That question is being answered this summer with an unprecedented exhibition of the most important masterpieces by this celebrated Victorian painter. Who was he?

His name was George Frederic Watts (1817-1904), and Watts Gallery Trust recently mounted a fantastic exhibition that celebrates his life and career, 200 years after his birth. Titled “England’s Michelangelo,” the exhibition brings together the artist’s most important paintings from both public and private collections. “For the first time since their restoration in 2011,” the gallery writes, “the historic galleries at Watts Gallery, designed by Watts himself, will be used for a temporary exhibition.

“Watts became a cultural icon who championed a new role for art as a means of symbolically expressing the process of humanity, and as a tool to assist in philanthropic projects. His imagery was carried all over the world through reproduction, making him the most internationally recognized British artist of the age. In 1884, Watts became the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.”

The exhibition’s title comes from the artist’s contemporaries, who saw in Watts’ work great ambition, generosity, and range. Dr. Nicholas Tromans, Brice Curator of Watts Gallery — Artists’ Village, says, “Watts was the most admired British artist of the late 19th century, and ‘England’s Michelangelo’ will show why. We have set out to bring absolutely the very finest works by the artist to Compton to create a Watts exhibition like nothing seen before. The exhibition will emphasize the great originality and power of Watts as a painter, the glamour of his portraiture, and the magnificence of his Symbolist works which so impressed all of Europe.”

The exhibition opened on June 20 and will continue through November 26. Watts Galleries is in Guildford, United Kingdom. To learn more, visit Watts Galleries.

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.

Themes of youth, beauty, strength, and the aging of the body are all explored during a solo exhibition of paintings by Sherri Wolfgang. Wolfgang showcases two complete series of figurative works, steeped in tradition and technical expertise.

The Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, Connecticut, is overjoyed to be exhibiting works by accomplished artist Sherri Wolfgang this summer. Opened on June 15 and continuing through July 31, “SOLO” presents two uniquely different series of paintings that are sure to intrigue the viewer.

One, titled “NICK.E.LO.DE.ON,” explores dance and the figure in motion while “Twisted” probes women and plastic surgery. The show will also offer viewers a glimpse into Wolfgang’s upcoming series “American Pathos,” which explores the effects of the Great Recession and disintegration of the American Dream among millennials.

To learn more, visit the Housatonic 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.

Lyons Wier Gallery in New York City is currently showcasing a dynamic range of landscapes that explore — among other themes — visual dynamics.

Several works by painter Peter Roux feature during “Suspension and Segment,” a solo exhibition at New York City’s Lyons Wier Gallery. Most of the paintings display large cloud and smoke formations, employed by the artist to pull viewers into illusory space and “then setting them into dialogue with elements of gestural marks and flat space,” as the gallery reports. “Sharp fields of blacked-out blocking, pushing into areas of deeper representational space further define what is available to the viewer and how it is all ultimately judged by the eye. In these offsets, Roux finds tensions and relationships that reflect on how contemporary spatial language and image can be understood.”

To learn more, visit Lyons Wier 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.

Curated by renowned artist Dina Brodsky and curator/writer Trek Lexington, this miniaturist exhibition features a number of world-famous painters exploring the importance and meaning of the artist’s palette as tool, extension of oneself, and painting surface.

Opened on June 15 and on view through July 8 at the Abend Gallery in Denver, Colorado, is a wonderful exhibition with an innovative theme. Curated by renowned artist Dina Brodsky and curator/writer Trek Lexington, “Palette” features works by over 50 artists including — among others — Liz Adams-Jones, James Adelman, Benjamin Craig, Nick Gebhart, Evan Kitson, Tim Lowly, Jessica Pisano, Nicolas Sanchez, Mark Trujillo, John Wentz, Timothy Wilson, Zane York, and Miles Yoshida.

In “Palette” the artist’s palettes take center stage not only — as the title suggests — as a point of origin for a painting, but as artworks in themselves, as surfaces upon which to paint. Via the gallery, “Every artist has a unique mind, and a deeply personal, often idiosyncratic studio practice. Some adhere to strict routines, and others work for weeks or months, then pause completely in order to reflect, incubate an idea, or travel and take in new experience. One way to get a glimpse into the artist’s mind, as well as into their practice is the painter’s palette — a tool that has been around for centuries, as painting itself has gone through myriads of transformations through the years. It is both practical and intimate, acquiring layers of paint as well as memories, reflecting intent and execution, storing the ghosts of paintings that have long since left the studio. The palette is the point of origin from which ideas become realized and paint is transformed into a reflection of the human experience. Whatever shape or form the surface or substrate takes, it all begins when brush meets palette.”

To learn more, visit Abend 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.

A deeply provocative and psychologically thrilling exhibition will soon be underway in Pasadena, California. Opening in July, “Mythos & Logos” is one heck of a mental and visual journey.

New works by painter Shaun Berke will be on view at Gallery 30 South in Pasadena, California, beginning July 1. Titled “Mythos & Logos,” the exhibition is intended to be both visually stimulating and thought-provoking, inspiring self-reflection within themes of memory, thought, time, and existentialism.

“These paintings might seem out of place in time,” the press release begins, “but that very quality is the entry point to better understand just how fleeting time really is. How we see time is bound up with how we see ourselves. We are nested in the present, always becoming. We are a moment, an ever-living fire. We are ephemeral and so is painting. More important than when we take place is the fact that we do at all. In so short a time we might learn to speak across the abyss.

“Look closer and we can see fragments of ‘thrownness.’ What we find on the surface of a painting are stories laid to rest––mythos. Interred in the painting is reason––logos; a ghost of existence, a shrine to death. Unearthed, this word breathes new life into memory. So the revenant stirs, remembers, sees by the light of a thousand stars. In Norse, the name of The Rememberer is Mimr, a giant and a sage whose head was brought back to life by a dear friend: Odinn, who gave his eye for greater sight and claimed a draft from the well of wisdom. Odinn’s search for knowledge is reflected in Heidegger’s view of painting––that the craft of painting is in drawing up to the light from the well of being. In the depths of allegory the light of wisdom reaches ever further. However, the constellations strewn from mythos are seen only by the light of logos. As mythos dreams, logos speaks dawn.”

To learn more, visit Gallery 30 South.

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.

Whether large or small, fierce or gentle, our planet’s wildlife is truly something to behold and appreciate. The nave of America’s largest cathedral, in America’s busiest city, is currently bursting at its seams with these world-class sculptures.

The National Sculpture Society (NSS) opened a significant juried exhibition on June 10 in Manhattan. Located at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine — our nation’s largest cathedral — “A Blessing of Animals” features works of 26 important sculptors from around the United States.

On view through September 10, the animal theme will “delight visitors,” the NSS writes. “The sculptures on display range from life-size to heroic and are created by some of this country’s leading animal sculptors. Animals furry, feathered, finned and flippered are represented in the show. Highlights include an eight-and-a-half foot tall Grizzly bear; a babel-like tower of frogs; ravens conversing from fence posts; a stalking bobcat; and a group of animal friends engaged in the childhood favorite ‘Ring Around The Rosie.’ Whether made of bronze, stone, or steel, the animal sculptures embody the diversity of talent and imagination of the artists and will appeal to everyone.”

More than 70 talented sculptors applied for the show, which took several years of organizing to realize. Robin R. Salmon, vice president for collections and curator of sculpture at Brookgreen Gardens, as well as sculptors Sandy Scott and Greg Wyatt, served as jurors for the exhibition. Twenty-nine works of art were selected from more than 278 entries.

After its tenure in Manhattan, the exhibition will travel to Naples, Florida, where it will be on display from early October through late January 2018. Sculptors featured in the exhibition include Dan Chen, Tim Cherry, Darrell Davis, D.L. Engle, Bob Guelich, André Harvey, Tony Hochstetler, Amy Kann, T.D. Kelsey, Madeleine Lord, Roger Martin, Walter Matia, Leo E. Osborne, Dan Ostermiller, Louise Peterson, Gary Lee Price, Paul Rhymer, Rosetta, Stefan Savides, Sandy Scott, Joshua Tobey, David H. Turner, Kent Ullberg, Meg White, Wesley Wofford, and Rod Zullo.

To learn more, visit the National Sculpture Society.

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 Ukrainian artist will soon showcase his hauntingly gorgeous paintings during a solo exhibition in Santa Fe this summer. His work is poetic, rebellious, and enchanting. Find out who the esteemed host is and when the curtain comes down.

“Fantastical oil paintings that evoke a sense of freedom, haunting beauty and enchanting mystery,” is how Meyer Gallery describes the work of Ukrainian artist Vachagan Narazyan. The Santa Fe, New Mexico, gallery will open “Shapito-Circus,” a solo exhibition of the artist’s newest work, on June 30. An opening reception will be held on the 30th from 5-7 p.m.

Narazyan is an important member of the nonconformist art movement of the former Soviet Union, and his paintings are often described as poetic, but also rebellious in “response to the repression he experienced working as a professional artist under Soviet rule,” as the gallery writes. “The artist graduated from the Kharkiv Art and Industrial Institute in 1979 during the height of the nonconformist art movement and began painting in a dissident style to socialist realism, which artists were mandated to adhere to under Soviet rule. Rather than abide by his strictly classical training, the artist risked imprisonment to paint imaginative oil paintings largely themed around his boyhood memories of the circus, which he can recall setting up in the town square just below the front window of his grandparents’ home in Russia. As a boy, Narazyan was fascinated by the romantic lifestyle of the performers who traveled from village to village sharing alluring stories from places unknown to the young artist. Narazyan’s naive intrigue resurfaced as romanticized fantasy when he began his art career. The artist combined his mastery of old world techniques with new age imagery to form a secretive style that was uniquely his own, one that he continues to work in today with renewed symbolism and character models. Narazyan’s storybook scenes are poetic, dreamlike visions with whimsical characters in magical settings, uninhibited by the constraints of a mandated lifestyle.”

The exhibition will continue through July 6. To learn more, visit Meyer 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.

Two world-class representational painters are sending out a call for artists to submit their work for an engaging digital exhibition. Who are they and when is the deadline?

They are arguably two of the most sought-after realist painters in the United States today; whenever we hear the names David Jon Kassan and Shana Levenson, our ears perk up. The artist couple recently sent out a call to artists for submissions for an exhibition they’re curating together, titled “Family.” Organized in concert with PoetsArtists, the show seeks to highlight the role and importance families have had for artists.

“Throughout the history of art, family has been a sacred subject for artists,” says the press release. “Most early paintings were commission-based illustrations from the Bible or portrait commissions for wealthy patrons, which didn’t leave much time for an artist to paint those that are closest to them. But when they did, there is a more personal connection that is present … something that is intangible.”

More information about submission guidelines can be found here. The deadline is July 15.

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.