Children’s toys: The New-York Historical Society, 200 years

Editorial Staff Art

By Amy a. Weinstein; originally published in January 2005. Appealing to the imagination of children of all ages, the toy collection of the New-York Historical Society offers a miniature window into nineteenth-century American family life. The approximately three thousand objects that constitute the collection are made of wood, metal, paper, ceramic, and cloth and trace the social, economic, political, and …

Chinese botanical paintings for the export market

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By Karina H. Corrigan; from The Magazine ANTIQUES, June 2004. A single stem of chrysanthemum explodes off the page shown in Plate I. This exquisite Chinese export painting was executed abut 1823, two years after this variety of chrysanthemum, the so-called quilled orange, had been introduced into English gardens.1 Chinese plants were first brought to Europe in the late seventeenth century, but …

Dealer profile: Lawrence Steigrad and Peggy Stone

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In 1989 Lawrence Steigrad and his wife and business partner, Peggy Stone, began dealing in Old Master paintings backed by only a thousand dollars and a few credit cards. For the first year, in case things didn’t work out, Stone continued to work as a cataloguer at William Doyle, returning home to help with research and catalogu­ing late into the …

Talking past and present

Editorial Staff Art, Furniture & Decorative Arts

The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, may be this country’s oldest continuing museum…or it may not be. Given its other distinctions, that hardly matters. Founded in 1799 by the wealthy entrepreneurs of Salem whose merchant ships sailed to India, Japan, Africa, China, the Pacific Islands, and beyond, it began with the curious idea of presenting the citizens of Salem …

On the money

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By Laura Beach Yorkshire calendar and almanac Calendar and almanac, probably York or Ripon, Yorkshire, England, c. 1425. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on parchment, each page 6 by 4 1/8 inches. WHY:  Priced in the six figures by Les Enluminures of Paris, New York, and Chicago, this calendar and almanac of about 1425, with prognostications in Latin, illustrates the English …

Life Studies: Edward Hopper’s drawings

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, September/October 2013. The hope of the artist is to resist interpre­tation. Emerson said that “to be great is to be misunderstood” and, pressed to explain his troubles, Hamlet cried to his inter­locutors, “You would pluck out the heart of my mystery.” Among contemporary artists, Jasper Johns has made a creed of reticence, and Edward Hopper was …

A long time gone: Art, the Kennedy years, and the Hotel Texas

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, May/June 2013 | On the eve of President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy’s visit to Dallas in 1963 a group of Fort Worth collectors gathered sixteen mas­terworks of European and American art and installed them in the presidential suite in the Hotel Texas. Fifty years later their gesture is bound to strike us as astonishing, improbable, …

Maine destination

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, May/June 2013 | Sharon Corwin remembers her first introduction to Maine in 2003. It was April. And dark. “Moose Crossing” signs punctuated the indistinct landscape as she headed north on I-95. In the light of day, Corwin, a Berkeley-trained art historian who came to the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville as its first Lunder …

Reverie on a pair of Japanese screens

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  By Michael R. Cunningham; from the Magazine ANTIQUES, July 2001 The idea of landscape in the West has historically been aligned with geography. The appearance of a given earthbound place in a painting or photograph normally initiates for the Western viewer an immediate response of physical orientation. We wish to understand the particular environmental conditions and perhaps the terrain …

SARAH GOODRIDGE

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By AGNES M. DODS; from The Magazine ANTIQUES, May 1947. THE WORK OF SARAH GOODRIDGE, one of the lesser known miniature painters of New England, has been increasing steadily in popularity for some years. Although her claim to fame rests mainly on her miniature of Gilbert Stuart, a diligent search of the countryside has brought to light many excellent likenesses from …