Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2025 i Fine Art Connoisseur

Time has a curious way of collapsing upon itself. It seems impossible that I was penning a similar note about the holidays just a year ago, yet here we are again — the calendar insistent, the season upon us. I find myself returning to the nature of art collecting: what it means, and perhaps more importantly, what it should mean. For most of us, it begins innocently enough — a pretty picture speaks to us in some ineffable way. But then something remarkable happens. As we live with that original painting, everything else begins to look stale, insignificant, somehow less. I can still recall with clarity the first time I visited a home filled with original masterpieces — not a single reproduction, not one poster. I remember thinking, “This house…

GABRIELLE CASTLE (b. 2001) planned to be a classical ballerina, but now she paints luminous figures and portraits using traditional techniques. Her life journey so far reminds us all to stay flexible and embrace what happens next. Castle was born in Minnesota, but her family moved to the mountains of western Maine when she was 5. Her parents buy and sell vintage musical instruments worldwide, so were predisposed to bring their children to museums and performances, and to travel together. At 5, Castle made her first visit to Britain, and at 7 she fell in love with Old Master portraiture during a tour of London, Paris, Rome, and Florence. She remembers being awed by Leonardo, Rembrandt, Renoir, and Degas (among other greats). “My parents couldn't pull me away” from the galleries,…

In his autobiographical novel, The Way of All Flesh (1903), British critic Samuel Butler asserted, “Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.” Artist Eric Fischl (b. 1948) has long drawn (mercilessly, some might say) on his personal history to exercise his imaginative drive. “Making art, having a creative engagement with life, has saved my life,” he tells Fine Art Connoisseur. “Until I discovered creative engagement and response in my life to my life, I was not an integrated ‘self.’ I had no way to organize and process my experiences.” A figurative painter who came up at…

The death of John Hafen (1856–1910) at the age of 54 came as a great blow to Utah's artistic community. Fellow artists James Taylor Harwood and Alfred Lambourne could hardly speak to reporters, so overcome were they with emotion and shock. One of Utah's most famous sculptors, Mahonri M. Young, however, was able to give a touching and cogent eulogy to the newspapers: “He was, to my mind, our foremost landscape painter… His was the spirit of youth. Though his hair and beard were grey, the last time I saw him, he was as interested in his work, as full of hope and as confident of ultimate success as any student of 20; though he felt he had done much, he felt that much more remained for him to do.”1…

Clothing shops have dressing rooms where customers try on outfits to see if they fit and how they look. Auto dealerships allow prospective buyers to take a test drive because all the brochures and advertising in the world can't give you a sense of how the car accelerates. In the art trade, dealers (and even some artists) permit potential buyers to take a sort of test drive, letting them live with an artwork for a few days, even a week, to see if the piece fits in their home, fits with their decor, and fits their own tastes. Dealers don't advertise this service, but it is a customary part of their business and usually results in sales and contented customers. New York City gallery owner Nancy Hoffman says, “Sending works…

New York City nyartistsequity.org November 6–December 4 Equity Gallery, the public-facing space operated by the nonprofit New York Artists Equity Association, is hosting artist Patricia Watwood's latest solo show, titled The Fey Wild. Inspired by the playfulness of rococo art and design, she has built upon her longstanding fascination with mythical figures to explore the imaginative Fey realm of Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Reaching back to her own roots in theater design, Watwood has created installation elements that viewers will move through, leaving behind the world they know to enter a universe of matriarchy, queerness, mysterious beauty, sensuality, and collaboration with spiritual forces. Warren, Ohio medicimuseum.art through December 31 The Medici Museum of Art is presenting The Light of Tomorrow, an exhibition of Mara Sfara's recent figurative sculptures,…

DAVID HARMS Autumn Morning Light, 22 x 28 in., oil on canvas nharmswy@yahoo.com | davidharms.com All Paintings Available at The Virtuosos of the OPA, November 7 - December 19, 2025 Ballard's Fine Art Gallery, Sheridan, WY PAULA B. HOLTZCLAW Drifting By, 30 x 30 in., oil on linen panel Pbhfineart@aol.com | Paulabholtzclawfineart.com JULIE DAVIS Tethered to the Land, 16 x 20 in., oil on panel juliedavisstudio@me.com | juliedavisstudio.com…

Everyone has one, so everyone is interested, to a lesser or greater degree. I'm referring to the human body, surely the most important touchstone in the history of art. Artists have been depicting the nude figure for millennia, sometimes in exacting detail and sometimes vaguely, but always with the understanding that every viewer has a direct connection with the subject — and thus a way of assessing the rendition's accuracy. The ongoing renaissance of realism means that figure drawing and painting have not been this good in North America for more than half a century. Though it would be easy to fill this section entirely with examples from the classical ateliers, we have decided to mix it up here stylistically. Get ready for some very modern approaches. But before we…

At first blush, the paintings of Barry Oretsky (b. 1946) may strike some viewers as “photorealist.” Although he does indeed photograph his subject matter and then paints from the resulting photos, his work is far more complicated and profound than that label suggests. This complexity comes, in part, from Oretsky's remarkable life journey. He was born in Owen Sound, Ontario — roughly 125 miles northwest of Toronto — but his family moved to downtown Toronto when he was 3. He fondly recalls childhood visits to a nearby public library, where he admired its collection of paintings by Tom Thomson (1877–1917), the Canadian master best known for daringly composed, boldly colored landscapes. Clearly they made an impression, as Oretsky started painting young, despite the fact that visual art was forbidden at…

As the largest public owner of works by American artist Susan Watkins (1875–1913), the Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, Virginia) has duly mounted several exhibitions about her over the years. With its current show, Susan Watkins and Women Artists of the Progressive Era (running through January 11), the Chrysler has widened the proverbial lens to focus not only on Watkins, but also on the community of American women who, like her, made art in Paris at the turn of the last century. This project, which visited Memphis's Dixon Gallery & Gardens before opening at the Chrysler in October, showcases more than 70 works by Watkins and such peers as Lilla Cabot Perry, Minerva Chapman, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Elizabeth Nourse, and Anna Elizabeth Klumpke. In the late 19th century, these…

AN EXCITING NEW PHASE Timothy Rees: Gilded Souls Bonner David Galleries Scottsdale bonnerdavid.com December 4–31 Based in Iowa, the widely admired figurative artist Timothy Rees is about to launch his first show at Scottsdale's Bonner David Galleries. Best known for keenly observed, richly colored paintings of women and children, Rees is opening a new chapter in his 15-year career with recent works that blend realism with abstraction. His show is titled Gilded Souls not only because many of the pieces feature 18-karat gold leaf, but also because the figures depicted — many of them dissolving partially into expressively brushed backgrounds — are charmed, ethereal beings, whether they are holding up the world like Atlas or lost in reading a book. “Gold leaf represents the enhanced beauty and value of experiences…

BONNIE ZAHN GRIFFITH bzgriff53@gmail.com | bonniegriffith.com Represented by Idaho Art Gallery, Meridian, ID CAROLE BELLIVEAU carolebelliveau@gmail.com | carolebelliveau.com Represented by Underwood Gallery, Santa Fe, NM CYNTHIA INSON matteucci.com Represented by Nedra Matteucci Galleries, Santa Fe, NM MARIAN FORTUNATI marian@fortunatifineart.com marianfortunati.com Represented by Fortunati Fine Art, Tarzana, CA…

Although the editorial team at Fine Art Connoisseur loves all kinds of art — from landscape to still life, from the Old Masters to the still-wet — we hold a special place in our hearts for figurative works and portraiture. People are at the center of what we do, and so images in which artists depict other people — be they models, strangers, or commissioning clients — carry a special fascination. Capturing a face or human body is incredibly challenging. We all have them, so we can see immediately when something is “not right” in a painting or sculpture. We may not be able to articulate what's wrong, but we sure do spot it. This makes figurative and portrait artists all the more extraordinary in my estimation; even if they…

Playwright David Henry Hwang recognizes a good story when he sees one. When Hwang — the Tony Award–winning writer of M. Butterfly and other prize-winning theatrical works such as Yellow Face, Golden Child, and Flower Drum Song — first saw the art of Dong Kingman, he felt a kindred bond with a fellow Chinese-American. And when he encountered this particular watercolor in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, he took immediate account of the drama playing out on this fictionalized street in San Francisco's Chinatown. “A lot of Kingman's work has a certain optimism to it,” Hwang says. “There's joy and cheer here, and a sense of community, with all different sorts of people hanging out together.” He points to the diversity of races on the…

James Foot (b. 1960) had just done something he hadn't been able to do before, though he had tried for four decades. “Sometimes, you break through, after just treading water for a long time,” says the English-born artist from his home in the village of Kyparissi (Greek for “cypress tree”). Foot is a master watercolorist, able to produce scenes of Greece, Venice, Jerusalem, Egypt, or wherever it is he travels, that redefine the medium. His watercolors have a depth of color and detail, an exactitude, a mood that gives them an effect unlike anyone else's. His scenes are, at once, precise and suggestive, eerily realistic yet imbued with a touch of the ideal or fantastic. Foot's “breakthrough” refers to a recently completed nocturne depicting the Venetian palazzo Ca d'Oro. Painted…

In Kensington, to the west of central London, Sara Pattle Prinsep (1816–1887) once presided over Little Holland House, located on the grounds of the Holland House mansion. She had leased it in 1851, eight years after her family's return from colonial India. A watercolor scene dated around 1870 shows a rambling home in a large garden, suggesting informal domesticity. Here Sara oversaw long visits from five of her sisters and their families, who traveled regularly between Britain and India. Together, the Pattle sisters created a dynamic and innovative Sunday afternoon salon where their heady cocktail of beauty, intelligence, lively spirit, social rule-breaking, and Indian-influenced dress contradicted buttoned-up, male-dominated Victorian norms. Little Holland House became its own world, led by liberal, confident, cosmopolitan outsider women of independent wealth. It stood apart…

During his long, distinguished career, the American sculptor Daniel Chester French (1850–1931) produced almost 100 public monuments and memorials, including the iconic Minute Man (1871–75) for Concord, Massachusetts, and the majestic seated Abraham Lincoln (1911–22) for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. He was also a generous mentor and champion of many artists. French taught and employed them as assistants in his studios, collaborated, passed along commissions, and added their work to his personal collection. As a trustee of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1903 until his death in 1931, French advocated for the purchase of sculpture by his contemporaries, among them Herbert Adams, Paul Wayland Bartlett, Evelyn Beatrice Longman, William Ordway Partridge, Attilio Piccirilli, Edward Clark Potter, and Bessie Potter Vonnoh.1 Of the museum's installation of American…

HOMER SEEN ANEW OF LIGHT AND AIR: WINSLOW HOMER IN WATERCOLOR Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Boston mfa.org November 2–January 19 The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) houses the world's largest collection of watercolors by the American artist Winslow Homer (1836–1910), who transformed this challenging medium through his relentless spirit of experimentation. Their sensitivity to light means they have not been displayed together in nearly half a century, and so this season's exhibition, Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor, will be a revelation to a new generation of fans. On view will be nearly 50 watercolors alongside a selection of related oils, drawings, and prints. Homer's luminous views bring viewers along on his many travels through the rugged Maine coast, Adirondack Mountains, seaside England, and sun-drenched Caribbean,…