By W. JOSEPH FULTON; from The Magazine ANTIQUE, August 1980. As in the rest of the United States, landscape painting as such seems to have received much slower acceptance in New Orleans than portrait painting; it was not really established here until the late 1860’s. We must speak with caution, however, since European artist-chroniclers accompanied expeditions to Louisiana …
The National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design, Feb. 1980By Barbara Ball Buff When Philadelphia ceased to be the capital of the United States in 1800 artists who had been attracted to the city by the prospect of portrait commissions from public figures turned to the booming port of New York. There newly wealthy merchants eagerly sought to have their portraits painted and …
Sparkle Plenty
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, July/August 2012 | Tinsel paintings are reverse paintings on glass with crinkled, embossed, or smooth metallic foil applied behind translucent and unpainted areas. The effect is one of shimmering highlights when caught in the reflection of candle- or gaslight. The use of other reflective materials such as mother-of-pearl led to tinsel paintings sometimes being called Oriental, crystal, or …
Folk art rising
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, July/August 2012 | Although the American Folk Art Museum received a great deal of press attention upon the closing of its award-winning building on Fifty-Third Street last year, the really big story was to be found in its immediate resurgence. Beginning with the hugely successful red and white quilt show at the Park Avenue Armory and …
Southern California modernism engages colonial New England
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, July/August 2012 | An advertisement placed by the Los Angeles department store Barker Brothers in the Los Angeles Times on November 13, 1929, records the earliest appearance of Porter Blanchard’s Commonwealth pattern, the first American flatware pattern to embrace modernism in both form and ornament (Fig. 3). Nine months later Barker Brothers featured Commonwealth again, in …
City Barnes
Architecture, by Greg Cerio | from The Magazine ANTIQUES, July/August 2012 | Let’s set aside any recap of the Sturm und Drang that accompanied the move of the Barnes Foundation from its home in suburban Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, to central Philadelphia, as well as the uproar over the legal legerdemain that erased many of the strictly defined codicils in the …
The glitter of Night Hauling: Andrew Wyeth in the 1940s
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, May/June 2012 | How do we account for the strangeness of Andrew Wyeth’s art of the 1940s? How, that is, beyond discerning the surrealist undertones, finding the magic realist affinities, or seeing that Wyeth followed in a Brandywine tradition whose oddity was firmly established by Howard Pyle-lone pirates on desolate shores; magicians and curly-shoed dwarves; Revolutionary …
Past, Present, and Future at the Huntington
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, May/June 2012 | Its name, the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, pretty well covers what this singular institution in San Marino, California, is all about. But it hardly begins to tell the story. The creation of Henry E. Huntington, a man with forward-looking business sense and retrospective tastes in art and literature, the Huntington today is …
Captain Elias Pelletreau, Long Island Silversmith, Part 1
By MABEL C. WEAKS; from The Magazine ANTIQUES, May 1931. Southampton, Long Island, is the place where Captain Elias Pelletreau was born, May 31, 1726. There, today, in the old cemetery, may be seen an ancient brown tombstone thus inscribed: “On Memory of Capt. Elias Pelletreau who died Nov. 2, 1810 in the 85, year of his age.” That he …
Talking Antiques
Nine leaders in the field discuss the changing antiques and fine arts market. Jane Nylander, preservationist The past speaks to Jane Nylander. She has been translating its messages for decades as curator at Old Sturbridge Village, director of Strawbery Banke, and former president of Historic New England. Are we currently losing ground in our commitment to preserve and conserve our …