Artists MaryBeth Karaus and David Mueller celebrate their shared love for painting in a new exhibition this September at Eisele Gallery of Fine Art. Find out more here!

Eisele Gallery of Fine Art in Cincinnati will open “Timing Is Everything” on September 8, featuring brilliant artworks by MaryBeth Karaus and David Mueller. This moving exhibition, which continues through October 7, showcases work rendered with a mix of refinement and spontaneous brushwork that employs contemporary designs.

“As a couple we are part of the lucky few that get to speak the same professional creative language and feel the same dynamics of effort, emotional investment, and rewards in what we do,” says Mueller. Karaus adds, “David and I are both motivated by capturing and sharing the simple beauty around us. A painting can be an oasis of peace and give nourishment to the soul in an otherwise tumultuous and chaotic world.”

According to the gallery, the show’s theme, “Timing Is Everything,” touches on the trials and joys that make up the canvas of a lifetime. “Works draw on the emotions of Mueller’s recent health crisis, the loss of Karaus’ parents, and the unexpected happiness that comes with finding a partner to share it all with,” the gallery writes.

To learn more, visit Eisele Gallery of Fine Art.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

There was only one thing that could happen when Romantic painters discovered Norway. Your chance to relive their journey through incredible art opens soon in Hartford.

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, will open a vibrant exhibition on September 7 that showcases the paintings of three Romantic painters considered to be “the leading figures behind the advent of Norwegian landscape painting in the 19th century,” according to the museum.

On view through January 15, 2018, “Sublime North: Romantic Painters Discover Norway” showcases the art of Johan Christian Dahl, Thomas Fearnley, and Peder Balke, set within selections from the museum’s broader collection of American and Northern European landscape painting in the Romantic era.

The museum reports, “Dahl, Fearnley, and Balke all traveled outside of Norway to study art and practice in cities such as Naples, Copenhagen and Stockholm, with both Fearnley and Balke joining Dahl — one of the first Norwegian artists to achieve international success — as his students in Norway and Dresden. Despite living abroad Dahl traveled to his homeland and remained deeply invested in his country, which struggled to achieve full independence during his lifetime. As Norwegians sought to define and express their collective identity, these artists especially contributed to the national awakening by looking to nature and the people who inhabited it with a sense of pride, and also by exhibiting and selling their work across northern Europe.

“Landscape painting during the Romantic era was fueled by the concept of the sublime — renewed reverence for nature and its influence on emotion and the imagination. Together with his pupils, Dahl infused Nordic fjords, craggy mountains and rivers with the established repertoire of Romantic motifs — rocky inlets, misty hills and contemplating wanderers. Fearnley’s powerful scenes are distinguished by sensitive effects of light, while Balke specialized in highly dramatic seascapes that foreshadow, with their radically simplified style, the abstraction of Modern art. Combining the direct study of nature (through open-air oil studies) with dramatic imaginary views, this group produced fresh interpretations of the rough and imposing Norwegian landscape.”

To learn more, visit the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

A major East Coast museum just announced its plans to mount a celebratory exhibition that commemorates its acquisition of a major European Old Master collection, 100 years ago.

Before John G. Johnson (1814-1917) died, he made sure his robust collection of European Old Master artworks was taken care of by giving it to the city of Philadelphia. That collection is held today by the renowned Philadelphia Museum of Art, which recently announced a November 3, 2017 opening for “Old Masters Now: Celebrating the Johnson Collection.” The exhibition brings together many highlights from the collection, which was received upon the donor’s death in 1917.

According to the museum, “The exhibition presents a fresh look at one of the finest collections of European art to have been formed by a private collector in this country. On view will be major works by artists such as Botticelli, Bosch, Titian, Rembrandt, and Manet, among many others. It will also open a window on the work of museum curators and conservators, illuminating how our understanding of these works continues to evolve.”

Timothy Rub, the museum’s George D. Widener director and CEO, added, “Over time our appreciation of Johnson’s extraordinary gift continues to grow, and yet it remains a source of endless fascination with many discoveries still to be made. We are delighted to open a window onto our work, offering visitors a fresh look at the process of scholarship and conservation that we bring to the care of our collection and an insight into the questions, puzzles, and mysteries that continue to occupy our staff.”

Continuing, the museum writes, “The exhibition also explores those areas of European painting in which Johnson focused in depth, including Italian, Dutch and Netherlandish, and French art. The number of Dutch paintings he acquired was among the largest of his day, and is especially rich in landscapes by Jacob van Ruisdael and animated genre scenes by Jan Steen. Rembrandt’s ‘Head of Christ’ will also be on view in this section.”

“Old Masters Now” opens on November 3 and will continue through February 19, 2018. To learn more, visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

Established in 2011, the Pismo Beach Art Show (called SLOPOKE) has emerged as a go-to destination for collectors of museum-quality fine Western art. In 2017, organizers are ready to again host the growing event, which is just around the corner.

Pismo Beach Veterans’ Memorial Hall in California will be the proud host of 2017’s SLOPOKE art show and sale, featuring a range of sculpture and paintings by leading Western artists. The event kicks off on Saturday, September 30, and will continue through Sunday, October 1. Now in its seventh year, the show originated as a Western art exhibition, but has since expanded to contemporary art as well in response to customer demand.

According to the event website: “The SLOPOKE is a standalone, business venture with participating artists and sculptors, who are juried in and on-site to present their art.” Represented artists in 2017 include Cliff Barnes, Greg Singley, Joe Milazzo, Keith Batcheller, Lisa McLoughlin, Loretta Tearney Warner, Pat Roberts, Regina Lyubovnaya, Susan von Borstel, Tom Marlatt, Valeriy Kagounkin, Vel Miller, Tamara Magdalina, Leslie Balleweg, John Budicin, Tom Burgher, Paula Delay, Errol Gordon, Barron Postmus, and George D. Smith.

To learn more, visit SLOPOKE.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

Fine Art Connoisseur magazine has set up a temporary website for artists, galleries, museums, and auction houses to register and tell their stories about Hurricane Harvey. In addition, we’re offering them a chance to participate in a free ad spread that we hope will get spaces reopened and collectors buying.

*Please visit this site to register: https://fineartconnoisseur.com/hurricane

A message from Eric Rhoads, Publisher of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine:

Dear Friends,

As publisher of various art magazines and newsletters, I feel that we have a responsibility to help artists, galleries, and museums impacted by Hurricane Harvey.

When Katrina hit New Orleans, many galleries there were in trouble. Tourism fell way off, and locals were consumed with things other than buying art.

At that time we stepped in and offered free advertising to help some of those galleries survive, and we later learned that it helped a lot. Thankfully, collectors with good hearts looked at the websites, found art they liked, and did some purchasing.

We feel an obligation to give back during this storm as well. We know of one gallery whose building collapsed. We also know that there are galleries that will be impacted by a lack of traffic and tourism, and galleries affected by flooding in their space or simply the distraction of storm-related issues in their communities, keeping people from visiting and buying.

We have set up a quick temporary website for people affected by the storm to register and tell us their stories.

We will reach out to these galleries, artists, and museums, and offer them a chance to participate in an ad spread to try to get people to visit and buy from them, to help sustain them during this difficult time.

We are not charging them for this special ad space, which will be in the next issues of PleinAir and Fine Art Connoisseur magazines, and promoted on the magazines’ websites as well.

We know the storm continues to create flooding in Houston and other areas, so please keep these people in your thoughts and prayers.

This is a time when we, as a community of artists, galleries, collectors, museums, and auction houses, can come to their rescue. I encourage you, particularly if you were going to buy art anyway, to consider visiting these people online and making purchases.

Yours truly,

Eric Rhoads,

Publisher

PS: This is not a time for competitive differences. Therefore I encourage all of my sisters and brothers in the arts community to come together, and for local galleries and artists not affected to help those who are. I also call on all other art magazines and websites to step up and offer a similar program.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

Sorrel Sky Gallery will host a two-woman show “Rural Narratives,” featuring Stephanie Hartshorn and Tamara Rymer on September 8. The pairing of the two artists should make for a great exhibition. Why?

An architect by trade, Hartshorn’s work engages heavily with structures as an art form, especially those found within both rural and urban landscapes. Rymer’s work is equally as beautiful, but instead explores western lifestyles and those surrounding her family history.

Shanan Campbell Wells, owner of Sorrel Sky Gallery, is looking forward to having these two artists showing together, suggesting “Stephanie and Tamara both paint with such a clear visual ‘voice.’ Each makes her own observations, creates her own narrative, and transforms that narrative into imagery that we can relate and connect to. Having their works paired in this show will offer a unique opportunity to ‘hear’ what they have seen and been influenced by.”

To learn more, visit Sorrel Sky Gallery.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.