An extraordinary gathering of rarely seen masterpieces highlights the watercolor movement in the 19th and 20th centuries. Told through works exhibiting bold innovation and classical realism, this type of show is once-in-a-lifetime.

On view for just a few more weeks (May 14, 2017) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, “American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent” is the fascinating story surrounding one of the most practiced and dynamic of artistic mediums as it evolved through the 19th and 20th centuries. Centered around the artistic geniuses of Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent, the exhibition showcases a staggering array of gorgeous masterpieces rarely seen by the public.

“Although widely practiced in the US before the Civil War, watercolor painting existed at the margins of the professional art world,” writes the museum. “Considered the domain of amateurs, women, and commercial artists, it drew little interest from the mainstream painters of the mid-1800s.”

The establishment of the American Watercolor Society in 1866 began to shift perspectives. According to the museum, the AWS’s annual exhibitions in New York City encouraged artists from a number of professions to reconsider the medium as a respected practice. The rest, as they say, was history.

“The American watercolor movement created stars like Homer, John La Farge, Thomas Moran, and William Trost Richards, artists who would remain dedicated to the medium for decades,” the museum continues. “Thomas Eakins, George Inness, and others rode the wave through its peak in the 1880s. Together, their work produced a taste for watercolor among younger artists and eager collectors that would endure through the turn of the century, inspiring a new crop of illustrators such as Maxfield Parrish and Jessie Willcox Smith, decorators from the circle of Louis C. Tiffany, and plein air masters Childe Hassam, Maurice Prendergast, and Sargent.”

Whether connoisseur or casual lover of art, “American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent” has something for everyone to enjoy. 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.

A captivating display of contemporary silverpoint opens tomorrow, featuring dozens of international artists. How are artists utilizing this deep-rooted medium today? Find out here.

Marbury NYC will open its highly anticipated group exhibition “Argentum: Contemporary Silverpoint” tomorrow, April 28. On view through May 12, the exhibition calls our attention to the oft forgot, but deeply rooted, silverpoint medium. Using a stylus of pure silver, an artist can draw on paper prepared with a coarse gesso. The hardness of the silver creates extremely fine and detailed lines, not too dissimilar from the quality of line found in etchings.

Although ancient in origin, the medium flourished in Renaissance Europe until the introduction of graphite lead offered artists a more affordable and forgiving tool for drawing. However, despite the advantages offered by lead, chalks, and ink, silverpoint has remained an outright technique enjoyed by artists worldwide.

With its practice in the 21st century rare, the opportunity to absorb stellar examples of silverpoint is one worth taking, especially when the exhibition includes superb international talent. Twenty-eight artists will be featured in the upcoming show at Marbury NYC; they include Dennis Angel, James Xavier Barbour, Lisa Bartolozzi, Noah Buchanan, Lauren Caldarola, Sherry Camhy, Harvey Citron, Casey Concelmo, Jeannine Cook, Diana Corvelle, Steven DaLuz, Randall DiGiuseppe, Lori Field, Evan Kitson, Sam Knecht, Aimi Li, Shanga Manning, Tom Mazzullo, Mary Anne McCarthy, Walter Meigs (1918-1988, courtesy Harmon-Meek Gallery), Lauren Amalia Redding, Raphael Sassi, Edward Schmidt, Laura Shechter, Ben Shechter (1940-2016, courtesy Laura Shechter), Dan Thompson, Cheryl Wheat, and Joseph Ventura.

An opening reception for the show will take place on Saturday, April 29 from 6-9 p.m. To learn more, visit Marbury NYC.

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 Salmagundi Club in New York City will soon showcase the winning artworks from the Art Renewal Center’s (ARC) 12th International Salon. Don’t miss this opportunity to view the best of representational art from around the globe.

The Salmagundi Club in New York City will be the first venue to host the Art Renewal Center’s “Live Traveling Exhibition” featuring selected works from its 12th Annual International Salon. The Salon is widely recognized as one of the best and most competitive representational art competitions; many of the world’s best artists have been selected for inclusion.

The 12th International ARC Salon boasts 1,006 finalist artworks by 640 artists representing 63 countries. Of these, the “Live Traveling Exhibition” features approximately 75 to 100 of the top entries. The Salmagundi Club will host the exhibition from May 12 through June 1 before it travels to the European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM), where it will be on view from September 23 through November 27, 2017.

Awards are categorized by subject and medium, including best nude, best social commentary, best trompe l’oeil, best figure, best portrait, best still life, best imaginative realism, best landscape, and many more. Of course, all artists covet earning Best in Show honors, museum purchase awards, and other awards sponsored by magazines such as Fine Art Connoisseur and PleinAir.

Tenaya Sims’ outstanding work “Semillas” (“Seeds”) earned top distinction as Best in Show in 2016-17. Runner-up honors, titled The Bouguereau Award, were taken home by Nick Alm for his painting “The Performance.” The winner of The Da Vinci Initiative Award for the Young Aspiring Artist was awarded to 15-year-old Ray Wanda Totanes for her marvelous painting “Perception of Self.” The Oil Painters of America (OPA) also sponsors an award of $1,000, which was given to Michele Del Camp for his painting “The Argument.”

Many other awards were presented to deserving artists, and we encourage you to view the full list of recipients by visiting the ARC International Salon webpage.

To learn more about the “Live Traveling Exhibition,” 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.

In this ongoing series, Fine Art Today delves into the world of portraiture, highlighting historical and contemporary examples of superb quality and skill. This week we discuss an arresting portrait by a 19th century Orientalist.

In was early in 1868 when famed Orient painter Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) returned to Paris after a 12-week journey to the Near East. Having been exposed once more to the vivid characters, colors, and textures of foreign lands, Gérôme did the only thing he could: paint.

One of the works that resulted from this particular tenure abroad is one of the most arresting and vivid portraits from the 19th century, titled “Bashi-Bazouk.” Located today in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Bashi-Bazouk” displays a black youth in about half length. Wearing an elaborate and colorful array of clothing, the sitter faces away from the viewer, his back turned. His rifle resting on his left shoulder, the sitter makes a slight turn toward the viewer and gazes out of the frame just over his right shoulder.

Set against a cool, olive-toned background, the subject wears a stunning salmon-colored silk jacket. He also wears a colorful and tall turban, which wraps tightly around his head with shimmering tassels dangling beneath. Gérôme’s attention to the sitter’s character and, more prominently, the array of textures, is truly mesmerizing. “Bashi-Bazouk” is a Turkish title that translates as “headless”; the word was meant to designate unpaid soldiers who fought “ferociously for plunder under Ottoman leadership,” the Met reports.

To learn more, visit the MET.

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.

Large-scale and dense urbanism are the focus of this impressionable exhibition in New York City this spring. In addition to the skyscrapers she depicts, this painter’s career is on a vertical trajectory.

Twelve large-scale paintings by Polish-born, New York-based artist Alexandra Pacula compose a brilliant solo exhibition at New York City’s Gallery Henoch from April 20 through May 13. “Vertical City” is an intoxicating exploration of dense urbanism through incredible views of skyscrapers. Using bold, geometric forms with a slight disorienting blur and abstraction, Pacula captures the grandeur of Manhattan’s shimmering towers with her unique creative voice.

“In each picture,” the gallery suggests, “Pacula confronts the viewer with a wall of skyscrapers so vast they appear to extend beyond the canvas. Powered by columns of glowing windows, the multitude of soaring buildings projects the vigor of a thriving society and the enchantment of a restless metropolis. The cacophony of lights, represented throughout her canvases by elegant dashes and dots, stimulate multiple shifts of the viewer’s eye, rhythmically articulating the feel of a city captured in a fleeting moment. The singular visual energy is intensified through the exuberant placement of pulsating marks and glazes of brilliant color.”

“Vertical City” is Pacula’s second show with Gallery Henoch. To learn more, visit Gallery Henoch.

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 intersection of art and religion is one that arguably dates to the Paleolithic origins of representational images on the walls of caves. Indeed, some art historians believe that most, even all, art ever produced is simply the human mind attempting to make sense of divinity. One artist is bringing this relationship to the fore during a thought-provoking solo show.

“Our Private Religion” is a fascinating solo exhibition currently on view at Last Rites Gallery in New York City. Featuring the new works of ascending artist Sergio Barrale, the show delves into the intersection of contemporary religion and art while also engaging with historical events.

The exhibition is on view through April 22; viewers will encounter Barrale’s large-scale graphite and oil pictures, which “strive to shed light on past injustices of organized belief while exploring the changing role of religion for people today,” the gallery said. “The decline of power structures and muddied laws in classical religions has left those in the modern era in a state of refocus.

“Barrale connects the use of graphite in his work to a naturalistic need for creative expression, and human desire to comprehend contemporary events rooting back to ancestral times. His large-scale works seek to incite a conversation about past approaches to religion as well as capture an outlook on it today as an ethical code, reformed without emphasis on hierarchy, but alternatively on individual truth and morality.”

To learn more, visit Last Rites 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.

Since 2014, a group of women have made it their mission to capture the majesty and beauty of various American landscapes. The artistic products from their recent trip to the Sierra Mountains compose this can’t-miss exhibition. Details here!

On view through July 9 at the Santa Paula Art Museum in California, “Between Heaven and Earth” is a stunning group exhibition by the prolific artist cohort known as the PAC6 Painters. Hailing from Southern California, the PAC6 formed in 2014 “through their love of representational painting,” as the group says. “Their friendship has led to mutual challenge, adventure, and inspiration in their art.” The painters include Linda Brown, Marian Fortunati, Nita Harper, Debra Holladay, Laura Wambsgans, and Sharon Weaver.

Throughout their tenure together, the PAC6 have traveled to many locations around the country, each time with the intention of creating a themed body of work that includes both plein air and studio paintings. Over 60 paintings compose “Heaven and Earth,” which takes viewers on a journey of discovery of the High Sierra.

Via the museum, “The first images of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with their dramatic peaks and pristine lakes, caught the imagination of a young America and helped to open the West. Following in the historic footsteps of the early California Impressionists, the PAC6 have created a body of work that provides an opportunity to see these iconic vistas from a new and contemporary perspective. While each of the six artists paint in a personally distinctive style, the pack’s purpose in creating the show was identical. It is the hope of PAC6 that in seeing the exhibition, viewers will be inspired toward their own great adventure — one filled with awe at the beauty and grandeur of the American landscape. The exhibit also includes a short video documentary with film footage and commentary describing the group’s pack trip from Mammoth Lakes to Lake Ediza.”

On March 4, the museum hosted a lively opening reception, which was attended by more than 200 guests and friends. The museum has also created this entertaining video to accompany the exhibition:

To learn more, visit the Santa Paula Art 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.