Fine Art Connoisseur July - August 2016

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of sitting at the dining room table with my mother as she painted. She had taken lessons in our community and returned home with the floral still lifes and portraits she had created. The first ever portrait of me (aged 12) was painted by my mother. Today, though I have sat for some of the finest living and historical portraitists in the world, the canvas I would save from fire first is the one my mother painted. Children don’t usually appreciate the angst of motherhood. Juggling a marriage with the lives and moods of three children, plus the usual domestic duties, must have created pressures I never glimpsed. Yet, even then, I could see Mom light up with joy as she painted. It…

For four years, I have gladly served on the board of the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (FAIC). Based in Washington, D.C., the Institute is the leading membership organization serving more than 3,500 conservation professionals. These are the people working in museums, in their own studios, and even outdoors who ensure that our collective cultural heritage reaches our children and grandchildren intact. The Institute’s foundation benefits them further by presenting courses, bestowing grants and scholarships, providing emergency response assistance for collections in danger, and operating a free online clearinghouse of technical information. FAIC’s efficacy, and the truly global dimension of its mission, were reinforced this June during an event celebrating the successful establishment of a department of photograph conservation at the State Hermitage…

Fly fishing and bidding at an auction are not exactly similar experiences. Casting a line in a babbling brook and standing for what might be hours awaiting a bite from a salmon requires a degree of patience that live bidding for a coveted item does not. Given the popularity of fishing scenes by the American painter Ogden Minton Pleissner (1905–1983), his June Fishing is tasty bait for collectors of his art. This vibrant watercolor will be offered at Guyette & Deeter’s annual auction in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where it will likely be snapped up fast. “This is one of Pleissner’s classic fishing scenes, set, it’s believed, along the Millbrook, a branch of the Beaverkill River in upstate New York,” says G&D president Gary Guyette. (Based in St. Michaels, Maryland, the…

Francis Kurkdjian has one of the best noses in the world. Perhaps in profile, but more for his keen ability to discern fragrances and scents. As co-founder of the Paris-based Maison Francis Kurkdjian, he says with a confident sniff, “I compose perfumes.” In addition to his namesake line of fragrances, he has created perfumes for all the major houses, including Dior, Giorgio Armani, and Van Cleef & Arpels. So honed are his olfactory skills that his nose led him to Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun’s 1783 portrait of Marie Antoinette holding a pink cabbage rose, Marie Antoinette à la Rose, which hangs at Versailles. “I love the pose she takes,” says Kurkdjian. “She’s so feminine and stylish. There’s something very innocent about it. I love Vigée Le Brun for her…

On a rocky ledge overlooking the Northern California coast near Monterey, a quartet of painters gather to capture its dramatic beauty. At their feet, orange poppies contrast with the teal and green waves crashing upon gunmetal-gray rocks. Layers of silvery blue and pearl-colored fog cling to the ragged ochre cliffs. In Cannery Row (1945), John Steinbeck described the sunsets here: “It is the hour of pearl — the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.” Just as writers use words to describe such natural beauty, so the professional landscapists Brian Blood, John Burton, Laurie Kersey, and Jesse Powell convey it by using color, values, and light — and they do so with conviction. Following in the footsteps of the historical masters who have called this area…

KATHRYN MAPES TURNER (b. 1971) creates “paintings that capture my subjects’ essential spirit and energy, and that tap into the inherent nature of our emotions. I don’t want to re-create photo-realistic representations.” With paintings like Grace, illustrated here, she is clearly achieving these goals. Turner is part of the fourth generation raised on the Triangle X Ranch in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. She grew up on horseback, discovering the charms and challenges of nature, but she also relished her school’s weekly art class; as a teenager, she painted alongside such local talents as Conrad Schwiering, as well as visiting ones like Ned Jacob, Skip Whitcomb, and T. Allen Lawson. This passion led to her to major in studio arts at the University of Notre Dame, the curriculum of…