Innholdsfortegnelse for Mar/Apr 2018 i Fine Art Connoisseur

Whenever I can, I encourage art lovers to visit a commercial gallery to exercise their eyes and see what’s out there. Galleries are essential to a healthy art world, and they also contribute a great deal to the communities where they do business. Moreover, the best galleries are eager to help visitors understand what they are looking at, to learn about artists and techniques, to see behind and around the artworks. It’s not about one fast sale — it’s about relationships and sharing the passion for art, all of which usually lead to ongoing sales over many years. These are just some of the reasons I was so pleased to read the following note from proprietors Stephen and Elizabeth Harris in the Spring 2018 newsletter of InSight Gallery (Fredericksburg, Texas),…

RICHIE CARTER (b. 1988) is only 29, yet this Montana-based painter has already assimilated decades’ worth of education into his professional practice. While earning his B.F.A. from the University of Montana at Missoula, which focused on conveying concepts through various media, Carter simultaneously developed a love of realism through drawing and painting from life. After graduating, he sharpened his technical skills further by taking numerous workshops, and he continues to draw inspiration through frequent travel abroad — the observations and experiences of which become fodder for future paintings. Discussing the conceptual aspects of his work — notable for being at once simple and striking — Carter says he sees himself as a receiver of visions. Once he sees the scene or subject, he then composes each element with much care.…

No matter how much we like being outdoors, most of us spend far more time inside buildings. Chances are we were born indoors, and we will probably die there, too. Much of life takes place inside: from the classroom where we learn to read to the church where we marry, onward to the house where we raise our children. It’s no wonder that artists — especially those working in two-dimensional forms like painting, drawing, and printmaking — have focused their attention on interior spaces for centuries. Illustrated here is an array of recent interior scenes reflecting this age-old fascination. Two are worth noting for different reasons. On July 2, 2011, the artist Neil MacCormack made a deal with his wife: in their home they switched on several surveillance cameras that…

Scheduled to mark the 200th anniversary of the arrival in America of the English artist Thomas Cole (1801–1848), the exhibition Thomas Cole’s Journey: Atlantic Crossings is on view at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art until May 13. Featuring three dozen of his finished landscape paintings, oil studies, and works on paper, it traces Cole’s life, from his youth in northern England and immigration to America through his extended travels in Europe and subsequent success in the New York art world. Hailed as one of America’s finest landscape painters, Cole inspired the next generation of them, now generally known as the Hudson River School. This exhibition breaks new ground by characterizing Cole as an international figure with a transatlantic perspective, and by reconsidering his art as a response to…

In December I was thrilled to visit a superb exhibition at New York City’s Morgan Museum & Library. It featured 150 breathtaking drawings donated to the museum by the dealer-collector Eugene V. Thaw and his wife, Clare, covering five centuries and ranging from Mantegna and Rembrandt to Goya, Van Gogh, and even Pollock. The drawings are among the finest of their kind, offering an intimate look over each master’s shoulder. A few weeks later, “Gene” Thaw died, aged 90, six months after his wife. Their passing represents the end of an era because they were America’s ultimate connoisseurs, passionate about quality and an array of art forms, including Native American material. Fortunately, those visiting the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown can see the Thaws’ treasures until April 22; then they…

Pies, cakes, hot dogs, and gumball machines are not usually considered suitable subjects for fine art. But when they are depicted by a master painter like Wayne Thiebaud (b. 1920), they become sensory delights, glowing with rainbow-hued impasto. At 97, Thiebaud has lived long enough to enjoy critical acclaim and to be the focus of countless museum retrospectives worldwide. Now an exhibition mounted at the University of California at Davis, where he spent 42 years teaching, is the first anywhere to highlight a 10-year period when a series of important breakthroughs in subject and style set the course for Thiebaud’s long career. Wayne Thiebaud: 1958–1968 consists of more than 60 paintings and prints gathered from public and private collections throughout the U.S. On view until May 13, it has been…

Readers of Fine Art Connoisseur may recall a lengthy, gorgeously illustrated article about the American painter Jane Peterson (1876–1965) in our February 2015 issue. This winter we were delighted to visit Jane Peterson: At Home and Abroad, the first major retrospective in 45 years devoted to this once-renowned artist. Much credit goes to the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut, where organizing curator Cynthia Roznoy gathered more than 85 works from lenders nationwide and published an impressive 124-page catalogue. That book opens with a touching preface by J. Jonathan Joseph, who produced the first biography of Peterson in 1981. Although the Mattatuck’s inaugural presentation closed in January, its Peterson show is continuing, relatively unchanged, to three more lucky venues: the Long Island Museum in Stony Brook, New York (February 11–April 22),…

CHARLA & BOB NELSON Owners of Manitou Galleries and founders of March in Montana TWO MEN IN A BOAT Philip R. Goodwin (1881–1935) Date unknown; oil on canvas, laid on board; 28 x 14 3/4 in. To be auctioned at March in Montana, Great Falls, March 17 Estimate: $40,000–$60,000 Sometimes ducks fly away, out of range of hunters’ rifles. The grizzly has been known to chase people through the woods, and many an advancing moose has forced a marksman to hide under an overturned canoe. The great sporting artist and illustrator Philip R. Goodwin (1881–1935) didn’t always depict humans winning their hunting trophy, though most of the time the game and fish were captured. In his Two Men in a Boat, a work never before shown in public, it’s not…

André Aciman doesn’t like the beach or the sun or even the city of Nice, and yet he remains captivated by a scene that depicts all of those elements in exquisite detail. The noted novelist and memoirist — one of whose books, Call Me by Your Name, was recently made into a movie nominated for an Oscar in that other famous city by the sea, Los Angeles — claims, “Ten minutes in the sun and I get a headache. My entire childhood I was fighting with my parents not to go to the beach. But I long now for cities by the sea, places like Barcelona, Naples, and Genoa.” Among Aciman’s favorite painted scenes are a series by Raoul Dufy (1877–1953) that depict the Nice waterfront through open windows. Versions…

It was a cold day early in March 1835, and the North German city of Hannover was eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring. For the past two weeks, however, something had diverted attention from the unfriendly weather. On February 24, the city’s third annual art exhibition had opened. Among its many fine works, one stood out — the life-size likeness of a bearded man in his early 20s, dressed in lush brown velvet and a green wool coat with generous fur trimming (Fig. 1). Posed dramatically against the clear blue sky of the Upper Rhine Valley, there was something enigmatic about him, a self-possessed gravitas that, in turn, suggested a deeper meaning, a back story that transcended his attractiveness. The portrait’s aura garnered so much public attention that the exhibition…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES New York City March 1–31 Bernarducci Gallery is celebrating its new home in Chelsea with a show of “New Precisionist” paintings. The artists represented include John Baeder, Antonio Cazorla, Ester Curini, Peter Drake, William Fisk, Max Ferguson, Gus Heinze, Park Hyung Jin, Cheryl Kelley, Sylvia Maier, Daniel Massad, Sharon Moody, Adam Normandin, Mario A. Robinson, and Nathan Walsh. For the “Old Precisionists,” see page 116. INFORMATION:525 W. 25th Street, New York, NY 10001, 212.593.3757, bernarduccigallery.com Charleston March 2–30 Meyer Vogl Gallery is hosting Bloom Boom Boom!, an exhibition of artworks inspired by flowers, ranging in approach from abstraction to botanical patterns. Gallerist and artist Marissa Vogl notes, “From pollination to survival, flowers are incredibly complex, and we often take them for granted.” The participating artists are Stanley…