Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2026 i Fine Art Connoisseur

I am continually amazed by how a few people can have a giant impact, as well as by how some forces work in concert toward a common goal without even being aware of each other. Late in the 20th century, a handful of visionaries began swimming against the tide of a contemporary art world enamored with conceptualism and apt to discount anything done in the past. Daniel Graves founded the Florence Academy of Art, and before him, Ives Gammell had established his atelier in Boston and Richard Lack another in Minnesota. Collectors like Fred Ross created the Art Renewal Center (ARC), an online repository and advocacy platform for classical realism. A group of collectors founded the New York Academy of Art, and then one of its graduates, Jacob Collins, launched…

While Beth Rundquist (b. 1962) was walking on a beach years ago, she spotted a goddess — or someone she would elevate to become one on canvas. During her annual summer foray to Cushing, Maine, Rundquist spotted a lovely young woman with long red hair knotted into a braid. The figure's visage, her contemplative presence on the beach, the backdrop of ocean waves, the sand, the multi-hued sky — all combined to make Rundquist stop and ask the stranger if she could take her photo. That image has since morphed, in oil on linen — Rundquist's preferred materials — into a masterwork called Fauna. “I didn't look up the meaning of that word when I titled this painting,” says Rundquist from her studio in a charming one-time icehouse in a…

We all get annoyed at someone now and then, and occasionally something gets said more for effect than for good reason. Something like “So-and-So is worse than Hitler” or “It makes Watergate look like child's play.” Cable TV and talk radio are filled with such comments. However, when Paul Klein, a professional adviser to fine artists, claimed in his newsletter that Chicago gallerist Ann Nathan had “cheated” a painter she represented through an “unethical” policy of deducting framing costs from the proceeds of his sales, Klein crossed a legal line and became the target of a defamation lawsuit filed by Nathan. Klein hadn't been aware that the consignment agreement the painter signed with Nathan stipulated that all framing costs would be borne by the artist. Oops. Klein published an apology…

A BRIGHT SPOT ON THE CALENDAR Scottsdale Artists’ School Best & Brightest Scottsdale scottsdaleartschool.org February 9–March 12 Now in its 42nd year, the Scottsdale Artists’ School is set to present Best & Brightest, the annual juried art show and sale highlighting artworks created by its top students and alumni living around the world. All artists who have taken a workshop, program, or online class through the school since 2019 were invited to submit their works for consideration. The official opening reception and awards announcement ceremony is set for February 12. First and second place awards will be presented in each of six categories: drawing, oil painting, pastel, water media, sculpture, and small work. The school's executive director, Trudy Hays, is quick to praise the “professional quality of Scottsdale Artists’ School students”…

Lynn Wyatt has always been noticed. The elegant, glam, ever-photogenic Houston socialite — actually more a philanthropist than a party host and party-goer — was noticed back in the late 1970s by Andy Warhol. Even though he had already made his signature silkscreens of Jackie Onassis and Liza Minnelli, Farrah Fawcett and Marilyn Monroe, as well as such alpha males as Mao and Muhammad Ali, Warhol was especially captivated by Wyatt's beauty. “I would never have dreamed of marching up to Andy and asking for a portrait,” says the 90-year-old Wyatt from her expansive Houston home, long ago dubbed “The Wyatt Hyatt” for the way it has welcomed so many celebrity friends over the years. “Andy actually approached me at a dinner. It happened very naturally, in conversation, the way…

The history of American art is filled with talented artists who were very well known in their day, yet have subsequently fallen from sight. One example is Leopold Gould Seyffert (1887–1956), an enormously successful painter of portraits and other subjects who has essentially been forgotten, even though his works are owned by major museums nationwide. Slumbering in storage rooms, these paintings are almost never exhibited, and few have even been photographed for the museums’ online databases. Seyffert's disappearance is a powerful reminder of how fame can fade, yet there remains much to celebrate in his superb artistry. The life journey of Leopold Seyffert reflects a hard-working immigrant's attainment of the “American Dream,” though many of the details are known only through the 1968 reminiscences of his sister-in-law, Marion Fleck Corbin.…

EDITOR'S NOTE: Audrey Flack (1931–2024) was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, teacher, author, feminist, and artists’ advocate. She grew up in New York City and studied fine art at Cooper Union and Yale, as well as art history at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. In the 1950s Audrey painted alongside the leading Abstract Expressionists, but shifted toward New Realism and then pioneered the genre of Photorealism. In 1966 hers was the first Photorealist painting acquired for the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection. In the 1980s Audrey turned her attention to sculpture, primarily monumentally scaled female figures with a Baroque flair, but she returned to painting in 2016. I thoroughly enjoyed my half dozen encounters with Audrey, especially our time looking at historical artworks together, and so was delighted when…

ARTISTS & GALLERIES Denver gallery1261.com January 8–30 Gallery 1261 is hosting the exhibition Icons for a New West, organized by the independent curator Rose Fredrick. It showcases artists from the American West who are addressing contemporary issues, demonstrating that Western art is not trapped in the past. The exhibiting artists are Reen Axtell, Michael Blessing, Kate Breakey, Jan R. Carson, Dianne Massey Dunbar, Maeve Eichelberger, Victoria Eubanks, Andy Evansen, Terry Gardner, David Griffin, Stephanie Hartshorn, Tony Hochstetler, Susie Hyer, T. Allen Lawson, David Carmack Lewis, Linda Lillegraven, Chris Maynard, Johanna Mueller, Billyo O'Donnell, Corey Picket, Linda Prokop, Brian Sindler, Elsa Sroka, Jen Starling, Adrienne Stein, Michael Vacchiano, Diana Woods, Steven Yazzie, and Dan Young. San Francisco ckcontemporary.com through January 10 CK Contemporary is presenting a retrospective of mezzotints, lithographs, and…

ONGOING FROM 2025 Ongoing: Nature's Impressions: Landscapes and Modernism; Grossman Family Gallery; The Bruce Museum Ongoing: Sculpture from the Brookgreen Collection (Anna Hyatt Huntington) and the National Sculpture Society Honors Exhibit; Polack Gallery, Rosen Galleries; Brookgreen Gardens Through March 14: Close Encounters: Wildlife Paintings by Carl Brenders; Glacier Art Museum Through April 12: The Medici Dynasty: Renaissance in Florence; Ashley Gibson Barnett Museum of Art at Florida Southern College Through April 19: Imaginations: The Adventures of ‘boxboy Jr.’ and the Art of Alex Lanier; Ashley Gibson Barnett Museum of Art at Florida Southern College Through April 26: Darkroom Alchemy: The Art of Jerry Uelsmann; Ashley Gibson Barnett Museum of Art at Florida Southern College Through May 10: Ursula von Rydingsvard: States of Becoming; Changing Art Gallery; The Bruce Museum Through May 10: Leonardo Drew: Alchemy; Works on Paper…

ASHLEY GIBSON BARNETT MUSEUM OF ART AT FLORIDA SOUTHERN COLLEGE Lakeland, FL | agbmuseum.org Through April 12: The Medici Dynasty: Renaissance in Florence Through April 19: Imaginations: The Adventures of ‘boxboy Jr.’ and the Art of Alex Lanier Through April 26: Darkroom Alchemy: The Art of Jerry Uelsmann Through May 31: Painting Paradise: The Rise of the Highwaymen From the Woodsby Family Collection BOZEMAN ART MUSEUM Bozeman, MT | bozemanartmuseum.org January 9 - March 28: Bozeman High-Lights: Bozeman High School Art Club Collection April 10 - July 4: Catch & Release: From Headwater to Confluence June 6th: BAM Fine Art Fair at Haynes Pavilion; Gallatin County Fairgrounds July 25 - September 19: Plein Air Montana, 2026, Painting Week: July 18 - 25 November 6th: Miniature Art Auction Fundraiser at the Baxter Hotel BRISCOE WESTERN ART MUSEUM San Antonio, TX…

Depicting water is notoriously difficult. We take for granted those artworks that do it well, but we also shudder at seascape paintings in which the waves look more like cake frosting than water, right? Around the world, the desire to evoke water — and to see it evoked — endures. No matter where we live, we all have a personal connection to some body of water or another, from oceans and rivers to lakes and pools. Water is one of the four elements essential to life, a symbol of diverse meanings, and a site of both pleasure (e.g., hot tubs) and tragedy (drowning). Now combine this appeal with the equally challenging prospect of depicting some sort of figure — be it human or animal — immersed in water, or near…

“I am an architect gone wrong,” Samuel Chamberlain (1895-1975) was wont to say in his good-natured way. Born in Iowa and raised primarily in the Pacific Northwest, Chamberlain enrolled in the architecture school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1915. Two years later, he was in France, driving an ambulance as a volunteer in the American Field Service. He resumed his studies in Cambridge in 1919, but, as he explained in his 1968 autobiography, Etched in Sunlight, “Unhappily, the routine of the drafting room began to pall on this returned doughboy. How to keep him busy with the T-square and triangle after he'd seen Paree was quite a problem.” Chamberlain, who had been drawing since childhood, and whose enthusiasm for picturing buildings rather than designing them took hold…

AN INVALUABLE RESOURCE WITT PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION Courtauld Institute of Art London photocollections.courtauld.ac.uk/witt-library Founded in 1932, the Courtauld Institute of Art is Britain's leading center for the study of art history, holding not only an important collection of fine art but also unparalleled archival resources consulted by students, researchers, art trade professionals, and the public. The Courtauld recently completed an 18-month project to digitize its Witt Photographic Collection (“The Witt Library”), which contains more than 2 million images of Western art spanning eight centuries. Anyone can visit the Courtauld website to explore this trove of photographs, reproductions, and clippings of artworks dating from the 13th century through today. Founded in the 1890s by Robert Witt, one of the Courtauld's co-founders, this holding began during his undergraduate years at Oxford, where he…

Elaine Adams, Director of American Legacy Fine Arts, has revealed her selections for the October 2025 PleinAir Salon art competition. Each of the 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. Born in Wisconsin and raised in Montana, Ned Mueller has been drawing and painting all his life. He is one of the few individuals who have been designated a Master Artist by both the American Impressionist Society and the Oil Painters of America. “First Place is awarded to this painting for its luscious color palette and rich gradations of greens and blues that beautifully illuminate the water,” says Elaine Adams. “The composition and perspective are both fascinating and…