J. Russell Jinishian Gallery, Inc. 1657POSTROAD,FAIRFIELD,CT06824
(203) 259-8753Specializing in 19th, 20th, and 21st Century Marine and Fishing Art from Europe and America.
Accepting artwork on consignment from collectors throughout the year.HOURS: Tuesday - Saturday 10-5 p.m. and by appointment.
We invite you to stop by and visit the gallery located just 1 hour from NYC just off I-95 at Exit 21.Visit our website: www.jrusselljinishiangallery.com
Tim Thompson Ghosting Off Great Point, Nantucket Oil18”x24”$30,000
As usual there’s been a great deal of activity in the marine art world over the last six months including exhibitions, workshops and projects
by dedicated marine artists all over the globe— So let’s get right to the news. We’ll begin close to home with the American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA), which under the leadership of their new president-- watercol-orist, author, architect, and historian Ian Marshall has embarked on an ambitious slate of programs as they approach their 30th anniversary in 2008. The high-light of this year will be the Society’s 14th National Exhibition, featuring over 100 works of marine art—paintings, drawings, and sculpture, scheduled to open the weekend of May 14 at the Chase Riverfront Center of the Arts in Wilmington, Delaware (riverfrontwilm.com) where it will run through June. In July the entire exhibition will move to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland (cbmm.org) until September. In October it will be hosted by the Noyes Museum in Atlantic City, New Jersey (Hey, maybe even Tony Soprano will show up) through February, 2009. From March through May it will move to the Spartanburg Museum of Art in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and then in June it will reach its final desti-nation in the New Bedford Art Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where it will be on dis-play through September. There will be a full color catalogue of the exhibition, published and available for purchase through the various venues, or through americansocietyofmarineartists.com.
The Society also has a regional exhibition planned on Cape Cod next summer at the Cultural Arts Center of Cape Cod in Dennis, Massachusetts, opening May 10th. It then travels to the Herreshoff Museum in Bristol, Rhode Island, where it opens during Bristol’s nationally famous July 4th Parade. 2010 will bring an A.S.M.A. exhibition at the Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover, Delaware, and if all goes well, a full-scale Retrospective Exhibition at the Mystic Seaport Museum, according to Ian, who met recently with museum director, Admiral Douglas Teeson. The exhibition will include 50 works of art by leading artists throughout its history selected by John Barber, Christopher Blossom, and Peter Egeli. There’s also a possibility that the exhibition may move to London to the National Maritime Museum, at Greenwich, and even onto Ian’s native Scotland.
The Society is certainly doing its best to give fans of marine artists worldwide as much opportunity as possible to learn what today’s talented artists are cre-ating. Last summer, their Region 4 which encompasses Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Missouri, held an exhibition of its artists at the Krasl Arts Center in St. Joseph, Michigan. Underwritten by Chemical Bank, the exhi-bition included artists Michael Blazer, Michigan; Randall Higdon, Michigan; Ed Labernik, Minnesota; Gladys Dysands, Illinois; Jim Griffiths, Illinois; and Gene Watson, Minnesota. In addition to viewing the
artwork, visitors to the opening exhibition received a copy of the Seaway Review, a magazine devoted to maritime life on The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway (greatlakes-seawayreview.com).
In November, A.S.M.A. members gathered for their annual meeting in Santa Barbara, California to exchange ideas, talk shop and plan their future. Among the artists in attendance were Westcoasters Norma Jay, Caleb Whitbeck and Bill Stevens; East coasters includ-ed Charlie Robinson, Willard Bond, Mike Killelea, Lois Toole, Jack Wiberg and Christine Diehlmann. In addition to their meeting, they also spent time visiting the Ventura County Maritime Museum (vcmm.org) at the Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard, California, where the paintings of Society members Louis Gadal, Phyllis Solscyk and David Large were on exhibition.
This is a fine private museum which houses the col-lection of marina entrepreneur Harry Nelson. The museum hosted The Maritime Museum Ship Guild during the month of December, whose members were on hand to demonstrate ship modeling techniques and sell their models to benefit the educational pro-grams of the museum. Annual attendees also visited an A.S.M.A. exhibition held onboard the Star of India, home of the San Diego Maritime Museum, which offered the show in conjunction with its Maritime Heritage Conference.
In addition to exhibitions, the Society has also been pursuing its educational mandate this past summer and fall, sponsoring workshops held at the Maine College of Art (meca.edu) in Portland, Maine by Don Demers and Sergio Roffo, and at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts (limeacademy.edu) in Lyme, Connecticut by William Duffy and Len Tantillo. In 2008, aspiring marine artists in the Northwest will have a chance to study directly with professional marine artists at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon where from May 30th to June 1st, Ed Mueller assisted by Paul Mullally, will run a workshop, and then on the weekend of September 13th and 14th, they’ll reverse roles. In addition to co-sponsoring these workshops, the American Society of Marine Artists will award the Charles Lundgren (the Society’s first president) Scholarship Award to one student in each class to pay his/her tuition. Information on these workshops can be found at pnca.edu.
Adventurous students may opt for a saltier paint-ing experience led by past Society president Richard Moore aboard the three-masted 1900’s schooner Victory Chimes which sails out of Rockland, Maine. Dick says they’ve designated June 18-21 as the Maritime Art Workshop Cruise for up to 35 artists and friends. More information on the cruise can be found at Victorychimes.com. or by contacting Dick at [email protected] or, Lorraine at 800-745-5651.
Ian Marshall tells me that the Society will also be revamping its newsletter in April to become the Journal of the American Society of Marine Artists “which will include a separate section for scholarly articles by maritime historians like Robert Webb and Carl Little”. This has certain historical significance as the Society’s newsletter is one of the few Association Publications to have been accepted into
the Library of Congress.
In addition to Ian’s duties as president of the Society he’s also found time to travel and paint in Argentina and in the small East African island of Lamu off the coast of Kenya. Summer saw the publication of his newest maritime histori-cal book illustrated by his own watercolors entitled Cruisers and La Guerre de Course. It features the illustrated his-tory of a small class of naval vessels built between the Civil War and World War I for their speed and maneuverability. It’s not surprising it’s been received with enthusiastic reviews by magazines like Sea History (see our book page for more information). Look for an exhi-
bition of Ian’s cruiser paintings in the fall. We’ll keep you posted on the details; many of them can be viewed today at jrusselljinishiangallery.com.
Royal Society of Marine Artists President, Geoff Hunt reports that his Society’s annual exhibition in the Mall Galleries was a tremendous success. The Mall Galleries, which are owned by the Queen, are right down the street from Buckingham Palace, and have undergone a total renovation this year making them much more spacious and up to date. They are the head-quarters of the British Federation of Artists and serve as exhibition space on a rotating basis for a number of art societies. Next time you’re tired of watching the changing of the guard you can walk a short way down the mall on the left and see what’s new in the galleries. Geoff said four new artist members were brought into the Society this year: Fred Beckett, Ginny Morgan, Alistair Butt, and Paul Wright. In addition to includ-ing their work in the exhibition, the Society pursues its own educational mandate by opening the doors to young artists between the ages of 16 and 25. Geoff said by and large the work was very impressive, “really professional.” About fifty young artists submitted and eleven were selected.
In addition to this exhibition the Society held a small exhibition in Mousehole in Cornwall, and you could find them exhibiting at the Earle’s Court Boat Show in December, and in the Classic Boat magazine booth at the London Boat Show in East London in January where artists were actually on hand painting during the show.
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News From the Artists
Tim Thompson The Schooner Yacht AMERICA Oil20”x24”$50,000 Approaching the Needles on the Way To Winning the 100 Guinea Cup--The 1st AMERICA’s Cup Race, August 22, 1851
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Just off the Artist’s Easels...Still Wet...
Neil Hughes View of Monhegan Island Oil24”x30”$10,500
Anthony Blake FORTUNA Followed by Other Large Schooners of the Eastern Yacht Club, Oil30”x40”$46,000 Sail into Nantucket Harbor, c. 1885
Information on purchasing the Artwork pictured in the Marine art Quarterly may be obtained by contacting the Publisher, J. Russell Jinishian at (203) 259-8753 or [email protected]
Geoff ’s involved in a variety of projects. He’s writ-ing a chapter for a new book by well-known British writer Brian Lavery all about the 28-gun frigate HMS Surprise of Patrick O’Brian fame. He’s also undertak-ing a large commission entitled “Strachan’s Action”. A little known but interesting footnote to British naval history: Strachan was the British Naval officer who chased down the four French frigates that escaped the Battle of Trafalgar and sank or captured them. Geoff has also been asked to leave the cold, overcast, clammy environs of the British Isles this winter to fly to the Caribbean as a guest speaker aboard Sea Cloud II. Hey, Geoff, if for any reason you can’t make it, you’ve got a volunteer here.
One of the little known but fascinating stories of the Napoleonic era and the Royal Navy was told in the pages of the winter issue of Sea History magazine by maritime historian and author William H. White (author of five novels on the War of 1812: In Pursuit of Glory, The Greater the Honor and the Evening Gun among them, www.tillerbooks.com), and through the five paintings which illustrated the story by Paul Garnett. It concerns the HMS Pandora. What was so special about her, you ask? Well, you’ve heard of “Mutiny on the Bounty”, the story of Captain William Bligh and the HMAV (His Majesty’s Armed Vessel) Bounty, which on the morning of April 28, 1789 hove to in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so that its crew could put Bligh and 18 of his men adrift in the Bounty’s launch, virtually sentencing them to death. What happened next is well known— Bligh performed one of the greatest feats of seamanship in history, sail-ing the Bounty’s launch and its crew for 48 days over 3,000 miles safely to the island of Timor. Bligh then made his way back to England where his request for a court martial and an open trial was granted.
The mutineers led by Fletcher Christian, [who is played — in the three movies made about the story— by Clark Gable in 1935, Marlon Brando in 1962 and Mel Gibson in 1984] sailed to Tahiti where sixteen of the crew decided to stay permanently while Christian and nine others took the Bounty and found the uncharted Pitcairn Island where they burned the ship and began a new life. All but one of the mutineers died within the first ten years but their descendants still populate the island today.
But the back story, (as they say in today’s parlance), is what happened to the sixteen men who stayed behind on Tahiti. Their fate was to be in the hands of Captain Edward Edwards who was dispatched aboard HMS Pandora to capture all the mutineers and return them to England. Edwards set sail from Portsmouth, England in November, 1790 and landed in Tahiti in March, 1791. Garnett’s paintings depict some of the most poignant moments from the tale— Bligh and his crew being set adrift in the overcrowded launch— and the launch under jerry-rigged sail fighting in heavy seas during their open ocean voyage (which by the way was duplicated several years ago by the son of well-known British marine painter Keith Shackelton). Garnett also shows Pandora anchored in Tahiti as she is about to take aboard the mutineers. Fourteen mutineers were brought aboard (two had been killed in the meantime) and placed so they could be observed in a specially built box on the ship’s poop deck that measured 11ft. x 18ft., providing only sitting or crouching head room. The prisoners were also manacled to the deck to prevent any chance of escape. Not surprisingly the crew quickly named this makeshift prison “Pandora’s Box.” Between March 23rd, and August, 1791 the Pandora wandered through the islands between Tahiti and Australia searching for the remaining mutineers. On August 26 Pandora approached the Great Barrier Reef search-ing for the passage through to the South Endeavour Straits. Three days later they were fighting for their lives, having grounded on the reef, the ship slowly
being broken to bits. A Garnett painting shows the scene at sunrise on the 29th of August with the ship half sunk bow down. Afloat in small boats are the crew and the surviving 10 prisoners, who were only freed because the boson ripped off the hatch at the last moment and threw in the manacle keys, not because Captain Edwards had ordered the prisoners released. When they got to the beach Edwards refused to give them any shelter, so they had to bury each other in the sand up to their necks to avoid massive sunburn— Could we sur-mise that he didn’t think too highly of mutineers? The 99 survivors eventually crowded into four boats, spent eighteen days sailing to Timor, landing exactly where Bligh ended up after the mutiny. It took another eight months, and passage aboard a couple of ships to get back to England, and almost a full year – September 12, 1792 in fact – to begin the court martial of the mutineers who survived the wreck of the Pandora. One of Garnett’s paintings illustrates the scene as they are rowed toward the HMS Duke in Portsmouth Harbor for trial, and another, as they are about to be hung from the yardarms off Spithead on October 29. Quite a remarkable story and the subject of White’s forthcom-ing novel to be published in the summer of 2008, which Paul Garnett is illustrating.
Paul tells us that he just received a copy of an amazing publication related to another Bligh voyage, this one as Master of the HMS Providence which was sent in 1792-94, back to Tahiti to complete the Bounty’s mission of transferring breadfruit plants to the Caribbean islands. This time Bligh was successful. You can still see the breadfruit he planted in Jamaica today. Bligh’s per-sonal log of that voyage was published in 1976 by Genesis Publications, Surrey, England, as an exact
replica of the original. It’s printed in Bligh’s own handwriting on paper that was specially made (after scientific analysis by the Mitchell Museum in Australia), to match the handmade paper of the origi-nal log. It contains a preface by Admiral of the fleet, Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. As Garnett observed there’s nothing like a ship’s log to inspire an artist because it reflects what’s happening at sea right then. Paul says that when he’s painting from historical subjects, “you feel the ghosts all around you”. He says “you work hard to get it right not to get credit as an artist, but because you want to do right by the people who lived it.” That’s a pretty big burden if you think of it that way, but it’s also what gives the best historic paintings their unique power. Some people take issue with an artist painting a scene he or she didn’t personally witness first hand. But if you follow Paul’s approach you understand that artists work extra hard to ensure that they capture the accuracy and spirit of the historic episode. No one has ever criticized the Sistine Chapel that I know of, because Michelangelo didn’t witness the creation firsthand.
The wreck of the Pandora can still be seen today in 90 feet of water on the reef, while many of the artifacts from it, are on display at the Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville, Australia. (www.mtq.qm.qld.gov.au). Speaking of that, here is another fascinating story that artist Dennis Lyall helped recre-ate for a private collector whose great-grandfather was chief engineer aboard the USS Powhatan. It seems that when word reached the Navy Department in Washington D.C., in March, 1861, that the situation at Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina was heat-ing up, President Lincoln, verbally told Powhatan’s
captain to proceed to go to the assistance of the Union forces at Fort Sumter. However, he inadvertently signed orders for the ship to proceed to Fort Pickens in Pensacola, Florida. The Secretary of the Navy caught, then corrected these, and ordered the Powhatan to go to Fort Sumter. When the captain of the Powhatan received these conflicting orders he decided to fol-low the first order from the President himself, and proceed to Pensacola. Meanwhile, the fight began to rage at Fort Sumter and the War Between the States was underway. In the painting which Bosworth Grier, the engineer’s great-grandson entitled “How the Civil War Should Have Started” Lyall shows the Powhatan engaged in a dramatic nighttime firefight off Fort Sumter, thereby, if only for a moment, rewriting his-tory. Earlier the artist had completed a portrait of Lt. Commander John Grier in the naval uniform of the time. A terrific pair of paintings with a great meaning to that family.
Here’s another interesting project that can only suc-ceed with help of a skilled artist, this one for the USS Constitution Museum. If you’ve been online at ussconstitutionmuseum.org you may have noticed that one of the online exhibits features a painting by well-known marine artist Robert Sticker. It’s one of his unusual below deck scenes on a 19th century American frigate showing the gun crew at its sweaty, deafening, dangerous and deadly work. For an exhibit tentatively titled “The Sailor’s Life for Me”, Sarah Watkins at the Constitution Museum says they’re looking for artists to render a “longitudinal cross section of the USS Constitution, her decks teeming with humanity; and
then to provide 15 to 20 illustrated areas of the ship showing its usage in battle and at peace time.”
The “Meet the Crew” section of the exhibition will involve an artist painting twelve full length por-traits of men aboard, from the captain to the purser. Through these portraits visitors will get to read about each individual’s responsibility aboard ship, perhaps the life they left behind on shore etc. In other words, the museum wants to use an artist’s recreations to help people get a feeling of “the complexities of the ship itself as well as the kind of men who shouldered the responsibility of sailing and fighting throughout her illustrious role in American history”. It should be a fascinating exhibition. They’ve approached a number of artists, including one of the leading scholars on the particulars of American fighting ships and armament, artist William Gilkerson, author of Boarders Away, Ships of John Paul Jones, Gilkerson, On War, and eight other Maritime books, whose knowledge is so extensive and so deft he just might be able to do all these with his eyes closed! Well, maybe not quite. More information on the museum’s plans and needs can be had by con-tacting Sarah at [email protected]. The exhibit is scheduled for sometime in late 2008 or early 2009.
Speaking of the anatomy of sailing ships, particu-larly those of the 17th and 18th century, one of the most formidable and important collections of detailed models of these ships is in the hands of twin brothers and Drs. Arnold and Henry Kriegstein who have been collecting British Admiralty Board models, along with related drawings, paintings, books and manuscripts
for the past thirty years. While their collection has been well-known to real connoisseurs in the field, the publication of the new book on it this year will be a revelation to many. It reveals the depth and breadth of their collection, and the intelligence by which they’ve gone about building it. As the brothers point out in a recent article about their models in the fall issue of Nautical Research Journal, “Very few draughts of early British naval vessels survive, and contemporary paintings and drawings generally focus on outward appearance, so contemporary models are often the only source of inboard details.” We’ve had the privilege of seeing about half the collection and I must say it is staggeringly beautiful. The book written by the broth-ers on their models is a handsome and outstanding testament to it. See our book page for details.
The Nautical Research Journal is a part of the Nautical Research Guild-- whose web site www.thenrg.org is one of the most informative and extensive research tools for historians and ship modelers around. The cover story in the winter issue is an article on master miniaturist Lloyd McCaffery’s 14” model of the 100-gun ship Britannia build in 1682. See elsewhere in this issue for photographs and a description of the model.
Collectors and enthusiasts of extreme miniature mod-els - scale 1:1250/1200, so that a model of a 600 ft. warship would measure only 2 inches - will want to know about the 4th Annual Meeting of Collectors, Builders, and Dealers of this area of collecting at the SUNY Maritime College and Maritime Industry Museum just under the Throgs Neck Bridge, NY from May 16 -18, 2008. They’ve lined up Annapolis-based
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HMAV Bounty puts about for the Cape of Good Hope, Africa, April 22, 1788. After leaving England way behind schedule, on December 23, 1787, to undertake her famed ‘Breadfruit’ Voyage, the Bounty arrived off Cape Horn at the start of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Captain William Bligh observed that the seas exceeded any he had met before and at times the waves were as high as three houses, one atop the other! One morning as he stood on the quarterdeck under the bare minimum of canvas to try to keep the ship before the wind, he observed that the water rising in the trough caused the waves to blot out the sky.
For 32 days Bligh, his crew and their small ship fought to make their way around the Cape and into the Pacific Ocean, during which time the ship began to complain and started to take on water. The men ran the pumps in shifts, 24 hours a day. From the violent motion of the ship, the cook was thrown to the deck, breaking four ribs. At last Bligh gave up, ordered the ship put about and made for Tahiti by way of Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, to the joy of all hands.
The Bounty is shown here with the Cape visible in the distance, in exactly the conditions Bligh described so vividly in his log; mountainous seas, a leaden sky and “lightning crackling down!” The Bounty’s topgallant masts are down and she is under shortened topsl’s. This encounter with the weather at the Horn was common in the days of sail and vividly illustrates what books have described for decades as the time of “Iron Men and Wooden Ships!” For Bligh it was to mark the beginning of difficulties with his crew which resulted in the infamous mutiny of April 28, 1789.
John Stobart New York, East River Arrival c. 1884 Oil28”x42”
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Paul Garnett Defeat at the Horn Oil22”x30”$6,500
Some of John Stobart’s most memorable images have been his recreations of the Port of New York as it appeared during the 19th century. To date he’s painted the harbor activity at sea and ashore over 20 times since 1967. That’s one of the reasons that the National Maritime Historical Society has chosen to honor him with a special dinner on June 12, 2008 (see our Artist’s News section for details). In this dramatic new evening view the clippership ECLIPSE is seen drying her sails across from the Fulton Fish Market and down the street from the Brooklyn Ferry Terminal and the recently completed Brooklyn Bridge in the distance.
As always, the art world is a dynamic marketplace with all sorts of fascinating goings-on through-out the year. Some of these have a direct impact
on collectors of marine art, while others simply offer insight into various aspects of the art world at large. This most recent period has seen some interesting devel-opments particularly in the areas of authenticity, copy-right, and buying and selling on the Internet. One quick read as to the health of the art market is to take a look at what’s happening in the major auction houses. The pri-vately owned Christie’s just announced its sales for the first six months of 2007 (Auction houses tend to look at their businesses in terms of six month segments). They have reported sales of $3.25 billion, for an increase of 32% over 2006. Those sales reflect 358 works of art that sold for more than $1 million each (that’s up from 189 in 2006), and $163 million of private, off the auction floor sales. This is another revenue stream that most auc-tion houses are pursuing regularly now. To accomplish their results, Christie’s offers over 600 sales each year in 80 categories through its 85 offices in 43 countries and 14 sales rooms from New York to Geneva, to Tel Aviv and Hong Kong.
For the first six months Sotheby’s reported $2.8 billion, their Impressionist and Modern Art sales this fall totaled $331.5 million alone, with ten works of art selling for over $10 million each. In their pursuit of private sales, the impressive Rostropovich-Bishnevskaya Collection of Russian Art which was scheduled for the auction block in September was scooped up in its entirety just prior to the auction by Alisher Usmanov, a Russian businessman, for an undisclosed sum.In fact the art mar-ket across the board appears to be hotter than it’s ever been before – this includes the Marine Art Market (see our sales results pages for specific recent sales of individ-ual artist’s work). As Edward Dolman, Chief Executive Officer of Christie’s said recently, “Christie’s robust results for the first half of 2007 delineate an exceptional art market. Never before has interest in art collectibles been so widespread.” Bill Ruprecht, President and Chief Executive Officer of Sotheby’s reported that their sales from September 1st through November 8, alone totaled $1.1 billion.
Both auction houses have noted shifts in their market-place and customers. There is the resurgence of London as a major auction market where the weak dollar has attracted major consignments from American collectors, and buyers among the newly successful Russian and Ukrainian entrepreneurs who are avidly collecting art. As Dolman remarked of the London auction scene, “It’s unbelievable, years ago if you had told me we would sell $450 million worth of art here in a week, I would have said you’re joking.” But speaking of the new Russian and Ukrainian collectors he said, “These new guys have completely transformed the market. They live in Europe and come to view art here.” Interestingly, despite the weak dollar, the major players in the New York auc-tion houses still tend to be American. The headline of a November article by Carol Vogel of The New York Times summed up the fall auction season relative to wide-spread money market uncertainty, “One market remains sound: money is still there for the best art.”
Query: What do you do if you’re making record sales and want to push the bottom line a little bit? Why, you raise the buyer’s premium (again). Of course! Both auc-tion houses have made the only real change they could at this point, and that is to raise the buyer’s premium on the lower end. So that at Sotheby’s, for example, the premium which had been pretty healthy, 20% on the first $500,000, has now gone to 25% on the first $20,000, 20% from there to $500,000, and 12% on the remaining amount. Surprise, Christie’s premiums are now exactly the same!
As we’ve reported before, auction houses are employing the technique of guaranteeing consignors a certain level of income regardless of the result of the auction. It’s a double-edged sword. But with so much at stake for the top paintings and works of art selling in the tens of millions of dollars, the risk is significant, but so are the potential profits in wooing top consignments.
In an effort to take advantage of the boom and the sporting art market, Christie’s has aligned itself with the leading decoy auction house Guyette & Schmidt from St. Michaels, Maryland, where recently an A.E. Crowell black bellied plover carving set a world record
selling for $830,000. Their plans together are to incorporate Guyette & Schmidt’s decoy auctions on Christie’s web site and in its auction catalogues, and vice versa, and to have annual January decoy auctions at Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza location in New York. Conversely, Christie’s, as it’s looking for new objects to consign will conduct an appraisal day at Guyette & Schmidt headquarters. This alliance seems to be anoth-er recognition of the real strength of niche markets.
Speaking in the interest for art in new markets, they are apparently pretty serious about their art in Dubai. How serious? How does a cool $520 million sound? That’s the amount that Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, agreed to pay the Louvre muse-um to use its name on the Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum scheduled to open in 2012. In addition, they’ll be paying France an additional $747 million for manage-ment advice, loan of artwork, etc. This is just part of a grander plan to build a cultural center on Saadiyat Island. Plans also include a Guggenheim of Dubai, a maritime museum and a performing arts center. The Louvre Abu Dhabi will be designed by French architect Jean du Val. Construction will cost about $108 million to build. The project will be overseen by the International Agency for French Museums. Wow! This makes the naming rights for the new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys look like chicken feed.
As both major auction houses have aggressively attempted to enter new markets by opening up auction rooms or alliances in places like Dubai and Beijing, and by providing real-time online bidding through “Live Sotheby’s” and “Christie’s Live”, the Internet, and actually buying and selling over the Internet, is becoming more and more of a factor in the art world. While there are a number of services online where col-lectors can subscribe to track auction results, there is one new site based in the Netherlands that opened in April. It offers free access to images and auction results since 1987. www.artvalue.com is from Mayer Guide, an annual auction reference that has been published every year since 1962 by Henrique Mayer. The Mayer Guide tracks 1.5 million auction results from 900 auction houses.
Of course, with development of the Internet as its own marketplace, new issues arise. These are being sorted out as they come to light. One concerns establishing the authenticity of items sold on the Net. This was the subject of the recent lawsuit filed by Tiffany’s against the Internet seller eBay in 2004, which finally made it to court this December. The suit was based on the activity of Tiffany employees who had purchased 186 pieces of supposed “Tiffany’s” silver and jewelry in 2004 through eBay and discovered that 73% were counterfeit. Tiffany contended in its suit that this was eBay’s fault and responsibility. At issue for eBay is how to police a site that has 248 million registered users and 102 million objects for sale at any given time. One thought put forward by Jeffrey Potter, Chairman of Anti-Counterfeit Practice at Kramer, Leven, Naftalis and Frankel of New York, is that eBay could require proof that Tiffany had been paid for the particu-lar items before auctioning it. He said that Tiffany’s overriding concern was, like Louis Vuitton’s, that “People avoid buying their signature bags because of all the fake ones out there.” According to Michael J. Kowalski, Tiffany’s Chairman and Chief Executive, Tiffany has endeavored to pursue sellers of counterfeits on the Net, but they were “chasing phantom sites that
INTERESTING NEWS FROM THE
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could be taken down one day and pop up another day.” He contended that, “the heart of the issue was the distri-bution network”---in other words, eBay.
Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman, told The New York Times that eBay had put in anti-counterfeiting measures in the ensuing three years since Tiffany filed suit including: “monitoring of categories of the most counterfeited items like expensive jewelry and handbags; Paypal verifi-cation requirements; selective restrictions on sales volume; and limits on cross-border sales”. As of this writing, the case is with the judge. We will report on the outcome in our next issue. However, the judge observed that the two parties have “a fundamental disagreement with respect to what the law is here.” It should be interesting.
But I don’t think there can be any disagreement about what the issues are for the buyer, regardless of whether you’re buying jewelry, art or anything else. As always, it comes down to the integrity of the seller and your ability to ascertain that. As values of art and objects continue to rise, and temptation for unscrupulous indi-viduals to get involved in transacting them gets greater and greater, the need to deal with sellers you know you can trust is reinforced.
The payment system that eBay owns, Paypal, which is widely used on the Internet, has itself become the subject of some contention. This time it’s between eBay and Google, who’s begun its own payment system, Google Checkout, which eBay promptly banned from use in its auctions. In fact, when Google set up a rival convention to be held in Boston at the same time as eBay’s annual convention, eBay coincidentally, or not, pulled the $25 million it spent advertising its’ services on Google. EBay says this is something they do frequently, shifting their market dollars to test new ways to attract customers. In another coincidence or not, Google canceled its conven-tion. Hopefully, they’ll kiss in cyberspace and make up. But it’s really just good old-fashioned competition. That’s something you’re never going to stop in a free market arena.
Investors looking to make money through art have yet another art investment fund to consider. It is London-based hedge fund WMG which focuses on photography. This photography investment fund is managed by Zelda Cheatle, owner of a London photography gallery who recently sold 4,000 photographsto the fund. The funds owners hope it will make returns of as much as 50% over three years. Reporting on this trend in The New York Times, Business Correspondent Julia Werdigier
says, “As investors search for places to put their money, hedge funds have expanded investment beyond stocks and bonds into art, wine, rare stamps and even soccer players. Areas like wine and art investments, previously reserved for the rich, become more mainstream as pen-sion funds and institutional investors look for ways to spread risk.” As we have reported on these pages, a number of art investment funds have opened and closed over the last five years. One of the issues for investors is that, while stock and bond investors can literally track the value of their investments day-to-day, there is really no way for investors in wine or art, or other tangibles to follow the market that closely. It really requires a special-ized knowledge. But with two recent Andy Warhol sales of $71 and $80 million, of pieces that originally sold in the six figures, art has become a business in which the returns can be very lucrative. One of the issues for Art as noted by Philip Hoffman of the Fine Art Fund in London is that “every painting (or artwork for that matter) is different, and making high returns requires knowledge and market expertise.” While determining authenticity of works of art is a key issue, whether you’re investing or not, the debate over doing so is one that involves both art and science. We reported in last winter’s issue on the 32 paintings reported to be by Jackson Pollock found by Alex Matter in the estate of his parents Herbert and Mercedes Matter, who were artists and friends of Jackson Pollock. With a Pollock painting selling last year for $50 million, this rep-resents a significant find. The authenticity of these paint-ings has been debated by scholars since they were found in 2005, and they were actually the subject of an exhibition at the McMullen Museum at Boston College.In November, forensic scientist James Martin spoke at a lecture sponsored by the International Foundation for Art Research in New York. He revealed that three of the 32 paintings contain material and paints that were not available until after Jackson Pollock died in 1956. One was in fact found to have pigment first patented by Ciba-Geigy in 1983. This clashes with the determina-tion of Ellen G. Landau, professor at Case Western University in Cleveland and one of the world’s leading Pollock scholars who determined that the paintings were authentic based on her examinations. Other scholars, including Francis V. O’Connor, the author of Pollock’s catalogue raisonée, felt after examining the paintings that they were not Pollocks. But the debate goes on, and who’s right? Science? Or Scholarship? It’s basically “Pollock CSI”, does the DNA lie? The jury is still out. In the future, artists may be considering inserting some of their own DNA into a painting to help determine its authenticity. I’ve heard reports that Thomas Kinkaid, “Painter of Light,” has already done such a thing. But I don’t know that for a fact.One Elizabeth Gibson needed no spectrometer back in 2003 to grab that 38”x 51” abstract painting from the garbage pile on the corner of Broadway and 72nd St. in Manhattan, and lug it back to her apartment. After a Byzantine story that involves a 1977 Sotheby’s auction, the International Foundation for Art Research, the Art Lost Register of South America, the Perls Gallery, the Musee d’Art du Moderne du la Ville in Paris, the Richard Feigen Gallery, Antiques Road Show, the Frick Art Reference Library, Google, and the First Church of Religious Science, it was determined that the painting was “ Three People” by a leading Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991), that went missing some 20 years ago after being purchased at Sotheby’s in 1977 for $55,000. It was stolen from a storage warehouse in Houston, where the owners reported the theft and offered a $15,000 reward. Ms. Gibson had no idea what she had recovered, although she was curious about the painting. She apparently discovered from the doorman of a building close by 72nd Street, that the garbage truck had swung by 20 minutes after she plucked the painting from the heap. After noticing a number of labels on the
back of the painting, she called one, the Richard Feigen Gallery in Manhattan. They called back and said they had no record of the painting. A year later, a friend of hers took a pile of books on Tamayo out of the library and there on the cover of one, was her painting! In the meantime, the theft of the painting had so intrigued the Sotheby’s expert, August Uribe, that he went on Antiques Road Show in May of 2005 to discuss the painting in a missing masterpieces segment. So when Ms. Gibson walked in the Mary-Ane Martin Gallery, a Latin American arts specialist, early in 2007 and was told that it was a stolen famous painting, she said, “I was in a state of shock.” So the first thing she did was build a false wall in her closet to hide the painting, after wrapping it in old shower curtains. (Man you can’t make this stuff up). In May, while “Googling” the painting and the artist’s name she discovered that the missing masterpieces seg-ment was going to be rebroadcast in Baltimore, so she hopped on a bus and watched the episode from a hotel room. She apparently knew then what she had to do. She called Mr. Uribe identifying herself as a “mystery woman,” got the minister from her church to accompany her, and went to Sotheby’s. Uribe decided to make a visit to Gibson’s apartment. He said, while dismantling the wall he “only saw a corner of the canvas and I knew it was the painting.” The painting sold this November for $1.1 million at auction. Ms. Gibson received the $15,000 reward from the owner. As James Wynn, the FBI agent in charge of the case observed, “Finding a million dollar painting in the garbage is very unusual. It’s a real New York story.”
John Christian Schetky(1778-1874) Lord Belfast’s yacht EMILY hove to off Belem Tower, LisbonOil31”x45” Sold for $199,755
January 30Maritime Art
Christie’sRockefellerCenter
February 9-11Dogs in Art including
Fine Sporting PaintingsDoyle’s
NewYork
February 19Marine Sale
BonhamsNewBondSt.,London44(0)207-447-7447
bonhams.com
February 20Marine Sale
BonhamsKnightsbridge,London44(0)-20-7393-3900
February 22-24American Furniture & American Historical &
Military ArtifactsNortheast Auctions
Manchester,NH603-433-8400
northeastauctions.com
March 4Clock, Watches &
BarometersBonhams
Knightsbridge
March 7American Paintings,
Drawings and SculptureChristie’s
RockefellerCenter
Upcoming AUctionsMarch 19
19th CenturyEuropean Art
Christie’sSouthKensington,
London44(0)207930-6074
christies.com
April 2Sporting Guns
BonhamsKnightsbridge
April 23Travel, Science &Natural History
Christie’sSouthKensington,
London
April 24Decoy Auction
Guyette&SchmidtSt.Charles,IL410-745-0485
guyetteandschmidt.com
April 28The Channel Island Sale
BonhamsJersey,UK
44(0)1534-722441
July 1Clocks, Watches &
BarometersBonhams
Knightsbridge
July 30Sporting Pictures
BonhamsKnightsbridge
H.M.S. PRINCE OF WALES 98-gun Second Rate Shipof the Line c. 1800 -- Napoleonic P.O.W. Model
Ivory,wood,bone42½”x15”x32½”Sold at Christies, London for $224,595
$171,000 Sung Ua (c. 1830-65) View of Macao Oil 16”x55”
$166,750 Confederate Ironclad Atlanta Revolver
$165,000 Commodore Matthew C. Perry Gold Medal, 1854
$162,400 Bowback Windsor Armchair 1780-1800
$153,500 Frank Benson “Seagulls in the Surf” Watercolor
$143,500 E. Howard & Co. No. 3t Wall Regulator Clock
$138,000 John Will Pewter Flagon c.1760
$130,203 Thomas Luny (1759-1837) “Battle of Trafalgar at 3:30pm” Oil 34”x51”
$126,000 Lynn Bogue Hunt “Blue Fin Tuna” Oil 18”x24”
$116,000 Lincoln Letter Suspending Habeas Corpus in N.Y. July 17, 1863
$115,000 U.S. Colt Single Action Cavalry Revolver
$106,400 French Bisque Bebe 24” Girl Doll c.1880
$105,840 Alex Guiness Obi Wan Kenobi Star Wars Costume
$105,600 Book of Mormons 1st Edition, 1830
$105,363 Derek G.M. Gardner (1914-2007) “The Glorious First of June, 1794” Oil 30”x50”
$104,400 John Bellamy Don’t Give Up The Ship Carved Eagle
$104,400 Pair Brace Back Windsor Side Chairs
$102,000 Babe Ruth Red Sox Bat
$102,000 James Whistler “Marine Nocturne” 1879-80 Etching
$102,000 Log from Titanic Rescue Vessel SS Mackay Bennett
$101,410 Mickey Mantle 1960 Uniform Jersey
$100,395 Peter Monamy (1681-1748) “An English Royal Yacht” Oil 28”x38”
$100,395 Thomas Whitcombe (1752-1824) “Glorious First of June, 1794” Oil 31”x47”
$99,000 Wythe County, VA Painted Blanket Chest
$98,600 ¾ Length Golden Haired Woman Figurehead 19th c.
$98,000 William Henry Buck “Schooner at Sunset at Lake Pontchartrain” Oil 18”x33”
$97,750 Ralph Cahoon “Nantucket Incident” Oil
RECENT SALES at AUCTION and ELSEWHERE
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AMERICAN SAILING SHIP MODELS23modelsofAmericansailingshipsfromthemuseumcollectionAddison Gallery of American ArtPhillips AcademyAndover,MAaccessaddison.andover.edu978-749-4015Ongoing
ASMA 14TH NATIONAL EXHIBITIONOver 100 Paintings, Sculpture andScrimshaw by some of America’sfinestMarineArtistsworkingtoday.Chase RiverfrontCenter of the ArtsWilmington,Delaware877-927-4837May 16 – June 30, 2008
Chesapeake BayMaritime MuseumSt.Michaels,Maryland410-745-2916July – September 2008Noyes MuseumOceanville,NewJersey609-652-8848October 2008 – February 2009Spartanburg Art MuseumSpartanburg,SouthCarolina864-582-7616March – May 2009New Bedford Art MuseumNewBedford,MA508-961-3099June – September 2009
ANTARCTIC VIEWSBY HURLEY AND PONTINGShackleton’s Endurance expedition(1914-1917)andScott’sTerra Nova
expedition(1910-1911)arebrilliantlydocumented in the photographs byFrankHurleyandHerbertPonting.Gladstone RegionalArt Gallery & MuseumGladstone,Qld.,AUSTRALIAGladstone-online.com.auDecember 8 – February 26
ART OF THE NORTHPaintings by Sydney Lawrence(1805-1940), works by nativeAlaskanartistsandothersdepictinglife and the environment ofAlaskaandthepolarregion.Anchorage MuseumAnchorage,AK•907-343-4326anchoragemuseum.orgOngoing
THE ART OF THE BOATPhotographs by MorrisRosenfeld & Sons40 vintage platinum palladiumprints of yachting, leisure boatingand racing from Mystic Seaport’sRosenfeldCollection.Independence Seaport MuseumPhiladelphia,PAphillyseaport.org215-413-8655Through April 27
BACARDI LIMITEDBIENNIEL EXHIBITIONExhibitionofcontemporaryBermudanart.Bermuda National GalleryHamilton,BERMUDAbermudanationalgallery.com441-295-9428Opens April
CHESAPEAKE ICONSOysters, blue crabs, waterfowl,skipjacksandlighthouses,thesym-bols of the Chesapeake Bay areportrayed in art, artifacts, models,sculpture,literatureaswellasusedinrecipes.Chesapeake BayMaritime MuseumSt.Michaels,MDcbmm.org•410-745-2916Through June
COMING OF AGE American Art, 1850s-1950100 years ofAmerican art,including themarinepaint-ings of Winslow Homer,John Singer Sargent andJamesMcNeillWhistler,theimpressionist paintings byChildeHassamandMauricePrendergasttotheabstractworks of Georgia O’KeefeandJacksonPollack.Dulwich Picture GalleryLondon,ENGLANDdulwichpicturegallery.org.uk020-8693-5254March 14 – June 8
CONRAD IN AUSTRALIAPhotographs, letters andbooks celebrate novelistJoseph Conrad’s 150thbirthday and his maritime
linkstoAustralia.Australia NationalMaritime MuseumSydney,AUSTRALIAanmm.gov.auThrough February 10
CROSS THAT BRIDGE:Prints from thePermanent Collection Etchings capture the elegance ofbridges from the Thames Riverin Boston to bridges around theworld by James McNeil Whistler,Paul Signac, Frank Brangwyn andothers.Museum of Fine ArtsSpringfield,MAspringfieldmuseums.org800-625-7738Through March 2
FIJI MUSEUMIncludesamaritimegallerycomposedof art, artifacts and archaeologicalobjects focussing on the maritimehistoryof the indigenouspeopleoftheSouthPacific.Suva,FijiIslandsfijimuseum.org.fj•679-330-0100Ongoing
FISH & SHIPSMasterworks by Harold Harvey,Henry Scott Tuke, Walter Langley,Sir Frank Brangwyn and photo-graphsbyVinceBevanexaminetheCornishfishingindustry. Falmouth Art GalleryFalmouth,Cornwall,UKfalmouthgallery.com44(0)-1236-313863Through Spring
4TH ANNUAL MINI-SYMPOSIUMExhibition of 1:1250/1200 shipmodels, and meeting of collectors,scratch-builders, manufacturersanddealers.SUNY Maritime College andthe Maritime Industry MuseumThrogsNeck,NY•518-439-3908Sunymaritime.eduMay 16 – 18
FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA:200 Years ofCharting America’s CoastsArtwork, photographs, charts andmaps explore the charting of theAmerican coastline from NewYorktoAlaska.Museum of the NorthUniversity of AlaskaFairbanks,AKuaf.edu/museum•907-474-7505Ongoing
GREAT BRITISH WATERCOLORS From the Paul Mellon Collect at Yale Center for British ArtIncelebrationof the100thanniver-saryofphilanthropistPaulMellon’sbirthhis88watercolorsby45art-ists highlight the great diversityof British watercolor painting fromthe inception of this demandingmedium inmid-17th century to thelate 18th century, includes worksbyJMWTurner,WilliamBlake,JohnConstableandothers.State Hermitage MuseumSt.Petersburg,RUSSIAhermitagemuseum.orgJanuary 13Yale Center for British ArtsNewHaven,CTycba.yale.edu•203-432-2800May 29 – August 17
Upcoming Marine Art Exhibitions and Events Around the Globe
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GREAT ESCAPES:Boating, Fishing and OutingsChinese paintings, ceramics andphotography from the 13th to the20thcentury.Norton Museum of ArtWestPalmBeach,FLnorton.org•561-832-5196Through March 25
HAMPTON ROADSNAVAL MUSEUMModels,paintings,artifacts,photo-graphs,medals,munitions,etc.tellthe story of the 220 year historyof theU.S.Naval fleet inHamptonRoads, Virginia. Also the site ofbattleshipUSSWisconsin.Norfolk,VAhrnm.navy.mil•757-322-2987Ongoing
IMPRESSIONISTS BY THE SEAOver50significantoilpaintingsby19th century Impressionists of theNormandy and Brittany seaside,includes works by Monet, Manet,Boudin,Gauguin,Whistler,Sargent,Renoirandothers.Wadsworth AthenaeumMuseum of ArtHartford,CT860-278-2670Wadsworthatheneum.orgFebruary 9 – May 11
INUIT PRINTSInuit prints from the DennosMuseum Center of NorthwesternMichiganCollegeBermuda National GalleryHamilton,BERMUDAbermudanationalgallery.comThrough April
INSTITUTE OF MARITIME STUDIESSpecial art exhibition related toNantucketmaritimeheritage.Nantucket,MAmarinehomecenter.com508-228-2505Ongoing
JELLYFISH – Nature Inspires ArtExaminingjellyfishthroughart,sci-enceandnaturalhistory.Australian NationalMaritime MuseumSydney,AUSTRALIAanmm.gov.auThrough February 17
J.M.W. TURNERThelargestretrospectiveeverpre-sented in the U.S. of works byJ.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) con-sisting of 140 oil paintings andwatercolors, including seascapes,landscapesandhistoricalscenesDallas Museum of ArtDallas,TX•214-922-1200dallasmuseumofart.orgFebruary 10 – May 18Metropolitan Museum of ArtNewYork,NY•212-535-7710metmuseum.orgJuly 1 – Sept. 21
LEGACY OF SHIPS: 400 Years of Shipbuilding in MaineAmulti-mediaexhibition, includingphotographs, paintings, models,actual shipsand rareobjects, cel-ebrating the 400 year history ofship-andboatbuildinginMaine.Maine Maritime MuseumBath,ME•207-443-1316mainemaritimemuseum.orgThrough May 4
MADE IN CHINA: Export Porcelain from the Leo and Doris Hodroff Collection at Winterthur150 small to very large porcelainpiecestellthehistoryofChinatradetotheWestbetween1550and1850.The Mint MuseumCharlotte,NC•704-337-2000themintmuseum.orgJanuary 25 – April 17
MAINE IN AMERICA:Works from thePermanent CollectionWorksbygreatAmericanartistsofthe 19th century, including FrankBenson, Fitz Henry Lane, ThomasCole, William Harnett, GeorgeInness,GilbertStuartandothers.Farnsworth Art MuseumRockland,ME•207-596-6457Farnsworthmuseum.orgMarch 1 – June 15
MAKING MODERN:The Watercolors ofKenneth McQueen (1897-1960)140 watercolors of Queenslandlandscape and the “Gold” and“Sunshinecoasts”shorelinebyanimportantAustralianmodernist.Queensland Art GallerySouthBrisbane,Queensland,AUSTRALIA61(0)7-3840-7303•qag.qld.gov.auThrough May 5
MAPS: FINDING OURPLACE IN THE WORLD100originalmaps,globesandartifacts.The Walter Art MuseumBaltimore,MDthewalters.orgMarch 16 – June 8
MARINE AND FISHING ARTBy the leading artists fromAmerica,EuropeandNewZealand.Paintings, sculpture, ship modelsand scrimshaw byAnthony Blake,ChristopherBlossom,DonDemers,Flick Ford, James Griffiths, IanMarshall,VictorMays,JohnMecray,StanleyMeltzoff, LeonardMizerek,James Prosek, Keith Reynolds,ArthurShilstone,JohnStobart,TimThompson,RobertWeissandothers.J. Russell Jinishian Gallery1657PostRoad,Fairfield,CT203-259-8753jrusselljinishiangallery.comOngoing
MARINER MADE:Folk Art by ThoseWho Went to SeaMaine Folk Art TrailThe finest examples of AmericanFolk Art, including models, carv-ings,portraits,pottery,needleworkanddecorativeobjectshavingsig-nificance to the heritage of thestateofMaineortoAmericanFolkArt in general, shown simultane-ously at museums throughout thestate.mainefolkarttrail.orgFarnsworth Art MuseumRockland,MEMarch 29 – November 2Saco MuseumSaco,MEMay 16 – August 31Sabbathday LakeShaker MuseumNewGloucester,MEMay 23 – October 6Maine Maritime MuseumBath,MEMay 24 – October 13Rufus Porter MuseumBridgton,MEJune 3 – October 15Bates College Museum of ArtLewiston,MEJune 5 – October 14Museums of Old YorkYork,MEJune 7 – October 11Penobscot Marine MuseumSearsport,MEJune 12 – October 19Colby College Museum of ArtWaterville,MEJune 22 – October 19Maine Historical SocietyPortland,MEJune 27 – December 30Maine State MuseumAugusta,MEJune 28 – October 12
William Ryan Harbor Queens, Lackawanna Railroad Steam Tug, MADISONOil18”x24”$14,000
Andrew S. Walton The Wager - Sandbaggers Racing c.1885 28”x36”$8,500
SILK ROAD TO CLIPPER SHIP:Trade, Changing Marketsand East Asian Ceramics1000yearsofexportceramicsfromChina,KoreaandJapan—exploringhowforeigntradeinfluenceddeco-rativedesignandtechnique.The Reeves Center WashingtonandLeeUniversityLexington,VA540-458-8400Through April 4Kresge Art MuseumMichiganStateUniversityEastLansing,MIartmuseum.msu.eduMay 3 – August 1
SPEED49 paintings by James E.ButtersworthtoWillemdeKooning,aswell as sculptures and12 shipmodels explore how speed andmotionareachievedinart.Peninsula Fine Arts CenterNewportNews,VAPfac-va.org•757-596-8175May 1 – July 13
STAR MINIATURE COLLECTION:Military Portrait MiniaturesMiniaturecommissionedportraitsofarmyandnavalofficersofhistoricalsignificance as well as unknownsoldiers from the 17th-19th centu-ries,includingtheNapoleonicWarsandtheAmericanRevolution.The Nelson AtkinsMuseum of ArtKansasCity,KSnelson-atkins.org•816-751-1278Through May 17
TEMPEST, TRAGEDYAND TRIUMPHArtandartifactsillustratingthetri-umphsandhazardsofoceantravel.Paintings by James Buttersworth,Fitz Hugh Lane, Robert Salmon,WilliamBradford,andothers.Minnesota Marine Art MuseumWinona,MN•866-940-6626minnesotamarineart.orgOpened November 27, 2007
32ND ANNUAL MIDWESTERN MODEL SHIP and BOATS CONTEST and DISPLAYA modeler’s symposium as wellas exhibition and competition ofmodelsfromtheUnitedStatesandCanada.
TRANSPORTERS:Contemporary Salish Art10 Coast Salish artists revealthe life, culture and myths of theNative American inhabitants ofPuget Sound and coastal BritishColumbia.Art Gallery of Great VictoriaVictoria,BC,CANADAAggv.bc.ca•250-384-4101Through February 24
29TH ANNUAL MODERN MARINE MASTERS EXHIBITIONPaintings, scrimshaw, sculpturesand ship models by contemporarymarineartists.Maritime Gallery atMystic SeaportMystic,CTmysticseaport.org860-572-5308April – June
THE VOYAGE OFTHE QUEEN MARGARET –New York to Fremantle 1905
PhotographsandjournalsfromtheSmithsonian recount the remark-able voyage from New York toFremantlebyayoungAmerican.Australian NationalMaritime MuseumSydney,AUSTRALIAanmm.govThrough July 22
WAR ARTISTS INTHE MIDDLE EASTExhibition of paintings by Britishartists who documented conflictsintheMiddleEastfromWorldWarItothepresent.Imperial War Museum, LondonLondon,ENGLANDlondon.iwm.org.uk44(0)207-416-5320Through May 11
THE WAR THROUGHSTEICHEN’S EYESCombat Photography inthe Pacific 1943-1945The first exhibition of 50 photo-graphs by Edward Steichen andphotographers who served underhim as war photographers in thePacificduringWorldWarII.San Diego Maritime MuseumSanDiego,CA
sdmaritime.com•619-234-9153Through July
WATERCOLORS BYWINSLOW HOMEROver 100 watercolors, drawingsandoilpaintingsbyWinslowHomer(1836-1910), explore his favoritesitesandsubjects.Art Institute of ChicagoChicago,ILartic.edu•312-443-3600February 16 – May 11
WOOLIES: A SAILOR’S ARTOver 30 embroidered pictureson canvas by British sailors from1840-1880 of ships, battles andlighthouses.Vero Beach Museum of ArtVeroBeach,CAvbmuseum.org•772-231-0707February 2 – May 11
YARMOUTH COUNTY MUSEUMOver 20,000 objects of art andartifacts centering on the historyof seafaring in Yarmouth County,NovaScotia.Yarmouth,NS,CANADAyarmouthmuseum.ednet.ns.ca902-742-5539Ongoing
MARITIME AUTHOR SERIESWhaling’s impactonAmericanhis-tory isdiscussed inLeviathan: The History of Whaling in America byEricDolinMystic Seaport MuseumMystic,CT • 860-572-5308February 27
MARITIME HERITAGEVISTOR’S CENTERMarine art and modeling fromaround the world with a specialemphasis on paintings by GreekandCypriotmarinepainters.Paralimini,CYPRUS257-23-83-40-20Ongoing
THE MASTERWORKSOF JACK GRAY (1927-1981)Ararecollectionof22oilpaintingsby one of Canada’s best knownmarineartists.Minnesota MarineArt MuseumWinona,MN•866-940-6626minnesotamarineart.orgOpening March 26,2008
MEN, SHIPS AND THE SEA: MASTERWORKSOF CALIFORNIAPaintings by Armin Hansen and William RitschelA retrospective of the worksby two California artists whowere seminal in the creationof the Monterey School andearlyCaliforniaart.Monterey Museum of ArtMonterey,CA•831-372-5477montereyart.orgJanuary 19 – June 22
MINIATURE ART SHOWAnnual exhibition of theMiniatureArtSocietyofFloridabytheworld’srenownedmin-iaturists includes works byGeoffHuntandothers.Gulf Coast Museumgulfcoastmuseum.org727-518-6833Through February 10
MORE THAN JUST TOYSShip models by engineers, artistsand amateurs from ancient Egypttothepresent.Schermerhorn RowSouth Street Seaport MuseumNewYork,NYsouthstreetseaport.orgThrough Spring
MUSEUM MESDAGMuseum housing the art and artcollectionofmarinepainterHendrikWillem Mesdag (1831-1915), alsoincludes works by French, DutchandAsianmasters.
NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM7,000 art objects and artifactsfocusing on Jewish seafaringreveal the maritime history of theMediterraneanandtheRedSea.Haifa,ISRAEL972-4-853-6622Ongoing
NATURE IN ART MUSEUMApplied fine and decorative artinspired by nature from 60 coun-triesspanning1500yearsand600artists,includingsculpturesbyKentUllberg,Inuitart,fishpaintingsandmarinerelatedart.Gloucester,ENGLAND44(0)1-452-731-422Ongoing
OCEAN TO OUTBACKAustralian Landscape Paintings, 1850-1950The best works from the NationalCollection celebrate the 25th anni-versary of the National Gallery ofAustralia.Ballart Fine Art GalleryBallart,Victoria,AUSTRALIAbalgal.com•03-5320-5828Through March 30Lawrence Wilson Art GalleryPerth,WestAustralia,AUSTRALIAuwa.edu.au•618-6488-3707April 13 – June 1Cairns Regional Art GalleryCairns,Queensland,AUSTRALIAcairnsregionalgallery.com.auJune 21 – July 27
Araluen GalleriesAliceSprings,NT,AUSTRALIAAugust 9 – October 9
PAINTINGS FROM THE COLLECTION OF JACQUES GOUDSTIKKER200 recently restituted Dutch OldMasterpaintingsfromthemagnifi-centcollectionofAmsterdam’spre-eminent dealer and collector priortoWorldWarII.Bruce MuseumGreenwich,CT•203-869-0376Brucemuseum.orgMay 10 – September 7
THE PARADOX OF WATERThe significance and diversity ofwaterareexploredthroughadiver-sityoffineartmedia.Westport Arts CenterWestport,CT•203-222-7070Westportartscenter.orgMarch 7 – April 14
PICTURES ASWITNESSES OF CHANGENewpaintingsbySwissartistHansErnidepictingtheeffectsofclimatechangeonwaterandland.Hans Erni MuseumLucerne,SWITZERLANDHanserni.ch•041-375-7482Through Spring
PIRATESArt, artifacts and legends explorethe lore and reality of the mostunsavorymariners,pirates.Cold Spring HarborWhaling MuseumColdSpring,NY•631-367-3418Cshwhalingmuseum.orgThrough August
POUSSIN AND NATURE40 oil paintings and 40 drawingsby Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665)inspiredbyVeniceandothergrandlandscapes.Metropolitan Museum of ArtNewYork,NYmetmuseum.org•212-535-7710February 12 – May 11
THE POWERFUL HANDOF GEORGE BELLOWS:Drawings from the BostonPublic Library57drawingsofAmerican life, fromtheseasidetoboxingtostreetlife.Portland Museum of ArtPortland,MEportlandmuseum.orgApril 10 – June 1
SAMUEL McINTIRE:Carving an American Style200 objects, including sculp-tures, ship ornaments andcarvings, architectural draw-ings and furniture by thearchitect of Salem, MA inhonorofhis250thbirthday.Peabody Essex MuseumSalem,MA•866-745-1876pem.orgThrough February 24
SCONSET: 02564Art, architecture and videoand audio programs explorethe evolution of Sconset, MAfrom a fishing village to afamedsummerresort.NantucketHistorical AssociationNantucket,MAnhu.org•508-228-1894
Though 2008
SEASONS –CHANGING LANDSCAPESLandscapes and seascapes ofNorway and Germany by EdvardMunch.The Munch MuseumOslo,NORWAY•47-23-49-35-00munch.museum.noThrough February 15
model maker Donald Preul to be their keynote speaker. More information on this event can be had by contacting its organizer Ulrich Rudosky at 518-439-3908 or by visiting their Web site www.steelnavy.com/1250home.htm.
We had a chance recently to visit the full scale mega yacht which has created the latest buzz in art circles. Christened the Sea Fair/Grand Luxe, it measures 228 ft. loa, weighs 3,200 tons, yet draws only 6 ½’. She has three decks and bunks for only the captain and a few crewmem-bers. What fills the rest of the space, you ask? Well, 28 art dealers from around the world and their wares, which include everything from paintings, and sculpture to furniture, jewelry and even antique books. Dealers rent space for $10,000 to $35,000 per week as the vessel makes its way to various ports of call up and down the East Coast. Because they were a little behind schedule this fall their ports of call were limited to the Chelsea Piers in Manhattan, Greenwich, Connecticut– where she tied up alongside the Delamar Hotel, and hosted a $1,000-a-plate black-tie dinner to benefit The Bruce Museum– Port Washington, New York and Norwalk, Connecticut where an evening to benefit the Norwalk Maritime Center was held. This was our first look at the $40 million vessel and the setup was unique. Once aboard we saw everything from antique English furniture to artwork by French artists like Jean Dufy and modern abstract artists like Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock and, Roy Lichtenstein. One gallery specializes in American realism. In their booth we found a Bronco Buster by Frederick Remington from the Roman Bronze works selling for a cool $475,000, and an Andrew Wyeth watercolor. Along the way at various dealers we noticed a smattering of marine art from Montague Dawson to 18th century Dutch paintings and 19th century English paintings by John Wilson Carmichael (1799-1868), to a yachting scene by contemporary English artist Stephen Renard.
We also were able to visit with the Sea Fair owners David and Leeanne Lester, when they stopped by our gallery the next day. They began their careers with galleries in Los Angeles and later founded the Miami and Palm Beach Art Fairs. They told us that they hit upon building this yacht when they were cruising up and down the East Coast on their own private yacht visiting clients. Three years later, the Lesters seem pleased with the result, reporting that several million dollars worth of artwork had already been sold in the few short stops. As we saw them they were headed back to the shipyard in Miami for a little reballasting, then on to their winter schedule that takes them along the Florida coasts into the spring when they will head up to Charleston and Hilton Head, Baltimore and then to New England in the summer.
Visitation to the Sea Fair is essentially by invitation only. You can log on to their Web site which is www.expoships.com, or call 239-908-2544. They’ll return your call, set-ting up a time for your visit. While like everything else on the water, exacting schedules are subject to the vicissi-tudes of wind and weather, whether you’re in the market for a Picasso or not, if Sea Fair is passing through your town she’s definitely worth a visit. There’s nothing else quite like her in the art world.
Turn of the century yachting with special empha-sis on the people on board, is the subject of Russ Kramer’s exciting paintings recently. If you’re a reader of Yachting magazine you would have seen a full page reproduction of his painting “Heavy Weather” in the
June issue and the elegant depiction of turn-of-the-century genteel yachtsman in “The Yachting Party” in the December issue. WoodenBoat magazine was so excited by the fresh approach and the dynamic quality of his work that they ran a six page spread of his paint-ings in their May/June issue accompanied by Russ’s text while Sheridan House has made Russ’s “Drop Sail at the Mark” of two William Fife-designed yachts, Moonbeam and Belle Adventure, their cover image for the 2008 Mariner’s Book of Days put together by Maine Boats, Homes and Harbors editor and long time columnist in the marine world Peter Spectre. There are two of Russ’s paintings also in the January issue of Sail magazine.
In addition to all that, Russ is helping to redesign the Christian Science Monitor newspaper, and he’s been commissioned by New York Times best-selling author Ted Bell, well known for his “Hawk” series of spy novels to illustrate Bell’s newest book, a youth -oriented pirate story along the lines of Treasure Island for St. Martin’s Press. I’d say he has a few things on his plate, wouldn’t you? The good news is that his paint-ings are, of course, one-of-a-kind and are available through the jrusselljinishiangallery.com; Russ is also producing them as limited edition gicleé prints on paper and canvas of each painting. You can view these prints at www.russkramer.com.
These days, some of the finest paintings of classic yachting are being produced down/under in the small but formidable maritime nation of New Zealand by sailor and painter Anthony (A.D.) Blake. When not painting a 1901 Regatta off Larchmont Yacht Club or the Eastern Yacht Club cruise into Nantucket Harbor by moonlight, or the Great Transatlantic Race of 1866, he’s actively involved in racing himself. Recently he sailed in the Classic Yacht Regatta in Melbourne, Australia and as a trustee of the Classic Yacht Charitable Trust of Auckland he helped in the launch of the 60 ft. Thelma built in 1897. As he said, “the amaz-ing thing about Thelma and many of New Zealand’s old yachts is that the hull timbers are still as good as ever…after a hundred years. Not bad, eh? ” It’s been two years since he and his wife Fiona were over for his one - man exhibition and interest in his work continues to grow, as does the value of his work. Large 30”x 40” paintings that a few years were selling for $35-$40,000, are now selling for $65,000 - if you can get one.
Speaking of down/under, we had a nice visit from Australian marine artist Ian Hanson and his wife
Kaylene who were in the area to attend an exhibition of his marine paintings in con-junction with the work of William Duffy, Robert Firehouse, Sergio Roffo, and Brad Betts at the Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport. Ian is another sailor/art-ist whose exciting paintings of tall ships in the southern ocean have captivated col-lectors from down/under to up/over (do they say that in Australia?). Ian reports that he’s just completed a commission for Sir Patrick Goodwin who hails from Nelson, New Zealand, of Lord Nelson’s triumphant Battle of Trafalgar. It’s a huge painting, 4’x 6’, which Goodwin flew Ian over on his private jet to present to the town. When not flying, Ian sails a cruising 8-meter designed by Alan Paine who designed the Australian 12-meter Gretel, which sailed against Weatherly in the 1962 America’s Cup. He says the 8-meter is essentially a smaller version of the classic yacht Bolero, built in 1952. In fact, Ian’s exhibition at Mystic Seaport features a painting of Bolero.
Bolero’s owner Ed Kane and his wife Martha Wallace were in attendance at the opening. In addition to restoring, campaigning and championing classic yacht-ing, he and Martha also have been involved in an interesting project to promote hands-on participation by young people in classic boats. The project entitled “Building Thoreau’s Boat” resulted in an exhibition at the Concord Museum, Concord, Massachusetts this fall and winter. The centerpiece of the exhibition was the replica of the 15 ft. dory that naturalist Henry Thoreau and his brother built in 1839. It was a trip in this boat that inspired Thoreau’s classic book A Week on the Concord and Merrmack Rivers. The Exhibition was sponsored by recent America’s Cup challenger Larry Ellison’s company ORACLE, and Wooden Boat Magazine, which covered it extensively. More informa-tion can be found at www.concordmuseum.org.We were able to see the boat and the Kanes at the Wooden Boat Show held in Mystic Seaport last sum-mer where we also ran into artist, Robert Webber. Bob considers himself strictly a boat painter, “Perhaps a throwback to the days before photography was invented.” He says, “My mission is to immortalize sur-vivors from America’s Golden Age of Yachting before they’re gone forever”. He likens his situation to the 19th century when Lloyds of London hired painters to paint portraits of yachts and commercial vessels solely as a record to document them in case of loss. He sees it as his personal duty to document classic yachts before they are gone. Among the boats he’s painted recently is the mahogany Hutchinson-designed barrel back speedboat Royal Amber the Lady Elin, a 1930 cruising yacht built by Electric Launch Company and a Trumpy-designed motor-yacht, El Presidente. While at the show Bob received a commission to paint the fabulously restored commuter yacht Aphrodite from its owner Chuck Royce. Pretty good Bob. More informa-tion can be found at www.robertwebber.comChristopher Blossom is one artist whose ability to master diverse subject matter is virtually unlimited as evidenced by a recent article on his work in the September/October issue of Art of the West magazine. Although he is a past president of the American Society of Marine Artists, he’s also a perennial award winner at the prestigious Prix de West invitational exhibition in Oklahoma City, where despite his ‘non-cowboy’ subject matter, his fellow exhibiting artists have voted him the “best artist” in the exhibition for an unprecedented three years, that’s quite a compliment! Fortunately for us, his first love, after, of course, his
family, and his boat Arcadia, is marine art. Because both his grandfather and his father were well known professional artists, he grew up in an environment that promoted drawing and painting. As a young man he was able to visit John Stobart, who was a member of the active artist community in Westport, Connecticut on a regular basis. Chris said, “At one point I suggested to my Dad that he buy one of his paintings because I liked it. Dad said I should paint one myself. So I did.” So aside from recognizing that John’s paintings were a good investment, Chris was able to combine his own love for being on the water with his interest in painting. Today, Chris divides his creative time between marine painting and landscape painting. His painting of the brig Betsy (1799-1801), reported to be the first American ship to anchor in San Diego Bay on the 26th of August, 1800, was featured on the cover of Mains’l Haul the journal of the Maritime Museum of San Diego this summer. It was painted at the request of Rodney Taylor who had discovered a log from the
Betsy, written between 1799 and 1801. As no known pictures of her were available, he asked Chris to use his extensive knowledge of ships and artistic ability to recreate what she would have looked like. Chris later painted another painting of Betsy anchored in San Diego at night. (See page 14 in this issue for that remarkable painting.)But despite his success in the West, Chris remains devoted to marine painting. And his thoughts on it in Art of the West are revealing, “Marine painting is fairly technical. It has to be technically correct. The standard composition for a marine painting is one-third water, two-thirds sky. My interest is in trying to find a dif-ferent way to portray what’s been portrayed for many years. The idea is to create a sense of movement and to get your eye to go where I want it to go.” As for his ideas for paintings he says, “Usually it’s something I’ve seen on the water that gives me a spark of an idea. What I find interesting is the way the water moves along the side of the hull, or the way the light reflects.” As for
subjects from a different era, such as schooners or the brig Betsy he says, “I want to create paintings of things I would like to have seen, and I want to paint them as they would have been. I want to see a beautiful boat at a particular time and in a particular atmosphere. I guess I’m really painting for myself.” That may be true, Chris, but there are a whole lot of people out there who really enjoy what you’re painting too. In fact, it’s no surprise that an artist like Chris, who has been well-known in marine art circles for many years, is now becoming regarded as one of America’s premier artists in any genre. Look for a one-man show of Chris’s paintings at the J. Russell Jinishian Gallery in late 2008 or early 2009.Cruise liner and steel navy expert Jim Flood reports that he’s been commissioned by the Cunard Lines to depict three queen liners: Queen Mary II, Queen Elizabeth II, and Queen Victoria in New York Harbor against one of his famous, vivid, brilliantly colored “Flood” sunsets. Vacationers aboard the Cunard Lines
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Christopher Blossom Smuggling Off San Diego Oil16”x20”$11,500 Brig BETSY, Sept. 1800
A challenge that began over a drink at New York’s Union Club in October resulted in one of the most storied yacht races in history. The Great Transatlantic Race began well after most yachtsman had put away their boats for the season. On December 11th, 1866 the starting gun sounded on a cool clear day with a fresh westerly breeze.In the foreground is seen the 107 ft. Henrietta, owned by James Gordon Bennett and skippered by Samuel “Bully” Samuels (of the famous record-breaking Red Cross Line packet “Dreadnought). On the left hand side, under cloud shadow, is the 106 ft. Fleetwing, owned by George A. Osgood, with Vesta, at 105 ft., owned by Pierre Lorillard Jr., on the right hand side of the painting. According to the numerous newspaper accounts, a very large spectator fleet accompanied the three racing schooners, after the start off Sandy Hook, New York. On the
left hand side a tug is just turning to head back to New York, giving the racing yachts a farewell ‘whistle blast’ of steam. The sea is already starting to ‘build’ and Henrietta is shown veering to starboard as her bow lifts onto the top of a wave. Her sails cast long shadows to leeward and the water appears very dark, both caused by the low winter sun. On the left hand side sunlight reflects off the waves. All the yachts are flying square sails from their foremasts, spinnakers not having been invented then. Henrietta’s staysail is being ‘back winded’ by her foresail and squaresail. Amazingly, Henrietta finished off the Needles on Christmas day, after a very fast passage taking 13 days 21 hours and 55 minutes and winning the ‘winner take all’ purse of $90,000. Fleetwing and then Vesta finished shortly after on the 26th of December.
Anthony Blake The Great Transatlantic Race of 1866 Oil36”x48”$65,000
Don Demers: “I want to discuss my current feel-ings, beliefs and philosophies about painting. It seems as though, as time has gone by I’ve become more and more aware of what embodies great painting by looking at the artists that have inspired me (see box). It has occurred to me that their work is not born of a visual source, but of an experiential source of something that had hap-pened to those individuals, or something that those people witnessed from a very deep place inside them. It goes far beyond the optics. It embodies a human experience. The early part of my career had been very preoccupied with the construction of paintings, and making sure that my craft and technique lived up to an aesthetic ideal that I had. Now I’m finding that I’m ever so slowly but surely embarking on this journey of bringing my work to a deeper level that repre-sents more of a human experience than simply a visual object. Actually, I’m beginning to have the sailing vessels and the sea and the sky and the figures in the paintings begin to represent some-thing greater about humanity, about the human condition, even if it’s something as simple as wit-nessing the weather.
It’s been interesting for me to spend as many years as I have watching my imagery evolve. I can remember back to my first opportunities to wit-ness the sea, the coastal environs. I can still feel the vivid emotional response that I had to these subjects. And when you’ve been inspired, tanta-lized, intrigued by a given subject, if you’re inclined toward visual portrayal you go about the process of beginning to make your pictures—pic-tures that you hope will convey the feeling of the experience you’ve had by having witnessed your subject. However, it takes years upon years upon years for most artists, at least it has for me, to
purge yourself of inadequate craft, the inability to see things as a unified whole. We go through a long technical evolution or growth of incremen-tally building our pictures, dealing with each of the components separately. And as long as we’re not fluent in this language our paintings will have a great opportunity to look fragmented and dis-cordant. But as that fluency builds, as this refine-ment occurs, eventually you can suspend the preoccupation with how a picture is put together and simply experience why the painting has been put together and what it means to you.
I’m at a point in my artistic development where I find the process of creating paintings more and more mysterious. Twenty years ago, when I asked Tom Hoyne, a mentor of mine, about his process, having seen the mature level his work had achieved, his answer to me was, “If you’re under the impression this ever gets any easier, you’re mistaken. It becomes more and more dif-ficult as times goes by.” I now know what he means because I’m looking for something intan-gible in my work, a quality that can’t exactly be identified. It has to come through a series of deci-sions that I make during the painting process, all of which are motivated by this inner vision that I have—an interior idea.
Relating that specifically to marine art is kind of interesting because of the multi-dimensional aspects of it. Marine art is obliged to be techni-cally accurate (at least the school of marine paint-ing that I work within) and that is essential to its authenticity. So I approach each of my paintings
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DON DEMERS If you’ve followed marine art at all over the last 25 years, you will have become familiar with the stirring paintings of Don Demers. His depictions of historic and modern sailing vessels in a wide vari-ety of locations and conditions have garnered every award the field has to offer- most more than once. He has been the subject of numerous magazine articles, which has helped earn him an international following among collectors and connoisseurs in the field. Over the last few years, he has expanded his subject matter to include ‘plein aire’ painting on location around the globe, where a whole new appreciative audience has been captivated by his ability to display our world with consummate skill and passion. As a result he now is widely recognized as simply one of the lead-ing realist painters in America today. We sat down with him recently, as he prepared for his one-man exhibition of new paintings this June, to discuss his philosophy of art and plans for the show.
Favorite Artistsof Don Demers:American Artists:
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) William Trost Richards (1833-1905)
Chasing the Rum RunnerFinal Oil Painting Size: 24” x 30”, $35,000
First AttemptFinal Oil Painting Size: 24” x 36”, $40,000
1928 Transatlantic Race, Schooner Water GypsyFinal Oil Painting Size: 36” x 48”, $65,000
RendezvousFinal Oil Painting Size: 26” x 40”, $50,000
Demers is constantly creating small pencil thumbnail sketches of ideas for new paintings throughout the year. He tacks them up and then, it may be months later, expands or refines them on his way to creating a full scale color painting. Here are four preliminary sketches for paintings that you will see in his upcoming
exhibit to be held at the J. Russell Jinishian Gallery in Fairfield, Connecticut from June 7-22, 2008,to preview the exhibition or reserve a painting, visit www.jrusselljinishiangallery.com.
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Don Demers ENDEAVOUR Chasing RAINBOW America’s Cup 1934 Oil30x40$55,000
UpcomingDon DemersExhibitionJune 7-22
Sketch for the ENDEAVOUR
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TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY: $85 plus $10 shipping and handling per book. Contact the Greenwich Workshop Gallery, (800) 243-4260, 1657 Post Road, Fairfield, CT 06824, or email us at [email protected] Phone orders require major credit card. To order by mail, please include check or credit card information.
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Charles Peterson Pencil on ClayboardClipper POLA of the Laiesz Line, Fills Away for Europe, 14 ½” x 22 ½”as the Steam Tug WATUPPA Drops its Tow $4,500
Peter Neill, President EmeritusSouth Street Seaport Museum, New York, NY
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The nation’s leading authority on the subject, J. Russell Jinishian, compiled the art and wrote this authoritative guide to the exciting world of mari-time life for both the beginning enthusiast and the experienced collector alike. This is the first book to highlight key movements in today’s marine art and to identify its most important artists with detailed discussions of their unique contributions. A must for every sailor’s library, this magnificent volume features over 200 color reproductions of paintings, scrim-shaw and sculpture (most never-before-published) by America’s leading marine artists.
now with the requirement that they are authentic and accurate, but also that they be imbued with the emotional human circumstances that I want to portray. I have found in my last year or two, particularly my last one-man show in 2006, that my efforts along these lines were immediately identified and recognized by the viewers. This was very, very gratifying. They may have been conscious of why they appreciated the paintings, or it may have been something too internal for them to articulate. But in either case, I could sense that I connected with them. There’s a com-poser whose name I cannot remember now, but he says about his music, “I don’t want people to be impressed by my work; I want them to be moved by it.” And that’s precisely what my motive is in my paintings at this point.
I have never found painting to be an easy or casual, or frankly, a fun activity, even from the time I was a boy. It’s been compelling, intriguing, engaging, exciting, disappointing and frustrating, but it’s never been something that I could do very casually. As I have applied myself over these many years, first in high school and art school, then as an illustrator, and through my commitment to marine art, I have ever so slowly tried to remove my shortcomings and have seen my work evolve to a higher level. Only within the last year or two, have I found that there are many things that I can achieve quite easily and without too much diffi-culty, which in the previous years I was unable to. I see this as just another example of having entered what I think is a mature phase and now am able to really get on with the deep, serious work of creating the kinds of paintings that I would like to create at this point in my career.
I’ve been very grateful for an attentive audience
for virtually my entire professional career. It’s been wonderful to have people recognize and appreci-ate what it is I was able to accomplish in my early work, and also join me in the journey that I’ve been involved artistically for these 20-25 years, allowing me some room to grow artistically.
Within the last ten years or so I’ve rededicated myself to landscape painting. I have found that it has greatly informed my work as a marine painter and vice versa. My skills as a studio marine painter have allowed me the facility I need to accomplish what I want outdoors. And my time outside directly observing nature and trying to capture it on the canvases has increased my abil-ity to get believability into my paintings—to really get a sense of weather and atmosphere. Both of them are stronger for the other discipline. Regardless of what the subject matter is in any painting, be it landscape, marine painting, still life, or figure work, I now believe that the list of motives that underlie any of those subjects is a relatively short list of human emotions. We take that list of human experiences and we apply it into the specificity of the subject we’re dealing with.
At a more descriptive level of my marine art I’d just like to take a minute to talk about the sub-jects that I’m currently interested in, though I don’t know where and why these evolve. Out of many of my friends and colleagues in this busi-ness, each has their own areas of fascination and subsequent expertise. One of the areas that I’m beginning to pursue or continue to pursue is that of the American Pilot Schooner. I think it’s based on the stories I find fascinating and I find those vessels to be at a very high level of beauty. I’m also beginning to work more and more with the 20th century subjects: the Cruising Club of
America boats; late America’s Cup; and then the early Newport-Bermuda boats; all the large great yawls and ketches from the 1930’s —1950’s. Those will begin to be part of my future work and be represented in my next collection of paintings. There will also be some landscape work and coastal landscape work. Neither one of these disciplines, landscape or marine, completely satiate me, but together they both completely fulfill me artistically. I’m very happy, and I have plenty of work to do in those two genres. Those both will obviously be represented in my next show.
Another feature of my next exhibition will be the size of the major canvases. My last one-man show featured some of my largest works to date. While this upcoming exhibition will include both small and mid-size paintings, it will also include paintings on an even grander scale than before. I find that the large canvases are a differ-ent kind of activity. They change my mentality toward the work both intellectually and emotion-ally. On a small canvas you have a tendency to look at the picture. As an artist you are quite cognizant of the fact that you are creating a pic-ture. With larger canvases, when you’re standing there at arm’s length facing them, you are not looking at the picture you are actually in the pic-ture. When you begin to look to your left and your right you still continue to see the same scene you are painting, that can encourage a total immersion in the subject matter itself. There is also a physicality required to paint on that scale. It requires a bigger physical investment. So I find the larger paintings allow me to immerse and involve myself at a greater, deeper, level. I look forward to sharing my new body of work with my collectors in June.”
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Continuedfrompage16
Don Demers Last Light of Day, Coastal Schooner Passing Fish Weirs, Bar Harbor, Maine Oil22”x36”$40,000
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Robert Weiss Arctic TrioScrimshaw on fossil 7” hMastadon Ivory $4,500
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Angling and War:The Collision of Big-GameFishing and WW IIMike Rivkin Hardcover $60Silverfish Press260 pp.To order: silverfishpress.comA spirited discussion of the impact World War II had on the newly dis-covered sport of big-game fishing, and big-game’s impact on the war effort; rich in anecdotes and previ-ously unpublished photographs and illustrations from around the world.
The Fine Art of Angling:Ten Modern MastersDiane K. Inman Hardcover $75Di-Les Books 216 pp.To order: dilesbooks.comFeaturing ten of the most important art-ists in the genre: Shirley Cleary, Rod Crossman, T.A. Daly, Luke Frazier, Eldridge Hardie, Chet Reneson, Arthur Shilstone, Brett Smith, Mike Stidham, and John Swan.
The Artist Who Loved BoatsPercy ‘Powder ThurburnHardcover $50Halsgrove Publishing144 pp.To order: 44(0)1823 653 777halsgrove.co.ukThis book will be loved by all those who love ships, boats and the sea, provides a fascinating story of a remarkable life, illustrated with over 100 wonderful paintings.
Big-Game Fishing Headquarters:A History of the IGFAMike Rivkin Hardcover $50IGFA Press230 pp.To order: [email protected] events, people, locales, and fish that contributed to the remarkable history of the International Game Fish Association. (Proceeds to benefit IGFA)
By the Light of the MoonThe Paintings of Ray EllisRay Ellis Hardcover $40Essays by Valerie Ann Leeds108 pp.To order: rayellis.com/books.htmlA beautiful book of paintings inspired by the moon illuminated over land and ocean, from Martha’s Vineyard to the Southeast Low Country, to the Marne River in France.
The Camera’s Coast:Historic Images of Ship and Shore in New EnglandW.H. Bunting Softcover $29.95Historic New England144 pp. ISBN: 0884482871
To order: 800-582-1899Vintage photographs and colorful ephemera related to coastal New England life woven together with small stories examine our past history while affording us an understanding of our present.
Collecting Stories, 400 Paintings, 400 StoriesA Collection of American PaintingsThomas Davies Hardcover $80Laynfaroh360 pp ISBN:0-9759783-14To order: tesco.comThe story of a forty-year passion for collecting American paintings, writ-ten entirely by a lifelong collector. Recounting the events surround-ing the acquisition of his collection and how the “art genre” was passed from his father to him, and onto his two sons. The 400 pieces of artwork range from 19th century Hudson River School Landscape, marine, genre, and still life, to work of expatriate art-ists in Europe, to art of the American West, illustration and contemporary artists of today.
Conway’s, the War at Seain Photographs, 1939-1945Stuart Robertson Hardcover $46.30& Stephen DentConway Maritime Press240 pp ISBN: 1844860450To order: amazon.comA chronological photographic account of World War II from a naval perspec-tive by both amateur sailor photogra-phers and professionals.
Cruisers and La Guerre de CourseIan Marshall Hardcover $60Mystic Seaport248 ppTo order: 800-331-2665 or mysticseaport.org52 original paintings and 30 pencil drawings, by the current president of the American Society of Marine Artists, with accompanying text together with diagrams and maps illustrate the development of the smaller class of
ships built between the American Civil War (1861-1865) and World War I, not for battle, but to hunt and destroy enemy merchant ships and supply lines.
Fish77 Great Fish of North AmericaFlick Ford Hardcover $50Greenwich Workshop208 ppTo order: 800-243-4260Featuring 77 never before published watercolors of the great fish of North America by one of the nation’s pre-mier fish painters with accompanying text by a well-known sport fisherman and fishing writer.
Frederic Edwin Church: Romantic Landscapes and SeascapesGerald L. Carr, Hardcover $50Foreword by Warren AdelsonUniversity Press of New England136 pp.To order: www.dartmouth.eduPublished to accompany a major exhibition of notable landscapes and seascapes by Frederic Edwin Church
(1826–1900), this catalog offers a rich sampling of the art-ist’s five decades of creative production.
The Historyof SeafaringNavigating the World’s OceansDonald Johnson Hardcover $89John Nurminen Foundation374 pp.ISBN: 9781844860401To order:johnnurminenfoun-dation.com
A definitive and stunning volume cel-ebrating 2500 years of man’s mythic and actual seagoing voyages includes beautiful reproductions of rare maps, navigational instruments, paintings, and ship models.
Impressionists by the SeaJohn House Hardcover $55with essay by David HopkinHarry Abrams144 pp ISBN: 1-9039-7388-0To order: hnabooks.comThis exhibition catalogue presents dis-cussion on 60 impressionistic interpre-tations of the Normandy and Brittany seaside during the 19th century.
Ipswich Days:Arthur Wesley Dow and His HometownTrevor Fairbrother HardcoverYale University Press146 pp ISBN: 9780300132915
To order: yalepress.yale.eduA newly discovered photo-album by artist Arthur Wesley Dow of 41 cya-notypes of the marshes and shores, boats and clam shanties, farms and people of Ipswich, MA facilitates dis-cussion of the artist’s use of color and form in his paintings.
Ironclad DownUSS Merrimack – CSS Virginiafrom Design to DestructionCarl D. Park Hardcover $40.50U.S. Naval Institute Press272 pp. ISBN: 9781591146599To order: usni.org/storeA comprehensive study of the archi-tecture and storied history of one of the first ironclad ships in the world.
J.M.W. TurnerIan Warell, Franklin KellyHarry Abrams Hardcover $55224 pp ISBN: 1-8643-7690-XTo order: hnabooks.comExhibition catalogue surveys the influ-ence of J.M.W. Turner’s innovative and masterful depictions of nature on the Impressionist movement and the art of America.
John M. Horton:Mariner ArtistPeter VassilopoulousHeritage House Hardcover $54.95192 pp ISBN: 9781894974349To order: amazon.comA look at the life and work of one of the world’s finest marine artists and cur-rent member of the Canadian Society of Marine Artists, John Horton.
Normandie:France’s LegendaryArt Deco Ocean LinerJohn Maxtone-GrahamW.W. Norton Hardcover $100260 pp ISBN: 978-0393061208To order: amazon.comWith intricate attention to detail and engaging deftness maritime historian John Maxtone-Graham brings to life the fabled story of France’s most elegant and stylish ocean liner. Fully illustrated with over 200 photographs and illustrations.
OceaniaArt of the Pacific Islandsin the MetropolitanYale University Press Hardcover $45368 pp ISBN: 9780300120301To order: yalepress.yale.eduAn overview of the art of the Pacific Islands and particularly that in the col-lection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, featuring 200 masterworks.
On Land and Sea:A Century of Womenin the Rosenfeld CollectionMargaret L. Andersen-Rosenfeld
Mystic Seaport Hardcover $50176 pp To order: mysticseaport.orgThe powerful photographs of the Rosenfeld Collection highlight the contributions of women in yachting, in sports, as caregivers and as laborers.
On the Wind: The Marine Photographs of Norman FortierEdited by M. Lapidesand Llewellyn Howland, III160 pp. Hardcover $35To order: woodenboatstore.com or 800-272-7447Duotone photographs tell the story of tall ships, commercial vessels and other watercraft, sailors and sail-ing, fishing and fishermen along the waterfronts of Rhode Island and the southern coastline of Massachusetts.
The Oxford Dictionary of Art,Third Edition Hardcover $47.95Edited by Ian ChilversOxford University Press862 pp ISBN: 019864769To order: oup.com/usA completely revised compendium of facts and critiques on every aspect of Western art from ancient times to the present, also including information on museums, artists, critics, dealers, patrons, art schools and techniques.
Paul Henry:Paintings, Drawingsand IllustrationsS.B. Kennedy Hardcover $125416 pp ISBN: 978033300117127To order: yalepress.yale.eduThe life, art and technique of a Whistler-trained artist who painted the “soul of Ireland” from its hills to its shoreline.
The Rembrandt BookGary Schwartz Hardcover $65Harry Abrams384 pp ISBN: 0810943174To order: amazon.comThis lavish, richly illustrated, definitive study of Rembrandt’s life and work cele-brates the 400th anniversary of his birth.
RiggingPeriod Fore-and-Aft CraftLennarth PeterssonHardcover $38.66U.S. Naval Institute Press128 pp. ISBN: 9781591147213To order: usni.org/storeA rigorous tutorial of ship rigging, rife with illustrations, employing an American schooner and a French eigh-teenth-century lugger as examples.
Sailors’ Wisdom Day by DayPhilip Plisson Hardcover $35.00Harry Abrams600 pp ISBN: 9780810994485To order: amazon.comOfficial member of Peintres de la Marine, master photographer Philip Plisson pairs his brilliant photographs of the sea and maritime subjects in all
their moods with win-some sailors’ proverbs.
17th and 18th Century Ship Models From the Kriegstein CollectionArnold andHenry KriegsteinHardcover $85Pier Books – Dupont Communications220 pp ISBN: 978-0-9755772-4-0To order:845-268-5845 [email protected] beautiful and
engaging volume documents one of the world’s largest and important private collections of scale British Admiralty Board ship models from 1671-1776. Deftly written and pho-tographed by identical twins, Arnold and Henry Kriegstein, these marine art enthusiasts have detailed the historical perspectives of each ship, described their construction, condition and restoration, as well as their acqui-sition and provenance. Included here are also chapters on the Kriegsteins’ maritime art collection which includes many works by the Van de Veldes and other masters.
Shanghaied in San FranciscoBill Pickelhaupt Hardcover $24.95Mystic Seaport184 pp ISBN: 0-964731-22-3To order: mysticseaport.orgThis true life story of men slipped Mickey Finns in San Francisco and coerced into serving at sea is enriched with 50 photographs, drawings and first-hand accounts.
The Shipcarver’s HandbookJay S. Hanna $19.95WoodenBoat108 pp.To order: woodenboatstore.com or
800-273-7447A classic how-to on ornate marine carving of stern-boards, trail-boards, eagles, dolphins and more; includes design and lettering tech-niques, as well as woods and tools.
The Sketchbooksof John Samuel BluntDeborah M. Child,Foreword by Diana KorzenikThe Portsmouth Athenaeum120 pp. Softcover $30To order: portsmouthathenaeum.orgJohn Samuel Blunt (1798-1835), dur-ing his brief career he is known to have executed miniatures, ship orna-ments and signage, as well as por-traits, landscapes, and marine art.
Stephen ParrishThe Etchings:A Catalogue RaisonnéForward by William H. Gerdts Hardcover $175The Old Print Shop192 pp.To order: 718-875-5100 [email protected] debut book publication for The Old Print Shop fully illustrates and details all 153 historical etchings cre-ated by America’s premier etcher/painter of the 19th century, Stephen Parrish (father of Maxfield Parrish).
StolenWith Blythe Dannerand Campbell ScottPrecision Films DVD $21To order: stolenthefilm.com/buy.htmlA fascinating exploration of stolen art in general and, in particular, the “heist of the century” –13 master-pieces, including a priceless Vermeer was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston on St. Patrick’s Day, 1990 by a terrorist orga-nization. To date not one work has been recovered. The cast of charac-ters include Harold Smith, the real life art detective who continues to pursue the case, Blythe Danner reading the correspondence of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Campbell Scott reading the correspondence of her advisor Bernard Berenson, and a host of Vermeer experts.
The Terrible Captain Jack Visits the Museum Or A Guide to Museum Manners for Incorrigible Pirates
and the LikeDiane Matyas Hardcover $10Noble Maritime CollectionTo order: 718-447-6490A delightful illustrated guide for chil-dren on how to behave when visiting a museum.
Tight LinesTen Years of the Angler’s JournalIllustrated by James ProsekEdited by Joseph Furia,Wyatt Golding, et al.Preface by James Prosekand Joseph Furia Hardcover $28Yale University Press264 pp ISBN: 9780300126303To order: yalepress.yale.eduA collection of 50 essays, stories, poems and reminiscences about fish and fishing by well-known and unknown writers, illustrated with origi-nal watercolors by James Prosek.
Useppa—A Passage of TimeDale Ludwig Passages Press Hardcover $59$599 for S/N Limited Edition Book (of 650 and S/N Limited Edition Print)300 ppTo order: [email protected] elegant coffee table book depicts native wildlife, colorful inhabitants and major events in the 10,000-year his-tory of Useppa Island in Southwest Florida. More than 80 vibrant paint-ings by world renowned artist John Seerey-Lester richly complement the sensitive, lyrical writing of novelist and historian Dale Ludwig.
Warman’s Antiques & Collectibles Price Guide, 41st EditionEllen T. Schroy Softcover $24.99Krause Publications800 pp ISBN: 0-89689-497-5To order: krausebooks.comA complete up-to-date collector’s guide includes warnings, information on fakes, reproductions and manufac-turers to current prices.
Noteworthy N e w B o o k s
may be familiar with Jim’s work as his paintings of the various ships have been available as prints from the bookstores onboard for many years. Jim also tells us that his painting of the “Queen Elizabeth II at Sunrise” will be used as the cover of a new book entitled QE II, A Picture History, written by William Miller, known as “Mr. Ocean Liner,” who has in the neighborhood of fifty books out on the great liners of the world.
Inside that forthcoming book will be more of Jim’s paintings in addition to well-known painter of New York Harbor and environs William G. Muller, a book of whose own paintings has been in the works for several years now and due out sometime in the next year or so.
New York City will be the site of an exciting exhibition on May 2-3 to be held at the venerable Salmagundi Club on Fifth Avenue (between 11th and 12th Streets). Entitled “American Masters,” it’s being organized by collector Tim Newton to bring together paintings by some of the top representational artists from all across the country in a wide variety of subjects from landscapes to still lifes, including the marine paintings of Christopher Blossom and Don Demers. Proceeds from the exhibition go to benefit the refurbishment of the galleries at Salmagundi Club, which was origi-nally formed as the New York Sketch Club in 1871. Information on the exhibition can be found at www.americanmastersart.com. While the world’s great museums in New York are enough of an attraction for any art lover, the two clubs started and operated for artists since the 19th centuries, The National Art Club (www.nationalartsclub.org) in Gramercy Park, and the Salmagundi Club (www.salmagundi.org), are well worth a visit if you are in town. Both operate exhibi-tion galleries that are open to the public, which, in addition to showing their members’ work, host exhibi-tions by groups such as the Pastel Society of America, and the American Watercolor Society. Just to visit these two historic buildings, not to mention view the collection of artwork by some of the finest artists in American history on these walls -- who have been members throughout the years-- is well worth the trip.I met with Tim recently at the Salmagundi Club where he gave me a tour of the newly refurbished library. It contains a collection of superb art books, both antique and new, that have been catalogued.
As usual John Stobart has been involved in a whirl-wind of artistic activity, appearing at Colby Frame in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Closson’s Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Kensington Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina this fall, to kick off the release of three new prints – A moonlit view of New York in 1884, entitled “East River Arrival” (published in an edition of 950, 19”x 28 ½” for $750; $1,750 remarqued); A view from the water of the Cotton Exchange in Charleston, South Carolina in 1820 (pub-lished in an edition of 850, 20”x 28” for $700, signed and numbered; $1,700 remarqued), and an open ocean scene of grand banks schooners returning home, (in an edition of only 350, 16 ½”x 24 ¾” for $400, signed; $1,400 remarqued). They are available by calling 800-989-3513. Some updates on new values of older prints by John: “Boston Faneuil Hall from the East in 1825,” now selling for $2,500, “Greenwich, a View from the Lower Landing,” $1,700, and “Charleston, Prioleau Street in 1870,” $2,700. In January, John will travel to Derby, England his hometown, to receive an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Derby University. Congratulations “Doc!”
We saw John this fall at our 10th Marine Art Weekend held at the American Yacht Club in Rye, New York during the Club’s annual Fall Regatta Series with over 140 boats participating. The three day exhibition kicked off with a dinner with the artists Friday night. In attendance, in addition to John, were many of the
top marine artists from around the world, includ-ing Robert Blazek, Christopher Blossom, Willard Bond, Don Demers, William Duffy, Richard Dana Kuchta, Len Mizerek, Bill Oakley, Yves Parent, and Ed Parker. Visitors to the exhibitions had a chance not only to talk with the artists for a few minutes, but sit down and have dinner and an extended conversa-tion with their favorite artist. What an opportunity! Think of the chance to ask any of your favorite artists from the past anything you’d like. Wouldn’t you want to know from Leonardo DaVinci what Mona Lisa was smiling about? Or find out how many paintings James Buttersworth worked on at one time, and how long it took him to complete one? Gatherings like this provide unparalleled opportunities for collectors to get together with the artists that will be regarded as the Buttersworths of tomorrow. We will be hosting another event like this the weekend of April 3, 2008, at the Riverside Yacht Club in Greenwich, Connecticut.
We were recently invited by South Street Seaport founder and National Maritime Historical Society past president Peter Stanford, to attend a planning meeting for a special evening to recognize John Stobart’s “con-tribution to maritime history” and in particular to the South Street Seaport area of New York City, to be held at the Downtown Association in Lower Manhattan on June 12, 2008. In conjunction with that evening, the National Maritime Historical Society will publish a booklet, The Ships of South Street written by Peter and his wife Norma Stanford featuring John’s paint-ings of the ships that were built in New York City. John himself is writing the preface for the booklet. The purpose of the dinner and the event is to “help the cause of historic ships across America and specifically to generate public interest in South Street, and the Seaport’s plans to restore the Wavertree which stands in need of an essential overhaul to continue her 122 year voyage through time.” Tickets for the dinner will be $150, with corporate sponsorships set at $1,000 and up. More information can be had by contact-ing Burchenal Green, the President of the National Maritime Historical Society at [email protected]. How hands-on was John’s involvement in ship pres-ervation? Well, Peter sent us a photograph of John in 1980, hanging over the side, painting a new stripe on the bark Elissa, now part of the Galveston Maritime Museum in Galveston, Texas.
Both Peter Stanford and marine artist John Mecray were honored this fall, for their contributions to Maritime Preservation by the National Maritime Historical Society, at a special dinner held in the model room of the New York Yacht Club. For John it was both recognition of his work as a painter, bringing alive images of some of the great classic yachts, and his work as the founder, past president of both the Museum of Yachting and the International Yacht Restoration School (IYRS) in Newport, Rhode Island. John said he “was bowled over by the evening.” Like many people doing good works, he gives his time because he’s pas-sionate about preservation of the yachting tradition, not because he’s looking for accolades. He’s so busy at this point, in fact with his obligations to various organizations that he contemplated not even complet-ing a painting this year but instead concentrating on his volunteer efforts, and completing the monograph on his work which he is personally designing down to every detail. But life intercedes, even for artists, so he recently agreed to paint a commission of two famous yachts of the 1930s, Sonny and Dorade, designed by Olin Stephens.
This summer, his most recent commission was unveiled at a ceremony at the New York Yacht Club’s Newport Headquarters, Harbour Court. It was a painting of the 12-meter Courageous commissioned by Ted Turner to commemorate the occasion of the 30th anniver-
sary of their America’s Cup triumph in the waters off Newport. On hand for the festivities was every crew-member from that regatta save one. They actually went out and sailed once again aboard Courageous, which is part of the small fleet of 12-meters still sailing that are currently chartered out of Newport. Former New York Yacht Club Commodore, George Hinman, presided over the festivities at the club. Under the supervision of internationally-known sailor and TV commentator and former member of the Courageous crew, Gary Jobson, they all sat down and signed twenty copies of prints of John’s painting, one of which was auctioned off for $5,000 to benefit IYRS and another to benefit the Paralympics sailing team at the record-breaking fundraiser held at the NYYC in New York City. The regular edition signed by John only, is available for $350, or if you prefer a gicleé on canvas, $1,200 in an edition of 200, or $2,000 in an edition of 50, produced in the exact size of the original painting. More information on these can be found on John’s own website: www.mecray.com. Readers of the Hungarian “Yacht Magazine” published in Budapest will have seen John’s painting of CORONET this year. In what John described as “one of the best spreads on CORONET ever”.
John tells me what really capped off his year for him was the recent delivery of a motorcycle he’s “lusted after since he was a kid,” a 1951 Vincent Black Shadow completely restored to Concours standard. It will just fit in his three-car garage, along with his vintage Porsche, MG and Land Rover.
As readers of the Marine Art Quarterly may remember the IYRS recently was beneficiary of a collection of miniature scale models second to none. Eighteen in fact, by the world’s leading miniature model makers American Lloyd McCaffery and English Donald McNarry. They were given by collector Bill Combs whose yacht Black Knight served as the commit-tee boat for many America’s Cup regattas off Newport. In addition to giving the models, Bill commissioned noted ship model expert Michael Wall, who oper-ates the American Marine Model Gallery in Salem, Massachusetts (www..shipmodel.com), to write a book on the collection. And quite a book it is. It con-tains a photograph and detailed description of each model as well as a write up on Bill and the modelers. While it’s not in the bookstores, IYRS has been using it in its special fundraising efforts. It is available for purchase by contacting IYRS at www.iyrs.org.
Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut was the recipient of another outstanding collection recent-ly—twenty-four paintings by James E. Buttersworth (1817-1894). James, who was the grandson or son, (even with today’s access to genealogical records through the Internet, nobody is 100% sure) of painter Thomas Buttersworth Jr. (1797-1842), was born in London, England, but moved to Hoboken, New Jersey in 1845 where he, in addition to working for Currier & Ives, chronicled all the activity from clip-per ships to yacht racing in New York Harbor with a precision and drama that has made his work some of the most sought after marine paintings in the market-place today. His paintings regularly sell for between $100,000 - $200,000, with one 22”x 34” painting of Dauntless Leading Columbia reaching a price of $712,000 at a recent Christie’s auction. These paint-ings came from the bequest of Donald C. McGraw, Jr., grandson of the co-founder of McGraw-Hill and well-known in maritime circles for his publication, Nautical Quarterly. The twenty-four oil paintings by Buttersworth that McGraw left to the museum nearly doubled the museum’s collection and made it the single largest museum collection of Buttersworth paintings in the world overnight. That’s quite a fantas-tic gift, literally valued in the millions of dollars, but
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Lloyd McCaffery - Britannia of 168217th and 18th Century Napoleonic-Era ship models are considered some of the finest ship models ever made, and sales results at auctions around the world in recent years, have borne this out. They were made by professional dockyard model makers employed by the governments of Britain and France. Models were also built by the shipwrights them-selves, and by actual sailors, often during long periods of captivity. As such they are extremely accurate and often are the only source of detailed information on ships from that time. However, over the last 30 years, the astounding models of 58-year old Lloyd McCaffery have been recognized as the equal of his 18th century predecessors and arguably some of the finest miniature works of the 20th/21st century. The sale of his 3 1/2”model of the100-gun ship of the line, Prince of 1670, for $100,000 in 1993, set a world record at the time. Since then he has continued to astonish collectors and connoisseurs with the increas-ing beauty and complexity of his creations. This model of the 100-gun ship Britannia of 1682 in the artist’s own words is simply “the ultimate expression of what a ship model can be.”
Britannia of 1682 was the only 100-gun first rate ship built by the British as part of a 30 ship program begun in 1677. Built by Sir Phineas Pieh, she was Lord Russell’s Flagship at the Battle of Barfleur in 1692. The scale of the model is 16’= 1”and measures 14 ½” overall. It is constructed of pearwood and applewood with holly decking laid “sprung in”-tapering towards bow and stern, (straight run deck planking was not used until 1800’s). The masts and yards are lancewood. The grates and carvings are boxwood. The rigging is specially made of nickel-chromium wire with the painted glassine flags lashed to the flag poles as they were before the introduction of halyards. The boxwood taffrail carving on the stern measures only 1 ½” yet contains six discernable figures, two horses, and various decorative elements. King Charles II, Samuel Pepys and other figures are placed on the model, and a white cat is seen below decks. The port side is cut away to permit a view of the complexity of the ship’s design and construction. $250,000
For a more detailed description of the model, read Nautical Research Journal, Winter 2007 issue or visit www.jrusselljinishiangallery.com.
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one that will insure that those paintings are preserved and enjoyed for generations to come.
The Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport held its 28th Annual International Marine Art Exhibition this fall. The judges for this year’s exhibition were John Stobart, Bruce Johnson, the president of Sparkman Stephens’ Naval architecture firm, and Ray Ashley the director of the San Diego Maritime Museum. Works of art and artists they singled out for awards were as follows: The Rudolph J. Schaefer Maritime Preservation Award went to Geoff Hunt for his depiction of Sir George Collier’s Squadron in Penobscot Bay. The Yachting Award went to English painter Andrew S. Walton. The Marine Environmental Wildlife Award went to Oregon painter and ex-Coast Guardsman Don McMichael. The Thomas M. Hoyne, III Award for representation of the Gloucester fishing schooners went to “Fog on the Banks” by Jeff Weaver. The Mystic Seaport Museum Purchase Award went to Ed Griffith’s acrylic “Dawn on Port Royal Sound.” The award in memory of David Thimgan for portraying maritime history of the West Coast went to Caleb Whitbeck for his depiction of the “Barkentine Mary Winkelman Entering San Francisco Bay.” And John Stobart’s own Foundation Award for “uniqueness of style, quality of light and atmosphere” went to Robert Norieka. Five artists also received Awards of Excellence, they were Neal Hughes, Robert Dance, Charles Syvertsen and sculptor Ken Ullberg and Jeff Weaver. Congratulations to all!
One Chesapeake Bay artist whos’ hitting his stride in his career is watercolorist Marc Castelli whose November show at the Carla Massoni Gallery in Chestertown, Maryland, and introduction of his fifth Chesapeake Bay Log Canoe print of Island Blossom Racing, was a great success. Marc also was tapped by St. Michaels’ Concours de Elegance Invitational Automobile gathering at the Inn at Perry Cabin in St. Michaels, Maryland. Who commissioned him to make a painting of a 1932 Bentley 8-liter to be used for the event’s poster, with the painting to be auctioned off to benefit the Delmarva Peninsula Red Cross. Marc was also featured in a Maryland Public Television produc-tion for their outdoor segment, working alongside the watermen on the Bay, and in his studio. His show in the spring sold 45 out of 50 of his paintings of the water-man. Not too bad Marc!
But the artist buck doesn’t stop there. Marc’s also involved in projects painting the replica clipper Pride of Baltimore and General George S. Patton’s schooner When and If. His son Ken is also an artist. Who has been named the first “Artist in Residence” by the State of Virginia on Tangier Island where he is living and painting at the Tangier Island Cultural Center and Museum. Of course, that and a quarter won’t buy you a cup of Starbucks coffee, but what a great experience for a young artist.
Here’s an interesting case of an artist using his skills not to re-create a vessel, but to actually create a new one. Soundings Magazine reported that the Covey Island Boatworks in Nova Scotia received a commis-sion recently from Bahamian artist Tom Goodwin to build Czarina a 27 ft. cold-molded center board ketch. Instead of the usual practice of sitting down with a boat builder and describing his needs and letting the boat builder translate that into a set of plans Goodwin did an extremely detailed watercolor of exactly what he wanted built so that the boat builder literally took the lines off the painting to develop the blueprints. The result is a boat that Covey Island President John Steele describes as “pretty and salty.” This is one of those cases where the best advice is don’t try this at home, you may end up with a boat that, shall we say, is not exactly what you had in mind.
In Seattle this year the Kirsten Gallery held its 24th Northwest Marine Art Exhibition since 1975, featur-ing the works of some thirty artists, including Cooper Hart, Steve Mayo, Mark Myers, Keith Reynolds, Charlie Robinson, Robert Tandeki, Victor Mays, and Australian Robert Carter. If you’re in Seattle, the Kirsten Gallery has been the mainstay of the marine art world there for thirty years. They are located at 5320 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle.
When painter Scott Kennedy is not in his studio in Newport Beach, California he can be found at his Baja Peninsula studio. Having created the paint-ings used for the posters to promote the Newport to Ensenada Race each year, Scott was asked this year, to illustrate Hooked on Baja by Tom Gatch, (published by Norton). It’s a visual and verbal depiction of the recreational sport fishing industry off Baja. He’s also working on illustrating a new edition of the log from the Sea of Cortez written by John Steinbeck and his
pal Ed Ricketts. Scott’s working closely with Thomas Steinbeck to capture the flavor of his father’s words.
We were on hand in Rockland, Maine this summer as the New York Yacht Club cruise stopped in for an afternoon visit to the Farnsworth Museum and the Wyeth Family Center there, and to hear a talk from Andrew Wyeth’s son, well-known painter Jamie Wyeth. While today Jamie spends most of his time between his Pennsylvania farm and his house on the rugged coast of Maine. Jamie spent a year earlier in his career about as far a field from the rugged, rural atmosphere of those two places as you can possibly find yourself. Where would that be, you might ask? Well try Andy Warhol’s famous Factory Building, which in the 1970’s was headquarters of Warhol’s creative life and the gathering place for a wide variety of creative individuals from the artistic communities around the world. Among them was Jamie Wyeth, whom Warhol invited to set up a studio in part of the Factory. They soon became fast friends, collaborators and respectful admirers of each others’ creative endeavors. Jamie talk-ed about his experience at the Factory, and the various luminaries who passed through it including the likes of now-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, then Mr. Universe, whose movie Pumping Iron had just been released. He came by the studio and allowed himself to be drawn in his Speedo by Warhol and Wyeth. Now that’s the three Musketeers! Andrew Wyeth, who just celebrated his 90th birthday and is still painting each day, was not in attendance.
If you’re in Rockland, Maine anytime throughout the year the Farnsworth Museum is well worth the visit. Their collection of American Realist paintings is unusual for its depth and variety. More information can be found at www.farnsworthmuseum.org.
We also spent some time with Don Demers this summer, up in Maine in between his workshops in Boothbay, Maine and Duxbury, Massachusetts and the Maine College of Art, and his trips to exhibitions of his paint-ings at the Hagin Museum in Stockton, California, (alongside marine artist Chris Blossom), and at the John Irvine Museum in Laguna Beach, California, whose Crystal Cove Invitational was a fundraising exhibition to raise money to preserve that Cove in perpetuity. Don received the Bronze Medal at that exhibition, while Charleston, South Carolina marine
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painter West Fraser received the Silver Medal.
Don and I were invited aboard Wind Crest a 90 foot Fontaine-designed sloop built for the heirs of the Campbell Soup family at Hodgkin’s Boat Yard in the historic shipbuilding town of East Boothbay, Maine. Don’s been commissioned to paint Wind Crest under sail where she is very impressive, but the space and finished work down below is as beautiful as a yacht gets. Don’s hard at work now painting for his one-man show opening the weekend of June 7th at The J. Russell Jinishian Gallery in Fairfield, Connecticut.
What do artists actually talk about when they get together and talk shop? Well, there might be a discus-sion of concepts, research, methods or favorite paint-ing location. Or it might be even something as basic as what an artist’s preferred paint, canvasses and brushes. To this end, the American Society of Marine Artists “canvassed”, as it were, twenty of its artists, includ-ing John Barber, David Bareford, Chris Blossom, June Carey, Bill Davis, Don Demers, Russ Kramer, Michael Karas, Ray Massey, Len Mizerek, Bill Muller, Sergio Roffo, Don Stone and others, for their thoughts on and choices of materials. When it comes to paint, here is what some of the artists had to say: Chris Blossom: “I learned how to paint with Winsor Newton paints, so that’s what I use most of the time.” Although he says he’s been using Holbein paints outdoors mostly. John Barber prefers Gamblin paints. For Loretta Krupinski choices are really straight forward. She says “You have to understand, I’m up here in a small town in Maine and Winsor Newton and Grumbacher is all they carry in my local art shop.” In addition to paint, brushes, in particular, their longevity, are important issues to artists. The preferred brand among the polled group was the Robert Simmons. Opinions about them range from Bill Davis who said, “I mix with my brushes and this beats them up so I mostly use synthetic ones and buy them by the box”; to Len Mizerek who says, “I like Filbert 6-12 bristle brushes. I use sable only for details, rigging and signing. Synthetic does not work for me”; to Ray Massey’s approach, which is “I use various brushes. I buy whatever looks good at my local art supply store.” Some artists it turns out, like June Carey, Michael Karas, Ray Massey, Len Mizerek vir-tually use paint as it comes out of the tube. Others mix their paint with turpentine, turpenoid or linseed oil. Still others mix their own mediums--like Bill Muller who mixes English turpentine, sun-thickened linseed oil and damar varnish, while others, like Len Mizerek actually puts his brushes and the palette with the paint right on it, in the freezer after painting, so that it’s basically preserved until his next session.
As for the surface to paint on, the most popular was Claessen Belgian linen canvas. Although Bill Davis said, “It’s damp out here on Cape Cod. I find linen tends to wrinkle, so I use cotton duck canvas and gesso (Gesso is a white acrylic primer that’s put on the canvas or board before painting on it). In fact, the paint actu-ally sits on the gesso primer. This takes the place of the traditional method of sealing the canvas with hot rabbit skin glue and then applying a white lead primer, which took a long time to dry because it was oil based, and over the years caused some serious health problems for a number of artists. Many scholars feel for example, that Francisco de Goya and Vincent van Gogh had some degree of lead poisoning. So if you ever wonder why each artist’s painting looks different, it not only has to do with his or her personal approach – how their hand lays the paint on the canvas, but also with the materials and mediums they choose. Together these things help contribute to what we would describe as an artist’s style or individual look of their work.
One artist who really follows Marshall McLuhan’s dictum that believes his “medium is part of his message”
is Peter Layne Arguimbau. The son of a painter, Peter studied many years in the studio of master Italian restorer Piero Mannoni, learning how to make paint from scratch to match the various finishes from all styles and periods that they were restoring. Today he continues that ancient tradition by grinding his own pigments from powder and mixing them with oil to make his own paint. He uses the traditional white lead preparation for his panels, and has developed his own oil-resinous mediums in the tradition of the Flemish masters of the 15th and 16th centuries that he feels gives his paintings a luminosity that can’t be achieved any other way. He’s even designed his studio built in an 1850’s chestnut wood barn after the studios of the great Dutch masters, using only natural northern light, which remains constant as the sun transits from east to west during the day. When he’s not working in his studio, he’s participating in classic boat regattas aboard his 1935 catboat Molly Rose, whose 12 ft. beam makes for a perfect floating studio. Not a bad life.
Painter Len Mizerek has sure been racking up the frequent flyer miles recently! Summer found him in Italy painting the buildings, waterways, countryside and cafes of Venice, Florence, Sienna, Milan, Tuscany and Cinque Terre, the five coastal villages linked by a single rail line— Aside from the obvious beauty and history he experienced, he observed that being a “plein aire” artist in Italy is not that easy. Many city centers are closed to cars during the day because of overcrowding – so that an artist has to lug his easel and equipment sometimes for miles to the location he wants to paint. Heck, some would say that Len is just doing it the old fashioned way! He then flew to Florida to dine with a collector who has purchased all eight of his large Everglades paintings to date, and now wants more. He also mounted a one-man show at the library in Westport, CT— hometown of the well-known Famous Artists School, whose sophisticated mail-order program to train artists was designed by the likes of world-famous illustrators Harold Van Schmidt, Robert Fawcett, Albert Dorn and Norman Rockwell. Len went through the program as a young man and tells me that he still has all his notebooks. Give that man a gold star!
In December, he exhibited alongside fellow Boston Guild of Artists members, Joe McGurl, Don Demers and Sergio Roffo and newly elected members William R. Davis and Tim Lawson, Tim’s father-in-law, author-historian, David McCullough was the recipient of Mystic Seaport Museum’s “America and the Sea” Award in a black-tie ceremony at The Rainbow Room in
Rockefeller Center in New York City.
If you are increasing your own frequent flyer miles and find yourself in Berlin this year you may want to take in the German Museum of Technology, formerly the Museum of Transport, where 50,000 square feet of display space houses vintage automobiles, locomo-tives, planes, engines, printing presses, a windmill, and even a turn-of-the-century brewery. Their naval section contains nearly 1,500 exhibits of models including sev-eral by fine Berlin-based model builder Bernd Braatz including a ship in a bottle of the Pandora. He reports he’s hard at work on a model of Frigate Diana of 1794. For more information on this fine museum, visit www.dtmb.de/Das_Museum.
We also heard recently from the Past Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, Henry H. Anderson Jr., with a great trivia question related to the famous group of lithographs by Frederic S. Cozzens, published in 1884 to accompany Lt. J.D. Kelly’s book, American Yachts: Their Clubs and Their Races. The 27 lithographs depict a variety of racing and cruising yachts of the day— Commodore Anderson’s query: Which print depicts a yacht still in commission? The answer: The Ice Boat, which was restored decades ago by FDR’s son! Yes, there’s one Hudson River ice boating lithograph.
Speaking of prints, Currier and Ives fans can look for a three-part documentary: Perspectives in America: Currier & Ives, on WGBY in Western Massachusetts in early 2008 and on PBS stations nationwide later in the year. Funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum Library Services, the film tells the personal and professional stories of Nathaniel Currier and James Ives, arguably the forerunners of the popular print industry of today.
The Currier & Ives printmaking firm, self described as “Publishers of Cheap and Popular Prints”, was based in New York City from 1834 to 1907. Currier started out by experimented with portraits, disaster scenes and memorial prints, and anything that he could sell to the public from tables in front of his shop. The public had a thirst for newsworthy events, and newspapers of the day did not include pictures. Their prints gave the public a new way to “see” the news. By the time Currier’s son Edward, and Ives’ son Chauncey, closed the print shop in 1907, they had produced in excess of one million prints, including more than 7,500 different titles. More infor-mation can be found at www.currier&ives.org.
That’s all that fits, but keep those cards, letters, and emails coming! Want more news? Read what we had to leave out here at marineartquarterly.com.
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J. Russell Jinishian is internationally rec-ognized as America’s leading authority on contemporary marine art. The former long time Director of the Marine Art Gallery at Mystic Seaport Museum, his writings have appeared in Sailing, Sea History, American Artist, Art New England and other publications. For many years he was the Art Critic for the Connecticut
Post and a Contributing Editor of Nautical World Magazine, where his popular column on marine art appeared regularly. He has served as a juror for many exhibitions, including three times for the Arts for the Parks Exhibition, sponsored by the National Parks Service. He is the author of Bound for Blue Water, con-sidered the definitive Guide to Contemporary Marine Art. He currently operates the J. Russell Jinishian Gallery, specializing in 19th, 20th, and 21st Century Marine and Sporting Art and continues to lecture nationally on marine art and collecting. He may be reached at 1657 Post Road, Fairfield, CT 06824. Phone: 203-259-8753 Fax: 203-259-8761, or e-mail: [email protected]
Arguimbau Schooner MARIETTE of 1915 Leads PEGGIE BAUN of 1840 11x165,000
There’s lots of exciting news to report in the world of Sporting Art:
Artist Flick Ford recently embarked on a new project of painting 50 significant All-Tackle World Record Fish that will be featured in a book to be released this fall. The book, with a working title of BIG, 50 World Record Fish (Greenwich Workshop Press, 2008), will be authored by noted historian, angler, author and former Catalina Tuna Club President Mike Rivkin, who has an intimate knowledge of this subject. Mike is a long-time Representative of the International Game Fish Association and has already written two fascinating books – Big Game Fishing Headquarters: A History of the IGFA and Angling and War – The Collision of Big Game Fishing and WWII (see our book pages).
Usually, Flick is busy throughout the calendar year fishing and painting the various fish spe-cies he catches along the way on waters from the Northeast, West and South. This project presents Flick with quite a different tactic, as his research has taken him to the records library of the International Game Fish Association, in Dania Beach, Florida, where he has studied and recorded these catches by various anglers from around the world to incorpo-rate into his masterful paintings. Among the species he will paint for the book are some favorites among anglers, such as Striped Bass, Brook Trout, Dolphinfish, Tarpon, Bonefish, and Permit, to name just a few. There will also be some species, such as Opah, Taimen and Tigerfish. Ever wonder what a 43lb Rainbow Trout looked like?
On the topic of books, two prominent artists, Arthur Shilstone and Mike Stidham, are both featured among an elite group of sporting painters in The Fine Art of Angling – Ten Modern Masters (Di-Les Books, 2007), along with several
other prominent artists, including Thomas Aquinas Daly, Eldridge Hardie, Brett Smith and John Swan (see our book pages).
Arthur Shilstone was commissioned earlier this year to create a series of sporting paintings featuring a New England landscape that has been preserved since its purchase from Native Americans in the 17th Century. Arthur visited the property and photographed various loca-tions, taking field notes and getting a feel for the ‘lay of the land’ — all part of what goes into every painting he creates. The end result was a stunning collection that captures the true essence of hunt-ing upland game, water-fowl and deer on this incredible land. We con-tinue to be amazed at the energy and enthusiasm he puts into every painting —an impressive effort to say the least for a man, who at 85, with a distin-guished career that has spanned so many decades and with so many mile-stones along the way, never seems to slow down. He continues to this day to create truly breath-taking images, and his work is every bit as crisp, concise and convincing as ever.
Artist Mike Stidham is best known for his dramatic oils of fish in their natural environ-ment. His paintings have been featured in publications such as Fly Fisherman, Rod & Reel, Outdoor Life and Trout, and he designed the 1992 Texas Saltwater Gamefish Stamp. Mike is one of few artists who has also worked in other
media, such as hand-colored etchings and origi-nal stone lithographs. Additionally, his artwork has been featured on tee-shirts sold through L.L.Bean and Nordstrom’s. But Mike is as much at home on the water as he is in front of an easel. He guided for several years on the Snake River in Idaho and holds the IGFA World Record for a Hammerhead Shark taken on a fly rod. Art Bond, formerly of Western Wildlife Gallery in San Francisco said it best, “Mike Stidham is without a doubt, the best fisherman I’ve seen. He can look at water running down a gutter and tell you when the next hatch will occur and what it’s going to be. He has a feel for water that’s almost like a sixth sense”. Much in the way that artist Stanley Meltzoff used to paint, Mike’s perspective of fish comes from years of spending time on, and in, the water, chasing after the various species he then transforms into spectacular paintings.
Speaking of Artist Stanley Meltzkoff, Diane Pogrant, Stanley’s Widow, was diving this summer off New Guinea and sprinkled some of Stanley’s ashes in one of their favorite dive locations – ‘Craig’s Bite’ on Male’ Island in Papua, New Guinea. Stanley’s legend lives on in the ocean waters! When Diane is not div-ing in exotic locations, she is busy finalizing the book on Stanley’s illustrious career, Illusions of a Fishpainter, written by Stanley himself.
This past August, Stanley Meltzoff and Flick Ford’s paintings shared the spotlight in a major exhibition at the Newport Harbor
Nautical Museum, as well as the Annual Past-Presidents’ Dinner at The Tuna Club of Santa Catalina Island. The events were both a great success and it was the first time either was covered by local television, radio and newspaper.
Artist Al Barnes, who many of you know and whose artwork you have seen gracing the cov-ers and pages of Gray’s Sporting Journal, Sports Afield, Sporting Classics, Field & Stream and many others recently returned
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from an adventure to the Bahamas with a Florida Conservation group and plans several new paintings from his travels there. Additionally, Al has been busy painting riverscapes of many of the prized waters of the West.
Artist James Prosek recently launched a year-long exhibition “Life & Death: A Visual Taxonomy” at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT. The exhi-bition, which opened on September 16, 2007,
will hang until June 8, 2008. This is a milestone event for James and should you find yourself anywhere near Ridgefield, CT, stop by and view this remarkable exhibition. James was recently featured in The New York Times chronicling his fishing trip to Alaska with fel-low angler, long-time friend and mentor Joe Haines – The same Joe Haines of James’ acclaimed book, Joe and Me, An Education in Fishing and Friendship.
Additionally, James has been commissioned by Hammonassett CT Chapter of Trout Unlimited to create a painting of a Farm River Brook Trout, a particular strain of Brook Trout, indigenous only to this water, as part of the chapter’s fundraising efforts. The painting has been traveling throughout the state for anglers to view and bid on, with a culminating event early this year.
Sporting Art News
Arthur Shilstone To the Boat Watercolor15½”x23”$6,500
ARTHUR SHILSTONE:SPORTING ART MODERN MASTERArtist Arthur Shilstone will be on hand for this one day event to discuss his art-work, display recent paintings and sign his award-winning book, Flashes in the River.The Bedford SportsmanBedford Hills, NY203-259-8753 or 914-666-8091Bedfordsportsman.comMarch 8, 11-3pm
THE FLATS: FISHING THIN WATERS OF THE SOUTHExhibition featuring original paintings, sculptures and dioramas by Christopher Atkins, Al Barnes, Flick Ford, Glen Hacker, Richard Dana Kuchta, Robert Lagasse, Stanley Meltzoff, James Prosek, Don Ray, Arthur Shilstone, Mike Stidham, Kent Ullberg and others. J. Russell Jinishian GalleryFairfield, CT203-259-8753 jrusselljinishiangallery.com February
JAMES PROSEK, LIFE & DEATH:A VISUAL TAXONOMYA series of watercolors of true-to-life birds and fish suspended in abstract envi-ronments by the author of Fly-Fishing the 41st: Around the World on the 41st Parallel and Trout of the World.The Aldrich ContemporaryArt MuseumRidgefield, CT203-438-4519aldrichart.orgThrough June 8
BIG: 50 WORLD RECORD FISHExhibition of original paintings by Flick Ford, and a presentation on his book proj-ect with the IGFA, including fish painted to date.Westport OutfittersNorwalk Cove Marina, CTwestportoutfitters.com203-831-8036 or203-259-8753March 22, 2008
LANG’S SPRING AUCTION& SPORTING COLLECTIBLES SHOWHoliday Inn at Boxborough WoodsBoxborough, MA • 315-841-4623langsauction.com April 25-26
OGDEN M. PLEISSNER:THE SPORTING GRAND TOURAmerican Museum of Fly FishingManchester, VTamff.com • 802-362-3300Spring
Upcoming Sporting Art Exhibitions
Mike Stidham Bad Day for a Crab Oil30”x48”$15,000
Al Barnes Hail Mary Oil24”x36”$5,000
Flick Ford IGFA All-Tackle World Record 23½”$6,50014lb8oz,CaughtontheNipigonRiver,Ontario,Canada-1916-byDr.W.Cook
For more information on these exhibitions or any of ourSporting Artists, contact
