Displaying items by tag: private

The American Folk Art Museum in New York is currently presenting the exhibition Bill Traylor: Drawings from the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. The show features over 60 drawings by the self-taught artist Bill Traylor (1854-1949), many of which have never traveled past the southeastern United States. The exhibition is complemented by Traylor in Motion: Wonders from New York Collections, which includes additional works on loan from private collections.

Traylor, one of the most significant outsider artists, was born into slavery on an Alabama plantation. Following emancipation, his family farmed on the plantation until the 1930s. In 1939, Traylor moved to Montgomery and spent much of his time drawings images of the people he saw on the street and scenes pulled from his memory illustrating his time spent on the farm. Over the course of four years, Traylor produced between 1,200 and 1,500 drawings.

While he garnered little recognition as an artist during his lifetime, Traylor began to gain notoriety during the 1970s thanks to his friend, Charles Shannon, the foremost champion his work. The R.H. Oosterom Gallery in New York mounted the first significant exhibition of Traylor’s work, which led to nearly fort solo shows and hundreds of group exhibitions. Traylor’s drawings now reside in major public collections including that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. The High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Montgomery Museum of Art in Alabama hold the largest public collections of Traylor’s drawings.

Bill Traylor: Drawings from the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts will be on view at the American Folk Art Museum through September 22, 2013.

England’s Ashmolean Museum has acquired one of the most important Pre-Raphaelite paintings remaining in private hands. John Everett Millais’ (1829-1896) portrait of John Ruskin, the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, has been on loan to the institution since January 2012. The work was officially given to the museum by the Art Council England under the Acceptance in Lieu of Inheritance plan, which stipulates that under British tax law debts can be written off in exchange for objects of national significance. The painting recently appeared in Tate Britain’s highly successful exhibition Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde.

Millais, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, was commissioned to paint the portrait in 1853 by Ruskin himself. While working on the painting, Milliais fell in love with Ruskin’s wife, which ultimately led to the breakdown of the Ruskins’ marriage, Millais’ friendship with Ruskin, and the artist’s involvement with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. After marrying Ruskin’s wife, Effie, Millais gave the portrait to a friend in Oxford, Henry Wentworth Acland. The portrait remained in Acland’s family until his descendants sold it at Christie’s in 1965, where the late owner of the painting purchased it.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which formed in 1848, was a group of English painters, poets, and critics who rejected the traditional approaches to art and painting established by the Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael (1483-1520) and Michelangelo (1473-1564). Instead, the Pre-Raphaelites turned to medieval and early Renaissance art for inspiration often painting subjects from Shakespeare and the Bible. Pre-Raphaelitism, which rattled Britain from 1848 to 1900, was considered the country’s first avant-garde movement.

Beginning on November 13, Doyle New York will start auctioning select works from the Spanierman Gallery, one of the Upper East Side’s foremost American art galleries. Founded by Ira Spanierman in the 1960s, the Spanierman Gallery has played an important role in the understanding and appreciation of American art from the colonial era through the 20^th century. The gallery has also placed many iconic works in prominent public and private collections across the country.

As the Spanierman Gallery has decided to shift its focus to modern and contemporary American art, they will auction hundreds of works from their early American art collection at a number of select sales that will take place in 2012 and 2013. The November 13 auction will include thirty works including four pieces by John Henry Twachtman, the last fully bound sketchbook of studies by Maurice Prendergast not in a museum collection, and a double-sided work by Alfred Maurer that exemplifies the artist’s Fauvist palette.

Another 36 works from the Spanierman collection will be sold at Doyle’s American furniture, decorations, and 19^th century painting sale on November 19.

Sotheby’s hosted a number of sales in Hong Kong this past week. On October 7^th, the Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian paintings sale achieved $15.5 million, soaring past the pre-sale estimate of $5.8 million. The sale achieved the highest auction total for this category and the painting Fortune and Longevity by Lee Man Fong, an Indonesian modern master, set a record for any Southeast Asian painting when it sold for $4.4 million. The final price for the painting was almost three times the pre-sale estimate.

The Contemporary Asian Art sale totaled $15.1 million and Tiananmen No. 1 by Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter, Zhang Xiaogang, was the top lot at $2.69 million. Liu Wei’s Revolutionary Family Series – Invitation to Dinner was the second highest sale at $2.24 million, a world record price at auction for the Beijing-based artist who works in various mediums including video, installation, drawings, sculpture, and painting.

The 20^th Century Chinese Art sale brought in $24.6 million and sold 90% by lot. Works from Europe, the United States, and around Asian sold well and many were above their pre-sale estimates. The top lot was Potted Chrysanthemums by the Chinese modern art pioneer, Sanyu, which sold for $3.99 million.

The following day, the Fine Chinese Paintings sale totaled $53.2 million, the highest of the four art auctions. Offering many works from private collections, the total sale was more than double the pre-sale estimate and sold 97.2% by lot. The two top lots at the auction, Zhang Daqian’s Swiss Peaks; Calligraphy in Xingshu and Fu Baoshi’s Lady at the Pavillion, both sold for $2,974,278.

Last year China beat out the United States as the world’s largest art and antiques market and the autumn sales reflect that power swap. There was a bit of controversy when a 60-year-old Taiwanese Buddhist sister demanded that a $1.65 million sale be halted at the Fine Chinese Paintings auction. Sotheby’s canceled the sale of a painting by Zhang Daqian after Lu Chieh-chien requested a court hearing to prevent bidding on Riding in the Autumn Countryside (1950) which she claims was the property of her family and had been consigned without consent.