What’s the story behind America’s romance with 19th-century French art?

The National Gallery of Art in Washington has curated 68 paintings for a dazzling exhibition to answer that question. “America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting” tells the compelling story of how collectors, curators, dealers, and directors of the early 19th century cultivated American taste for French art. Whether it is the decorative canvases of rococo artists such as François Boucher and Jean Honoré Fragonard or the sober neoclassicism of Jacques Louis David, the exhibition brings together the best and most unusual examples of French art of that era held by American museums.

“America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting” opens on May 21 and will be on view through August 20. To learn more, visit the National Gallery 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.

Teachers and parents of aspiring young artists will want to attend the world’s first Atelier Art Education Day in New York City. Who are the esteemed sponsors to be on hand, and when? Details here!

Sponsored by the Da Vinci Initiative, the world’s first Atelier Art Education Day will take place May 19 and includes free portfolio reviews, free artist demonstrations, and free admission into the Art Renewal Center’s (ARC) Salon exhibition. In addition to world-class artists, representatives of the Florence Academy of Art and Studio Incamminati will be in attendance. Atelier Art Education Day will be held between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the Salmagundi Club in New York City.

To learn more, visit The Da Vinci Initiative.

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.

If you’re headed to Paris this spring there’s still time to catch a viewing of this fantastic exhibition at the Louvre Museum. Who knows — you just might leave shaking your own tail-feathers.

The Classic Greeks were some of the first artisans (that we know of) to have become fascinated with how the human body moves in space — and how to capture that in bronze, marble, and paint. A fun and inventive exhibition at the Louvre Museum, Paris, is exploring how this enchantment continued through the creative vision of some of art history’s greatest artists.

“Artworks are by nature static,” the museum writes, “but artists were trying to anatomize movement long before chronophotography came along and opened up new perspectives for them in the late 19th century. In their efforts to capture movement, avant-garde artists like Degas and Rodin turned to the world of dance. Around 1900, drawing on antiquity and the work of dancers like Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, and Nijinsky, the discipline underwent its own revolution: an innovative gestural repertoire and a break with classical ballet that foreshadowed modern dance. Thus choreography and the visual arts intermeshed.”

The museum continues,  “Observing works from the Louvre and its partners will help visitors appreciate the challenge conveying movement represents for artists, and the solutions they have come up with, using the different materials and techniques available to them. Walking, running, stopping in your tracks — not to mention such ‘movements of the soul’ as terror: What conventions govern representation of the movements and postures involved?”

Titled “The Body in Movement: Dance and the Museum,” the exhibition runs through July 3. To learn more, visit the Louvre Museum.

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.

EVOKE Contemporary is the latest gallery to display the works of renowned painter Jeremy Mann. Featuring works that explore the artist’s experiments, process, and emotions, this isn’t a solo show to miss.

EVOKE Contemporary in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is overjoyed to be presenting the latest body of work from the mind of Jeremy Mann. On view through May 20, “Experimentations, Process, and Emotions” is a fascinating representation of Mann’s self-reflection as one of the nation’s top artists.

An excerpt from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine’s profile on Mann:

Dramatically and skillfully rendered, the cityscapes and figurative works of Jeremy Mann give visual form to the emotive essence of modern life. Jeremy Mann’s paintings capture the tenor of these moments that characterize life in the city. Whether depicting the distinctive hills and winding roads of San Francisco, or the bustle of the city that never sleeps, Mann paints the heart of his setting.

Confident, gestural strokes and brilliant highlights define his style. Any detail of one of his cityscapes would almost certainly look abstract. But as the eye moves away from the canvas, dots of red emerge into rows of brake lights and slashes of blue signal the glow of neon street signs. Mann works to manipulate paint in a variety of techniques, sometimes staining the surface of the canvas, using solvents to thin and remove paint, or exploiting the gritty quality of an ink brayer. The result is a personalized, expressive style.

Interestingly, Mann’s cityscapes are almost completely devoid of figures. His figurative works form a separate part of his artistic output and are just as masterfully executed. These interior scenes of women picture loneliness and ennui, self-reflection and melancholy, all expressed in a deeply sensuous visual language.

Though his work divides easily into these categories, a common theme underlies both. The modern city – dark, sexy, stimulating, seductive – is Mann’s true subject.

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.

Don’t you love the sudden burst of life, color, sounds, and warmth the spring season brings? Galleries around the nation are in celebration as well, showcasing stellar artworks with subjects ranging from florals to landscapes, and much more. A fantastic example lies here.

On view from May 13 through June 17 at Glen Cove, New York’s Hersh Fine Art, “Awakenings” is a solo exhibition of exquisite florals by renowned physician and artist Dr. Marjorie van de Stouwe. Although her subjects are primarily still life, Stouwe has developed a knack for rendering the subtle textures, colors, and layering of nature.

Via the gallery, “Each season offers a new opportunity to create a fresh body of work as the landscape changes with the weather. ‘Awakenings’ celebrates transition, spring, and new birth. Tying together lyrical composition with an almost scientific investigation into the surface quality that communicates the difference between a dandelion and a daffodil, Dr. van de Stouwe’s work transcends mere academic pursuit. It celebrates the fleeting yet enduring qualities of beauty and impermanence. For a moment, the petals are intact and the leaves are suspended in the air by their own strength, but the moment passes, and the flowers cannot endure long. ‘Awakenings’ explores all stages of life and brings dignity to each one.”

Perhaps you spent the winter constantly digging yourself out of snowbanks, perhaps not, but whatever your experience was from November through April, “Awakenings” is a superb opportunity to officially welcome spring into your life — and maybe your home.

To learn more, visit Hersh 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.

First created and conceived over 20 years ago, the William Blake Archive set a standard for the digital humanities. It’s now broken another mold with a complete redesign of its website.

The combination of text and illustration on a digital page never looked so polished and beautiful as it does on the newly refurbished website for the William Blake Archive. “For more than two centuries, the works of Romantic-era English poet and artist William Blake posed considerable challenges” the archive reports. “Reproducing his art in books has been expensive — and only captures a sliver of what he created. Literary critics claimed Blake’s writing, and art historians, his illustrations — with neither camp able to do justice to the full body of work.

“Two decades ago, the William Blake Archive set out to change that. Now the Blake Archive holds almost 7,000 images from 45 of the world’s research libraries and museums. It integrates editions, catalogs, databases, and scholarly tools into a single electronic archive.”

The project has been made possible through generous help from institutions around the globe, including the University of Rochester, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, the Library of Congress, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others.

Explore yourself by visiting the website here; enjoy its stunning image quality and user-friendly interface.

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.

Renowned master draftsman Joel Daniel Phillips could be heading in a captivating direction with his newest body of work titled “Hazards May Be Present.” What’s the buzz?

Joel Daniel Phillips has emerged in recent years as one of the most skilled draftsman in the country, and he might be headed in a new direction with his recent body of work, titled “Hazards May Be Present.” Since 2011, Phillips has turned his creative attention toward his very own community, often highlighting social issues. From June 2015 through August, Phillips was honored as the Palo Alto Art Center’s artist in residence, a distinction that required him to create a body of work aimed at the city of Palo Alto, California.

Phillips decided to turn his artistic lens on the residents of the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park, which remains the last of its kind as poorer residents are increasingly displaced by the rapid growth of the middle class in the Bay Area. Embroiled in a legal battle, the park has fought to survive and has evolved into a symbol in the long-running debate over gentrification.

Phillips’ newest body of work features larger-than-life-sized renderings exploring San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point Neighborhood through the lens of three deeply rooted residents. “Long neglected,” Phillips suggested, “these inhabitants’ particular piece of the Bayview is demarcated and defined by the Hunters Point Shipyard, a shuttered U.S. Navy Base closed due to extensive environmental contaminants. By examining three men’s relationship with their home through their vocation as recyclers, daily proximity to hazardous waste, and their friendship with each other in the midst of an environment fraught with abuse, the drawings explore the complex history of use and misuse of resources that have helped to shape a unique corner of San Francisco.”

To learn more, visit Joel Daniel Phillips.

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.

The adroit fine art connoisseur and collector likely receives notices about the current state of the art market and its current trends. However, do you have your finger on the pulse of the online art world?

Hiscox recently released its 2017 Online Art Report, a long-awaited consolidation of art market trends in the digital universe. The online art market continues to grow steadily, currently adding up to about $3.75 billion dollars, up 15 percent.

“The established global brands in the art market such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s are starting to dominate The Hiscox Online Art Platform Ranking and appear to be getting to grips with the challenge of transform a bricks-and-mortar business into a multimedia business,” Hiscox writes.

To download the 2017 report, visit here.

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.