Joseph Sweeney, “University Barge Club,” 2017, pastel on paper, 22 x 32 inches
Along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States lie hundreds of small towns and cities that boast stunning views of river landscapes. These classic scenes form an important part of late 19th- and early 20th-century American art. That tradition continues today, as seen in the recent body of work by Joseph Sweeney.
Born in the Farimount section of Philadelphia, artist Joseph Sweeney returns to his roots during “On the River,” a solo exhibition at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia. On view June 1 through June 30, “On the River” is Sweeney’s recent exploration of the classic river scenes that have drawn artists to the state of Pennsylvania for generations.
Joseph Sweeney, “Regatta Morning,” 2017, pastel on paper, 22 x 32 inches
“After exploring landscapes of central Pennsylvania, the New Jersey shore, Ireland, and Bermuda, the artist is revisiting a subject matter that has inspired so many Philadelphia painters over the years,” the gallery writes. “Managing to strike a fine balance between rendering a portrait of a place and capturing its essence without being literal, Sweeney identifies and reveals what is vital in each scene with the quickness of stroke and the intensity of color only possible through the medium of pastel. The resulting images emerge as refined and poetic; infused with Sweeney’s genuine affection for his subject matter.”
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Leonardo da Vinci, “The Virgin and Christ Child with a Cat,” circa 1478-81, pen and brown ink over stylus drawing, British Museum
There’s a reason many describe line as the most basic and important of the visual elements. Lines are infinitely variable in their expression of time, movement, emotion, and intensity — qualities that are directly translated to artworks made only from lines: drawings. How did some of art history’s greatest minds employ line? Find out here.
The New Mexico Museum of Art is one of only two U.S. institutions to host a major exhibition of historical drawings on loan from the British Museum. Opened on May 27 and on view through September 17, “Lines of Thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to Now: from the British Museum” presents an important examination of the enormous variety of methods used by some of history’s greatest artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Albrecht Dürer, Piet Mondrian, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Bridget Riley, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Franz Kline, and Rachel Whiteread.
Julie Mehretu, “Untitled,” 2002, pen and ink and brush drawing on vellum and Mylar, British Museum
Drawn from the British Museum’s world-class collection of more than 50,000 drawings, “Lines of Thought” will showcase some 70 drawings that exhibit powerful designs and expressive sketches through the ages. “A drawing can capture and preserve a record of an artist’s thoughts, rendering visible ideas, developing and refining them, serving as a key conceptual tool throughout each stage of the artistic process,” explains museum director Mary Kershaw. “‘Lines of Thought’ explores the numerous and invaluable lessons one can learn from examining the drawings of past masters in the context of artists working today, from Michelangelo to Mondrian, Rembrandt to Rachel Whiteread, Piranesi to Picasso.”
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Co-sponsored by Collectors for Connoisseurship at Windows to the Divine and the Clark Hulings Fund, a unique opportunity for artists is set to begin on Tuesday, June 20 in Colorado. What’s the buzz?
The art business can be nebulous and confusing at times — it’s a minimally understood and difficult profession to be sure. Avoid madness this summer at Space Gallery in Denver on June 20 with a half-day forum for professional artists through Collectors for Connoisseurship and the Clark Hulings Fund.
During the forum, peers and experts in the field will “engage in important visionary dialogue about the future of living artists,” the organization suggests, “and consider practical advice from experts.” Subjects include: What’s selling? Where and to whom? How can the artist be in control of his or her own career? When and how should artists use marketing tools like social media and e-mail to best effect? What can artists do individually and collectively to make their businesses more sustainable and successful?
The event takes place between 1-5 p.m., and a cocktail reception will follow at 6:30 p.m. The gathering is only open to members of ArtLover, which can be joined at any time for $49. Already an ArtLover member? The forum is free!
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Gaston Lachaise, “Equestrienne,” 1918, gilt bronze, 10 5/8 x 10 x 4 5/8 inches, George H. Warren
A fascinating new exhibition seeks to investigate for the first time the integral relationships among modernism, classicism, and pop imagery through interwar sculpture. Who are the central players, and where can you see it?
The Portland Museum of Art, Maine, has recently mounted an incredible exhibition that explores the formative sculpture of modernists Gaston Lachaise, Robert Laurent, Elie Nadelman, and William Zorach. Titled “A New American Sculpture, 1914-1945,” the show explores how this cohort of European-born sculptors became important figures of modernism in the United States. Amassed from both public and private collections, this gathering of 60 sculptures and several preparatory drawings “reveals the confluences of sources — from archaism and European avant-garde art to vernacular traditions and American popular culture — that informed these artists’ novel contributions to the history of sculpture,” the museum writes. “[The exhibition] also addresses the remarkable affinities between the oeuvre of four divergent personalities, who redefined sculpture’s expressive potential during the turbulent interbellum period.
Gaston Lachaise, “Standing Woman,” 1912-17, bronze, 72 x 28 x 17 inches, Philadelphia Museum of ArtWilliam Zorach, “Mother and Child,” 1922, mahogany, 31 x 12 x 12 1/2 inches, Portland Museum of Art, MaineElie Nadelman, “Head of a Woman,” circa 1916-32, bronze, 18 3/4 x 10 x 15 1/2 inches, Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester
“Between 1900 and 1914, Lachaise, Laurent, Nadelman, and Zorach each enjoyed formative experiences in Paris amid an exhilarating era of artistic experimentation and fomentation. They witnessed the development of modern sculptural modes informed by divergent currents of classicism, global sources, the energy of science and industry, and nontraditional technical approaches. By the beginning of the first World War, all four artists had settled in the United States, each responding differently to his new home and laying the seeds for what would become their shared, lifelong preoccupation: exploring the communicative power of the human form.”
The exhibition opened on May 26 and will be on view through September 8. To learn more, visit the Portland Museum of Art.
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Have you ever thought about the connections between humans, animals, and conceptions of divinity? A talented sculptor took up this challenge for a solo exhibition this summer that merits your consideration.
Opening June 2 and continuing through the month, Sorrel Sky Gallery in Durango, Colorado, will present several new sculptures by the renowned artist Star Liana York. Titled “Bridging Worlds — Human, Animal, Divine,” York’s mesmerizing bronzes tell compelling stories of life and discovery.
Although the artist finds creative interest in people, animals, and the environment of the Southwest, “For Star, inspiration is drawn from the world as a whole,” the gallery reports. “From history, the present day and future expectations; deepening her understanding through patient observation, attentive listening, and then accepting what her surrounds are saying. As she assimilates, she creates bridges between worlds. Bridging the worlds between the human, the animal, the divine.”
In her own words, York suggests, “When a character emerges from a work I am sculpting, I feel touched at a deeply intimate, subconscious level. It is the essence in a work of art that makes it intensely personal and entirely universal at the same time.”
Sorrel Sky Gallery will host an opening reception on June 2 from 5 to 7 p.m. To learn more, visit Sorrel Sky Gallery.
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Rachel Pierson, “El Viejo,” charcoal on paper, 22 x 15 inches
Featuring more than 30 works of art from Studio Incamminati’s esteemed roster of artists and alumni, collectors can bolster their holdings and contribute to future generations of creatives during this can’t-miss annual exhibition.
Philadelphia’s Studio Incamminati is one of our nation’s premier academic ateliers, continually producing artists who have won national and international awards (and frequently profiled in Fine Art Connoisseur). Each year, the school hosts its annual artists and alumni exhibition and sale in early summer, presenting the discerning collector with an early opportunity to acquire masterworks and support future generations.
Robin Frey, “Joy,” oil on panel, 12 x 10 inchesStephen Early, “Untitled,” oil on linen, 16 x 8 inchesJason Patrick Jenkins, “Hindsight,” oil on canvas, 12 x 19 inchesLeona Shanks, “Blind Justice,” oil on linen, 20 x 16 inchesCarolyn Gabbe, “Dad’s Lemon,” oil on linen board, 10 x 8 inchesShira Friedman, “One Fish,” oil on linen, 12 x 18 inchesKerry Dunn, “Melissa,” oil on wood, 24 x 18 inches
On view at Avery Galleries in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, from June 2 through June 28, the group show will feature some 30 works of art, all available for purchase. Proceeds benefit the Studio Incamminati scholarship fund, helping the school “fulfill its mission of makings its education as accessible as possible to all deserving art students regardless of financial means,” they say.
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Joseph Kleitsch (1882-1931), “San Juan Capistrano,” 1923, oil on canvas, 22 x 26 3/4 inches, Private Collection
In this ongoing series for Fine Art Today, we take a longer look at the history and features of a soon-to-be-available artwork of note. This week we feature one of several outstanding American Impressionist landscapes available soon via Swann Galleries.
Swann Galleries in New York can barely wait to kick off its annual sale of American Art on June 15. This year, Swann has seen several blockbuster consignments to the gallery for this sale, among them a brilliant landscape by California Impressionist Joseph Kleitsch (1882-1931). Born in Hungary, Kleitsch immigrated to the United States in 1902, eventually taking up residence in such vibrant cities as Cincinnati, Denver, and Chicago. However, it was Kleitsch’s migration to the West Coast, particularly Laguna Beach, that proved to be the most important move, as he eventually became one of California’s most influential and important Impressionists.
“Laguna Beach was an epicenter of California Impressionism — a regional school of American Impressionism of en plein air painting, mostly practiced by expatriate Europe artists, living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California,” Swann Galleries reports. “The unspoiled, undeveloped coastline of Laguna Beach attracted many of these artists, who started a number of different local artist organizations, including the Laguna Beach Art Association (Kleitsch even opened his own school, the Kleitsch Academy, with his wife). Although he continued to paint portraits (he was an in-house portraitist for the esteemed Stendahl Gallery, Los Angeles), it was in Laguna where Kleitsch discovered his passion for landscape painting.”
Painted in 1923, “San Juan Capistrano” is a fantastic reflection of Kleitsch’s admiration for the jewel-toned colors and rich textures that abound in Southern California. From a perch in the shade, viewers find themselves presented with myriad colors from a tree. Vines drape and hang from the trunk and are filled with purples, oranges, greens, and blues. Just beyond are the sunbaked dunes of San Juan Capistrano.
Auction estimates are between $100,000 and $150,000. To learn more, visit Swann Galleries.
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Gustave Courbet, “Self-Portrait as the Desperate Man,” 1845, oil on canvas, 18 x 22 in. (c) Private Collection 2016
In this highlight, view a historical and contemporary example of superb quality and skill: Gustave Courbet, “The Desperate Man.”
The self-portrait has long been employed by artists to convey different messages or psychological states in their art. In fact, the exploration of the inner being through self-representation has been well documented among some of the most influential and monumental figures in Western and Eastern art.
However, few artists have investigated their own souls to such an extent that their bodies of self-portraits provide an autobiographical description of their journey through life. Immediately, one thinks of Rembrandt, the 17th century Dutch master who left us nearly 90 representations of himself from the time he was an adolescent to months before his death. Similarly, other significant figures such as Max Beckmann, Albrecht Dürer, and Van Gogh have all been recognized for the deep psychological tone of their self- representations.
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) can be added to this illustrious group of artists. As one of the most recognized painters of his time, Courbet earned success as a young man, though a period of uncertainty and financial misery pervaded his life until the mid-1850s. Further, letters to family, friends, and patrons suggest that even as late as 1860, Courbet was susceptible to melancholy.
Significantly, between the years 1840 and 1850, Courbet produced nearly 24 self-portraits that offer his viewers a glimpse into the formulation of his early identity and psychological evolution. As scholar Dominique de Font-Reaulx has noted, “the early self-portraits are a window into the artist’s early training and development. The visual habits formed in these works would continue throughout his oeuvre.”
However, Courbet is seldom recognized as being connected to the themes and ideologies of the Romantics, who enjoyed the apex of their success around the time of Courbet’s birth in 1819. Courbet found his career in a transitional period that saw Romanticism coming to a close and subsequently, the birth of realism and modernism in European visual culture. However, his early self-portraits would seem to argue differently, suggesting Courbet was acutely aware of and inspired by traditions extending back to Dürer in the 16th century and Rembrandt in the 17th.
Gustave Courbet, “Self-Portrait as the Desperate Man,” 1845, oil on canvas, 18 x 22 in. (c) Private Collection 2016
Courbet’s “Self-Portrait as the Desperate Man” is one early example, produced in 1845, at the apex of the artist’s melancholy and Romantic disillusionment. Courbet presents himself frontally in a tight, claustrophobic, horizontal frame. His expression seems to be one of both fear and psychosis. His arms are raised to his head, clenching his dark hair, with tensed muscles bulging from his wrists and forearms. There is no escape, and the confrontation with the viewer achieves an intensity rarely witnessed in the history of art.
It has been suggested that Courbet’s goal was to “share the intensity of a moment in which the artist, having come to the end of his Romantic education and suddenly overcome at the spectacle of his imminent downfall, finds the strength to repudiate a destiny that is not his.” In this way, it proves to be a key work in the artist’s life, and it remained in his studio until his death.
Albrecht Dürer, “The Desperate Man,” circa 1515, etching, 7 3/8 x 5 3/8 in. (c) Metropolitan Museum of Art 2016
This was Courbet’s chance to express what he had not done in his letters and his desire (to use his words), “to bury the amorous follies of my youth.” This is precisely why self-portraiture was so attractive to Romantic artists, and it touches the core nature of self-portraiture as a genre. Indeed, in this way, Courbet’s “Desperate Man” is quintessential Romanticism in every sense of the term.
Pushing it further, Courbet could have appropriated Renaissance imagery, which would add yet another Romantic tone. Consider Albrecht Dürer’s etching “The Desperate Man” of 1514 — the central figure bears a strikingly similar gesture and mood. Note the clenched fists that grasp the figure’s hair and the raised arms, which seem too similar to Courbet’s rendering to be mere coincidence.
To learn more, visit the Musee d’Orsay. (This article was originally published in 2017)
> Visit EricRhoads.com to learn about more opportunities for artists and art collectors, including retreats, international art trips, art conventions, and more.
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The beautiful inner courtyard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
It was arguably one of the most famous art heists in history: In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, a pair of thieves disguised as Boston police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and left with 13 works of art valued at more than $500 million. To further the recovery effort, the museum’s board of trustees has just made an announcement.
Members of the board of trustees at Boston’s famed Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum recently announced their approval to double the reward from $5 million to $10 million for information leading to the return of 13 works of art stolen from the institution in 1990. The increased offer is effective immediately and expires at midnight on December 31, 2017.
The reward increase is, in fact, the second since the theft in 1990. In 1997, the museum raised the reward from $1 million to $5 million, making it the largest private reward in the world. The recent increase to $10 million “sends a strong message that Museum officials are serious about their commitment to bring the works back to the Museum,” according to the Gardner’s website.
Anthony Amore, the museum’s security director, adds, “We encourage anyone with information to contact the museum directly, and we guarantee complete confidentiality. This offer is a sign that our investigation remains active. Our hope is that anyone with knowledge that might further our work will come forward.”
The March 18, 1990 theft remains the largest art heist in history. Among the artworks that were taken were Johannes Vermeer’s “The Concert” — one of only 36 surviving paintings by the Dutch painter — and the only known seascape by Rembrandt van Rijn, titled “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee.”
“Typically, stolen masterpieces are either recovered soon after a theft or a generation later,” Amore continued. “We remain optimistic that these works will ultimately be recovered.”
Anyone with information should contact Anthony Amore at 617.278.5114 or e-mail [email protected]
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.
My fascination with the art of bonsai began over thirty years ago. Developing the process to cast intricate bronze bonsai trees, required roughly ten years of practice.
My mother was an active gardener and helping her earned me the affectionate nickname “hole digger.” One dreary winter day, she surprised me with a trip to the Philadelphia flower show.
The event was packed and before I knew it, I was swept up by a river of visitors and set adrift into the “hall of the moon gates,” a bonsai exhibition. On either side of a hallway, various trees were displayed through large round portholes. When I peered through these “moon gates”, I was instantly transported into a fantastic bonsai universe.
I have always been fascinated by the magic of nature: dinosaurs, Blue whales, giant Sequoia Redwood trees, telescopes, microscopes, and even a few unhappy snapping turtles collected from the creek near my house. Yet, bonsai was something truly bewildering and more interesting than big or small, magnified or snappy. It was something which simply shouldn’t be! I was instantly hooked.
As an adult, I experimented with a collection of my own living bonsai trees and as my interests evolved, and I developed my own bronze process, I discovered lots of things that shouldn’t be. For instance, I shouldn’t be able to make a mold of an entire tree but I can. I shouldn’t be able to use fragile wax for my patterns but I do. Nor, should I be able to instantly cast an entire tree and nearly eliminate the need for fabrication, or effortlessly polish my bronze castings and finish the most delicate features of my sculptures with rich, transparent patina without using any chemicals.
One of the most interesting aspects of my work is the actual casting of the bronze. Tracy Witherow, of ART Research Enterprises, once said to me—“Matt, you should name every piece you do, Finger’s Crossed!” There’s a good reason for her comment. I have to perfectly execute every single step, leading up to and including the actual casting, to avoid a total disaster on every tree.
Why adopt a casting process which essentially requires that I hit a hole-in-one on every step, every time? The answer is simple, it makes the accomplishment that much sweeter and that much more exhilarating. I get to transform a gale into a breeze and create a beautiful and timeless bonsai tree! I hope you enjoy!
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