Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2014 i Fine Art Connoisseur

It’s only May, but I am already getting excited about Fine Art Connoisseur’s Iberian Art Cruise this September. Why? I have just been chatting with our editor-in-chief, Peter Trippi, and our travel coordinator, Gabriel Haigazian, who are laying plans for the adventure ahead. They are ensuring our travelers will not only meet a range of curators, artists, collectors, and gallery owners, but also have sufficient free time to wander and relax. This is a holiday, not a research trip, yet many of our returning travelers relish the fact that lots of learning is packed in daily. Indeed, one of our greatest pleasures is looking at and discussing art alongside fellow enthusiasts. By all accounts, our ship — Silversea Cruises’ Silver Cloud — is one of the most luxurious vessels afloat.…

The Passions of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux is an apt title for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current retrospective of this gifted French sculptor, who lived from 1827 to 1875. Carpeaux was indeed passionate — a man tormented by violent mood swings that terrorized his long-suffering wife. He also endured serious physical illnesses, dying at only 48, but not before producing an astonishing quantity of masterworks that have kept his name alive in France right through today. Carpeaux transcended the 19th-century trends of neoclassicism, romanticism, and realism to create unique sculptures that are somehow simultaneously grand and idealized, yet intensely specific and emotionally compelling. His best works are characterized by forceful motion and anatomical exactitude, demanding — and winning — our willing suspension of disbelief. Set to close on May 26, the…

Researchers have shown that a pitiable four to 30 seconds is the average time a museum-goer spends looking at any given painting. But I would like to know how long the typical visitor spends before a work of trompe l’oeil. Down through the ages, the creators of these seductive still lifes, designed to “fool the eye,” have dared us to find the flaw, the place where the illusion of reality breaks down. The effort often causes us to linger. The critic Alfred Frankenstein’s seminal 1953 book on American trompe l’oeil painting, After the Hunt, traces this genre’s history from 19th-century saloon curiosity into the 1930s, when it was “rediscovered” by the Manhattan art dealer Edith Halpert, whose Downtown Gallery invented the commercial market for American folk art. Frankenstein quotes a…

The publication of Shelley M. Bennett’s The Art of Wealth: The Huntingtons in the Gilded Age is of great significance to anyone interested in the history of collecting in America. A longtime curator at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, Bennett fully meets the challenge of crafting a coherent narrative of a story that spans two continents, four formidable principal characters, and more than half a century. With its episodes of divorces, adoptions, and the marriage of an aunt to her nephew, the history of the Huntington family has all the plot elements of a soap opera. Against this colorful backdrop, their acquisition of masterpieces such as Rembrandt’s Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, Goya’s Duchess of Alba, and Gainsborough’s Blue Boy — no…

In Oklahoma City, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum will soon host its annual Prix de West invitational, on view to the public June 13-August 3. Historically, this exhibition’s opening weekend (June 13-14) is among the liveliest and best attended in Western art, with all eyes focused on the fixed-price sale of its more than 300 paintings and sculptures, made by the field’s leading artists. The commercial failure of the Hollywood remake of The Lone Ranger (2013) exemplifies younger Americans’ rapidly dissipating interest in “cowboys and Indians,” once the most popular markers of the fascinatingly complex evolution of the American West. The public’s gradual shift in focus to different Western themes will surely be evident through the sheer diversity of subjects in this summer’s exhibition: they will range from…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES Santa Fe May 9 - 23 Prized for its hardiness, the burro has served mankind well for 5,000 years throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. The Dutch-born, Santa-Fe-based artist Jo Sherwood (b. 1941) has painted a group of oils honoring this loyal creature, on view at the Santa Fe Art Collector Gallery of Fine Art and Sculpture. The show is dedicated to her late husband, Peter. Information: 217 Galisteo, Santa Fe, NM 87501, 505.988.5545, santafeartcollector.com Denver May 17-June 6 The Colorado Dominican Vocation Foundation is hosting its biannual Windows to the Divine exhibition and sale at ArtHaus, in Denver’s hopping River North Arts District. This year’s edition will feature works by 59 renowned and emerging artists from 10 states and Germany. Though only 10 percent…

Most of the artworks illustrated in this issue have been owned, or will soon be owned, by a living, breathing collector. It is, first and foremost, collectors that Fine Art Connoisseur aims to serve and inspire, and for that reason we have been running Hidden Collection articles ever since this magazine was founded in 2004. (For example, please enjoy the intriguing article about Van Kirke and Helen Nelson of Montana, which starts on page 55.) Recently, however, it occurred to our publisher, Eric Rhoads, and me that we have never highlighted America’s leading collectors of contemporary realist art all at once — alongside each other, so to speak. We agreed that it would be fascinating to specify which individuals are acquiring the best works in this booming field — plus…

Based in London, the 130-year-old Art Workers’ Guild may not have instant name recognition among Fine Art Connoisseur readers, but they will surely be familiar with the achievements of its Past Masters and Brethren — among the most outstanding in their varied fields. Quite apart from objects in America’s museum collections, buildings and artifacts created by Guildsmen can be found throughout the U.S., including Past Master Sir Edwin Lutyens’s British Embassy in Washington, D.C.; P.M. Henry Wilson’s huge bronze West Doors for Manhattan’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine; and P.M. Christopher Whall’s stained-glass windows in Boston. Though not on American soil, Brother James Butler’s Rainbow Division Memorial — unveiled in 2011 at Croix Rouge Farm in France’s Marne Valley — is one of the most recent links between the…

Hundreds of talented artists and enthusiastic collectors will gather soon at the Bennington Center for the Arts in southwestern Vermont. There they will kick off the 23rd annual National Juried Exhibition & Convention, mounted by the nonprofit organization Oil Painters of America. Scheduled to open to the public on June 7 and run through July 27, this show features roughly 200 paintings selected from more than 2,100 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 include Master Signature artist Charles Movalli as the Juror of Awards and Alan Wolton as this year’s Distinguished Artist. Artists participating in the educational events include Roger Dale Brown OPA, John Michael…

Who would have thought that, amid central Florida’s horse farms and oak trees laden with Spanish moss, one would find a museum featuring 19th-century European academic art? Such is the case of the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, which is rivaled in this region only by the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing. This surprising venue was built by, and houses the collection formed by, Arthur I. Appleton (1915-2008), a Chicago businessman who came to Ocala to breed horses. He soon recognized the area’s need for a cultural institution, and in 1985 he opened his museum on land that had been donated by the city; the College of Central Florida has operated it since 2004. In addition to 19th-century paintings and sculpture, the Appleton also has extensive holdings of…

VINCENT XEUS (b. 1981) explores the circle of life and challenges its supposed truths through figurative paintings on linen and drawings on paper. He grew up in central China as that country shook off the Cultural Revolution that had so thoroughly suppressed artistic expression of all kinds. Undaunted, his family gave the boy a drawing kit at age nine, when he began “living and breathing” art. By 14, he was having artworks published in a national newspaper and acquired by collectors overseas. At 16, he traveled to the United States, and eight years later, he received a B.A. in architecture with high honors from the University of California, Berkeley. Within two years, Xeus had founded Marque Design, through which he worked on several buildings in China. Now focused on fine…