Upcoming auctions

Editorial Staff Art, Calendar

October 22   Prints & Multiples at Bonhams, San Francisco, CA    bonhams.com October 24   Fine American and European Painting, Drawings, and Sculpture at Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers, Milford, CT    shannons.com October 25   Works of Art, Rarities, and Collectibles, online     auctionata.com October 28   Fine European Furniture and Decorative Arts at Bonhams, San Francisco, CA    bonhams.com October 30   Old Master through Modern Prints …

New Light on the Old Masters

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, September/October 2013. In its ceremony and its symbolism, the staircase that leads up to the Metro­politan Museum’s galleries of Old Mas­ter paintings is one of the grandest theatrical experiences that New York has to offer. There are elevators, of course, and an escalator has been discreetly tucked away on the left. But to use them is …

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 …

Clare Leighton’s

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, January/February 2011 | In 1948 Josiah Wedgwood and Sons commissioned printmaker and author Clare Leighton to make wood engravings for a set of twelve plates depicting New England industries. Leighton was in many ways a perfect choice with strong appeal to audiences in both England and the United States. She had established her reputation in Britain …

Parisian jewelry and American patrons, real and fictional

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By SHIRLEY BURY; from The Magazine ANTIQUES, April 1992. The formidable skill of Parisian jewelers in interpreting the work of innovative designers was the prime cause of their international popularity. Although craftsmen elsewhere practiced the late eighteenth-century technique of open-backed, or à jour, setting, which allowed light to refract and reflect through the stones, greatly enhancing their brilliance, the contrast …

The jewelry of René Lalique

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By GEOFFREY C. MUNN; from The Magazine ANTIQUES, June 1987. Even if the word genius was used as sparingly as it should be, the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century jeweler René Lalique would always be so described. Rather than a craftsman with a leaning toward the artistic, he was an accomplished artist who chose to express himself primarily in …

John Trumbull’s portrait of Alexander Hamilton

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A full-length portrait by the celebrated Revolutionary-era painter John Trumbull of Alexander Hamilton, then secretary of the treasury under President George Washington, has joined the permanent collections of both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, thanks to a gift from the painting’s former owner, the global wealth manager and investment bank Credit Suisse. Each …

Pictures within pictures: Photographs of American folk paintings, 1840-1880

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, September/October 2013. Early photographs of Ameri­can folk paintings constitute a unique archive of works by both recognized and unknown artists,1 frequently even preserving a visual record of otherwise unknown paintings. A large number of early daguerreotypists practiced this lucra­tive work at a time when photography afforded Americans their first opportunity to have accurate copies of works …

Subject and object: The collection of Philip Pearlstein

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, July/August 2013. The arcane logic that unites the naked human form with a metal fan, a duck decoy, and an inflatable King Tut effigy may not seem self-evident to the average art lover: but for the past generation, these two subsets of creation have come together in the paintings of Philip Pearlstein. An avid collector of …