Although Rachel Ruysch is not exactly a household name, she is hardly anonymous: while she lived, she was an honored painter in the Old Masters tradition, and she has had her admirers ever since her death in 1750, at the age of eighty-three.
Objects: Enmeshed in Luxury
Unable to stop a spear but singularly effective at getting people to stop and stare, metal mesh handbags were all the rage at the beginning of the twentieth century.
When the Bulb Bubble Burst
400 years ago, the world experienced its first major financial crisis — and Dutch “Tulip Mania” was to blame.
Four Decades of Olde Hope
It may be worth noting on the fortieth anniversary of one of the treasures of the American antiques business, that the portraits, painted furniture, weathervanes, and quilts they purvey at Olde Hope Antiques are, in an important sense, emblems of the owners’ belief in bedrock values of our democracy.
A New Home for American Classicism
For decades, Kelly and Randall Schrimsher have acquired the best of the best in early nineteenth-century American furniture. Now, much of their collection has a period-appropriate showcase in Charleston, South Carolina.
Trail of Tiles
A fantasia in ceramic, Leighton House in London testifies to the decorative sense of its namesake builder, artist Frederic Leighton, and the craftsmanship of William De Morgan.
Exhibitions: Tales from the Other Side
For the unbeliever, the skeptic, the misanthrope, few movements could elicit greater disdain than the spiritualism that arose in the late 1840s and swept through American society into the 1920s.
Exhibitions: Hold the World in Your Hands
That’s the idea behind a new exhibition at Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: John Smart: Virtuoso in Miniature, on view to January 4, 2026.
Exhibitions: Due North at the Met
A show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrates (if a year late) the 250th anniversary of the birth of Caspar David Friedrich in 1774.
Swing City
The keen eye and advocacy of New York collector and retailer Kathryn Hausman have served to breathe new life into the arts of the Jazz Age, a century on.