Innholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2025 i Fine Art Connoisseur

This June, I embarked on a month-long journey through China, speaking at colleges and attending museum openings and exhibitions, many held in my honor. I also got to visit the homes and studios of some of China's greatest living artists. I was expecting to find what we see in Western media coverage: ancient villages, poverty, cultural suppression. Instead, I discovered something that challenges everything we think we know about art education and cultural priorities. I found a modern nation whose beautifully designed skyscrapers eclipse Manhattan's, and where government investment in the arts isn't an afterthought but a national priority. More striking still was a population with universal arts literacy, where the average citizen possesses sophisticated knowledge of visual arts (and skills) that would shame most American college graduates. China's infrastructure…

“THE AMERICAN WEST” means many different things to many different people, and that fact should make us all glad. At Fine Art Connoisseur we have long been keenly aware of how art of the West differs from – and overlaps with – art made in or about the rest of this remarkable country. That's one reason every issue of this magazine contains a separate section called “Art in the West” – to underscore that very point. Its existence does not mean we have passed on a comparable section titled, say, “Art in the Northeast.” (In fact, this issue has an entire section about eastern Massachusetts.) Rather, it's recognition of the fact that Western vitality in the fields of historic and contemporary realism is so noticeably strong that it shouldn't be…

The tradition of depicting flowers and plants can be traced back to antiquity, and we are pleased to report that today it's going from strength to strength. Still lifes depicting flowers are universally admired and usually find a ready audience. Botanical images can be more challenging because they combine science and art, requiring the artist to understand the physical structure of plants and to communicate this knowledge in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Botanical works are made for pleasure, for sale, and also for study, much as parts of the human body are illustrated to help scientists and doctors understand anatomy. Without having sought it, the field of botanical art has acquired an “eco-warrior” aspect because many plant species are disappearing due to climate change. Recording the appearance of at-risk specimens…

Pilgrimages to artists’ studio homes are not unusual: think of Monet's Giverny, northwest of Paris, or the house where Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner painted on Long Island's East End. To that list can now be added Cezanne's home and studio in Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France. Widely known as “Aix,” this lovely university city with a modern population close to 150,000 was the birthplace and home of the post-impressionist master Paul Cezanne (1839–1906). Located half an hour north of Marseille, its roots go back to Roman times, when its thermal waters healed the residents of Aquae Sextiae. (Derived from Latin, Aix means “waters,” and its springs still attract the public today.) Cezanne's association with Aix is hardly news; the art historian John Rewald documented relevant sites in and…

Every field has its own jargon, its own inside-baseball talk. Sports certainly has a lot of it: The baseball pitcher, perhaps a “southpaw” (left-handed), goes “back up the hill” (the pitcher's mound); the quarterback throws a “Hail Mary” (a long pass); basketball players score a “trey” (a long jump shot “behind the arc”); bicyclist Lance Armstrong was “juiced” (on steroids), while a losing boxer “throws in the towel.” The purpose of the jargon has less to do with explaining or obscuring anything – we'll leave that to the field of law and its Latinisms – than with giving sports announcers some variations on what they find themselves repeating again and again. The art world has jargon, too. As in sports, these words allow people to say the same old thing…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES Birmingham, Alabama oilpaintersofamerica.com beverlymcneilgallery.com September 11–October 11 The nonprofit organization Oil Painters of America (OPA) is returning to Birmingham to present its 2025 Eastern Regional Exhibition at Beverly McNeil Gallery. On view will be more than 100 paintings created by OPA members. On September 11, the co-hosts will welcome guests for an opening reception and awards ceremony, during which the exhibitors will be eligible for approximately $12,000 in cash and merchandise. Los Angeles coreyhelfordgallery.com through October 4 Corey Helford Gallery has mounted its fourth show devoted to the Canadian-born artist Martin Wittfooth. Titled Deus ex Terra, this presentation highlights how the enduring forces and cyclical rhythms of nature function as both muse and mirror. Wittfooth's latest works employ sometimes haunting symbols that suggest correspondences between the cosmos's…

ELENA BRIA (b. 1992) declares, “Painting has become my way of fully enjoying and experiencing the world around me.” Her world encompasses two places: the Italian village of Valsolda on Lake Lugano, and her birthplace of Chișinău in Moldova, the former Soviet republic located between Romania and Ukraine. Bria's art immersion started at age 8, when she was asked to paint a peony in watercolors. “It felt exactly like what teenagers describe when they fall in love for the first time – butterflies in the stomach and a kind of electric excitement in the brain. From that day on,” she recalls, “I started sketching everything around me.” Fortunately, Bria's parents came from the world of sports and immediately supported her passion and discipline. Three years later, Bria began learning the principles…

The home that Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) designed for his family on the eastern bank of New York's Hudson River served the successful artist not only as a country respite, farm, and studio, but also as a repository for the crates of mementos he shipped home from an extended trip to Europe and the Middle East (1867–69). In them he had packed “rugs – armour – stuffs –curiosities, etc. etc., crowded in together and some of the other boxes have old clothes (Turkish) stones from a house in Damascus, Arab spears – beads from Jerusalem – stones from Petra and 10,000 other things.”1 The name Olana alludes to a treasure storehouse on the Araxes River, which offered a view of Mount Ararat (in modern-day Turkey), where Noah's ark was said…

With McKim, Mead & White's shingle-clad Casino at one end and Doris Duke's Rough Point at the other (plus a run of impressive Gilded Age “cottages” strung between), Bellevue Avenue is perhaps the best-known street in Newport, Rhode Island. A magnet for visitors, Bellevue is also home to one of the city's most unique historical assets: the Redwood Library and Athenaeum. Set back from the sidewalk amid its own broad greensward, its Doric portico seeming inviolable, this 278-year-old institution is not quite as it appears. Founded in 1747 by 46 “proprietors” – engaged citizens determined to “propagate virtue, knowledge and useful learning with nothing in view but the good of mankind” – the Redwood is a membership library, but it has always welcomed the public. It takes its name from…

LAYING IT ON THICK Brad Teare: Painted Earth, The Impasto West Legacy Gallery Santa Fe legacygallery.com September 19–29 On view at Legacy Gallery's Canyon Road space is the exhibition Brad Teare: Painted Earth, The Impasto West. Formerly an illustrator, this painter now turns his attention to the rugged beauty of the American West – capturing not only windswept mesas, towering peaks, and endless horizons, but also the region's spirit. Inspired by Van Gogh, Teare uses a palette knife to create lively textures that bring out the raw physicality of oil paint, as well as the West's vibrant coloring. GOOD TIMES IN CODY Rendezvous Royale Cody, Wyoming rendezvousroyale.org buffalobillartshow.org bywesternhands.org September 15–20 Rendezvous Royale is the joyful celebration of the arts the town of Cody hosts every September, featuring a range of sales,…

Master artist Larry Moore has revealed his selections for the June 2025 PleinAir Salon Awards. Each of the 22 winners is now entered for a chance to win the 15th Annual PleinAir Salon Art Competition, to be awarded at the Plein Air Convention & Expo in May 2026. The Grand Prize winner will receive a check for $15,000 and have their winning painting featured on the cover of PleinAir Magazine. Moore says, “I've judged many shows like this, and they are never easy, especially if you love and embrace all forms of creative expression. It is a bit of a juggling act, and every show is different in this regard. So, to be a good and fair judge, I set up a few rules for myself. 1. Honor the range…

At the end of the day, it's always time for bed. For Christopher Robin, the fictional 7-year-old owner of Winnie-the-Pooh, it was bedtime back in 1926, when illustrator Ernest Howard Shepard depicted the boy trudging up the stairs with his beloved toy bear. At the top of the landing, other friends, notably Eeyore and Piglet, await. Peter (“Pom”) Harrington, owner of his namesake London-based business dealing in rare books, cites this illustration (often referred to as “Bump, bump, bump…,” given Winnie's rough ride up the stairs) as “one of the key drawings” in Shepard's series. “This is the closing illustration for the Winnie-the-Pooh books and poems,” says Harrington, adding that what makes this particular pencil-and-pen drawing so distinctive is its scale. “Shepard was a master of line, able to change…

Based in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, Jeffrey C. Legg (b. 1959) is a painter who has won many accolades, exhibited widely, and taught hundreds of enthusiastic workshop students. Amazingly, Legg has never been the subject of a solo museum exhibition – primarily because his sales are so strong that he could never accumulate enough works to lend. For the past few years, therefore, the artist has been holding pieces back and creating new ones, and now they are on view through October 25 in Jeffrey C. Legg: Alchemy of Light & Shadow, a show at the George A. Spiva Center for the Arts in the southwestern Missouri town of Joplin. Legg was born in Joplin, so the return is, in his own words, “incredibly meaningful.” Most of the exhibited…

In 1857, Emma Stebbins (1815–1882) moved to Rome. An established painter and portraitist in New York City, Stebbins wanted to pursue a career as a sculptor, and Rome was the ideal place to do that. This was an unusual goal for an unmarried woman, but it was not unprecedented. When Stebbins arrived, she became part of a community of American women sculptors working in the Eternal City, met the love of her life, and created the art that would become her legacy. Referring to themselves as the “Jolly Bachelors,” this community of American women in Rome included sculptors Harriet Hosmer, Edmonia Lewis, Margaret Foley, Louisa Lander, Anne Whitney, and Vinnie Ream. At the center of their orbit was Charlotte Cushman, a renowned American stage actress whose Shakespearean roles included both…

The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) – the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts, and design – is strutting its stuff. Putting more out there, in different locations, to inspire, delight, fascinate, and stimulate more people. And as always, for free. In addition to its monumental headquarters in the London neighborhood of South Kensington – where 145 brimful galleries give just a taste of its holdings because only 3% is displayed – there is V&A Dundee in Scotland to showcase Scottish design, plus the V&A Wedgwood Collection in the English town of Stoke-on-Trent highlighting the renowned bone china made there since 1759. In the London neighborhood of Bethnal Green, the re-thought Young V&A for children opened two years ago. Now comes V&A East. It's at Hackney Wick –…

FROM AMERICA & BEYOND ALLIED ARTISTS OF AMERICA Reading Public Museum Reading, Pennsylvania alliedartistsofamerica.org readingpublicmuseum.org September 13–January 11 Founded in 1914, the nonprofit organization Allied Artists of America (AAA) is set to open its 112th Annual Juried Exhibition at the Reading Public Museum. On view will be 100 works selected by the AAA board from entries submitted by artists all over the world. Those selected are eligible for more than $45,000 in prizes, including the $6,000 Gold Medal of Honor. Specific awards will be presented for oil painting, water media, pastel, graphics and mixed media, and sculpture. The exhibition can be seen on AAA's website from this September through September 2026. DISCOVERING THE GOLDEN STATE SCENIC ROUTE American Legacy Fine Arts Pasadena americanlegacyfinearts.com through October 11 American Legacy Fine Arts (ALFA) is…