Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2025 i Fine Art Connoisseur

When Fine Art Connoisseur launched two decades ago, classical realism stood at the margins — a whisper in an art world dominated by modernist voices. The traditions of rigorous draftsmanship and high finish, once the pinnacle of artistic achievement, had nearly vanished. Only a handful of ateliers dared teach what colleges had abandoned; life drawing classes had withered; and Old Master techniques seemed destined for obscurity. I launched this magazine with a singular conviction: that beauty, craft, and tradition deserve not just preservation, but celebration. Alongside visionaries like Fred Ross’s Art Renewal Center, we embarked on what many considered a quixotic mission - to champion art the establishment had declared irrelevant. Today, I write from the midst of a renaissance we helped ignite. The transformation has been nothing short of…

First, the good news. The visibility of women artists and art professionals - both historical and living — is on the rise and growing steadily. The National Gallery of Art is just about to close its successful presentation of the gifted artist Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012); the nonprofit organization American Women Artists is achieving its goal to schedule 25 shows of members’ art in 25 museums; and Long Island’s Heckscher Museum of Art is preparing to unveil its groundbreaking show devoted to sculptor Emma Stebbins (1815–1882). Organizations and institutions of all kinds are busy training, encouraging, and exhibiting women artists. The talented artists highlighted in this section of the magazine reflect just some of the vitality we all are enjoying today. Everyone at Fine Art Connoisseur congratulates them on their achievements…

Elena Vladimir Baranoff’s unique portraiture weaves folklore-inspired detail into masterful depictions of notable people, from business executives to religious leaders. Her new likeness of British actor Simon Callow, costumed as Samuel Pickwick, is the latest in a body of work that turns the formal portrait into an experience of brilliant color and imagination executed in the time-honored medium of egg tempera. Baranoff (b. 1960), a Russian-born American artist, met Simon Callow years ago; more recently they have been working on a film adaptation of The Portrait (also known as The Mysterious Portrait), a short story by 19th-century Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Callow has a role in the film while Baranoff serves as the production’s co-writer, producer, and director. Several months ago, the artist completed a portrait of Callow for her…

Situated in the southeastern section of the Adirondack Park and banked along its 32-mile length by a noble landscape of gently rolling mountains, Lake George has long been celebrated as one of New York State’s natural glories. I discovered this region during college when, bent on pursuing a singing career, I worked as an apprentice with the Lake George Opera Festival for two summers. As a hopeful lyric tenor, I had amassed a collection of historic opera recordings, 78s, to be precise — fragile shellac discs whose grooves preserved performances by many great singers of the early 20th century. When I learned that the village of Bolton Landing, on Lake George’s western shore, is home to the former voice studio of one of that era’s leading singers, the Polish coloratura…

IMPRESSIONISM IN DEPTH American Impressionist Society 26th Annual National Juried Exhibition Cassens Fine Art Hamilton, Montana americanimpressionistsociety.org cassensfineart.com August 1–September 2 The American Impressionist Society (AIS) will soon open its 26th Annual National Juried Exhibition at Cassens Fine Art in the Bitterroot Valley of western Montana. On view will be 166 paintings, as well as 15 more created by AIS “Masters,” board members, and officers. Most have been executed in oil, casein, pastel, oil stick, watercolor, acrylic, or gouache. A five-member jury reviewed 1,750 entries, and a printed catalogue illustrating all of the works they selected will be available for purchase, as will the artworks themselves. AIS Master Ned Mueller will serve as awards judge, and on July 31 he will distribute more than $100,000 in cash and merchandise, including…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES New York City froschandco.com July 10–August 16 Frosch & Co. will soon present Eat the Heat, a show of recent works by gifted emerging and mid-career artists. Established in 2009, the gallery is located in the lively Manhattan neighborhood between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. San Francisco ckcontemporary.com August 9–September 7 CK Contemporary Gallery is presenting Cenotes, an exhibition of a dozen underwater figure scenes painted by Anne Leone in acrylics on canvas or paper. The artist has been spending time in the cenote pools of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, exploring the interplay of light, water, and human motion. In meticulous detail, she shows swimmers suspended in crystalline waters, noting that her “focus tends to be where the body and the surface connect,” spurring us to ponder the…

CAROLINE NELSON (b. 1998) creates luminous figurative paintings in oils, especially of women, as well as still lifes. Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, she was born and raised in Arlington, a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. “I always wanted to be an artist,” Nelson explains. “My parents have been steadfast supporters of my dream, which was further encouraged by art teachers from elementary school onward.” She drew particular inspiration from the portraitist Valerie Nelson, her grandmother, and cherished childhood visits to the studio in her 18thcentury Maryland home, where distinguished artists like Daniel E. Greene taught workshops. (His demo of Valerie Nelson’s husband remains in the family collection.) Nelson also benefitted from visits to Washington’s renowned museums, saying it was a “formative experience to gaze at the Raphaels, Rembrandts, and Vermeers.” When…

Some artists fit a certain moment (for instance, John Singer Sargent and the Belle Epoque), or maybe they define a certain moment (Andy Warhol and Pop Art). Gregory Gillespie (1936-2000) was noteworthy for not fitting into any trend, which perhaps explains why his work was admired during his life and then largely forgotten. Gillespie painted almost exclusively on wood, sometimes sawing parts off one painting to adhere to another. His most iconic images were self-portraits that more or less resemble him, glaring at the viewer, often bare-chested and slouched, frequently surrounded by the accouterments of an artist’s studio. As he grew older, Gillespie portrayed the folds in his belly. If you want your artists to be heroes and your heroes to have idealized forms, Gillespie ain’t your man. How to…

Realism, once declared irrelevant or even dead by prominent voices in the art world, has endured the “dark times” and is again practiced, respected, and enjoyed by a wide audience worldwide. In places like Florence, which it never truly left, and New York City, which has always had a big enough tent for all approaches to stake a claim, the field of classical and contemporary realism is alive and well. One place enjoying a slow but steady renaissance of representational art over the last several years is Seattle, Washington. In a city known for technology innovations, grunge music, and a lively tradition of glass artistry, a growing community of artists and institutions is turning to realist fine art. This shift is more than aesthetic nostalgia; it’s a thoughtful engagement with…

Even when Sam Sussman is at home, he’s never quite there. When the novelist is in his third-floor Manhattan walkup, which his late mother occupied in the mid-1970s, he’s aware of what transpired there, as well as memories that are not exactly his. And when he visits the farmhouse he and his mother shared in upstate New York — where he fondly remembers riding horses and gathering eggs as a boy — he is keenly aware of change. “Home is always mythic,” Sussman says, “and the place that is home is never fully itself. When I’m back at the house and memories arise, I see that the trees have transformed, the landscape has transformed, the house itself has transformed, and I’m not a child anymore.” Sussman is an especially thoughtful…

All too often, we take them for granted. Every now and then, though, we slow down to refocus on the sheer wonder of our sun and our moon. A Without the former, we simply could not exist, and it is the moon that governs our tides and (usually) illuminates our nights. From the dawn of time, humankind has tried to make sense of them, and although science has made huge progress in furthering our understanding, the sun and moon still enthrall, puzzle, and surprise us, catching us off-guard with solar flares or eclipses that remind us how not in control we Earthlings are. Visual artists have always been intrigued by these celestial phenomena, and many of them working today are making unique contributions to our collective archive of images. Rather…

Few places capture that old-money aesthetic quite like Delaware’s Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library. Walking around the former estate of Henry Francis du Pont (1880–1969) is like entering another world. It’s been that way for me since my first visit 14 years ago, when I came to see some 18th-century silverware created by my ancestor John Leacock of Philadelphia; it had been acquired by “Harry” du Pont and then bequeathed to the institution with the rest of his extraordinary collection of Americana. I have been back several times since then, most recently in December, when I was ecstatic to finally see a pair of 1766 oil portraits that have been in the care of Winterthur’s renowned conservators, and therefore off public view. To see such pieces, it’s essential to book…

Daniel Robbins had found what he was looking for, and he had only two hours to secure it as his own. There was fierce competition right beside him. The Richmond-based artist had set up his easel on a downtown street in Easton, Maryland, during the town’s annual plein air event, and even though it was blazing hot, with the sun directly overhead and a crowd of people forming around him, he began his work, mixing oil paints, then brushing his canvas with broad, confident swaths of color. Unlike most artists in the world, Robbins knew that he had very likely already sold the painting he was creating — long before his greens and blues, pinks and yellows had even dried. It was the last day of the annual Plein Air…

FINDING HOME ARLINE MANN: THE FOREVER HOUSE Customs House Museum & Cultural Center Clarksville, Tennessee customshousemuseum.org August 7–October 26 Inspired by such 19th-century forerunners as Anders Zorn and Christen Købke, Arline Mann is a watercolorist who creates serene scenes that capture the play of light and shadow in interiors, on cherished objects, and across landscapes. Having previously worked in theater and then corporate law, Mann now splits her time between New York City and a remarkable house in Chattanooga, Tennessee. That home was constructed in the early 1920s by George Elder, a Chattanooga native who bought more than 3,000 acres on what became known as Elder Mountain. Acting as his own architect, he found on his land most of the necessary stone and wood, ultimately conjuring a structure spread along…