A powerful exhibition looks at World War I through the lens of American Art.
A Fighting Chance
The Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia opened on April 19th.
Mr. Boyd and Mr. Miles: A New York State portrait artist deciphered
Early nineteenth-century American portraiture includes a number of small profile likenesses in oil, pastel, and watercolor by artists such as C. B. J. F. de St. Mémin, James Sharples, Gerrit Schipper, and Jacob Eichholtz. All follow the European fashion for profiles, namely emulating those on Greek vases and Roman coinage, and are thus fitting for the neoclassical motifs and styles …
Life Studies: Edward Hopper’s drawings
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 …
Grandma Moses comes home to Galerie St. Etienne
When the Museum of Modern Art hosted an exhibition of contemporary unknown artists in 1939 one artist to be discovered was Anna Mary Robertson Moses. Beloved as much for her sweet persona as for her winsome paintings, the self-taught folk artist from Eagle Bridge, New York, was 79 years old at the time. Luckily, for the sake of American art …
Antiques season in New York
Winter Antiques Show This year’s fifty-sixth annual Winter Antiques Show will feature six new exhibitors—including two who specialize in early twentieth-century decorative arts, New York’s Liz O’Brien and Lost City Arts—to complement the always stunning array that is the show’s signature. Its loan exhibitions are also always remarkable in the way they transform a very small space into a lively …
Ralph D. Curtis: A nineteenth-century folk artist identified
November 2009 | In 1973 at an auction in Ellenville, New York, an early nineteenth-century portrait of a woman wearing a lace bonnet, holding a red book, and seated in a high-back chair sold for what was then an unusually high price of nine thousand dollars. The picture, painted on tulipwood, was unsigned and is believed to have come from …
This Week’s Top Lots: May 15 – 22
* Prices were down at the May 15 sale of American and European paintings and prints at Skinner in Boston. The top lot was Picasso’s Portrait of Ambrose Vollard with His Cat, which sold for $308,500 (estimate $450,000-650,000), and the next highest prices paid were $118,500 for the Henri Matisse drawing Seated Woman in Oriental Dress (estimate $150,000-250,000), and $41,475 …
ANTIQUES authors meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
In our article “Sarah DeHart, Early American Silhouettist” in the September 2008 issue of The Magazine ANTIQUES, we discussed at length a large collage of silhouettes and word puzzles made by DeHart that is in the collection of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the United States Department of State in Washington and had never before been interpreted. About a month …
A Director’s Vision: The Legacy of Anne d’Harnoncourt
To celebrate the memory of its former director, Anne d’Harnoncourt, the Philadelphia Museum has arranged a special tour through its galleries, A Director’s Vision (on view through July 19), which highlights special acquisitions made throughout d’Harnoncourt’s tenure at the museum—as curator from 1982, and as director from 1982 until her sudden death in 2008. Her colleagues at the museum have …