Mr. Boyd and Mr. Miles: A New York State portrait artist deciphered

Art

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

Editorial Staff Art

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

Editorial Staff Art

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

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

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

Editorial Staff Art

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 …