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Articles
Over the past quarter century, growing interest in the arts of the South has led to significant research and new discoveries by furniture scholars. Winterthur’s collection has benefited from this research as a number of pieces previously attributed to Northern…
A Flemish walled town is the setting for a scene populated with people all busily engaged in a variety of seemingly absurd and unrelated activities. The meaning of each little episode only becomes clear when one realizes that the artist…
In 1815, when trade between America and England resumed after the War of 1812, Staffordshire potters regained access to one of their most lucrative markets, and America, with its limited industrial base, was ready to import both the necessities and…
Exquisite in craftsmanship, unique in detail, and few in number, “lover’s eyes”—as they are popularly known today—are hand-painted miniature portraits of individual human eyes presented in an astonishing array of settings, both decorative and functional. Among the many objects housing…
The Lorraine and Alan Bressler Gallery in the new Art of the Americas Wing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, features works inspired by the American Arts and Crafts movement (Fig. 1). Despite the fact that the founding and…
Mark Twain considered the game of golf “a good walk spoiled,” while J. Carter Brown believed games like golf invite us to “leave behind the toils and trouble of daily life in search of pleasure, exercise, and spirited competition.” From…
When the investment banker moved into one of Manhattan’s iconic Upper West Side prewar buildings, he was at the beginning of his collecting career. The three-bedroom co-op, which offered beautiful views of Central Park, was perfect for a recently divorced…
Ruby Devol (Finch) (1804–1866) of Westport, Massachusetts, was the subject of an in-depth article more than thirty years ago.1 While one signed portrait (Checklist, 2 ) came to light shortly after the initial publication in 1978, it was not until…
Antiques & Fine Art has selected twenty works of fine and decorative arts that museums acquired in 2011. We are pleased to highlight the generosity of donors and those supporting museums, which continue in their the vital role of presenting…
The New American Wing galleries for paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts that opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 16, 2012, comprise twenty-six galleries, encompassing nearly 30,000 square feet on the Wing’s second floor. The first eight, the…
One of the foremost female patrons of the arts, Isabella Stewart Gardner’s (1840–1924) (Fig. 1), interest in collecting began in the 1880s after attending lectures on art history and readings of Dante at Harvard College. Enamored by the writer, Gardner…
When Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, partners in marriage and in business, decided to part with some of their $10 million contemporary art collection they didn’t store it, sell it, or donate it to a museum. Instead they built…
In 1973, Robert Scull, the owner of a New York City taxi fleet, sold off the bulk of his noted Pop Art collection at Sotheby’s, in the process earning $85,000 for a painting by Robert Rauschenberg entitled Thaw that he…
Founded as Sleepy Hollow Restorations in 1951 by noted philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874–1960), Tarrytown-based Historic Hudson Valley is a collection of National Historic Landmarks that serve as distinct, robust platforms for fulfilling the organization’s mission of celebrating the…
In the course of his painting expeditions, Edgar Alwin Payne’s artistic journey covered some 100,000 miles throughout the United States and Europe.1 Payne (1883–1947) found magnificence in diverse settings, including the Southern and central California coast, the Sierra Nevada, the…
Historic Hudson Valley, a museum of historic sites, possesses a strong American fine arts collection. Particularly notable are its portraits of New Yorkers, their kinfolk, and their associates dating from the colonial and early national periods. These canvases by John…
On October 15, 1922, The Metropolitan Museum opened to the public Furniture from the Workshop of Duncan Phyfe (Fig. 1), the first exhibition ever held in an art museum on the work of a single cabinetmaker. Ninety years later and…
"A neglected house gets an unhappy look; this one had it in spades." Joe Gillis, the doomed screenwriter protagonist of Sunset Boulevard, could have been talking about The Cedars in an earlier incarnation, when he said those words. Indeed, some…
Thirty years ago a Pennsylvania couple purchased a plot of land in the rolling countryside of Bucks County. Their plans were to build a home emulating an early Pennsylvania house. Their mind was swayed, however, after a visit to Shelburne…
Hiram Powers (1805-1873) was one of the most celebrated American sculptors of the nineteenth century. His full-length nude marble statue The Greek Slave (1844), one of his best-known works, earned him international acclaim. A retrospective exhibition of Powers' work at…
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