american art

When Hudson River School artist Jervis McEntee’s wife Gertrude died in October 1878 at the age of 44 of an unknown illness, it left a gaping hole in his life. They were married in 1854. Early on, they lived in an idyllic cottage on the McEntee family property overlooking the town of Rondout, New York (now Kingston). From their windows they could see the Catskill Mountains to the north and the Hudson River to the east. While Jervis worked on his art, Gertrude planted rose bushes around the cottage, played the piano, and sang: "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls," "There you’ll ...

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The Los Angeles Art Show is at the LA Convention Center through Sunday, January 22, 2012.  
      We are featuring Judith Shahn’s Back Yards, Greenwich Village, 1948, and a group of Anne Ryan paintings and works on paper. In an inaugural view, Theodore Haupt’s Three Graces, 1941, pairs with Acrobats, 1937.  Also hanging are Bernard Rosenquit’s Playroom, 1946, and drawings and prints by Peggy Bacon and Her Circle -- Isabel Bishop, Wanda Gag, Reginald Marsh, and Marguerite Zorach.          The fair seems to have ...

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Some folks like to do things in a big way.  They enjoy the spotlight, and blossom with a little extra attention.  We’re sort of that way, too, so we understand.  Even when it comes to selling an antique or collectible, we think it’s always more fun to make a splash.  Why do anything the conventional way when you can make it fun? Do you remember that Super Hero Auction we had last year?  We had national news coverage for that event, plus plenty of local headlines and spots on our local news networks.  Our own John discovered he looked good in ...

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There was a time when no amusement park or playground was complete without a carousel ride. Children and even adults could take pleasure in a whimsical ride atop an array of horses and other fanciful creatures carved by the most skilled artisans of the day. Though quality examples of these nostalgic masterpieces come few and far between on the market, that doesn't seem to deter the demand for these magnificent figures. The carousel reached its golden age in early 20th-century America, and lasted until the Great Depression of 1929. This roughly 25-year period saw the creation of carousel ...

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  I recently came across this rather amusing photograph of me while cleaning out a drawer of old photographs. I find it comical that at the age of three I possessed the strength to lift what appears to be a sixteen pound gander.  Upon seeing this photo, the first question that came to my mind was "Could I have ever ended up in a non-waterfowl related field?" With an avid hunter as a father and the past Chairman of National Audubon Society as my uncle and Godfather, the sporting field was a profession I couldn't refuse. Little has changed in the last forty years, I still love ...

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I recently finished a commission for a woman in my writing class. Connie is a person who is overflows with enthusiasm for people and life. She bubbles over when she is excited about a topic and she can cry in an instant at something that is sad. Well... She wanted me to create an oil painting of her sister and her sister's two daughters sitting on a bench in Laguna Beach. The mother lost her husband when the girls were just babies and has struggled to work and do her best at raising the girls alone in Taiwan. It turned out that the mother did quite well financially but in the stress ...

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Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention is on view at the Art Institute through January 15, 2012. A Chicago native, Goldberg is known for the Marina City, Raymond Hilliard Homes, and River City projects. As both an engineer and architect, Bauhaus-trained Goldberg envisioned re-invigorated downtowns with multi-use buildings. He created urban communities utilizing industrially innovative concepts such as prefabricated modules and cantilevered construction. The Astor Tower of the early 1960s is contemporary to Marina City. Goldberg also designed private homes, furniture, ...

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For the Hudson River School artists there was no more sacred place than Kaaterskill Clove, the rocky, forested nave into which Thomas Cole and successive aspirants trekked and clambered, paint box and umbrella in hand. The artists rarely came alone. Working in twos or threes outdoors in nature, they probably talked art, shared tips and encouragement, or sometimes just painted together in silence, listening to what William Cullen Bryant referred to as the "still voice" coming from "Earth and her waters, and the depths of air." Today that "still voice" speaks to a new generation of young ...

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In her New York Times review of November 4, 2011, Roberta Smith wrote: (Ryan’s) subjects include bathers, reclining nudes, still lifes and juggling clowns. Most are implicitly nocturnal, which is especially effective in stark images of apartment buildings and in two examples of “The Argument.” Here two scrawled figures confront each other against a cragged, gray background that, suggesting an urban wall, recasts them as giant graffiti. These are physically obstreperous works, shot through with unsettling emotions.   Link to entire article: ...

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Every once in a while, a painting comes into our gallery that just knocks you off your feet. Painted in luscious colors, this large scale 48" x 48" work is a masterpiece of composition and execution. Created around 1919, at the height of the popularity of American Impressionism, George Ames Aldrich (1872-1941), pushes the envelope to produce a thoroughly modernist image of a traditional Cape Ann theme, the busy docks of Gloucester harbor. The influence of the European modernists first seen by many American artists at the famous Armory Show of 1913, ushered in one of the most creative ...

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  If antiques are items torn from history, then auctions are the vehicles that place them once again within the context of personal history.  As surely as Curtis Jere's fanciful wire sculpture "Three Birds in Flight" or Nathan Wasserberger's nude on blue reflect today's sensibilities, two 19th C. French bronzes-Jean-Paul Aube's "Allegorie de le Pientre" and Auguste Peiffer's Allegorical Bronze Group-echo with a timeless beauty.  It will be a joy to see all find new owners. Surveying the wealth of designer modern furniture in our gallery at 80 East 11th Street, I can almost see the set of six ...

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While sifting through a large box lot of art dropped off at the Larchmont, NY gallery by what is known in the trade as a “picker,” Nelia Moore, Art Specialist/Auctioneer at Clarke Auction spotted a beautifully executed but very dirty painting on panel of a woman in a veil. After dusting it off and studying the painting she spotted the Prendergast Paris signature on the lower right of the panel. The quality and style of the small oil lead both Mr. Clarke, auction owner, and Ms. Moore to believe they had made a very important discovery, especially relevant in a time of economic gloom.  ...

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I heard that the other day.  "Art is back".  It was said so matter of factly that I nodded my head as if to say, "Yes".  But really, where did it go?  Or maybe the question is not where but for whom.  It appears that the New York interior designer crowd are discovering or re-discovering painting.  They are touting the benefits of owning art.  How a painting can complete the room.  And this is pushing sales.   I've always thought that a painting can make the room.  It sets the tone and gives you something to work with in designing the remainder of the space.  But more than that, it gives to ...

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A few days ago, a Chinese collector came into the gallery to inspect a piece of Orientalia. He brought a black light, a jeweler's loop and a translator. After thoroughly inspecting the item, the collector remarked that the nuances and subtleties were all but missing on the Internet. That's why Robert and I spend so much time staging the Roland Auction exhibitions. The preview that opens Thursday, October 13 features more than 400 lots in the October 15 sale. Catalog descriptions are, at best, curatorial and academic. We don't editorialize. We don't "sell" in the catalog you view on ...

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A gem of a Harvey Joiner painting is showcased on the Payne Fine Arts website this season. Joiner, a native of the Clark County community of Charlestown in Southern Indiana, was largely self-taught and came of age artistically during the high tide of American Tonalism. According to "Baird's History of Clark County, Indiana," Joiner was born in 1852 and exhibited an interest in and a talent for art from an early age. He traveled the Mississippi River as a young man, sketching scenes of life in Louisiana and ending up in St. Louis, Missouri, where he started doing portraits under the ...

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From one owner to another, from exhibition to auction, through years of adulation and years of neglect, a painting can endure a life of its own. Some lives are more exciting than others. Such is the case with Albert Bierstadt’s Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, a monumental work measuring over five feet by eight feet in the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art. How it arrived at the Alabama museum is a story involving shady finances, public charity, and a historic escape from destruction. Bierstadt painted Looking Down Yosemite Valley in 1865 toward the end of the Civil War. ...

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Judith Shahn (1929-2009) was born in Paris to the artist Ben Shahn and his wife, Tillie Goldstein. She lived in New York City and spent summers in Truro, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  As a small child Shahn painted alongside her father and as a young artist she took life classes with the painter Moses Soyer. She attended Olivet College, Michigan, and graduated from Mexico City College in 1949. She was a painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and graphic artist. Her drawings appeared in The New Yorker magazine from 1958 to1992, as well as in Harpers, The Nation, Gourmet, and others.  Starting with ...

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If I had to pick three great names in 20th Century design, I think they would be Frank Lloyd Wright, George Nakashima and Isamu Noguchi.  I was coming of age when they had already achieved a certain agelessness. Their names and work continue to endure.  We're lucky to have items by each in our September 17 auction. Frank Lloyd Wright's last project was the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue. Who can forget Isamu Noguchi's sets for the Martha Graham modern dance company? And Nakashima's offspring continue in his tradition. I won't say Roland's looks like a museum these days, but when you see ...

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The show is such a stunner -- everything looks wonderful. The Edward Laning 1931 painting of 14th Street is an entire universe.  The Alexander Brook and the Isabel Bishop are just beautiful -- both are in the fabulous Salon Gallery. (Bishop's Nude, 1934, is modern before she was consciously modern.) Peggy Bacon, Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Fiene, Katherine Schmidt, Arthur B. Davies, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Georgina Klitgaard  (Mrs. Kai Klitgaard), Katherine Schmidt, Marguerite Zorach, and Max Weber, are just a few of the others in the show.  

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Have you ever heard that?  Have you ever said that?  Well, we won't be taking names, so don't worry.  Maybe you've asked yourself, "what is abstract art?".  Here's my take on it.  It is emotional.  It is strong.  It is powerful.  Abstract art is more than splashes of color, squiggly lines and paint splatters.  It is spontaneity.  It is the raw emotion of the artist presented for all who dare to look.  It is the visual representation of a feeling, or mix of feelings.  An artist strives to represent something without external likenesses.  The thing is not represented in realistic terms, but in ...

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"My dear McEntee…"On August 28, 1863, Sanford Robinson Gifford wrote to Jervis McEntee from a book shop at Saratoga Spa in northern New York State (the original letter is digitized on the Smithsonian Archives of American Art website). Gifford had recently returned from his final tour of duty with the New York Seventh Regiment in the Civil War. He was attempting to gather his friends, including artists Richard William Hubbard and Worthington Whittredge, for a sketching tour of northern New York.  His letter is a revealing glimpse of the affection and humor that characterized the close ...

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Have I mentioned that I am quite good at buying unsigned paintings?  Yes?  Oh, wonderful then you know already.  For those of you who are new to my blog, here's a little backstory: I am always buying things that I know very little about.  There.  I said it.  It's part challenge and part gamble.  It's what makes the antiques business fun.  Reaching out and trying your hand at something new.  This painting is no different.  Actually, it is different.  Very different... So, I had just given birth to our second child a week earlier.  A dealer friend of mine had called to see how we were all ...

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 As I write this, the Roland Auction team is staging the preview for our monthly auction on August 13.  As you know, we have two showrooms in  our 80 East 11th Street, NYC, headquarters. Both are worth taking a look at during the Preview on Thursday, August 11 and Friday, August 12 because the Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Summer Auction is loaded! As usual, we're putting art up front and leading with Israeli abstractist Zvi Mairovich. The floral still life is characterized by strong contrasts between dark and light. Mairovich was a member of the New Horizons movement anad won the Dizenoff prize of ...

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  In Holland Cotter’s August 5th New York Times review of our Peggy Bacon & Her Circle show, he referred to the “distinctly geeky male students lurking in the background” of Bacon’s 1918 drypoint, Lunch at the League. Bacon puts herself and two friends, Dorothy Varian and Doris Rosenthal, in the print as well. Actually, he began “Historically, one of the most ephemeral aspects of art is the social environment that generates it, the networks of artists coming together and drifting apart.” Three of the League’s (and Bacon’s) teachers are represented: George Bellows, Kenneth Hayes Miller, ...

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Given the enormous interest Fitz Henry (formerly Hugh) Lane’s artwork has generated over the years, it is perhaps only natural that little attention has been paid by scholars on Lane’s personal life. Further complicating matters is the fact that Lane left few artifacts beyond his artwork by which his daily life could be understood and “fleshed out.” With only a handful of private letters, newspaper clippings and reminiscences with which to guide us, an image of Lane has formed over time, one of a man who was dour, taciturn and lonesome. Contemporary quotes describing him as “nervous, ...

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