As part of our effort to continue to help artists and art galleries thrive, we’re proud to bring you this week’s “Virtual Gallery Walk.” Browse the artwork below and click the image itself to learn more about it, including how to contact the gallery.
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Want to see your gallery featured in an upcoming Virtual Gallery Walk? Contact us at [email protected] to advertise today. Don’t delay, as spaces are first come, first served, and availability is limited.
The exhibition “Perseverance: A Woman’s Journey West” offers a rare look at the American West through the often-overlooked eyes of a pioneer woman. Inspired by the 1840s journal of Keturah Belknap (1820–1913), artist Heide Presse created a collection of vibrant oil paintings and graphite drawings that brings Belknap’s story to life, from her family’s homestead in Iowa to their journey along the Oregon Trail.
At a Glance:
“Perseverance: A Woman’s Journey West”
The James Museum
St. Petersburg, Florida
thejamesmuseum.org
Through September 28, 2025
“Little did I know that discovering Keturah Belknap’s journal would spark a deeply personal journey of my own. As I traced her path, I found myself reflecting on the choices we all face—the risks we take, the changes we embrace, and the ways we push the boundaries of our lives. My greatest hope is that this work not only honors Keturah’s story but also inspires others to reflect on their own and to enjoy their journey, wherever it may lead.” -Heide Presse
At the heart of Perseverance is the richly detailed journal of Keturah Belknap. Recognized by her family as a vital historical record, which led to its preservation, the journal offers an intimate glimpse into the everyday moments and emotional weight of her family’s decision to risk everything for a chance at a new beginning. The exhibition is laid out to follow that same path, guiding visitors from their life in Iowa to their eventual home in Oregon.
Through sentimentalized paintings and drawings, this exhibition draws powerful parallels between past and present, reminding us that the desire to grow, to seek something better and to hold fast to those we love transcends time. Visitors are invited to reflect on how the twists and turns of life shape every journey, some by choice, others by circumstance, and to consider how courage and connection guide us forward.
Take Part of the Exhibition Home
Acclaimed artist Heide Presse has generously donated an original graphite drawing, “Cradle for Two” (12×12, 18×18 framed), to support The James Museum. This tender portrait of a mother and her two children reflects the heart of Perseverance—a story of family, resilience and the emotional truths of frontier life. Bidding open through June 30 at noon. Proceeds benefit the museum. Drawing will remain in the exhibition and available for pick up after September 28, 2025.
Browse more western art here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.
The Frist Art Museum (Nashville, TN) presents “Venice and the Ottoman Empire,” an exhibition that explores the artistic and cultural exchange between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire over four centuries. Organized by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and The Museum Box, the exhibition will be on view in the Frist’s Ingram Gallery through September 1, 2025.
This ambitious cross-cultural exhibition examines the complex links between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire from 1400 to 1800 in artistic, culinary, diplomatic, economic, political, and technological spheres. “The relationship between Venice and the Ottomans represents a fascinating and multifaceted chapter in the history of Mediterranean geopolitics, one marked by a blend of cooperation and conflict, handshake- and arms-length approaches, diplomacy and back-stabbing, understanding and misunderstanding,” writes exhibition curator Stefano Carboni in the exhibition catalogue.
Featuring a richly diverse selection of more than 150 works of art in a broad range of media, including ceramics, glass, metalwork, paintings, prints, and textiles, the exhibition draws from the vast collections of seven of Venice’s renowned museums. The creative contributions of well-known Venetian artists such as Gentile Bellini, Vittore Carpaccio, and Cesare Vecellio are showcased alongside works created by the best anonymous craftspeople both in Venice and the Ottoman Empire. The Venetian loans are joined by a trove of recently salvaged objects from a major 16th-century Adriatic shipwreck of a large Venetian merchant vessel that have never been exhibited outside Croatia. A gallery dedicated to Mariano Fortuny’s Venetian- and Ottoman-inspired fashions and decorative arts created in the early 20th century brings the exhibition to a spectacular conclusion.
“Venice stood at the crossroads of a vast trade network connecting Africa, Asia, and Europe,” writes Frist Art Museum Curator at Large Trinita Kennedy. “To maintain its status as an international emporium, with markets full of ceramics, metalwork, spices, textiles, and other goods, Venice acquired overseas territories to its east and cultivated close ties with the Ottomans, whose empire became the wealthiest and most powerful in the Eastern Mediterranean after their conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and widespread expansion in the 16th century.”
Organized thematically, the exhibition begins with an overview of diplomacy and trade during the period illustrated through portraits of powerful Venetian and Ottoman leaders including doges, sultans, and ambassadors. On display are nautical maps as well as a printed manual that illustrates how merchants who spoke different languages conducted business using hand gestures. Despite diplomatic efforts, relations were not always harmonious. Between 1400 and 1800, the two powers fought seven major wars, with the Venetians gradually losing almost all their overseas territories to the Ottomans.
The exhibition, however, emphasizes that during periods of peace, the two powers forged a close relationship and shared aesthetic tastes. “Venetians and Ottomans admired and sought one another’s luxury goods and gave them to each other as gifts,” writes Kennedy. “Ottoman sultans liked Murano glass and portraits of themselves by Venetian artists, while Venetian women wore Ottoman clogs and perfumed their homes with incense burners imported from Ottoman regions.”
The next two sections are dedicated to decorative arts and textiles, which figured prominently in commercial exchanges and the interior design of Venetian homes. Extravagant Ottoman velvets and brocaded silks were synonymous with status and survive in Venetian museums today. The Ottomans were just as enthusiastic about Venetian textiles. “Both cultures favored red and gold and bold designs with carnation, pomegranate, and tulip motifs,” writes Kennedy. “Their textiles are so similar that sometimes it can be difficult to discern whether a textile was made in Venice or Bursa, the Ottomans’ principal textile center.”
A section dedicated to the spice trade traces how Venetian merchants sailed to Ottoman-controlled ports in Africa and Asia to purchase goods and then sold them in markets back home to merchants from elsewhere in Western Europe. In addition to spices such as cardamom, nutmeg, pepper, and saffron, Venetians depended on trade with Ottomans for coffee, figs, pistachios, raisins, salted sturgeon, sugar, vinegar, and, most importantly, wheat. Through a video featuring two Nashville chefs, a take-home recipe card, a display of spices, and scent devices with fragrant aromas, guests will learn about Venetians’ and Ottomans’ shared culinary culture.
Ship building, sailing, and a storied shipwreck are the focus of the next two sections. One of the highlights of the exhibition is a large group of objects recovered from a shipwreck that illustrates the opportunities and perils of seafaring in this age. They come from the Gagliana Grossa, a fully loaded Venetian ship that sank in 1583 in the waters off the Dalmatian coast of modern-day Croatia while traveling to Constantinople. The ship’s diverse cargo offers evidence of the types of goods Venetians traded in the Eastern Mediterranean. “The Venetian Senate sent a Greek diver to salvage diamonds, emeralds, pearls, and some luxury textiles onboard, but the rest of the goods remained on the seabed until the site was rediscovered in the 1960s,” explains Kennedy. “Excavations are ongoing, and this exhibition presents some of the most recently found objects.”
Works in the penultimate section center around the revered Venetian naval commander and doge Francesco Morosini (1619–1694), who played a major role in Venice’s interactions with the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century and amassed a large collection of art taken from his campaigns as well as acquired from the Venetian art market. The exhibition concludes with an enchanting gallery devoted to the exquisite creations of Mariano Fortuny (1871–1949)—the Spanish artist, designer, and inventor who lived and worked for most of his life in a Gothic palace in Venice creating sumptuous textiles with new printing techniques that recalled the bygone era of Venice and the Ottoman Empire.
For more information, please visit fristartmuseum.org.
By Daniel Grant
Contemporary artworks can be confusing or aggravating, but at least we know who made them. Today’s artists put their names on every work, document it with photographs, and create archives to make it easier for future scholars to research them. Before the mid-19th century, however, most artworks were not signed or even titled, leaving future collectors, curators, historians, dealers, and auctioneers asking urgent questions about authenticity and provenance. Their ongoing research adds to our shared knowledge, and thus to the financial value, of these unsigned, undated artworks.
The holy grail is finding out definitively “who did it” — through documentation (e.g., letters or contracts), physical analysis (x-rays or laboratory testing of pigments), and/or connoisseurship (spotting the same pattern of brushwork). In 2017, “The Temptation of St. Anthony,” a 500-year-old painting at Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art that for 80 years had been consigned to storage as the work of a follower of Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516), was upgraded to Bosch himself. Why? Because the Bosch Research and Conservation Project had undertaken a detailed study and found the picture to be the genuine article. Every year, new discoveries and reattributions like this occur. It’s a miracle of our time.
Artists in the past were no less prolific than their successors today, so by definition there are many artworks whose authorship is unknown. Most remain unstudied, so we may never know for certain who painted them. We are powerfully reminded of this state of affairs when we go to examine the lots on display before an auction of Old Masters. For example, gracing a 2016 sale at Sotheby’s London were some fully identified paintings by artists more prominent in their day than in ours.
At that sale, Scotland’s Sir Henry Raeburn (1756–1823) was represented by a half-length “Portrait of a Young Indian Woman” that had been confirmed as a Raeburn by a former director of the Scottish National Gallery. Two Arcadian paintings of peasants tending to their animals with the outline of a town beyond had been attributed to Francesco Zuccarelli (1702–1788) by Federica Spadotto, author of this Italian painter’s 2007 monograph. Yet most of the remaining 200 or so lots were of less certain attribution. Among them were a “Ferrarese School, 16th century,” a “Follower of Andrea del Sarto,” a “Circle of Paolo Veronese,” a “Manner of El Greco,” a “Workshop of Lorenzo di Credi,” an “After Sir Peter Paul Rubens,” and a “Studio of Follower of Jan Brueghel the Younger.”
A sale at Sotheby’s Paris of artworks owned by actor Peter Ustinov similarly contained a range of vague attributions: a bronze sculpture was “probably Russian,” two watercolors were “English School, 18th Century,” a drawing of cow heads was “Attributed to Jean-Baptiste Huet,” a painting was “Circle of Albert Cuyp,” three paintings were “Manner of Alfred Stevens,” a drawing was attributed to a “Follower of Goya,” and another drawing was “After Pablo Picasso.”
What’s the Difference? You may well wonder what the difference is between “Studio of” and “Workshop of.” “Circle of” and “School of” are hardly more helpful. Just how many ways can an auction house say, “We don’t know”? Continue reading in this issue of Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine (November / December 2023)
Attention Art Collectors!
May 20-22, 2025: Visit the Plein Air Convention & Expo’s robust pop-up art gallery at the Nugget Casino Resort in Reno, Nevada, where hundreds of artists, including our master faculty, will have studio and plein air works on display and ready to purchase. Register for the full event at PleinAirConvention.com now.
View artist and collector profiles here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.
Learn about the first exhibition to highlight Wayne Thiebaud’s extensive reinterpretations of works by his artistic heroes. Now on view at the DeYoung / Legion of Honor (San Francisco), through August 17, 2025.
From the organizers:
Artist Wayne Thiebaud (American, 1920–2021) was a self-described art “thief” who openly appropriated and reinterpreted old and new European and American paintings, believing that art history is a repository of ideas that connects artists of the past, present, and future.
Organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (the “Fine Arts Museums”) with generous loans by the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation, “Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art” is the first exhibition to spotlight the artist’s extensive engagement with art history throughout his six-decade-long career, offering crucial insights into his creative process.
The exhibition presents Thiebaud’s thoughtful reinterpretations of historical and contemporary masterworks—some on public view for the first time—alongside images of the original paintings that served as source material. A series of rare works from the artist’s personal art collection, by artists from the past and present who informed Thiebaud’s subjects and signature style, will also be on view.
Wayne Thiebaud is a significant part of the Legion of Honor 100, a yearlong centennial celebration of the historic San Francisco landmark museum and its collections. By installing Wayne Thiebaud at the Legion of Honor amid the museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition highlights the history of art that served as a rich resource for Thiebaud.
“As a self-identified ‘thief,’ who mined the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, Wayne Thiebaud’s practice was deeply rooted in his study of art history, but this aspect of his work has never been explored,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “Over the course of the next year, as we reflect upon the Legion of Honor’s legacy as a center of art historical research and inspiration, ‘Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art’ couldn’t be more timely.”
The exhibition presents 65 of Thiebaud’s wide-ranging reinterpretations of old and new European and American artworks, spanning from 1957 to 2020, with multiple paintings inspired by the same artist displayed together. Reference images of the original artworks, and insights provided by Thiebaud about the artists he drew inspiration from, will be presented alongside his works to provide deeper insights into his creative process.
The exhibition also includes a salon-style gallery featuring about 28 of Thiebaud’s copies after other artists, spanning from Rembrandt van Rijn to Édouard Manet to Giorgio Morandi, as well as approximately 37 original artworks spanning from Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres to Henri Matisse to Joan Mitchell, which he acquired for his personal collection. Thiebaud’s copies were largely made from reproductions that offered him inspiration and insights for his paintings, while his art collection enabled him to own and study original works by some of his heroes in real life.
“Wayne Thiebaud’s engagement with art history’s ‘bureau of standards’ through the practice of appropriation and reinterpretation revealed his belief that the world of art transcended limiting definitions of time and place, as well as progress,” said Timothy Anglin Burgard, exhibition curator as well as Distinguished Senior Curator and Ednah Root Curator in Charge of American Art at the Fine Arts Museums. “Viewed from this perspective, the entire global history of art, encompassing every movement and style, was as accessible, relevant, and inspiring to Thiebaud as contemporary art.”
Three significant works from Thiebaud’s personal collection were generously given to the Fine Arts Museums by the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation ahead of the exhibition. Two of these objects—Joan Mitchell’s Untitled (ca. 1957) and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s ‘Mrs. Fleetwood Pellew (Harriet Frances Webster)’ (1817), are on public view for the first time.
About the Artist
Wayne Thiebaud was born in Mesa, Arizona, raised in Southern California, and spent most of his career in Northern California. He first gained acclaim in 1962 with paintings depicting a colorful and quintessentially American array of bakery, cafeteria, delicatessen cases, and counters garnished with delicious—or dubious—foods. In the ensuing decades, Thiebaud tackled new subjects including figure groups and portraits, tightly arranged cityscapes, expansive landscapes, and poignant performing clowns. His abstract representations of the real world not only upended the art world’s perception of realism, but also challenged viewers to decide whether his perfectly posted subjects were worthy of admiration, criticism, or both.
Thiebaud was an influential and admired art and art history professor at Sacramento Junior College (now Sacramento City College) and later at the University of California, Davis. His legacy as an artist, teacher, and mentor significantly influenced the evolution of American art in the post-WWII decades.
For more information, please visit www.famsf.org.
As part of our effort to continue to help artists and art galleries thrive, we’re proud to bring you this week’s “Virtual Gallery Walk.” Browse the artwork below and click the image itself to learn more about it, including how to contact the gallery.
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Want to see your gallery featured in an upcoming Virtual Gallery Walk? Contact us at [email protected] to advertise today. Don’t delay, as spaces are first come, first served, and availability is limited.
“Portraits of Ridgway” is a series of thirty 6×6-inch paintings capturing scenes from around Ridgway, Colorado – each painted on location as a way of preserving the town as it exists today. These intimate studies act as a visual time capsule, inviting viewers to consider the beauty and impermanence of their surroundings.
More from the Artist, Emma Kalff:
The show features two special events – a historical talk titled From the Rearview Mirror, led by local historian Joan Chismire, and an artist talk titled Sketches from the Side of the Road, in which I’ll share my motivations behind the series and walk through my plein air painting process. Together, these elements create a conversation between past and present. It’s both a love letter to our town and a reflection on how quickly things change. Come and see how art can help us hold onto a moment in time.
All 30 paintings will be available for viewing through August 29th at the Decker Room in Ridgway, CO. See additional programming below. All events are free and open to the public. 10% of all sales will be donated to the Ouray County Ranch History Museum.
Friday, August 29th, 5-7 PM
Closing Night
The artist will be at the gallery one last time to answer any questions and chat about the work.
For more details, please visit www.emmakalff.com.
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Please help us congratulate John Buxton for winning Overall First Place in the May 2025 PleinAir Salon, judged by Dave Santillanes, 9th Annual PleinAir Salon Grand Prize winner.
“This painting is masterfully executed,” Dave said. “The light and atmosphere in this one immediately draws you in. Then the design takes over – moving the eye deftly through the scene ultimately to reveal the hidden story. The design, concept, and execution are all fantastic.”
John Buxton is an Art Renewal Center Living Master known as a “painter of our heritage.”
From his website:
John Buxton’s 31 years as a successful illustrator have evolved into these past 20 + years as an honored Fine Artist, painting scenes inspired by the 18th-century Wilderness Frontier. A frontier that influenced the development and relations of “The New World”; its people and what would become a New Nation.
There have been many awards and accomplishments in his decades-long career. John’s work is recognized in the Western Art genre. Perhaps because in the early years of European settlement, the “West” did not yet extend beyond the eastern mountain range or the Mississippi River. This allows his paintings to be exhibited at The Masters Of The American West Show at the Autry Museum each year. The Eiteljorg Museum of Indianapolis also exhibits his paintings in its Quest For The West Show annually.
[The artist researches, reads, does more research, or hires] a Historian to qualify the authenticity of every detail before beginning any sketches or developing compositions. It has to be correct because John’s paintings hang in museums, at Historical sites, and are used in documentary films, books, and magazines. His images also help to bring visual reality to the written word in many classrooms.
In the spirit of the French Salon created by the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, this annual online art competition, with 11 monthly cycles, leading to the annual Salon Grand Prize winners, is designed to stimulate artistic growth through competition. The PleinAir® Salon rewards artists with $50,000 in cash prizes and exposure of their work, with the winning painting featured on the cover of PleinAir® Magazine.
Winners in each monthly competition may receive recognition and exposure through PleinAir Magazine’s print magazine, e-newsletters, websites, and social media. Winners of each competition will also be entered into the annual competition. The Annual Awards will be presented live at the next Plein Air Convention & Expo.
The next round of the PleinAir Salon has begun so hurry, as this competition ends on the last day of the month. Enter your best art in the PleinAir Salon here.
View more artist and collector profiles here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.
From the Fine Art Connoisseur July/August 2025 Editor’s Note:
“A picture is worth a thousand words.” This famous adage has always been self-evident, but it’s urgently relevant now as our society ponders the huge benefits and the huge pitfalls of imagery generated by artificial intelligence (AI), including “deepfakes” — realistic-looking yet misleading media created with AI.
Much precious time and needless effort will be saved by employing AI, yet there is a human aspect to handmade fine art that we must not ignore. As editor of Fine Art Connoisseur, I am committed to sharing what motivates real artists to do what they do, and I hope you’ll agree that this issue attains that goal. And because young people always represent the future, I hope that you will share the magazine — after you have finished reading it — with a youngster who might enjoy skimming it and maybe even getting excited about one story or another.
I mention the young because — more than any generation in history — they will have to learn to communicate their ideas and stories visually, and to create images with intention and authenticity. In this digital age, it is the visually literate who are the most effective communicators, and they are also best equipped to parse facts from nonsense. Where imagery goes, people and power follow. 
This magazine’s name includes the word “connoisseur” for a reason: we aim to help readers see and understand. Whether you’re looking at art or advertisements, learning how to see and understand is crucial. Without these skills, without visual literacy, critical thinking, and communication skills of your own, you’re relying on someone else’s judgment, and that’s never good. When you can discern, describe, and judge for yourself, you take control, and that’s especially meaningful for youngsters who may otherwise feel powerless in life.
Again, this may sound corny, but please do share Fine Art Connoisseur with someone younger. If they happen to wonder why that painting is composed as it is, or why we selected these specific images for that specific article, we’ll be making headway.
Thank you for your ongoing commitment to artistic excellence, and please do share with us accounts of your own experiences with AI imagery.
What are your thoughts? Share your letter to the Editor below in the comments.
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ON THE COVER
Rosetta (b. 1945), “Lynx” (artist’s proof), 1993, bronze (edition of 18), 16 x 21 x 15 in.
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