We've Moved!

Please visit our new blog site at http://spanierman.wordpress.com/

We hope you continue to keep up with our latest news and research.

Thank you!

Art Forum Review on Dan Christensen

Jenn McMenemy

In Dan Christensen news, Art Forum's November 2009 issue has a great review on the Christensen show organized by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Dan Christensen: Forty Years of Painting was on view at Kemper from May 15-Aug. 30, 2009 and is now on view at Sheldon Museum of Art from October 23, 2009 thru January 31, 2010.

Sheldon has a great podcast (about 5 minutes) with Sharon L. Kennedy, Sheldon's Curator of Cultural and Civic Engagement, talking about Christensen’s early years in Nebraska and Kansas City. You can download it here or visit their site to listen.

And if you're a Christensen plaid fan, there's a show on view thru Nov. 14th at Spanierman Modern featuring 14 of his plaid paintings. My personal favorite is Dark Tulip, 1970. Dan Christensen: The Plaid Paintings

Video: Peter Poskas on "Prelude to Spring, New Milford, Connecticut"

Jenn McMenemy

A few weeks ago we invited artist Peter Poskas in for a brief video interview with Ira. As part of the "video team" it was a pleasure meeting Peter and his wife, Jan, and a treat to hear him talk about one of his recent works, Prelude to Spring, New Milford, Connecticut.  It was nice hearing of his experiences painting the farms of Connecticut, especially the story of the only refusal he's gotten on a farm he wanted to paint.

Opening Photos! Peter Poskas: Capturing Light

Thanks to all those who helped make last night's opening reception for Peter Poskas: Capturing Light a success!

Photos from the event:

Ira Spanierman and Peter Poskas 
shown in front of

Orchardman’s House, (Washington Connecticut), 2008
Oil on panel, 24-1/2 x 33-3/4 inches

Opening-night crowd

the painting on the far wall is  
Prelude to Spring, New Milford, Connecticut, 2009
Oil on panel, 24-1/2 x 30-1/2 inches

Re-seeing John Twachtman’s Little Giant

Lisa N. Peters

On walking into Ira’s office the other day, I noticed John Twachtman’s Little Giant (ca. 1900) facing his desk. This made me wonder why Ira would choose this painting for this spot. We know that the work depicts Gloucester’s Rocky Neck dock, where the ferry “Little Giant” made an intermediary stop on its route between Gloucester and East Gloucester. However, aside from the fascinating history of the subject, and Ira’s longstanding admiration for Twachtman’s art, I think Ira may have chosen to have this painting meet his gaze because it captures a particular moment and mood.

Painted with dark strokes applied with the scraping force of an action painter, the dock in the foreground stands out from the soft Whistlerian atmosphere of the rest of the work. Out of a pleasant recreational landscape, we’ve zoned in on this dilapidated structure that seems out of the way, isolated from the highly developed far shore. Sloping too steeply for a comfortable descent to the water, the Rocky Neck dock seems a place left behind by progress. It evokes an image of something old and beginning to deteriorate while newness grows up around it. The ferry still stops here, with passengers aboard, but we don’t see any waiting or disembarking. A few empty rowboats rest in the dark green shadows beneath the dock’s ramp, huddling as if to fend off corrosion due to lack of use. The diagonal of the shadows draws our eye to the ferry, making us aware that it’s in the process of moving on.

The painting seems to ask: what is our relationship with things that time has passed by? There’s both vitality and some sadness to the sprightly yet seemingly wobbly dock. It’s still here, but we imagine that soon it won’t be. The painting puts us in touch with ourselves and the world around us, and that may be why it stands opposite Ira’s desk.

Read more for information on the John Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné.

Research in Progress: Helen Wessells

Carol Lowrey

With Veteran's Day approaching, I’d like to showcase a patriotic painting we have in the gallery. It’s entitled The Negro Troop, pictured here, and it depicts a group of African-American soldiers making their way along a street, the Stars and Stripes held aloft by one of the men. Some female admirers tag along, distracting several of the marchers. Where is the scene meant to take place? I’m at a loss to tell you because the ambiguous background makes it unclear as to whether the parade is in a rural town or a large city. The subject matter, however, is a reminder that during the first half of the twentieth century many African-American men proudly served their country, despite the discrimination that continued in American society and the armed forces; their involvement in both World War I and II led to future reforms within the U.S. military.

This striking genre piece (the medium is tempera on panel) was painted in 1936 by Helen Wessells, an artist whose career remains unstudied thus far. According to the archivist at the Art Students League of New York, she studied there from 1922 to 1927, working under influential painters such as George Bridgman, Allen Tucker, Kenneth Hayes Miller and Thomas Hart Benton. In The Negro Troop, she works in a painterly representational style that links her to the Fourteenth Street School in New York (of which Miller was the leader), who portrayed modern, everyday themes with techniques inspired by the Old Masters. What’s particularly impressive about The Negro Troop is the way in which Wessells employs a firm, almost caricaturist method in rendering the faces of several of the protagonists, her deft touch capturing the individual facial expressions and excited demeanor of several of the women.

Biographical accounts, exhibition records and newspaper reviews I’ve located thus far indicate that Wessells exhibited in New York City––at venues such as the G. R. D. Studio, the Midtown Galleries, Contemporary Arts and the Whitney Museum of American Art–– at various times during the late 1920s and 1930s. This elusive painter seems to have disappeared from the Manhattan art scene after about 1940, but it’s obvious, from The Negro Troop, that she was a figure specialist––skilled in translating the emotions, actions and energy of ordinary people into paint––and her work can be situated within the tradition of American Scene painting and Depression-era Realism. If anyone out there can enlighten me further on Wessells (her surname sometimes appears with one ‘l” or she’s referred to as “Helen E. Wessells”), please contact me at the gallery.

Can Technology Topple Art Forgeries?

Jenn McMenemy
Yes, but it needs help!

Appraisers Workshops highlights an interesting article in the NY Times on the use of technology in identifying forged artworks. Being the tech geek that I am, I can't help but share it with you.

Barbara Wall interviews Eric Postma, a professor of artificial intelligence at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Moreover, Postma is an expert in the digital analysis of Vincent Van Gogh works. Using complex algorithms and applying it to a database of Van Gogh paintings, his software is able to identify a complex pattern of brushstrokes that is unique to the artist. (Sounds like a brushstroke "fingerprint" of sorts.) Here Postma describes how the process has been used to identify fake Van Goghs:

Working in cooperation with the Van Gogh Museum and the Kröller-Müller Museum, both located in the Netherlands, we have been able to demonstrate the accuracy of digital analysis. A painting depicting the sea at Saintes-Maries, a Van Gogh fake sold by the German art dealer Otto Wacker, fooled experts for years, but our software easily identified the work as suspect. It had too many prominent brush strokes.... Our methodology was also tested on a U.S. television show, “Nova Science,” where we were easily able to distinguish one fake Van Gogh painting from five genuine works by the artist.

I find it unfortunate that this method is not being more encouraged in the art world. Postma continues:

Notable Pictures, Inspiring Chairs

Katherine Bogden  

I’m an avid reader, and because sometimes I find the couch a little too comfortable I’ve been daydreaming about purchasing a modest chair, which I think is just what I need to keep my eyes on the page.

Until this week, I had been ogling chairs in decorator’s magazines, store displays, and those quick glimpses through the windows of the handsomely decorated brownstones of my Brooklyn neighborhood.

And then, I found myself  jealously eyeing the chairs in some of the paintings in the gallery’s collection. Here are a few I've noticed:

Nicolai Cikovsky, Flowers on a Chair

(oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches)

The blue-green chair in this picture expresses the painting’s simple and homey ambiance. Its  square legs and flat seat, which hold a vase of wildflowers, suggest stability. The touches of green throughout the picture, coupled with the portrait on the far wall, create a sense of life even without a human presence. The color of the chair draws in the those of the lush growth outside the window. Like the overall simplicity of the composition, the plainness of the wooden chair appeals to me, and its hard, straight back would certainly help me stay awake when reading.

 

William Glackens, Unfinished Nude

(1920s, oil on canvas, 32 x 26 inches)

Glackens’s handling of the chair-fabric in this picture is soft and delicate. The bold orange and plush quilting suggest both luxury and comfort. Although the sitter is the focus of the painting, the chair is not lost, it works to both frame the model and set her apart from the simple background. (Although the chair’s armlessness might present a problem for reading, as sometimes I like to rest a book just-so, or prop an elbow on the armrest after a long day.)

Gershon Benjamin, Lady on the Green Chair

(ca. 1935, pastel on brown paper, 27 x 20 inches)

The straight-back Victorian-style piece in this painting is upholstered with a green, patterned material which could seem overly formal, yet the slouched, relaxed posture of the sitter suggests to me the chair is both snug and a space to relax. Like the chair above it isn't the focus here, but is essential to the composition—it seems inevitable that the sitter has found this particular chair to sit in at this particular moment.

—For more information, or too see additional work by each artist, click on the artists' names—

Peter Poskas

Lisa N. Peters

A second exhibition at Spanierman Gallery of the work of Peter Poskas will be opening November 5. The thirty paintings on view—images of the rural farms of Connecticut and the sun-washed coasts of Maine--are quiet worlds that we feel we can enter, due to perspectives that involve us and a subtle, measured, and carefully observed sense of light that expresses the specific moment. Poskas preserves on canvas places that are threatened by development. At the same time, he conveys optimism about the perpetuation of the past by depicting places where structures from a past era have been lovingly maintained—old parts have been repaired rather than ripped out and new ones have been integrated seamlessly with old ones.

Betty Parsons in Maine

Katherine Bogden 

I cannot remember a time in my life when I wasn’t deeply in love with the state of Maine. There is something in the wild, coastal waters and thick, old-growth woods that instantly casts away the urbanite in me and calls forth my rural roots. For someone working in the field of 19th and 20th century arts, this is probably a good thing, for countless painters have traveled to our easternmost state to paint and take in the area’s plethora of natural beauty.

These works are, for the most part, easy to recognize—sometimes almost down to the exact location. There are others, however, that represent the state in a less literal manner. One such painting is Moonlight—Maine by Betty Parsons. Intrigued by this dramatic painting, we recently decided to see what more there was to know about Betty Parsons and my favorite state.

Although it is well-known Parsons traveled widely, we didn’t know if she had spent extensive time in Maine or merely passed through. What first clued us in that she might have spent extensive time there was a very brief quote from a 1975 New Yorker profile written by Calvin Tompkins in which Parsons states:

After Europe, I went out to Wyoming for three weeks and stayed with my friend Hope Williams, who has a ranch near Cody. I did a lot of painting there. And then I was at my cottage in Maine for two weeks.

That she owned a cottage in Maine certainly suggested she spent more than passing time in the state! We poured back over monographs on the artist, countless articles and interviews, determined to find more on this “cottage in Maine.” And yet all we found were two small connections to Maine: a review from 1957 which mentions the artist’s images of “The Maine woods,” and a photograph in Lee Hall’s Betty Parsons: Artists, Dealer, Collector with the caption: Calvert Coggeshall, Betty Parsons, and Jack Tilton, Newcastle, Maine, 1977 (pictured here).

After perusing even more documentation, we became worried we would never find more on this mysterious “cottage in Maine.” It wasn’t until weeks later we finally thought to contact Gwyn Metz, a close friend of Parsons’s who had helped us in the past. Gwyn has always been a generous resource on the artist, and this time was no different—she was full of answers: not only had Parsons visited Maine, but she had in fact owned a cottage in Sheepscot, which is located a short distance from Newcastle, where two of Parsons’s good friends also had residences—Calvert Coggeshall and Pauline Fenno. Coggeshall, it turns out, was one of the reasons Parsons first began to visit the state sometime in the late 1950s, and Fenno was the one to sell Parsons a “cute little house” in need of renovation sometime after. Although Gwyn remembers Parsons using her Maine home primarily as a rental property, she assured us the artist made frequent visits to the state, visits which continued until the very last decade of her life.

Autumn Landscape: The Tonalist and Impressionist Point of View

John Francis Murphy
Autumnal Landscape
(possibly Arkville, NY), 1898Carol Lowrey

My recent blog on Emile Gruppé’s Vermont scenes (coupled with a pleasant drive upstate), has prompted some further musings on autumn landscapes by American painters. However, this time, I’m going slightly back in time to peruse some Tonalist and Impressionist pictures from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Charles Warren Eaton
November, Montclair, ca. 1890sThe writer George Eliot described autumn as a “delicious” time of year and rightly so, in view of its colorful foliage and golden atmosphere, which appealed to artists with a love of nature and an intuitive approach to painting. This was certainly true of J. Francis Murphy (1853-1921), Charles Warren Eaton (1857-1937) and Bruce Crane (1857-1937) , who were associated with Tonalism, a very suggestive mode of painting that became fashionable during the 1880s. Preoccupied with conveying mood, Tonalists liked autumn because it was a transitional time of year––a much more poetic season than summer. Painted at contemplative times of day such as dawn and dusk and in varying types of weather, their fall landscapes typically feature isolated rural locales which they depicted with a limited palette of harmonious colors and with expressive brushwork that made forms blurry and indistinct––an approach that imbued their work with a gentle lyricism and a feeling of relaxation. I’m not at all surprised that Tonalist landscapes found their way into the parlors and dining rooms of contemporary collectors such as William T. Evans and George Hearn, providing them with a welcome visual refuge from their harried lives in the New York business world.

Bruce Crane
Autumn Landscape, 1933Tonalism and Impressionism were contemporaneous movements, each reaching its high point in about 1915. You can see the difference between the Tonalist take on autumn and that of the American Impressionists when you compare the works I’ve just mentioned with Willard Metcalf’s (1858-1925) The Red Oak No. 2 (below). Considered one of the finest interpreters of the American countryside (one critic dubbed him the “Poet Laureate” of New England scenery), Metcalf painted this view of a sunlit upland pasture in Cornish, New Hampshire, on a bright day in October of 1911 (the date, title and location are inscribed on the verso of the canvas). With its structured composition and broken brushwork, the painting is, in my opinion, a classic interpretation of autumn in “good old Yankee land,” the lively hues (look at that resplendent shade of blue!) reminding us that, in contrast to the Tonalist emphasis on ambiance, the Impressionists were concerned first and foremost with color and light. Whether you prefer the romantic aesthetic of the Tonalists or the more direct and optimistic Impressionist vision of Metcalf, I’m sure you agree with me that these painters all reveled in the beauty of autumn––a season that’s always been popular with those who wielded a brush.

Willard Leroy Metcalf
The Red Oak (No. 2), 1911

Emile A. Gruppé and the Autumn Splendor of Vermont

Carol Lowrey

Here we are in the midst of autumn, a time of year when “October’s poplars are flaming torches lighting the way to winter.” Penned by Nova Bair, these words immediately bring to mind the landscapes of Emile A. Gruppé (1896-1978), a painter I had the opportunity to write about in 2008 when Spanierman Gallery organized a major exhibition of his work (Emile A. Gruppé (1896-1978)). Born in Rochester, New York, Gruppé was the son of the painter Charles P. Gruppé and the brother of the sculptor Karl Gruppé. After studying with his father and with influential teachers such as John F. Carlson and Charles Hawthorne, he went on to establish a reputation for his vigorously rendered portrayals of the harbors of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he settled in 1929. However, Gruppé is also linked with the artistic tradition of Vermont, a region of mountains, lakes and rivers that he visited from the early 1930s and into the 1960s.

Although Gruppé spent a number of winters painting outdoors in the Green Mountain State, he made the majority of his trips in the fall, when dazzling foliage and golden sunshine would transform the countryside into a colorful mosaic of light and color. I love the way he captures this quality in The Hills of Vermont, a painting that also demonstrates his practice of interpreting shapes as broad masses to create what he called “the big effect.”* You see the same approach towards form and color in Old Buttonwood Trees, Vermont (both works date from the 1950s-60s), but here Gruppé takes the opportunity to explore the decorative potential of the buttonwoods––trees being among his favorite motifs and there are certainly plenty of them in Vermont. Look at the way he creates a “tree screen” by allowing the winding branches––replete with the final vestiges of fiery leafage––to move upwards and outside of the canvas, as if seeking the warm rays of the sun. His dynamic brushwork (very much in keeping with his outgoing personality) captures the anatomy of these ancient sentinels and suggests the animation within the natural world, ranging from the fluctuations of sunlight and shadow on the setting to the movement of clouds across the sky. Over the years, many artists have responded to the scenic beauty of Vermont, among them Aldro Thompson Hibbard, Willard Leroy Metcalf and Neil Drevitson; in my opinion, Gruppé’s autumnal views are the most robust and convey the most emotion, revealing his obvious pleasure in the process of painting and his ability evoke a sense of place, time of day and season.

*See his book, Gruppé on Color: Using Expressive Color to Paint Nature, ed. Charles Movalli (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1979), 138.

From the Archives: A Letter from Gershon Benjamin

Katherine Bogden 

Back in 2007-8 I had the great pleasure of assisting with the exhibition and catalogue for Over Seven Decades: The Art of Gershon Benjamin.

From a research standpoint, this was no small undertaking. Benjamin and his wife Zelda left behind no less than nine boxes of (previously unsorted) archive materials, which included everything from reviews clipped from newspapers and magazines to personal letters, professional correspondence, photographs, sketches, award certificates, legal paperwork—and the list goes on.

Although sorting and organizing this material was a tremendous amount of work it was also immensely rewarding. Besides helping us trace Benjamin’s steps from his time in Canada through his New York years and up until his death in Free Acres, New Jersey in 1985, these documents helped answer our more abstract questions: what went on in the mind of the artist, beyond the brush?

Benjamin's letters read like windows through the canvas, giving both tangible evidence of his inspirations (such as the Greek sculptures he discusses below) and what he was after in his work—in Benjamin’s case he was always trying to capture the essence of the object (or as you’ll read in his letter, the “soul”).

I found the letters between Benjamin and Zelda particularly interesting for a number of reasons:

Firstly, they range across his career from before their marriage, when Zelda still lived in Canada, until late in their marriage when they wrote to each other while away—when Zelda traveled with her acting company or Gershon traveled to Gloucester or other places to paint.

Secondly, in many cases because both husband and wife archived so much of their lives we have both Benjamin’s letters to Zelda and Zelda’s letters to Benjamin, providing at times complete conversations.

And lastly, it is in his letters to Zelda that Benjamin often seems the most candid, the most free with his words—and from these we glean what it must have been like to know the artist himself.

I’ve selected a single letter from the archive, from the then-young Benjamin, written to Zelda (the letter is addressed to “Hilda Cohen” which was Zelda's name at the time, when she married she dropped "Hilda" and went by her middle name, Zelda), in 1923, just after he reached New York. Zelda had recalled that upon reaching the city Benjamin had immediately stowed his suitcases and headed off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and this letter gives us no reason to doubt the story.

The artist elaborates a bit here—no doubt to impress his future wife—stating he is sending her sketches of “original sculpture by Michelangelo” (we believe the sketches were actually done from plaster casts of Michelangelo sculptures which are part of the Museum’s permanent collection).

Below is an excerpt from the letter (I’ve corrected his spelling):

Just a few studies I made during my visit to the “Metropolitan Museum of Art.” They are all from original sculptures by “Michelangelo.” One is a study of a statue or rather one of his many slaves! It depicts a young person in a strange struggle for freedom from what we do not know, his arms are free—only a thin lace encircling his body is seen. It is to me one of the most tragic figures in the whole of the Museum and impressed me most.

The strange part about it, is, when first you look at it, it appears to be a woman—only after a close examination you notice it is a figure of a male strong and powerful! The whole thing has a monumental feeling—with a great symbol behind it—it is to the internal meaning of life—it carries with it all the softness and hardness. There seems to be two strange beings struggling with each other like monsters they want to devour each other, it is the two natures in the human being that the Greek Artist wished to portray—it is to me the most beautiful work of art my eyes have yet seen….

And later:

Darling Zelda I could not help think of you when I did those sketches they are really yours for you…you were in my mind—strange is it not dear Zelda that when I was most thrilled looking at these [illegible] works of art, I seemed to see your face continually. A close resemblance to you, seemed very obvious in all the Greek sculpture—the same youthfulness, nimble body—boyish charm. With it all you see in the whole ensemble a great tragedy—their faces always carry a sad note—that note is the symbol of their soul—that note is also your soul.

Gershon

Thursday August 9/1923

Danny Simmons reviewed in The New York Times

Danny Simmons: From There to Here was reviewed by art critic Benjamin Genocchio in The New York Times this past week.  Though critical of a few of the works, overall it is a positive review of the artist's debut exhibition at Spanierman.  Genocchio also remarked, "The paintings in this show, pulsing and occasionally brash, are very different from the usual polished but staid art that you see hanging in galleries in the Hamptons. They shake things up." We are happy to be pushing the bounds of the East Hampton art community! 

Genocchio writes:

Totemic, mythic imagery abounds, giving the best of the paintings visual force and a disquieting strangeness. Whimsy is also prevalent, be it in the artist’s twisted looping lines or amped-up color schemes.

Mr. Simmons, 56, lives in New York, where he has been showing in galleries and museums to growing acclaim since the mid-1990s. He regularly spends summers in East Hampton, where one of his brothers, Russell Simmons, the hip-hop impresario, owns a home in the Georgica neighborhood. His other brother is the rapper and minister Joseph Simmons, who stars as Rev Run in the MTV reality show “Run’s House.”

The Spanierman show of almost 50 paintings comes with a handsome color catalog. It tells us that Mr. Simmons likes to rise at 5 a.m. to paint, working in silence and allowing his paintings to grow intuitively, a method he shares with many of the best abstract artists. It is a risky, gutsy way to make art, somewhat hit or miss, but when it succeeds, the results are a marvelous tangle of lines, shapes and collage elements, including, in one work, bits of wood nailed to the canvas.

Take a look at the entire review, Sensuous Abstractions, on the NYTimes website.

Any readers out there who saw the exhibition?
What was your impression of Simmons's work?

Danny Simmons: From There to Here will be showing until Nov. 23, 2009.

Plaid Puzzlement ...The Paintings of Dan Christensen

Lisa N. Peters
When we were helping the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, in organizing the retrospective of the work of Dan Christensen that opened there last May, it emerged that a group of paintings Christensen created from 1969 to 1971 stood out and were different, or so it seemed. . . .

These large (many wall-size) geometrically conceived canvases with discreet flat areas of color, appeared a departure in Christensen’s oeuvre from the freeform spray gun works that preceded them as well as from his later work, in which he pushed automatist methods with the spray gun to their limits in blurred circles, infinite lozenges, swirling ribbons, and rich drizzle marks that seem to ricochet off the surface. The paintings with their clean horizontal and vertical stripes drew the attention of everyone who saw them, maybe because instead of having the stillness of so much hard-edged geometric painting, they seemed to project a glowing energy.

Those who knew the artist referred to these works as “Dan’s plaids,” but we were unclear about their origins and how they fit into the context of his art and time. We decided to find out by devoting an exhibition to them. We were able to hang sixteen of them in our current show, which along with the four in the exhibition organized by the Kemper (opening October 23 at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln), enables these works to receive a spotlight they haven’t been given before, while allowing us to find the answers to the questions that had been raised.

We were lucky in moving forward that the artist’s widow Elaine Grove was able to not only speak to us about these works, but to be the subject of an interview that we included in our catalogue. A sculptor and painter herself, Elaine met Dan in 1967 at the famous New York City artists’ haunt, Max’s Kansas City. Her recollections of this heady time when artists were at the forefront of the radical transformation taking place in American life have a freshness only possible for someone who has lived through this time from its midst. In the interview contained in the catalogue, Elaine not only answered our questions about the plaids, but provided a sense of the richness of the context from which they emerged.

As Elaine explains, the plaids were less a departure from the sprays, but an evolution. She states:

“The spray gun paintings have a more airy feeling to them, whereas there is more tightness and solidity to the plaids, but both are still a matter of paint interacting with other areas of paint. The later calligraphic stain period of Dan's work speaks similarly to the spread of paint as does the paint in his plaid paintings. He's dealing with the same issues in all the periods of his work, but they are handled and addressed in different ways within each period.”

As to why Dan seemed to leave the plaids behind, Elaine responded:

“He stopped painting them for the same reason that he stopped painting other kinds of paintings. He did them until he felt that he had said all that he could about that type of picture making. Once he figured out how to make a certain type of painting really well, it ceased to be, for him, as interesting to paint. He would then move forward to something else he could explore.”

Elaine also pointed out an especially interesting factor in the art world of the time that was key to Dan’s development, which has not previously been given much recognition in scholarship on the era. That is that the period that Dan moved forward was one in which different innovations in acrylic paints were becoming available at the time. Elaine notes: “Sam Golden, (later the founder of Golden Paints) was a chemist for and partner with Leonard Bocour at Bocour Paints. He developed and introduced new gels and mediums that could be used to thicken paints and extend the pigment. One could paint and produce impasto effects without having to use up so much expensive pigment. Some mediums were transparent, and Dan began exploring how you could add pigment to a gel and put that over straight bands of color. This led into his white and dark slab paintings, which were also squeegeed.”

Grove thus explained how the plaids, rather than a departure in Christensen’s art, can instead be seen as a natural stepping stone along the way for this artist for whom painting was a constant adventure that he seems to have had almost no choice but to pursue.

The full interview provides a true sense of this extremely exciting time in the history of painting.

It seems a rare occurrence for a show to provide such a satisfactory and fascinating answer to the question around which it was organized, but this is truly a show one needs to see to get the full impact of what these works are about.

Dan Christensen: The Plaid Paintings

John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Miss Helen Brice

Carol Lowrey

John Singer Sargent (1867-1925) was a versatile artist who painted landscapes, still lifes, intimate genre scenes and religious allegories. However, the first thing I think about when his name comes up is his activity as a grand-manner portraitist. Without doubt, he was the most successful and prolific portrait painter of the Edwardian era, producing more than 800 likenesses over the course of his career and attaining the reputation in England and the United States as the “Van Dyck” of his day. What was it that made Sargent’s work so special? It was a combination of technique––soft, buttery brushwork and a sensitive handling of color––coupled with his ability to capture the look and personality of his cultured, upper-class clients, among them such notables as Mrs. Henry G. Marquand, wife of the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner and the architect Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes; as a Boston critic wrote in 1888, “Style is the predominant characteristic of [Sargent]; all of his pictures are permeated with it. Nothing is commonplace; nothing is conventional. There is . . . [a] palpable atmosphere of refinement, ease and––tranchons le mot––aristocracy.”

The sense of privilege and gentility we associate with Sargent’s portraits comes across beautifully in this depiction of Helen Brice (1874-1950) (pictured above), from 1907. A daughter of Calvin Stewart Brice (1854-1898), an Ohio-born railway magnate and U.S. senator, Helen was a well known figure in the social circles of Manhattan and Newport during the first half of the twentieth century. She’s shown here at the age of thirty-three wearing an elegant gown and cashmere shawl, posed with her shoulders back and her head held in a way that gives her a proud, regal bearing. Her gaze is averted away from the viewer, endowing her with a sense of inner contemplation and poise. I wonder how she felt about sitting for the famous Sargent, who had painted luminaries on both sides of the Atlantic. In my research on Miss Brice, I found out that she never married, but she led a full (and one would like to think, happy) life replete with balls, dinner parties and nights at the opera, charity events, travel abroad and leisurely summers in Rhode Island.

“Society Portraits by Modern Masters on Exhibition,”
New York Times, 16 February 1913, p. X2

The Brice portrait was exhibited at important venues in New York (see article above), London, Venice, and elsewhere, and it was also included in Sargent’s memorial exhibition, held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1925. Retained in the family until 1980, it is also among the last portraits Sargent would create, a final bloom in the triumphant bouquet of a career; by about 1910, tired by the demands imposed by his portrait work, he painted fewer likenesses in order to devote most of his time to informal oils and broadly brushed watercolors inspired by his travels abroad.

Edith Mitchill Prellwitz at the Cornish Colony Museum

Katherine Bogden 

October has always been one of my favorite months, especially if I find myself spending any of it in New England. I’m addicted to that wonderful feeling of walking though fallen yellow and rusty-brown leaves, which always make the most satisfying underfoot crunch.

My point is, of course, that it’s a great time to leave the city, and head up to Windsor, Vermont, where there are plenty of leaves, and an attractive show on view at the Cornish Colony Museum: Women's Work: The Artistry of the Women of the Cornish Colony. The exhibition features work by Edith Mitchill Prellwitz, including three oils on loan from Spanierman Gallery.

Alma Gilbert-Smith, the museum’s former director, gives a lovely introduction to the exhibition which sums up much of what is important about the show and why it is worth the trip:

Much of what the women of the Cornish Colony accomplished still lives after them. History and historians are just beginning to give them professional credit which is due… it is our sincere hope to enhance the public’s appreciation of some of the truly magnificent accomplishments which the women were able to achieve here. Despite the hardships of maintaining their artistic integrity while attempting to be wives, lovers and nurturers, it is also undeniably true that the beauty and inspiration of the area fed their artistic, intuitive souls and made them reach for the stars with their own creations, by a concentrated effort of heart and will.

I’m particularly pleased by the museum’s choice to include Prellwitz’s The Steam Drill in the exhibition, which departs from scenes typical and expected of woman artists of the period. In fact, the pairing of The Steam Drill with Mother and Child and Among the Roses seems an adept representation of the complexity of Edith Prellwitz, and her range of accomplishments.

The show remains on view until October 24, 2009.

(top) Mother and Child, Sleepy Boy, 1911, oil on canvas, 36-1/2 x 29 in.
(center) Among Roses, 1895, oil on canvas, 17 x 55 in.
(bottom) The Steam Drill, 1886, oil on canvas 22 x 17 in.

TONIGHT: Gallery Night on 57th Street!

Tonight is GALLERY NIGHT ON 57TH STREET!

Spanierman Gallery & Spanierman Modern will be open tonight until 8 p.m. along with 64 other galleries between Lexington Avenue and 7th Avenue. 

On view at Spanierman Gallery is Five American Watercolorists. 

 On view at Spanierman Modern in the newly opened Dan Christensen: The Plaid Paintings.

Stop in and say hello!

Charles Kaelin and The Aesthetic Appeal of Motif No. 1

By Carol Lowrey

On a recent trip to Boston’s North Shore, I spent some time in Rockport, MA, described by the painter Harrison Cady as “the quaintest port on the entire New England coast.” For art historians––particularly those of us interested in American art colonies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries––visits to locales in which our favorite artists painted are essential components of the research process, giving us greater insight into their choice of imagery and the myriad ways in which they responded to their immediate environment. With this in mind, I headed straight to Motif No. 1 (above), a small lobster shack on a stone jetty that juts out into the quiet waters of Rockport’s inner harbor. Located on Bearskin Neck, the structure is painted a deep red; its simple and unassuming but in terms of the artistic tradition of Cape Ann it has iconic significance, for it’s been said (by Cady, among others) to have been the subject of more paintings that any other building in America, attracting the brushes of artists and art students alike.*

In strolling along the docks, I came to understand the allure of Motif No. 1: not only does it stand out because of its color and placement at the end of the wharf, it looks different depending on the light (as seen on this sunny day)––and thus its appeal for artists concerned with portraying outdoor effects. This was certainly the case with Charles Kaelin (1858-1929), a fixture on Rockport’s art scene during the early 1900s. Born in Cincinnati, he made his first trip to Cape Ann in the summer of 1900 and visited regularly for the next sixteen years, when he made Rockport his permanent home. Although the lush pine forests on the outskirts of town are often featured in Kaelin’s oils and pastels, he was at his best when depicting the local waterfront, just steps from his studio on Atlantic Avenue.

Motif No. 1 could be approached pictorially through a number of different vantage points. In Rockport Harbor (left) Kaelin gives us a glimpse of the building as seen from Bearskin Neck, using the gentle diagonals created by the boats and pier to lead our gaze into the picture and to create visually appealing design. His sharp cropping of the image produces a lively, snapshot-like effect and a sense of immediacy that’s heightened by his vigorous application of pigment (when using oil, he would typically interpret nature in terms of mass rather than line). Charles Kaelin’s rich palette helps evoke the play of sunlight as it glances off this famous landmark on a summer’s day; indeed, when viewing the piece, I’m immediately transported back to Rockport, where salt-tinged air, cool breezes and Motif No. 1 rule the day.

* Motif No. 1 was built in the 1840s. It was destroyed in the Blizzard of 1978 but an exact duplicate of the structure was erected that same year.

Danny Simmons Opens at Spanierman East Hampton

The much anticipated exhibition Danny Simmons: From There to Here opened this past Saturday at Spanierman Gallery, LLC at East Hampton. This is the first time we've exhibited Simmons's work so it was wonderful to have such a turnout.

Artist Maria Schon

 Artist Frank Wimberley and his wife also attended,
pictured here with Helen and Ira Spanierman.

Viewing Simmon's
After De took All De Cud Take, 2004

Simmon's Grey Matter #2, 2002

DAN CHRISTENSEN: THE PLAID PAINTINGS opens tonight!

Join us TONIGHT from 6 to 8 pm at Spanierman Modern for an opening reception for Dan Christensen: The Plaid Paintings.  

Read more on The Artist.

Read the Press Release.  

View the Exhibition Online.

A Gallagher Moment

Lisa N. Peters

In the middle of our last 8 am (groan) staff meeting, Ira Spanierman, who was conducting the meeting, rose from his chair mid-sentence. Looking toward the wall of the gallery to his left, he seemed elsewhere for a moment, and then said: “THAT is a really beautiful watercolor!” Even though Sears Gallagher’s Pine Trees and Coastline, Monhegan, Maine has been in our inventory for a while, and even though hundreds of watercolors have passed through the gallery over the years, this one struck a nerve for Ira. It was as if he was seeing it for the first time and in doing so momentarily left the work day behind to imagine being in this peaceful natural place. Those of us who could crane our necks to see this image felt similarly.

Gallery Opening: Danny Simmons

 
Don’t forget!  

This Saturday, October 10, 2009 marks the opening of Danny Simmons: From There to Here at Spanierman Gallery, East Hampton. 

A reception for the artist will be held from 6 to 8 pm.

Simmons, a self-taught artist, is the older brother of Russell Simmons and Joseph “Reverend Run” Simmons. To learn more about the artist and to see additional work from the exhibition visit our website. 

The Division of Heaven and Earth, 1997

Oil on canvas, 60-1/2 x 71-1/2 in.  

A New York Gallery - Spanierman Gallery, LLC

Some time ago, there was quite a wonderful little shop called Old World Antiques on 57th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues here in New York City. It was presided over by my great uncle Fred Spanierman, who left Vienna in 1902. Nearby was the old Savoy Art and Auction Gallery. Founded in 1928 and presided over by my father, Samuel Spanierman, it was located at 5 East 59th Street and later moved to 50th Street across from Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

And now, I, myself, preside over Spanierman Gallery, LLC, located at 45 East 58th Street, right between those old memories.

For more than a half century, Spanierman Gallery, LLC, has been dedicated to dealing in the finest American art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In September of 1994, the gallery moved from 50 East 78th Street (its home for almost thirty years!), to a luxurious new location at 45 East 58th Street, directly across the street from the Four Seasons Hotel. With 12,000 square feet of space, the gallery presents exhibitions of the highest quality, including loans from museums and private collections and works from our own holdings.

Please stop by and visit us during your next stay in New York.

Ira Spanierman

Musings on Paul de Longpré

By Carol Lowrey

During a recent visit to L.A., I happened to stay in West Hollywood, in a historic Art Deco hotel located on Sunset Boulevard. My accommodations were situated directly next door to William S. Hart Park, a small, hilly enclave that I wandered through one sunny morning. As I exited the south entrance, I came out on De Longpré Avenue, a quiet, crescent-shaped thoroughfare lined with low-rise apartment buildings surrounded by foliage and blossoms. The street name, of course, was easily recognizable to me, for it honors Paul de Longpré (1855-1911), a French-born watercolorist who specialized in the portrayal of flowers.

Once referred to as the “King of the flower painters,” de Longpré began creating depictions of blossoms in France. In 1890 he came to New York to execute a commission and, after losing most of his savings in a bank failure in Paris, he decided to remain in the United States to explore new opportunities for patronage. He initially supported himself by teaching and working as a horticultural illustrator while painting in his spare time. De Longpré’s gamble that he could make it in the competitive New York art world paid off: his career came in to its own in 1895, when an exhibition of his work at the American Art Galleries created a major stir, attracting throngs of gallery-goers and admiring collectors eager to purchase one of his watercolors for their dining-rooms and parlors. Other successful shows in New York, Boston and Philadelphia soon followed, topped off by an article in the New York Times Illustrated Magazine in which de Longpré was described as “a poetical-botanical painter.” These words were spot on, for de Longpré’s floral vignettes (see above) were executed in an accessible realist style, but without the abundant detail we associate with botanical art; instead, he applied his pigments in delicate, translucent washes, manipulating color, form and light to reveal the underlying lyricism of his subject.