Innholdsfortegnelse for May/Jun 2015 i Fine Art Connoisseur

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), A Bust of a Warrior, c. 1475-80, Silverpoint on paper, 11 5/16 x 8 5/16 in., © The Trustees of the British Museum, London; on view this season in the exhibition Drawing with Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns. For details, see p. XX. The painter who has no doubt about his own ability will attain very little. When his work succeeds beyond his judgment, the artist acquires nothing. But when his judgment is superior to his work, he will never cease to improve, unless his love of gain interferes and retards his progress.—Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)…

So entranced was Morton Livingston Schamberg (1881-1918) with the precision of modern-day machinery that, even in his paintings of flowers and, notably, this Still Life (1913), nature assumes a geometric dimension and order. “Schamberg’s fascination with broken-up planes and the structure of things is reflected strongly in this picture,” remarks Elizabeth Goldberg, who heads Sotheby’s American Art department, which will include the painting in its auction on May 20. “After all,” Goldberg adds, “Schamberg was trained as an architect in Philadelphia and for a while was aligned with Charles Sheeler, who was a personal friend, as well as others in the movement known as Precisionism. The moment I saw this painting, it jumped out at me — in terms of its quality, its freshness, its composition. It’s a little gem,…

If you have never heard of metalpoint, you are not alone. A surprising number of art-smart people have not either. Until recently, few schools taught this technique, and fewer art supply stores sold the necessary materials. Only a handful of American museums own examples of it, and those that do rarely put them on view. Major exhibitions devoted to metalpoint are few and far between. Fortunately, this last fact is about to change. The long-awaited exhibition Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns, will appear at Washington’s National Gallery of Art from May 3 through July 26 before moving to the British Museum in London (September 10-December 6). At press time, I had seen only the exhibition’s handsome catalogue, which illustrates and documents all 105 of the artworks…

first met the great Missouri painter Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), America’s foremost muralist, in his Kansas City home on a frigid day in January 1968. I was a businessman then, and my secretary had made an afternoon appointment for me to visit the artist’s wife, Rita, to discuss my buying one of his paintings of an Ozark river scene. She and I chatted for 90 minutes while viewing his work, and then Tom Benton came in unexpectedly from his studio. That day, I began a friendship with the Bentons that lasted until he died seven years later, during which they kindly introduced me to the complexities of the art world. It began when I was 35, having already been a Marine, publishing executive, and president of a high-tech computer company.…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES Friday Harbor, Washington May 9-25 Now celebrating its 30th anniversary, WaterWorks Gallery is exhibiting the paintings of Anelecia Hannah Brooks (b. 1985), who is also turning 30. Raised in the Pacific Northwest, Brooks makes quiet paintings of everyday objects that reflect the passage of time. She will give a public talk at the gallery on May 23. Information: 315 Argyle Street, Friday Harbor, WA 98250, 360.378.3060, waterworksgallery.com Santa Fe May 8-10 The Canyon Road Merchants Association will present its fourth annual Passport to the Arts extravaganza on Mother’s Day weekend. Many of this lively neighborhood’s 100 galleries will host receptions to celebrate their new exhibitions. Also on offer will be live and silent auctions, a quick draw contest, artists’ demonstrations, live performances, and family art-making projects. Information:…

To everything there is a season. Noted in the Bible, even in a folk song, this fact still has much to teach us. All things, all people, all trends have seasons, and now you and I have entered an especially exciting one. As I write this, flowers are blooming outside my window, and tree leaves are glistening with the verdure of new growth. American art has moved through its seasons, too — a fruitful summer, a vibrant fall, then falling leaves, hibernation, and now rejuvenation. While launching this magazine 11 years ago, I observed that art reflects society. As William Strauss and Neil Howe have argued in such books as Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069, societal shifts occur every 80 to 100 years. I went on…

Leonard Riggio stood along Utah’s Great Salt Lake, studying a roadway that stretched far into the eerily tranquil water. He knew that the piled-up surface of black basalt rocks and earth he was about to traverse, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, was often below the water line, but that day, it was wholly visible. “The moment I started walking on it,” he recalls, “it seemed as if I was on a surface that had always been there, that it wasn’t man-made. It started out as an ordinary walk, but the tighter the spiral got,” he says, referring to the form of this 1,500-foot-long, 15-foot-wide sculpture, “the more I became aware of its shape. Yet it felt part of the natural order of things.” Although Riggio lives in a Park Avenue apartment…

It is not a surprise that Alan J. Lawson (b.1974) became a professional painter, as his mother and her family were all artists, but it is remarkable that he is also such a perceptive commentator and gifted poet. These latter gifts make more sense when we learn that he studied philosophy and English literature at Aberdeen University in Scotland, the country where he grew up, interspersed with family stays in Latin America. Lawson taught himself to draw and paint by copying the Old Masters, then studied at the Florence Academy of Art, where founder Daniel Graves still requires that the first year be devoted entirely to drawing, before students are permitted to pick up a brush or chisel. Within a year of arriving there, Lawson was asked to teach drawing,…

When I first saw the poster for the current exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887-1920, I was transfixed by its image — Philip Leslie Hale’s painting The Crimson Rambler. It holds intense personal associations for me. When I first decided to study at PAFA, 25 years ago, I sent my parents a postcard of this very painting. I knew they would love it — so sun-drenched and joyous, yet still very “proper” — and I hoped that it would help calm their fears about my quitting the day job in order to attend art school. Fortunately, it worked so well that last year, as I helped clear my parents’ home, I found that postcard among the…

From one side, the painter Nigel Van Wieck (b. 1947) appears to be the proverbial “Englishman in New York,” having discovered Old Master aesthetics and made them his own since 1979, when he immigrated to the U.S. But from the other side, we see the quintessentially American practitioner of contemporary realism he has become during those same three and a half decades. This spring, art lovers residing in, or passing through, New York City will enjoy a rare opportunity to experience Van Wieck’s latest works in person. Composition is Van Wieck’s primary concern because it supports his narrative. “I am a storyteller, and the viewer is my audience,” he explains, “but before then, while sitting at the easel, I am the audience member who must be drawn in.” Seemingly taken…

As our publisher, Eric Rhoads, explained in his message, now is an ideal time to celebrate the burgeoning of contemporary realism — some call it post-contemporary art — with a redesign of Fine Art Connoisseur’s graphic identity. In this issue, you will also find four — yes, four — articles written by yours truly, which may make you wonder if I ever sleep. In fact, several of these pieces were percolating for a while, and have only now made it into our pages for various reasons. I am delighted to highlight these topics — from individual artists like Steven Assael, Alan Lawson, and Nigel Van Wieck to the Plein Air Easton festival in Maryland — partly because they remind me of just how many good things are occurring in our…

RICHARD CHRISTIAN NELSON (B. 1961) is best known for his luminous commissioned portraits in oil and charcoal, most of them life-size. He is by no means limited to this genre, however, so also paints unnamed figures, still lifes, and the rural landscapes he admires in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, or in the foothills of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, where he resides. Nelson grew up far from such Southern tranquility — in Detroit, actually. There he earned his B.F.A. from the College of Creative Studies (CCS), where he was inspired by his teacher William Truman Hosner (b. 1950) with these stirring words: “If you can paint the figure, you can paint anything, but you won’t want to paint anything else.” Nelson thrived at CCS, so much…

The clue is in the title: the magnificent show about Romantic art now at the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG), created in partnership with the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) located just across the street, is boldly called The Critique of Reason. It is precisely that. Rather than seeing the Romantic movement as a cry against the age of reason, it shows how artists scooped it all up and with “positive criticism” pushed it to the next level while adding passion and soul, making it relevant to a turbulent and yet progressive Western Europe. This was a war-torn yet optimistic Europe awash with new science, new philosophies, and new political ideals, as well as new techniques of painting, printing, and dissemination of ideas. While the world grew bigger with…

Hundreds of talented artists and enthusiastic collectors will gather soon at Brilliance in Color Fine Art Gallery, part of Cutter & Cutter Fine Art Galleries in the historic Florida port of St. Augustine. There they will kick off the 24th annual National Juried Exhibition of Traditional Oils, mounted by the nonprofit organization Oil Painters of America (OPA). Scheduled to open to the public on May 1 and run through May 25, this show will feature roughly 250 paintings selected from more than 2,000 entries submitted by OPA members throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Founded in 1991, OPA will distribute awards totaling more than $80,000, including a Gold Medal award worth $25,000. Honored guests will include Huihan Liu as the Juror of Awards and William Whitaker as this year’s Distinguished…