Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2023 i Fine Art Connoisseur

This summer finds me again in the Adirondack Mountains of New York at our family’s summer camp. When my wife initially suggested experiencing island life, I wasn’t convinced I would enjoy it. The idea of relying on boats to transport every single building material, every piece of furniture, and even every morsel of food seemed daunting. And life doesn’t pause for thunderstorms. Now I wouldn’t trade this lifestyle for anything. Despite its inconveniences, it instills a sense of planning, discipline, and above all, tranquility. The sounds of silence envelop our island, where the only things to be heard are the whispering of trees in the wind, the ethereal call of the returning loons who’ve spent their winter in Florida, and the occasional splash of water as trout leap joyfully. Life…

 As this issue’s two Historic Master articles reveal, it was never easy being a female artist. Until the 1960s, society expected most women who were trained professionally in the visual arts to teach, rather than to exhibit actively. Those who did successfully pursue a public career often started out with an independent income or privileged access to the system. Even today, when more women than ever earn a living through art, the system remains skewed. According to the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. — which will reopen this October after a major renovation — an impressive 51 percent of American visual artists are women. So why are they not better represented in gallery shows, museum collections, and auction records? The (several) answers to this important…

TODAY’S MASTERS Chances are you're reading this magazine in a room or other indoor space. But even if you're sitting by the pool right now, surely we agree that interiors are a crucial part of our lives. Much as we revere nature, we probably spend much mor of our time in houses, stores, offices, restaurants, theaters, warehouses, gyms, or museums than we realize. This reality has inspired the diverse images illustrated here, created by talented artists across the country who are intrigued with the world inside. Whether they have depicted a space with or without people, with or without meticulous detail, one thing is certain: light is always a key player, helping to establish mood, clarify the artist’s priorities, and guide our eye to where it should be. When figures…

Getty Publications and Lund Humphries have been busy producing more books in their collaborative Illuminating Women Artists series. This season sees the arrival of Elisabetta Sirani by Adelina Modesti and Rosalba Carriera by Angela Oberer. During her brief life, Sirani (1638–1665) became an esteemed painter, printmaker, and teacher in her native Bologna. Of the more than 100 extant works known to be hers, perhaps most memorable is Timoclea of Thebes (1659), in which the legendary heroine shoves her rapist down a well. Unlike Sirani, Rosalba Carriera (1673–1757) lived a long and productive life working in her native Venice and throughout Europe; she became a renowned portraitist in both oils and pastels, on a large scale and in miniature. More than 700 extant artworks are attributed to her, including self-portraits made…

INSIDE TRACK Buying art and antiques is exciting, educational, and fun, but it can also make people nervous. Will I be embarrassed if my tastes change in a few years? Will interest in, and prices for, this artist’s work diminish? Can I trust my dealers to know what they are talking about, or is this all salesmanship? Making this realm seem even more perilous is the fact that the collectibles trade is still, in large part, a handshake industry that requires a high degree of trust — in yourself, in the advice offered to you, and in the market (now and in the future). Naturally, the sheer monetary value of the art and antiques trade has fostered a growing number of lawsuits and legislation. As a result, the market is…

DESTINATION ART Many readers of Fine Art Connoisseur visit London regularly, yet some may not have noticed the Handel Hendrix House, despite its central location near Sotheby’s in Mayfair. Operated by a trust and supported in part by a group of American patrons, this unique site preserves the former homes of two great musicians — the Baroque composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) and the American rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) — while sharing with visitors their intriguing life stories. This past May — 300 years after Handel moved in — the site reopened following an 18-month-long, £3 million renovation. Dubbed the Hallelujah Project because this is where Handel composed the famous “Hallejuah Chorus” for Messiah, the initiative has made his entire house accessible for the first time by restoring its…

HISTORIC MASTERS Beginning in the 1910s, the collaboration of American sculptor Malvina Hoffman (1885–1966) and Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova (1881–1931) brought together two remarkable women who had already shaken up the maledominated fields of visual art and dance. Each worked at the peak of her craft, and they were also the best of friends. On February 28, 1915, a New York Times critic made an insightful observation about Hoffman’s 26-panel bas relief frieze that depicts Pavlova dancing the sensual Bacchanale with her Russian partner, Mikhail Mordkin. He noted that Hoffman’s “attention to drawing seems to be unusual among modern sculptors, although Rodin practices it and Michelangelo was so passionate a draughtsman that whole pages of his notebooks are given to the interplay of the waist muscles in certain twisted…

ART IN THE WEST BIG TALENT AT BIG HORN BIG HORN, WYOMING thebrintonmuseum.org July 8 - August 26 The Brinton Museum is set to host the eighth edition of its popular Bighorn Rendezvous exhibition. On view will be oils, monotypes, pastels, and bronzes created by invited artists Roger Broer, Tammy Callens, Sonja Caywood, Jim Jackson, T. D. Kelsey, Tom Lockhart, David Mensing, Anton Nowels, Julie Oriet, Gregory Packard, Gerald Shippen, Kathy Wipfler, and Scott Yeager. This show will conclude with a bang on August 26. That morning, these 13 artists (plus their colleague Jerry Salinas) will be found working all over the museum’s scenic property as they create new Quick Draw works to be auctioned at the gala later that day. Also on view at the museum this summer are…

ELIZABETH GOLDSTEIN President, Municipal Art Society McSorley’s Bar John Sloan (1871–1951) 1912, oil on canvas, 26 × 32 in. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, General Membership Fund, 24.2 Many family road trips in the 1960s involved stopping at natural attractions or visiting grandparents, taking in a small-town carnival or reaching a lakeside cabin for a stay. For Elizabeth Goldstein, they meant piling into the car with her parents and sister and driving from their home in the Bronx to other cities to see Rembrandts and Goyas, Picassos and Mondrians. “I come from an itinerant family always in search of art,” says Goldstein, who serves as president of New York’s Municipal Art Society (MAS), the influential nonprofit that advocates for preservation of the city’s built and natural environments. Goldstein…

TODAY’S MASTERS For all its red-brick charm, the city of Boston has not been represented on canvas nearly as much as have its leading citizens — think of Copley’s portrait of a pensive Paul Revere, or Sargent’s vision of the scandalously clad collector Isabella Stewart Gardner. With the exception of Childe Hassam, even members of the Boston School, who included Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank Benson, and William Paxton, rarely went out onto the street to paint. Yet the artist Joel Babb (b. 1947), whose work now springs from the backwoods of Maine, once made Boston both his home and his subject. The geometry of its built environment, particularly the 19th-century grid of the Back Bay neighborhood, proved endlessly appealing to the artist, for whom perspective has remained almost an idée…

HISTORIC MASTERS The last decade has witnessed a marked increase in major museum shows devoted to female artists. Embraced enthusiastically by the public, these projects are bringing us nearer the moment when we can discuss these artists not as women, but as masters of their art, ranked alongside their male peers and equally worthy of attention from scholars and the public. This is one hope of the curatorial teams that have organized two exhibitions on view in Europe this year. Devoted to Artemisia Gentileschi and Lavinia Fontana, both stem from large-scale conservation projects and the extensive scientific and historical analysis that accompanied them. ARTEMISTA Opening soon at Florence’s Casa Buonarroti, Artemisia at the Museum of Michelangelo (September 27, 2023–January 8, 2024) promises to be an illuminating exhibition that advances our…

EVENTS PREVIEW IMPRESSIONISM IN DEPTH AMERICAN IMPRESSIONIST SOCIETY 24th Annual National Juried Exhibition Somerville Manning Gallery Greenville, Delaware americanimpressionistsociety.org somervillemanning.com August 3–September 2 The American Impressionist Society (AIS) will soon open its 24th Annual National Juried Exhibition at Somerville Manning Gallery. On view will be 167 paintings, as well as 25 more created by AIS “Masters,” officers, and founders. Most have been executed in oil, pastel, watercolor, acrylic, or gouache. A five-member jury reviewed 1,657 entries, and a catalogue illustrating all of the works they selected will be available for purchase. At the opening event, AIS Master Quang Ho will serve as awards judge, distributing more than $75,000 in cash and merchandise, including $12,000 for Best of Show. Among the opening activities will be a “Wet Wall” exhibition and sale…

DESTINATION ART Dublin has been throwing a very long party. Indeed, 10 years long, and now it has been extended into extra time. The party’s title is “A Decade of Centenaries,” embraced with vigor by all residents of the Irish capital. It has resulted in the permanent enrichment of an already splendid cityscape through restoration of its parks, better use of its astounding quantity of 18thcentury Georgian buildings, and rethinking of how better to display its impressive art collections and museum tributes to Ireland’s heroes. With the cleanedup, sparkling River Liffey meandering through the compact city center, and a lively cafe and restaurant culture, Dublin has an almost Parisian quality that makes it a pleasure to stroll between art hubs. But, before exploring, an explanation. Although Dubliners know about the…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES Orleans, Massachusetts collinsgalleries.com August 19–September 8 Collins Galleries will soon present Carmen Drake: Wall Flowers, an exhibition of recent still life paintings by a North Carolina-based artist who closely studies the flowers she grows herself. Artfully arranged and subtly illuminated, these blooms seem so real we might touch them, yet Drake avoids the traps of photorealism by infusing her scenes with a palpable sense of atmosphere. New York City salmagundi.org through August 20 A tronie is a type of artwork common in Dutch and Flemish Old Master painting, resembling a portrait yet not specifying the sitter. Instead, it offers more profound insights into the model’s physiognomy and character, or perhaps embodies an abstract idea such as youth. The most famous tronie in history is Johannes Vermeer’s Girl…