That time has come when all of us here at Fine Art Connoisseur reflect upon the many artful fortunes of 2016 and step away for a two-week intermission to enjoy the season’s blessings. First, however, a note from the Editor to you and yours.

Let me begin first by offering my sincere gratitude to you, our readers. Your passion for traditional, representational art is the bedrock upon which Fine Art Connoisseur stands, and it is our hope that you will continue to offer your support and constructive feedback on our magazine and newsletter, Fine Art Today, in 2017.

Nearly every day I have to pinch myself to ensure all of this is real. It is a great privilege bringing you the current happenings in the traditional art world, and I look forward to discovering the artful treasures that 2017 will bring with you.

2016 was an incredible year, and Fine Art Today reported on a broad scope of topics and events from all across the globe. From London to Los Angeles and Tokyo to France, we’ve seen many solo and group exhibitions, successful and record-breaking auctions, and unbelievable discoveries. This year also saw the addition of a new feature to Fine Art Today, the “Portrait of the Week.” Since August, these stories have allowed me to delve into one of history’s most important genres, investigating its myriad conceptual and aesthetic possibilities. We’ve looked at some of the most important visages in art history, from Rembrandt to Klimt and Ingres to today’s masters. The “Artist Profile” feature has continued to allow our readers exclusive access to the minds of the creative geniuses of our day, revealing their inspirations, processes, and goals. This rewarding section is one of the most enriching of my life, and I hope it continues to brighten yours.

I would also like to send my thanks to all of the artists, galleries, and art institutions who have graciously provided the time, effort, and materials that have made Fine Art Today possible. It is our goal and hope that the newsletter has provided you a platform upon which the traditional arts can continue to be celebrated and promoted.

Finally, our team here at Streamline Publishing cannot go without mention. I work with an incredible group of hardworking individuals who have patience and flexibility. Thanks to all of you! In particular, I’d like to thank the marketing team, who work tirelessly to keep our publications financially supported. It’s an incredibly tough world in sales, and we’re lucky to have each of you. To our web developer and IT specialist Dale Dubilowski: You “da man”! Without your dedication and expertise, I’m not entirely sure where our digital platforms would be, and we’d all hate to find out. Finally, to our founder and publisher, B. Eric Rhoads: You always lead with grace, passion, and professionalism. Thank you for the opportunity to learn about and explore this beautiful expression we call art.

I know I speak for all of us at Streamline Publishing and Fine Art Connoisseur in wishing you and your family a most joyous and safe holiday season. We all certainly look forward to bringing you more outstanding content in 2017. Cheers!

With warmest regards,

Andrew M. Webster

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.

Spanning 23 city blocks and nearly eight centuries, the world’s preeminent showcase for art’s most fundamental technique is poised for another great year.  Click for an inside scoop.

Whether you’re in the market for that next master drawing or simply game for some stunning exhibitions, New York City will be a premier destination in January 2017 as Master Drawings New York (MDNY) takes over Madison Avenue once more. MDNY opens January 21 and continues through January 28, and many of the world’s leading art dealers and collectors will purchase and showcase rare drawings, watercolors, oil sketches, and more from the 14th to the 20th centuries.

Now in its 11th year, Master Drawings New York is the world’s premier destination for collectors and dealers, also spawning a series of concurrent exhibitions along Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side in New York City. In 2017, the week-long event will feature 24 exhibitors that will “unveil surprises in the form of new discoveries and drawings not seen on the market for decades,” the organizers predict. “The event includes pop-up presentations by leading dealers from London, Paris, Florence, and Vienna, and special exhibitions mounted in private gallery spaces by top New York specialists.”

MDNY Director and co-founder Crispian Riley-Smith said, “Drawings are often called the first draft of art history — and that’s the excitement, really. Simply by studying strokes on a page, one can become privy to an artist’s first intention. And because drawings have been less systematically documented over the centuries than paintings, unknown works still surface with some regularity. MDNY reminds us that art history is forever changing. Each year we offer visitors a kind of one-off, serendipitous tour of art that’s determined by the best of what’s recently emerged on the market.

“In January, the week of events will be anchored in the Academy Mansion at 2 East 63rd Street. Five dealers will occupy rooms in the historic building and a special loan exhibition celebrating the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut, will be featured there.”

Among the many highlights in this year’s event are works by Pablo Picasso, Giovanni Battista Naldini, Gustav Klimt, Giorgio Vasari, Vincent Van Gogh, Egon Schiele, J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Gainsborough, Edgar Degas, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jacopo Bassano, Salvator Rosa, and David Hockney.

A complete list of all the exhibitors, concurrent events, lectures, and symposia can be found by visiting the MDNY webpage 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.

Don’t you love hearing about unbelievable fine art discoveries? The answer to that question will be an emphatic “Yes!” after you read about this amazing story breaking out of France this week.

Major Paris-based auction house Tajan announced on Monday, December 12, that a retired doctor recently brought them a drawing that depicts Saint Sebastian bound to a tree — now authenticated as by Leonardo da Vinci (1478-1519). If the French government approves the sale of the drawing, slated for the summer of 2017, the drawing could fetch in excess of $16 million. The discovery is the first of its kind in nearly two decades.

It is a familiar subject for both Da Vinci and his connoisseurs, and there survive several works by the Renaissance master depicting Saint Sebastian. The drawing also includes, on its back, optical studies in light and shadow and text written in Leonardo’s famed cryptic mirror style. Via The Art Newspaper, “The artist referred to eight drawings of the saint in his tome of drawings, texts and scientific studies, the Codex Atlanticus, and this sheet is believed to be among them — and is the one of only three that have been located to date.”

Tajan has reported that the anonymous owner brought the drawings to them in March 2016 along with a group of about 13 other unframed drawings that had been collected by his father. The auction house’s director of Old Master paintings, Thaddée Prate, was struck by the image of Saint Sebastian and sought further counsel from their drawings expert Patrick de Bayser and, later, Carmen C. Bambach, a curator of Spanish and Italian drawings at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. As Bambach remarked to the New York Times, the drawing was “quite incontestable” and “an open-and-shut case.” She added, “My heart will always pound when I think about this drawing.”

To learn more, visit The New York Times.

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.

Which London Auction House hosted a spirited Old Master Paintings sale on December 8 that witnessed an avalanche of bidding that shattered several world auction records?  We can’t believe it! Will you?

December 8 saw some major totals for Old Master paintings during the sale in London, realizing a robust $15,451,768. Among the notable lots were pictures by Jacob Jordaens, Balthasar van der Ast, Jean Decourt, François Clouet, John Constable, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, and Judith Leyster. Of the 37 lots offered, 30 were sold, with 94.7 percent by value.

Several artists established new world records. Judith Leyster’s “Portrait of the Artist” exceeded its $400k to $600k estimate with a hammer price of $613,040. Corneille de La Haye’s new world record is now $840,560, which was earned by her 1540 “Portrait of a Merchant.” François Clouet and Jean Decourt also earned new world auction records at $946,736 and $992,240, respectively.

Detailed in Fine Art Today just a few weeks ago, Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s outstanding “Return from the Kermesse” topped its $2 million-$3 million estimate by realizing a total of $3,259,249. Titian’s “Portrait of Two Boys” also bested its estimate by over $1 million, selling for a whopping $2,666,514.

To learn more, visit Christie’s.

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.

Leave it to a Latin American master and Los Angeles to break Old Man Winter’s grip with a fresh dose of liquid dreams and reflections.

Only a few days remain for a significant solo exhibition at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, California. All it takes is a quick glimpse of Latin American master Julio Valdez’s stunning paintings to forget all about water in its frozen, solid form.

On view through December 17, “Dreams and Reflections” (which takes its title from Carl Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections) is a remarkable display of Valdez’s ability to harness the phenomenon of refracted light with paint and brush. Completed over the past three years, “Dreams and Reflections” presents several of Valdez’s newest oils, which display a variety of figurative and narrative subjects immersed beneath the rippling surfaces of water. In addition to being visually compelling, the works “simultaneously reflect an inner world informed by the artist’s personal and collective history,” the gallery writes.

Continuing, “[The paintings] are inspired by Valdez’s varied travels, including a visit to the Celestún Biosphere Reserve in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Among the exhibition’s highlights is ‘Celestún II,’ depicting a diver submerged beside the anchor line of an unseen boat. The anchor line disappears into the ocean depths, far below the diver’s refracted image. The painting’s tensions resonate in the disappearing anchor line, the instability of the diver’s image and a sense of isolation and vulnerability reinforced by the unseen boat.”

To learn more, visit Bergamot Station.

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’s still ample time for you and your family to plan a trip to Los Angeles this February for an incredible Western art exhibition and Sale. Some extra incentive is just one click away. Details here!

Seventy-six premier Western artists will highlight 2017’s edition of the Masters of the American West Art Exhibition and Sale, slated to open at Los Angeles’ Autry Museum on February 11. Now in its 20th year, the event has a reputation for being a top destination for art collectors.

With the event running through March 26, the Autry will also host several concurrent events alongside the exhibition and sale. Among the nationally and internationally known artists in this year’s show are Bill Anton, George Carlson, Tammy Garcia, Robert Griffing, Z.S. Liang, Kyle Polzin, Mian Situ, Tucker Smith, Curt Walters, and Morgan Weistling. Proceeds will help benefit the museum’s dynamic educational programs, collections conservation, and much more.

Opening day is slated to be quite a celebration. From 8:30 to 10 A.M., an early preview of the show will be offered to sponsors and Masters ticket holders who also have an Autry membership at the Copper level or higher. Award-winning painters John Fawcett and Tammy Garcia will also be on hand for a “State of the Art” luncheon with an awards presentation. Festivities continue well into the evening with a cocktail reception and fine art sale, “where patrons and artists join in festivities and approximately 275 fixed-priced works are sold through a drawing,” organizers write.

Autry Chief Curator Amy Scott said, “The ‘State of the Art’ conversations represent our effort to understand the experience of Masters from the artists’ point of view. It is important for us to know what artists are thinking when creating work for museum exhibitions, and we want to ensure that Masters is a success for artists, the Autry, and our audience.”

To learn more, visit The Autry 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.

Earlier this year, Fine Art Today reported on a tantalizing new grant opportunity for museums.  Discover who recently doled out over $2 million to more than 50 deserving recipients. Details here!

Some argue that a frame is almost as important as the artwork itself. When used correctly, a good frame accentuates and showcases the image within its borders. Master framers Eli Wilner & Company recently opened a grant opportunity for frame conservation and have just announced the first round of winners.

Collectors and museums are often thrilled to learn that a painting’s frame is original to the work, but this feature can be both a blessing and a curse. Period frames were hand-carved and -gilded, making them unique works of art themselves that merit conservation and repair. Master framers Eli Wilner & Company are sponsoring the first full-funded frame-conservation grant.

The grant includes five different categories, based on the dates of the frames: 18th century, early 19th century, late 19th century, early 20th century, and mid-20th century. Eli Wilner adds, “In addition to frame restoration, the selected institutions will be entitled to a private tour of the Eli Wilner studio during the restoration process.”

With the introduction of the grant opportunity, the company writes, “As part of an ongoing commitment to period frames, Eli Wilner & Company will restore five important American frames in public collections at no cost whatsoever to the institutions. The five frames will be selected from eligible applications by a panel of distinguished jurors from the professional community. Applications will be accepted from museums, historic sites, and other nonprofit cultural institutions.

“Eli Wilner & Company has completed hundreds of complex frame restorations for private collectors and public institutions. Increasingly, curators, dealer, collectors, and aficionados embrace the aesthetic and historical value of period frames. With a 10,000 square foot studio, the Wilner expert carvers, gilders, and mold-makers are able to complete a remarkably wide range of projects, including those that smaller studios cannot accommodate.

“Completed projects from this program include: a replica of a carved and silver gilded early 20th Century American frame for Marsden Hartley’s ‘Alpspitze (Alpine Vista), Mittenwald Road from Gschwandtnerbauer,’ circa 1933, for the Wellin Museum of Art, a replica of a 19th century European frame, applied ornament and gilded, for William Henry Hunt’s ‘Portrait of Mary Bugden Hunt,’ 1827, for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a replica of a shaped and stained American frame for Isabel Bishop’s ‘Double Date Delayed,’ circa 1948, for the Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute.

“Other participants in the 2016 program include: the J.Paul Getty Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the RISD Museum, the New Britain Museum of Art, the Ringling Museum of Art, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Josyln Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the New-York Historical Society, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Krannert Art Museum, and the Museum of the City of New York. The total value of donated frames is over $2,000,000.

“Wilner also recently announced the winners of their unique Museum Frame Restoration Grants, which were adjudicated by prominent art world scholars. These were awarded in five categories based on specific time periods to: the Colby College Museum of Art, the Fenimore Art Museum, the Georgia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Columbia University Libraries.”

To learn more, visit Eli Wilner & Company.

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.

Can you imagine the excitement of acquiring a new work by a modern icon? A Dutch institution just landed this.  You’ll be surprised at who the maker was.

The Het Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch, Holland, recently announced its acquisition of a brilliant watercolor by 19th-century painter Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890). Purchased from a private collection, “The Garden of the Vicarage at Nuenen” is a remarkable glimpse into Van Gogh’s creative mind without his iconic impasto style. Moreover, the piece is thought to be the last known watercolor Van Gogh produced in Nuenen between October and November 1885.

According to the museum, “Vincent van Gogh lived with his parents in the vicarage at Nuenen for nearly a year and a half. The garden behind the vicarage was one of his favorite spots, and he produced a number of works there, some of them very ambitious indeed. This watercolor occupies an important place in Van Gogh’s oeuvre. The purchase of the watercolor fits in with the intention of the province of Noord-Brabant to pursue a more active policy in the coming years to link Van Gogh more explicitly to Brabant. Interestingly, the new acquisition actually depicts one of the Van Gogh cultural heritage sites in Brabant. Het Noordbrabants Museum is the only museum in the southern part of the Netherlands to exhibit original works by Vincent van Gogh. The new acquisition will be added to the display in the Van Gogh pavilion. Owing to its fragility, the watercolor will now be shown only until 19 March 2017.”

To learn more, visit The Het Noordbrabants 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.