Innholdsfortegnelse for July-August 2025/No. 82 i American Fine Art Magazine

National Gallery launches major loan project The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. recently announced details of its “Across the Nation” partnership program, which brings key works of art from its permanent collection to regional museums across the United States throughout 2025 and 2026. Through this program, the National Gallery has lent works of art by celebrated artists like Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Dorothea Lange, Sandro Botticelli, Rembrandt van Rijn, Henri Matisse and Mark Rothko to 10 partner museums nationwide. “We are so thrilled to bring some of the most beloved works from the nation’s collection of art directly into communities across the country,” says Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art. Loans include paintings, photography and full-scale installations. Across the Nation is part of the National…

SANDRA GERMAIN Owner Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers Shannon’s has always prominently featured historical American art as the backbone of our auctions. We are located in New England and source consignments locally and on an international level. So far this year we have had buyer participation from over 13 different countries and 43 states. Our most recent auction was 85-percent sold, indicating good interest and a healthy middle market. Overall, we have seen increasing participation from private collectors and an influx of new buyers entering the market, which is encouraging for us and the market as a whole. We find that in times of economic uncertainty, people would prefer to spend their money on tangible assets that they can enjoy. Our online presence is extremely important as it allows us to…

The tradition of landscape painting has stood the test of time. The natural world changes but the desire to depict it has endured, ever since it ceased being only a backdrop for figurative works, first in the Netherlands in the early 17th century, and emerged as a genre in its own right. It took roughly two more centuries for the landscape to earn respect as a central subject of paintings in Europe and America, but by the early 19th century the tradition had taken root, and those roots have only grown deeper and stronger with time. The landscape continues to be a favorite subject of contemporary artists, and one of the most popular genres among collectors. Looking at the evolution of American landscape painting over time, as the Hudson River…

There’s an Alex Katz painting at the Milwaukee Art Museum that used to bug me as a kid. That I am thinking about it now, just as I am about to ruminate on Painting Energy: The Alex Katz Foundation Collection at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, suggests that the painting still, in some corner of my unconscious, bugs me. It’s a big painting, 96 by 72, titled Sunny #4, and was painted in 1971. You won’t see it in these pages. Suffice it to say that it is a depiction of the largerthan-life face of a sheepdog or maybe a terrier—“Sunny,” presumably—tongue out, looking out at us amiably from the vantage of tall marsh grasses growing at the edge of the Maine coast, which you can see in…

In 2022, Alphawood Exhibitions presented The First Homosexuals: Global Depictions of a New Identity, 1869-1930 at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago. It included more than 100 paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and film clips drawn from public and private collections. This year, an expanded version of the exhibition, The First Homosexuals: Global Depictions of a New Identity, 1869-1939, featuring more than 300 works of art, will be held atWrightwood 659 through July 26 and will then travel internationally. The exhibition analyzes the art created around the globe in the first 50 years after the term “homosexual” was coined. The head curator is Jonathan D. Katz, and gender, sexuality and women’s studies at the University of Pennsylvania and a founding figure in queer studies in art history. The associate curator is Johnny Willis,…

Linda Bean (1941-2025), granddaughter of the founder of retailer L.L. Bean and the company’s heiress, was an avid art collector, particularly of paintings by the Wyeth family, whose ties to Maine resonated with Bean, a lifelong resident of the state. In November 2024, a collection of Wyeth paintings in her estate sold for a combined $1.7 million in a Bonhams’ American art sale. This August, Maine-based Thomaston Place Auction Galleries will offer up 1,500 lots, including another collection of historic fine art from Bean’s estate in its Summer Grandeur sale, including three masterful original pieces by Andrew Wyeth, as well as a number of works by William Thon, Abraham Jacob and Dahlov Ipcar. Also from Bean’s estate is what Jennifer Langley, a Thomaston Place representative, calls “a rare collection of…

On April 11 and 12, amid an unsteady market and economy, the Scottsdale Art Auction held a sale that realized $15 million in sales, set numerous new auction records and had a 97 percent sell-through rate. The markets may have been volatile, but bidders had other plans. “Despite the economic issues happening that week, we are thrilled at the number of people actively bidding throughout the duration of the sale,” says auction partner Brad Richardson. “The auction had stronger attendance than we have had in a few years and the enthusiastic bidding speaks to the quality of work we offered across the board. You can never count out the energy of Western collectors.” The sale opened with a first session on April 11 that included key works from late 20th-century…

While the event has historically taken place in August, the 2025 edition of the Nantucket Show of antiques, art and design moves to July for a mid-summer celebration of some of the very best in historic antiquities. An international roster of 26 exhibitors from across the United States, England and Europe will present their wares during this year’s show, including American furniture and folk art, English and Continental furniture, traditional and contemporary art, sculpture, jewelry and other captivating objects. Among the dealers in attendance at the 2025 show are Roberto Freitas American Antiques and Decorative Arts, David Brooker Fine Art, James Butterworth Antique American Wicker, Silver Art by D & R, William Cook, Finnegan Gallery and many more. Cavalier Galleries will be bringing works by prominent artists like Mary Cassatt,…

A significant painting was recently added to the collection of the Farns worth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, bolstering its recognition of women artists that were once overlooked. The acquisition of Milkweeds in Maine, by artist Anne Carleton (1878-1968), came to fruition during the height of the museum’s exhibition Capturing Her Environment: Women Artists, 1870-1930. Although the piece was not included in the exhibition, it’s certainly a fine complement to its exploration of nine women artists who lived and work in Maine in the 19th and early 20th century. They were often overshadowed by male artists in their families or merely dismissed as hobby painters. “Anne Carleton was born in Atkinson, New Hampshire, and moved to Boston to study painting at the Massachusetts Normal Art School, an institution that specialized…

When an artist’s work is elusive, when it doesn’t fit the received wisdom of art history, two things can happen. One, the artist is ignored. I’d love to give you examples, but I can’t. Ignored here means unknown, and unknown comprises the greatest part of the current of the arts that runs through history. I’m not talking about “Anonymous.” Plenty of artworks by Anonymous are part and parcel of the vernacular of human culture. I said “two things can happen.” The second is that the artist was known, and may have even had a career, a reputation, enjoyed fame. In this instance, the artist’s elusiveness isn’t in the life of the artist; it’s in the work. When this is true—and it is true in the truest sense of true when…

If you do a Google search of “F. Edwin Church” the first result is for Frederic Edwin Church, the famous landscape painter and Hudson River School artist. Herein lies the problem because F. Edwin Church is an entirely different artist, albeit one named exactly after the search’s first result. (In fairness, Google does fetch the correct F. Edwin Church for the second and third results.) Church (F. Edwin from here on out), an East Coast impressionist painter, was the subject of a New York retrospective in 1975, the year he died. The artist was 98 years old at the time but attended the event and was even photographed in the gallery by the Oyster Bay Guardian. Now, 50 years since that momentous salute to his career, the North Shore Historical…

By the time Childe Hassam turned his attention to printmaking at age 56, he was already an established impressionist painter whose urban and coastal scenes were characterized by his bold and vibrant use of color. Though he discovered printmaking later in life, Hassam developed a passion for the monochrome medium, and he approached it with an innovative spirit that re-enlivened all of his art forms. On view at the Speed Art Museum through August 17, Childe Hassam: Impressions in Black and White provides another dimension to our understanding—and appreciation—of one of the foremost painters of the 19th and early-20th centuries. “When Hassam adopted printmaking beginning in 1915, it reinvigorated him artistically,” says Kim Spence, Speed Art Museum senior director of collections and curator of works on paper. “He quickly became…

Western art, a widely collected subgenre within American art, lassoed its way to the top of Bonhams’ $6.5 million American art sale on April 30 in New York City. Not only were seven of the top 10 lots Western works or by artists who spent a great deal of time in the West, but tied for the top lot was a work by Frank Tenney Johnson, whose works of cowboys and Native American are iconic within the genre. “The results of this recent auction proved to us that there is an enduring and strong appetite for iconic portrayals of theWest by America’s most coveted artists, such as James Earle Fraser, Frank Tenney Johnson, Victor Higgins and Thomas Moran,” says Aaron Anderson, American specialist with Bonhams. “In many respects, so much…

SANTA FE SANTA FE ART AUCTION Art of the West May 7-8 $1 million The recent Art of the West sale, held by Santa Fe Auction, brought in more than $1 million with an exceptional sell-through rate of 95 percent. The auction saw competitive bidding action on works from a number of important collections, including items owned by Tyrone Campbell, Gregory Warren Nelson and Patsy P. and William L. Hutchison. Major highlights include Malcolm Furlow’s September Shaman (est. $6/9,000) that sold for an impressive $30,750; Gustave Baumann’s 1924 color woodcut San Geronimo, Taos (est. 12/18,000) that sold for $20,910; Irby Graves Brown’s Winter Snow Splash (est. $600/900) that achieved $11,070; Louisa McElwain’s painterly Sunset Thunderhead ($2/4,000) that went for $7,380; and Edward Borein’s watercolor Remuda, which sold for $14,760 against a…

JULY 12, 2025-JANUARY 11, 2026 Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery Colby College Museum of Art &8226; Waterville, ME This retrospective exhibition celebrates Gertrude Abercrombie, an artist who has been historically marginalized due to who she was, and how she lived and worked. museum.colby.edu ONGOING Modeling Women: Female Models and Artists at Chesterwood CHESTERWOOD • STOCKBRIDGE, MA The home and studio of Daniel Chester French reopens with an exhibition exploring the sculptor’s creative relationships between the sculptor and his models. www.chesterwood.org ONGOING Painting Energy: The Alex Katz Foundation Collection PORTLAND ART MUSEUM • PORTLAND, ME This exhibition celebrates over a decade of gifts to the museum, reflecting Katz’s deep personal and professional ties to Maine. www.portlandmuseum.org ONGOING John Sloan and His Students DELAWARE ART MUSEUM • WILMINGTON, DE…

What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why? I breezed through Boom! Art and Design in the 1940s at the Philadelphia Art Museum on my way to the Philadelphia Show a few weeks ago. I can’t wait to go back and spend some time with all the art, fashion and furnishings. The installation is dynamic, and the story is expansive. Having spent the past few years working on an exhibition of work from the 1920s and 1930s (Jazz Age Illustration), it’s fun to engage with what comes next. What are you reading? For work, I’m busy reading and, in some cases, rereading the essays in Imprinted: Illustrating Race, a catalog produced by the Norman Rockwell Museum for the exhibition…

On July 26, the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction returns to Reno, Nevada. The sale will feature more than 350 lots, the vast majority of which are from the popular genre of Western art. For auction partner Mike Overby, the sale speaks to the reliability and growing popularity of Western art, which has roots in 19th-century artistexplorers who ventured into the American frontier and recorded their journeys in watercolor, drawings and paintings. The art moved from paintings of Native Americans and landscapes to images of cowboys and cattle, and then depictions of the Southwest and its people. Some of the greatest American artists worked within the genre, and many will be featured in the sale. “We have 350 lots and we’re right where we want to be—with some truly remarkable artwork…

Freeman’s | Hindman attracted an impressive percentage of new buyers in its Post War and Contemporary Art auction on May 13, achieving $3 million in total sales with 78 percent of lots sold. The top lot of the sale was Fritz Scholder’s seminal work, Four Indian Riders, which realized $476,750—the artist’s second highest result at auction. Freeman’s | Hindman currently holds the highest two auction records for the artist and five of the overall top 10 records for Scholder. Chicago surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie exceeded expectations when her paintings Set for the Night and Moonlight and Landscape with Tree (Tree Lady) sold for $267,200 and $222,750, respectively. Both pieces surpassed their presale estimates of $50,000 to $70,000 and $60,000 to $80,000. All five artworks by Abercrombie in the sale saw competitive…

In late July, the Newport Show returns to Newport, Rhode Island, to continue its mission to showcase high-caliber antiques, art and objects, while also benefitting local charities. In addition, this year’s event has been scheduled the weekend after the Nantucket Show, to maximize opportunities for collectors of fine and decorative art, and Americana memorablia. “This year, we have our usual mix of dealers offering fine and contemporary American, English and French art; American, English and French furniture, fine jewelry, garden antiques and nautical works of art; English and Chinese porcelain; Japanese and Chinese works of art, rare prints, antique oriental rugs, rare books, Tiffany works of art, antique wicker and much more,” notes show manager, Diana H. Bittel. The 2025 edition offers quite the lineup of exhibitors, including Gladwell &…