history while showcasing what gives our holdings their unique dimension and scope,” says Spencer…

New York City’s anticipated American Art Week in the spring and fall always drums up an air of excitement among fine art collectors, and one of the highlights each season is Just Off Madison. It’s a widely loved art walk in which collectors can jump from prestigious gallery to prestigious gallery, all located along and around Madison Avenue. And after a 2020 hiatus, Just Off Madison is back, but note that the spring rendition is by appointment only, taking place on Monday, May 17. Thus far, dealers who will be participating in the spring 2021 event include Graham Shay 1857, Avery Galleries, Kraushaar Galleries, Conner • Rosenkranz, Menconi + Schoelkopf, Meredith Ward Fine Art, Taylor|Graham, Alexandre Gallery, Debra Force Fine Art and Betty Krulik Fine Art, Ltd. Featured at Betty…

Golden Age illustration has always been a prime category for Heritage Auctions, and its May 7 American Art sale continues that trend with important works from two of the biggest names in the genre—Norman Rockwell and Joseph Christian Leyendecker—coming to market. Rockwell’s Excuse me!, which was painted for the July 1917 cover of Judge Magazine is sure to be a standout, as it is one of his earliest depictions of a solider, while the Leyendecker—Football Hero, the November 14, 1914, cover of The Saturday Evening Post—is also a classic subject for the artist. “What’s very special about [the Rockwell], to me, is the narrative is simple and clear,” says Aviva Lehmann, vice president and director of American art at Heritage. “It’s a gorgeous woman on the arm of a handsome…

BOSTON, MA GROGAN & COMPANY MAY 2 Spring Auction Leading Grogan & Company’s May 2 Spring Auction of around 200 lots is a selection of works by notable female artists. Three paintings by Anna Mary Roberton (Grandma) Moses will be available, including Over the River to Grandma’s House on Thanksgiving Day (est. $70/100,000). Helen Frankenthaler is represented by an untitled 1969 acrylic painting that was a gift from the artist to her neighbors. The work, which was included in the traveling exhibition Helen Frankenthaler: A Selection of Small Scale Paintings in 1978-9, has an estimate of $50,000 to $80,000. There will also be pieces from Gloria Vanderbilt, Edna Andrade, Alyce Frank, Lilla Cabot Perry and Laura Coombs Hills. From the same consignors as the Grandma Moses works is a rare…

The spring American Art Week in New York City has arrived. There’s a sense of excitement this time around, because many of the usual events are taking place. The three major auction houses—Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams—will be hosting their lauded American art auctions within days of one other (May 18, 19 and 20, respectively) as most collectors have become accustomed. Christie’s also has a special sale that will be held just prior to its American art auction featuring the collection of the late artists Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason. The husband-and-wife painters were not only well-respected for their own talents but also were adept patrons of the arts building a dynamic collection that spoke to their modern tastes. Included are works from Georgia O’Keeffe and Richard Diebenkorn, whose painting graces…

CHRYSLER MUSEUM OF ART Norfolk, VA, (757) 664-6200, www.chrysler.org What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why? After reading the wonderful catalog, I am looking forward to seeing Virginia Arcadia: The Natural Bridge in American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I’ve always been so enchanted by the site itself, and it is so interesting to consider what a deep impact that landscape had on the course of 19th-century art. It also includes one of the Chrysler’s best early landscape paintings by Jacob Caleb Ward, and I look forward to seeing it in this rich and fuller context. What are you reading? I have been rereading David Esterly’s The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of…

When I became an art dealer in 1972 the market for 19th-and early-20th-centur y American art was a very different place. The few art auctions that were held in major cities were mostly wholesale events attended by dealers. Any significant historical American paintings included in suburban antique sales in New England, where I lived, were usually bought by local antique dealers or knowledgeable intermediaries called “pickers” and passed up the ladder to the few major galleries in New York or Boston dealing in this works. In the early 1970s there were only two international art price guides, printed once a year in book form. They covered only three American auction houses: Parke-Bernet in New York, Weschler’s in Washington, D.C., Eldred’s on Cape Cod and Butterfields in San Francisco. They only…

The spring American art sale at Christie’s is returning May 18 in New York with a large selection of works that should delight collectors of American art. The sale will offer around 100 lots, including many from top artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Tylee Abbott, the new head of the American art department at Christie’s, says he’s excited about the sale and the direction the market is headed. “Last year it was a supply challenge because people were holding onto what they had, but now we’re starting to see tremendous interest among sellers so we’re optimistic that the market is in a good place,” he says. “Now is the time to sell, especially as interest is high and the financial markets are all high.” He adds: “[We have]…

Throughout his career, Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) often painted the landscape around his summer house on Great Spruce Head Island, Maine. In Bonhams’ May 20 American Art sale, a stunning work by Porter of the Maine coast will arrive to the market from the Los Angeles estate of Yvonne de Chavigny Segerstrom, whose family was prominent in the luxury retail industry and who herself was involved in philanthropy for the arts in California. The piece, titled Yawl in the Channel, is from the last few years of the artist’s life and is a culmination of his talents. “This work was likely done in his studio on Great Spruce Head Island in Maine. It was one of his favorite spots throughout his life and where he felt at home,” says Aaron Anderson,…

Depictions of sweeping landscapes, beautiful sunshine and iconic California impressionism will be the main focus for John Moran’s California & American Fine Art sale. Approximately 100 lots of 19th and 20th century pre-war fine art paintings and sculpture will be up for grabs on May 4, via a virtual bidding platform. “The market for California Impressionism has certainly seen a recession,” says Morgana Blackwelder, John Moran senior vice president, “but much like other genres, there’s a group of collectors that are holding on. There’s still going to be a place for these views of nature, beautiful weather and landscapes. People still pay tribute to a time that may not really exist anymore and that historical importance will always be there. There’s a need to have a versatility within a collection…

Neal Benezra, the Helen and Charles Schwab Director at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, has recently announced that he will be stepping down from his nearly two-decade role at the museum. Benezra will assist in the transition and search for a new director, as well as continue to lead the day-to-day operations of the museum. Eric Fitzgerald Reed, executive at Verizon Communications, and Allen Karp, executive at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, have been named co-chairs of the board of trustees at the Newark Museum of Art in Newark, New Jersey. Beloved founder of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Wilhelmina Cole Holladay passed away on March 6 at the age of 98. For almost 40 years, Holladay worked to celebrate and highlight…

The Princeton University Art Museum in New Jersey recently acquired a masterful impressionist painting by celebrated artist Mary Cassatt. Little Girl in a Large Red Hat—a portrait painted around 1881 at the early peak of Cassatt’s career—features a young girl in a red hat, a work distinguished by its painterly characterization. “A work such as this one, which comes from the final years when the artist was exhibiting with the impressionists in Paris, not only tells us so much about process and technique, but also allows us to engage with important questions about how a woman artist made her way in the patriarchal art world of the time,” says James Steward, the museum’s Nancy A. Nasher-David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director. “This extraordinary painting will be able to move…

Inspired by the book Ninth Street Women, written by Mary Gabriel, the upcoming exhibition Ninth Street Women and Their Legacy at Somerville Manning Gallery delves into the artwork of Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell and Grace Hartigan. In the exhibition the works of these five historic American women artists will be placed alongside art by five living artists—selected by the gallery—who are inspired by the Ninth Street Women. “It’s a wonderful book about the story of the growth of the New York art world [explored] through women,” says Vickie Manning, owner of Somerville Manning Gallery. “Their life story and career is in [the book], but along with that [Gabriel] puts them in the context of all the artists they were around…poets, philosophers, from the ’30s to…

On May 18, Christie’s will be offering rare and important works from the collection of modern painters Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason. The married artists—Kahn died in 2020, Mason in 2019—had a oneof-a-kind art collection that included many personal works that related to their artist friends or artists they dearly admired. The sale, Fields of Vision: The Private Collection of Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason, will take place immediately before the spring American art sale at Christie’s in New York City. “It’s a special collection of art because almost every artist represented in their collection was someone Wolf Kahn or Emily Mason knew personally, or had a personal connection to their artwork,” says Christie’s American art specialist Paige Kestenman. “The couple was very connected to the New York art world,…