Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2019 i Fine Art Connoisseur

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…

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…

For me, February 8 was not just any day. It was the day the AKC Museum of the Dog opened in Manhattan, and I had the deeply appreciated honor of attending. For a dog aficionado like me, nothing could be better. I was delighted to discover that the museum is easy to reach and also easy on the eye. It has been exquisitely designed in a sleek modern style with walls that can be moved to accommodate any exhibition. Anyone who frequents museums knows that seeing artworks in person wins hands-down over seeing them in books. At the AKC Museum of the Dog, you can get very close to the paintings to fully appreciate their brushwork. As a dog painter, this almost gives me goosebumps. The breadth of this collection…

Published late last year, Wendy Moonan’s book New York Splendor: The City’s Most Memorable Rooms is a treasury of stories and images that reveal some of the most breathtaking spaces in a city renowned for its significant houses and buildings. The volume breaks new ground as a tribute to the designers, artists, and craftspeople whose talents reshaped these spaces into dwellings uniquely appropriate for their clients. Moonan is a longtime New Yorker who has been writing about architecture, design, and antiques for 30 years. A graduate of Wellesley College, she also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she fondly recalls an instructor who regularly brought her students to the Louvre after class to discuss the French paintings hanging there. As an editor at Town & Country magazine, Moonan assigned…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES Annapolis mcbridegallery.com through July 28 McBride Gallery is presenting an invitational group show with the intriguing title Impressionism, Tonalism, and Perceptualism. The participating artists include Mark Beale, John Ebersberger, Cynthia Feustel, Abigail McBride, Murray Moldofsky, Bill Schmidt, Carol Lee Thompson, and Sarah Wardell. Each of these talents has strong thoughts on the differences and connections among the show title’s three terms. Perceptualism is the newest of them, with ever more artists gravitating toward it. Everyone is invited to learn more in Annapolis this summer. Santa Fe lewallengalleries.com through July 20 Lew Allen Galleries has mounted its second show of paintings by Ben Aronson. It is titled Views from Above because the artist has diverted his gaze from his customary skyscrapers, streets, stop signs, and sidewalks toward higher…

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…

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.…

Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904) was a highly accomplished American artist who painted landscapes, still lifes, seascapes, and portraits, and who also specialized in such unconventional subjects as marsh scenes, hummingbirds with orchids and passion flowers, and magnolias. Although he is often included in the Hudson River School of landscape painting and sometimes designated a luminist, it is arguable whether he fits into either category. The quotation above introduces Heade’s artistic, social, and intellectual connections in New York City’s Tenth Street Studio Building and how these influences led him to visit South and Central America in search of tropical settings for his early hummingbird paintings and his later pictures of hummingbirds with orchids. Referencing scenes such as Brazilian Forest and Sunset: Harbor at Rio, the Transcript critic mentions that Heade’s jungle…

Good news: Midtown Manhattan has yet another attraction to entice art lovers from around the world. This past February — while the renowned Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show was underway nearby — the AKC Museum of the Dog opened at 101 Park Avenue, just south of Grand Central Terminal. For those who don’t know, AKC stands for the American Kennel Club, which was founded in 1884; both organizations are dedicated to enhancing public appreciation for, and knowledge of, the dog, which has always been man’s best friend. (It is now estimated that 35 to 40 per cent of all Americans own a dog.) As one of the world’s largest collections of dog art, the museum holds more than 2,500 paintings, drawings, watercolors, prints, sculptures, posters, bronzes, porcelain figurines, trophies, decorative…

At first glance, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942) and Augusta Savage (1892–1962) are the oddest of couples, the strangest of bedfellows. The disparity holds true as one learns more about these female American sculptors who lived worlds apart (both socially and economically) and whose works, purely by chance, have lately been crisscrossing the eastern half of the U.S. in museum retrospectives dedicated to each of them. Yet the biographies of this pair — one an heiress-patron who became an artist herself, the other an artist-prodigy who became an influential member of the Harlem Renaissance — have several crucial elements in common. To be sure, each lived and worked in New York City in the early to middle years of the 20th century, embracing various degrees of realism and helping other artists…

1 It is probable that the American Pre-Raphaelites discussed publishing their journal The New Path (1863–65) here. And it was here that William Stillman (a student of Church) had a studio and worked with non-tenant John Durand, son of the Hudson River landscapist Asher B. Durand, to produce The Crayon, the first American art periodical (1855 –1861). Theodore Winthrop wrote the novel Cecil Dreeme (1861) here and created the brochure for Church’s Heart of the Andes to accompany the private showing of that painting in the artist’s Tenth Street studio and elsewhere in the U.S. 2 This letter dated November 4, 1858 is quoted in Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., The Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade: A Critical Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, Yale University Press,…