Fine Art Connoisseur July/August 2019

Unlike the rest of us — whose names might one day be noted only by cemetery visitors stepping around our tombstones — some artists have the rare privilege of being acknowledged into the distant future thanks to their lasting creations. As their admirers, we rightly hope to own such a treasure. More likely, museums proudly hang the works of these masters, and so some, like Rembrandt, who died exactly 350 years ago, remain very much with us. Hundreds of volumes about this Dutch genius have been published, and hopefully our collective interest in him will endure. A couple of years ago, when a well-known artist friend of mine passed away, I mentioned to an art expert that the artist’s prices would soon soar, to which he responded, “Not true.” Naturally…

Recently I was reminded that getting more brains on a problem is better than fewer. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has always been admired for the expertise of its curators, who have built up an especially strong track record in the paintings of John Singer Sargent (1856–1925).* Knowledgeable as they are, curators Erica Hirshler (American paintings) and Pam Parmal (textiles and fashion arts) teamed up with the museum’s educators earlier this year to mount an intriguing display that shows how inclusivity can benefit everybody. On view at the MFA for seven months (it closed in late June), Exhibition Lab: Sargent and Fashion was devised in anticipation of a major show that will be on view at Tate Britain (London) in 2021 and then in Boston the following year. It…

By 1909, the last year of Frederic Remington’s life, the prospects for cowboys and Indians continuing their ways of life on the Great Plains were not promising. The Wild West was morphing fast into the Old West. Peter Hassrick, director emeritus and senior scholar of Wyoming’s Buffalo Bill Center of the West, sees that reality embodied in Casuals on the Range, which will be offered in the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction in Reno this July. In his essay for the sale catalogue, Hassrick writes, “Perhaps the artist was trying to suggest that both the cowboy and the Indian saw their lifeways imperiled at this time, so they were bonded by sharing a mutual, externally imposed threat.” He notes how “the two protagonists face one another, their horses’ necks are almost…

Thomas Farley’s favorite work of art is one he didn’t particularly care for at first sight. “Its appeal is not the technique or the colors, but rather the mystery surrounding it,” he explains, referring to The Love Letter — painted by the Finnish artist Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905) — which had long been in his family’s possession. “Who was this elegantly dressed 19th-century woman, what message is contained in the letter she is reading, and how did my grandfather’s family come to acquire this work?” These were the matters that intrigued Farley when the painting suddenly came to light in a basement that had recently been flooded. In 1997, when he carried the work, wrapped in brown kraft paper, to Sotheby’s, where it was to be put up for sale, Farley…

TAHA CLAYTON (b. 1981) is a multi-talented artist with a multi-faceted background. Born in Houston, raised in Toronto, and currently living in Brooklyn, he is a portraitist who previously worked as a carpenter, scenic painter, and set designer for films, photo shoots, and high-end events. Today all of these influences and areas of expertise flow through Clayton’s fine art, helping him approach each new work as a storyteller, as a designer, and as a director. Clayton is now focused on painting pictures that celebrate his heritage and address mistruths of black antiquity. Culture and legacy, as well as social injustice, spirituality, and family, are among the themes of his portraits and narrative scenes; in them, he uses historical references as both reminders of the past and predictions of the future.…

Most of us may be conditioned to believe that the nude is the most revealing and expressive depiction of the human form — literally and figuratively — but the work of American sculptor Karen LaMonte (b. 1967) boldly refutes that assumption. In the sculptures for which she is best known, disembodied garments fashioned from bronze, ceramic, rusted iron, and most especially cast glass cling to absent female forms. The result is ethereal and haunting, provocative and entirely captivating. At the Winter Show in New York City this past January, a display of LaMonte’s work on the stand of the Gerald Peters Gallery beckoned visitors to stop and admire. “The work truly has its own voice that all levels of art appreciators understand on an intuitive level,” says Alice Hammond, a…