Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2017/ No.123 i Western Art Collector

Fine Art Publishing, the exclusive publisher of Western painter Howard Terpning, has announced a special new series of limited edition giclée prints to celebrate the artist’s 90th birthday on November 5. To mark the occasion, each print will be limited to 90 prints. The publishing company, started by Howard Terpning’s son Steven Terpning, was formed in December 2016 and released its first print in February 2017. Beginning on November 5, Fine Art Publishing will be offering five giclée prints and one small canvas work as part of the Howard Terpning 90th Birthday Series. The titles will be released quarterly through November 5, 2018; the first release is Status Symbols, done for a 1982 show at Settlers West Galleries in Terpning’s hometown of Tucson, Arizona. “We’re incredibly excited about these images,…

Martin Grelle recently finished a piece titled A Moment of Peace, a concept that has recently eluded the painter’s own life. “I’m on 18-hour days right now,” he says from his studio, a wet palette at the ready near his easel. “They’ve been marathon painting sessions for the last several months, but an end is in sight.” The reason for the epic late-night painting sessions is a November 11 solo exhibition, Bound by Heart and Paint, at Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, an exhibition that has all the makings for a historic art opening and not just for Scottsdale or Grelle, but for all of Western art. It’s rare to see more than three Grelle paintings in a single room together at one time, and for this show Grelle has…

Long before the days of foldable pop-up tents, subzero sleeping bags, GPS maps and RV campgrounds with water and cable hookups, German-born wildlife painter Carl Rungius would pack up a string of mules with a supplies, including a rifle and painting materials, and trek off into the wilderness for weeks at a time. These weren’t the days of Lewis and Clark, a time when a man’s survival depended on his ability to live off the land. Rungius lived in the time of airplanes, automobiles and the telegraph. He didn’t have to live off the land—he chose to. “He was really dedicated to the wild and what it offered. The first time he did it he really found something reaffirming about being out there, and he then brought those experiences back…

Colorado painter Stephen C. Datz, like most landscape painters, is most at peace in front of the easel and out within nature. For his newest show, opening November 17 at Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona, the artist has painted some of his favorite locations in the United States—scenery that includes destinations in Utah, Colorado, Arizona and other locations in the Southwest. But instead of painting the hits of these destinations, Datz has turned his attention to some notable B-sides. “I’ve chosen views that I’ve not looked at before. The more you look at places the more you get to know them, and the more you don’t really see them at first glance anymore,” he says. “So for this show I wanted to focus on areas I’ve not…

“This is it,” says artist Jerry Venditti. “It’s not about anyone; it’s about everyone. Be part of a face of change!” Venditti creates his own vibrant style that takes one beyond the canvas—no subject too insignificant to be treated with reference and perfection. He pursued his love of art under the mentorship of renowned art teachers in the San Francisco Bay area. Venditti’s work is collected privately, internationally and corporately. He is a member of Artists for Conservation (Nature Artists), one of the world’s leading groups of artists supporting the environment and was selected this year as one of 84 artists to participate in the international exhibit in China. He also was a featured artist at the Jane Goodall International Symposium for Conservation Art. Venditti works with environmental foundations in…

During the week of November 6 to 12, two dozen landscape artists will converge on Zion Canyon for the ninth annual Zion National Park Plein Air Invitational. Hosted by the park’s non-profit partner, the Zion Natl Park Forever Project, the invitational is intended to inspire and educate visitors about the park as well as raise funds for the park’s future. This year’s featured artist is James McGrew of Lake Oswego, Oregon, and his oil painting Eternal Majesty appears on all of the event’s promotional materials. Visitors can see and interact with McGrew and other artists throughout the week during free one-hour painting demonstrations. On November 11, all artists will be present for a paint out and sale on the Great Lawn while a silent auction takes place in the Zion…

The beauty of the Grand Canyon—and there is an abundance of beauty—is that an artist can form a little rectangle with their fingers, stretch their arms out in front of them and point their makeshift frame at the canyon, and no matter where they look they have a painting. And then from that point— up, down, left and right—there are even more paintings. The volume of scenery to take in is so immense that the problem is not choosing what to paint, but choosing what not to paint. These are great problems to have for artists who participated in this year’s Celebration of Fine Art on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon on September 15 and 16 in Northern Arizona. The annual show brings out dozens of artists to…

Works from five members of the Taos Society of Artists, including three Taos Founders, will be major highlights in Sotheby’s American art sale November 13 in New York City. The big standout is Oscar E. Berninghaus’ Crowd at Horse Race—Taos, N. Mex, a 1946 oil featuring a group of onlookers who have come to a desolate stretch of desert to watch an unseen horse race; the back of the painting says the event is “during San Geronimo Festivities in September, each year.” The work is estimated at $600,000 to $800,000, and if it sells within those estimates it will be the best selling Berninghaus in more than nine years. The work bears some resemblance to the Taos artist’s auction record, The Pueblos Await the Dancers, which sold in 2008 for…

On November 14, John Moran Auctioneers will host a two-session sale that includes an Art of the American West segment featuring paintings and bronzes by American artists as well as Navajo weavings and Arts and Crafts furniture. The Western artwork dates from the early 20th century through contemporary and highlights an array of subjects and price points. The auction house adds, “[T]his curated auction session aims to please the most connoisseurial buyer as well as the emerging collector.” Bronzes are among the standouts in the segment. Harry Jackson’s Sacagawea is a monumental bronze depicting the 19th-century Shoshone guide. Measuring 10 feet in height, the piece is estimated to achieve $100,000 to $200,000. A number of smaller examples of Jackson’s Sacagawea have sold in recent years around the United States, while…

By Western Hands, which aims to preserve the legacy of Western design through the support of artisans and craftsmen and women, has recently secured its first permanent home in Cody, Wyoming. The 8,000-square-foot facility, formerly occupied by a local hardware store and centrally located near the historic Irma Hotel in downtown Cody, was acquired specifically to benefit the organization and its members. It is tentatively planned to open in the spring of 2018. The design center will house a retail gallery showcasing handmade works of art, including Western-designed wooden and leather furniture, leather, fabric and bead works and metal craft, and will showcase the evolution of Western function art, including designs influenced by Thomas Molesworth. A historical overview of Western design furniture and other functional art, which was greatly influenced…

Frederic Remington is one of the most iconic Western artists to ever live, and with that acclaim comes an unfortunate byproduct: his works are occasionally copied, altered and otherwise misrepresented to the public. Rather than turn a blind eye to these works of questionable authenticity, the Sid Richardson Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, has devoted a small focused exhibition to them in Frederic Remington: Altered States. The exhibition, ongoing now, will feature three paintings, each of which has its own unique history. One of the works in the exhibition is He Rushed the Pony Right to the Barricade, which was shown publically for years as a Remington painting until Remington scholar Peter Hassrick began to scrutinize the paint itself. He found details of the painting, including the signature, that appeared…

A new puma-themed exhibition, Puma Past and Present: A Natural History of the American Mountain Lion, opens September 16 and continues through December 25 at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, Arizona. The juried exhibition, curated by Holly Swangstu, will take place in the Ironwood Gallery and will showcase 70 original artworks created by 61 different artists. Artists include Cher Anderson, Priscilla Baldwin, Patricia Banks, Guy Combes, David Conklin, Andrew Denman, Laura LePere, Jennie Norris and many others. The exhibition will also feature youth and amateur artists, as well many archival elements, historical photos and items from the museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition will help celebrate the museum’s 65th anniversary of interpreting the Sonoran Desert for visitors from around the globe. The museum’s own past has a rich history with…

Nov. 11: Santa Fe Art Auction Santa Fe, NM | (505) 954-5780 | www.santafeartauction.com NOVEMBER Nov. 1-15 TRAILSIDE GALLERIES A View to the West Scottsdale, AZ – (480) 945-7751 www.trailsidegalleries.com Nov. 3 SAKS GALLERIES 5th annual Rims to Ruins Denver, CO – (303) 321-3120 www.mesaverdefoundation.org Nov. 3 HERITAGE AUCTIONS American Art Dallas, TX – (877) 437-4824 www.ha.com Nov. 3-5 24th annual Carefree Fine Art & Wine Festival Carefree, AZ – (480) 837-5637 www.thunderbirdartists.com Nov. 3-Jul. 1, 2018 HEARD MUSEUM Awa Tsireh: Pueblo Painter and Metalsmith Phoenix, AZ – (602) 252-8848 www.heard.org Ending Nov. 5 BOOTH WESTERN ART MUSEUM Ansel Adams: The Masterworks Cartersville, GA – (770) 387-1300 www.boothmuseum.org Ending Nov. 5 NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WILDLIFE ART Andy Warhol: Endangered Species Jackson, WY – (307) 733-5771 www.wildlifeart.org Ending Nov. 5 NEW…

Painter Z.S. Liang says gallery shows are sometimes given to artists and they have to go searching for material. For his most recent works, the material came to him long before his gallery called with the invitation. “I did not have to go searching at all for ideas. It was not that way at all,” he says. “These things were cooking in my mind. They were ready to come out.” Liang’s new works—six peaceful Native American scenes involving one and two figures, as well as several magnificent horses—will debut at a new exhibition opening November 1 at Trailside Galleries in Scottsdale, Arizona. Liang is widely known and respected for his large and elaborate multi-figure historical scenes, some of them featuring a dozen figures or more arranged in complex compositions. With…

The great frontiersman and guide Daniel Boone said, “I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks.” Guides, steeped in knowledge, experience and respect for the wilderness and wildlife take sportsmen on the experience of their lives. Artists add to the skills of the guide with their ability to render fact and impressions in their paintings. They give the armchair explorer and hunters themselves a feeling of being there in the combination of peaceful wilderness and thrilling hunt. Nicholas Coleman follows in his father Michael’s footsteps with his interest in painting timeless scenes of early trappers and guides as well Indian encampments in the West. The Moose Hunter shows the hunter heading towards his canoe for an early-morning expedition in the fall. Coleman began…

UPCOMING SHOW Up to 75 works November 18, 2017 Settlers West Galleries 6420 N. Campbell Avenue Tucson, AZ 85718 (520) 299-2607 The Great American West, Settlers West Galleries’ long-running exhibition and sale, returns November 18 to Tucson, Arizona. This year’s show will celebrate a milestone: 40 years of bringing top-quality Western art to Arizona collectors. “This show always starts our season in Arizona with a good step forward,” says Stuart Johnson, owner of Settlers West Galleries. “We really notice artists put forth an extra effort for this show, and we’ve been very successful with it. And this year, with the 40th anniversary, we are seeing the artists showing even more enthusiasim and willingness to be involved and bring their best work.” Johnson says the show has always been a great…

When Western visitors—cowboys, soldiers, settlers and explorers— made their way into the heart of the country and beyond, their sudden arrival sent shockwaves through Native American tribes that were protective of their lands and their ways of life. This fragile new balance in the American West serves as the main theme of a new exhibition, Legacy, now open at the Sid Richardson Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. “With the settling of the West by so many different kinds of people, from cowboys to explorers, indigenous people were at the center of a lot of conflict as people moved into the West. We wanted to explore how artists depicted this important theme,” says Mary Burke, the director of the museum. “It’s such a sensitive subject, and so we made a choice…

November 10 to 12, the annual Waterfowl Festival will take place in Easton, Maryland, bringing together some of the finest wildlife and sporting art from around the country. Featured will be 80 artists, who will exhibit their work in 10 galleries and pavilions at various venues around the city. Kicking off the festivities is the VIP preview event benefitting the Waterfowl Chesapeake, which aides in the conservation of the Chesapeake Bay region. It all begins on November 9 with an opening ceremony at 4 p.m. where the 2017 Hall of Fame Awards will be presented and the new Federal Duck Stamp winning artist is introduced. The premier party will happen from 4:30 to 9 p.m. where attendees will have a preview of this year’s artwork and have the chance to…

Santa Fe is known for its rich Western and Native American traditions, but also its cutting-edge art from some of the leading American modernists. Those two aspects of The City Different will be seen together in the Santa Fe Art Auction on November 11. “We do have some particularly strong lots for New Mexico modernism, whether it’s Raymond Jonson or Andrew Dasburg. We’ve seen some standout pieces sell at online sales throughout the last year, so we’re very excited to bring them to auction. This is a genre that our buyer base has really responded to very strongly,” says Jenna Kloeppel, administrative director for the Santa Fe Art Auction. “But then we also have some more traditional pieces, including a really great collection of Cowboy Artists of America works that…

The Kravis Discovery Center at the Gilcrease Museum has recently reopened after a renovation that has added the Interactive Discovery Trail, an immersive experience that will bring museum visitors closer to the materials in the collection and provide a deeper examination of more than 4,000 artifacts. The new feature was designed by TEQ4, a United Kingdombased firm that specializes in immersive attractions and interactive experiences for museums, science centers and theme parks around the world. The new additions to the Gilcrease will offer a variety of technologybased features, including visitor tracking, augmented reality and 3D printing. Additionally, the Interactive Discovery Trail will use 3D soundscapes, innovative display solutions and TEQ4’s proprietary Chaperone system to tell the story of Native peoples and cultures of North, Central and South America. “We are…

For California painter Logan Maxwell Hagege, the desert, particularly the deserts of the Southwest, are stages on which his players are arranged in Western theater— tableaus of sage and sand, earth and sky, past and present. “These scenes make sense in my mind—they’re almost like memories—and so I just fill them out as I want them,” Hagege says, adding that his works are often assembled from reference materials gathered for a variety of sources. “I like having that variety…of landscapes, of figures, or artifacts. I start adding these things together—after all, no one is going to see the reference material, only the finished work, so it doesn’t matter—and it starts creating this imagined world.” Hagege likes to keep his works and their themes ambiguous to his audience, which leaves each…

Small works and miniatures can be an introduction to collecting and can fill in gaps in established collections. Their intimacy can evoke a greater closeness to the subject and to the presence of the artist. John Moyers is well known for his large paintings. “I paint what excites me. Maybe for two months all I want to do is landscapes, then maybe Native Americans and then Mexican pieces.” He continues, “The more you paint, the more comfortable you get with the process. Hopefully, I’m improving all the time.” His small, plein air paintings embody the excitement of being on sight and experience the vibrant atmosphere of the Southwest. Old Adobe is 12 by 12 inches. The buildings bake in the sun beneath a steely sky, one with the land they…

The 12th annual Small Works, Great Wonders exhibition and sale at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City will include smallscale paintings and sculptures by more than 100 emerging and established artists. The museum fundraiser highlights works depicting contemporary and traditional Western subjects, with paintings limited to 16 by 20 inches and sculpture being no larger than 20 inches in height, width and depth. “We present quality art, but the nature of the size of the art puts it in a more affordable category,” says Susan Patterson, the museum’s curator of special exhibits. “It’s a great place for someone who may want to start collecting, but going to a big art sale can be a bit intimidating. This is a comfortable, causal evening where people often get…

Now in its 12th year, the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis once again welcomed Western painters and sculptors to its galleries for the Quest for the West exhibition and sale. The show, which featured more than 50 artists and 150 works, opened with blockbuster sales, including an inaugural and nearly sold out miniatures presentation, as well as the full exhibition that generated more than $960,000 in sales—$1 million depending on how you like to round up. More than 400 patrons were on hand to welcome and mingle with the artists. Events included an opening night reception during the miniatures presentation, the by-draw sale, a banquet and awards ceremony, and the grand opening of Quest artist P.A. Nisbet’s solo exhibition, Light, Space and Power: The Art of P.A. Nisbet. Rather than hosting…

Five works by Thomas Moran, including one major oil and another major watercolor, are being offered in Christie’s November 21 American sale in New York. “I’m a bit of a Moran fanatic, so I’m very excited to talk about these pieces, especially the watercolors,” says Tylee Abbott, Christie’s Western art specialist. “To find just one of these watercolors is exciting, but three is incredible.” The watercolor is Morning Glory Pool, Yellowstone, which carries an estimate of $300,000 to $500,000. It was conceived during Moran’s 1871 trip West with Ferdinand V. Hayden, who later compiled a report that included several Moran paintings and William Henry Jackson’s photographs. The report eventually led to the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, which makes Yellowstone paintings from Moran in the early 1870s highly…

During Heritage Auctions’ November 3 American Art Signature Auction approximately 200 lots will cross the block, with around 80 being in the Western and California genres. There are also groupings of Golden Age illustration—including a single-owner collection of about 40 lots—and a number of 19th century American impressionist paintings. Popular names in all categories are expected to yield significant interest such as Howard Terpning, Birger Sandzén, Wilson Hurley, Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker, William Merritt Chase and more. Western art has always been a standout of Heritage’s sales, according to Aviva Lehman, head of the firm’s American art department. She adds, “There’s definitely a lot of interest [in Western art], especially in Texas and the Southwest for contemporary cowboy paintings. Anything like the Hurleys or Terpnings [we have in the sale].…

Examine the auction records of wildlife painter Bob Kuhn from the past decade and you start to see a pattern: Fire Storm, with estimates of $180,000 to $220,000, sold for $657,000. Leopard in Light and Shade, with estimates of $180,000 to $250,000, sold for $601,000. The Spawning Run hit more than double its high estimate when it sold for $497,250. Jaguar and Cattle Egrets went more than seven times over its high estimate when it sold for $41,600. The takeaway here: don’t underestimate a wildlife piece by Bob Kuhn. The artist’s estimateshattering streak continued September 16 during the Jackson Hole Art Auction when a lion piece from 1977, Closing the Distance, sold for $409,500, nearly three times its high estimate of $150,000. The piece, now the fifth top-selling Kuhn work,…