Fine Art Connoisseur Jan/Feb 2017

Alexandre Hogue “always viewed himself as a radical, yet his passion stemmed from a deeply conservative idea: that art, culture, and nature should form a central force in the life of every human being.” — Susie Kalil, author of Alexandre Hogue: An American Visionary (2010)…

When I was 23, I stopped by the home of my parents’ friends on an errand. In their foyer, several gold-framed historical paintings piqued my curiosity. Not knowing anything about high-quality fine art, I expressed interest and was invited in to view their other artworks. Never before had I seen a home adorned with paintings that were all original. That pleasant experience led me to visit a small but good gallery nearby, where I was able to browse. I particularly admired a large British painting of a small girl standing before a huge Gothic cathedral. Being so young, I could not afiord it, or anything else on ofier. Yet that picture has haunted me ever since, and for decades I have wished I’d found a way to buy it then.…

What an inspiring experience! For the past few months, our editorial team has been engrossed in learning about the real-life individuals who are collecting superb contemporary realist art right across America. Our conversations with these enthusiastic patrons — conducted via telephone, e-mail, and in person — have confirmed our belief that huge energy — not to mention cash — is being expended in support of the ever-growing number of talented realist artists working among us. In preparing the profiles here, we learned that many of these collectors — sophisticated and well-connected as they are — are not accustomed to being in the spotlight. Knowing how much they value their privacy, we appreciate even more their willingness to speak with us, and we are looking forward to doing the same with…

No matter how rich a Western gentleman might have been in the early 1900s, the idea of his actually mounting an elephant to hunt tigers was mostly fantasy. Illustrated books and world’s fairs depicted such exotic experiences and the native peoples who lived them, but the possibility of doing this yourself was truly remote. Instead, you could live vicariously by buying these “Vienna bronzes,” a genre named for the city where many leading foundries were located then. This pair depicts a successful hunt for tigers, with armed guides walking alongside the elephants, and it was made in an era when such expeditions were not considered ecologically exploitative. “There’s not anything fundamentally derogatory about these bronzes, but if you were to ask a bourgeois Austrian, British, or American gentleman around 1910,…

When Edwina Mountbatten (1901–1960) stepped into a Paris hotel’s elevator in the late 1930s, her fellow passenger turned out to be the famous artist Salvador Dalí. As the lift brought them to their desired floor, Dalí became captivated by this wealthy, glamorous, and much-photographed socialite. She was also much-discussed due to rumors about the affairs she conducted outside her marriage to Lord Louis Mountbatten, who later became the British Viceroy of India. “The family story is that Dalí was transfixed by my grandmother’s tiny feet and that his very first memory of her was that detail,” says India Hicks. As a former model, second cousin to the Prince of Wales, and owner of her namesake brand of beauty products and accessories, she is nearly as recognizable as her late grandmother…

Strictly speaking, a museum is a place dedicated to the muses — the nine (female) divinities of the arts, history, science, and literature who were revered by the ancient Greeks. Though most of us don’t worship those goddesses anymore, the subjects they symbolized live on and are still brought to life daily in the vast array of museums found all over the world. Like so many good things, museums emerged during the Italian Renaissance, specifically in 1471, when Pope Sixtus IV opened the Capitoline Museums in Rome to show off the ancient sculptures he owned. His successor Julius II launched what we know as the Vatican Museums in 1506, but it must be noted that only invited guests — usually of the higher and artistic classes — could enter such…