Jackson Hole

EXHIBITIONS        ARTWORK ON VIEW     DIRECTOR     RELATED NEWS     SERVICES

‹ ›

Situated in the wild beauty of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with National Parks as a stunning backdrop, Heather James Jackson has brought the highest caliber of artworks and services to the Intermountain West for over a decade.

Catering to the unique community that makes Jackson Hole an unparalleled destination for American culture and the outdoors, Heather James strives to provide an unmatched selection of artworks and white glove services for locals and visitors alike.

172 Center Street, Suite 101
P.O. Box 3580
Jackson Hole, WY 83001
(307) 200-6090

Hours: Monday thru Saturday 10am – 5pm

Exhibitions

VIEW ALL

Sound and Spectacle: Harry Bertoia and George Rickey
CURRENT

Sound and Spectacle: Harry Bertoia and George Rickey

June 26 - December 31, 2024
Andy Warhol: All is Pretty
ARCHIVE

Andy Warhol: All is Pretty

August 17, 2023 - August 31, 2024
Claude Monet: An Impressionist Genius
ARCHIVE

Claude Monet: An Impressionist Genius

August 18 - October 31, 2022
Impressionism at Heather James Fine Art
ARCHIVE

Impressionism at Heather James Fine Art

September 1 - October 31, 2022
Marc Chagall: The Color of Love
ARCHIVE

Marc Chagall: The Color of Love

September 8 - October 12, 2022
Picasso - Prints and Works on Paper
ARCHIVE

Picasso - Prints and Works on Paper

September 1 - October 12, 2022
All We Have Seen: Impressionist Landscapes from Monet to Kleitsch
ARCHIVE

All We Have Seen: Impressionist Landscapes from Monet to Kleitsch

August 9, 2021 - September 30, 2022
The Paintings of Sir Winston Churchill
ARCHIVE

The Paintings of Sir Winston Churchill

August 1 - September 16, 2018
Norman Rockwell: The Artist at Work
ARCHIVE

Norman Rockwell: The Artist at Work

June 30 - September 30, 2016

ARTWORK ON VIEW

VIEW ALL

On May 15, 1886, a visual manifesto for a new art movement was born when Georges Seurat’s crowning achievement, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte was unveiled at the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition. Seurat can claim title as the original “Scientific Impressionist” working in a manner that came to be known as Pointillism or Divisionism. It was, however, his friend and the confidant, 24-year-old Paul Signac and their constant dialogue that led to a collaboration in understanding the physics of light and color and the style that emerged. Signac was an untrained, yet a blazingly talented, Impressionist painter whose temperament was perfectly suited to the rigor and discipline required to achieve the painstakingly laborious brushwork and color. Signac quickly assimilated the technique. He also bore witness to Seurat’s arduous two-year journey building myriad layers of unblended dots of color on the colossally-sized La Grande Jatte. Together, Signac, the brash extrovert, and Seurat, a secretive introvert, were about to subvert the course of Impressionism, and change the course of modern art.

PAUL SIGNAC

Cottonwood Tree (Near Abiquiu), New Mexico (1943) by celebrated American artist Georgia O’Keeffe is exemplary of the airier, more naturalistic style that the desert inspired in her. O’Keeffe had great affinity for the distinctive beauty of the Southwest, and made her home there among the spindly trees, dramatic vistas, and bleached animal skulls that she so frequently painted. O’Keeffe took up residence at Ghost Ranch, a dude ranch twelve miles outside of the village of Abiquiú in northern New Mexico and painted this cottonwood tree around there. The softer style befitting this subject is a departure from her bold architectural landscapes and jewel-toned flowers. <br> <br>The cottonwood tree is abstracted into soft patches of verdant greens through which more delineated branches are seen, spiraling in space against pockets of blue sky. The modeling of the trunk and delicate energy in the leaves carry forward past experimentations with the regional trees of the Northeast that had captivated O’Keeffe years earlier: maples, chestnuts, cedars, and poplars, among others. Two dramatic canvases from 1924, Autumn Trees, The Maple and The Chestnut Grey, are early instances of lyrical and resolute centrality, respectively. As seen in these early tree paintings, O’Keeffe exaggerated the sensibility of her subject with color and form. <br> <br>In her 1974 book, O’Keeffe explained: “The meaning of a word— to me— is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Color and shapes make a more definite statement than words.” Her exacting, expressive color intrigued. The Precisionist painter Charles Demuth described how, in O’Keeffe’s work, “each color almost regains the fun it must have felt within itself on forming the first rainbow” (As quoted in C. Eldridge, Georgia O’Keeffe, New York, 1991, p. 33). As well, congruities between forms knit together her oeuvre. Subjects like hills and petals undulate alike, while antlers, trees, and tributaries correspond in their branching morphology. <br> <br>The sinewy contours and gradated hues characteristic of O’Keeffe find an incredible range across decades of her tree paintings. In New Mexico, O’Keeffe returned to the cottonwood motif many times, and the seasonality of this desert tree inspired many forms. The vernal thrill of new growth was channeled into spiraling compositions like Spring Tree No.1 (1945). Then, cottonwood trees turned a vivid autumnal yellow provided a breathtaking compliment to the blue backdrop of Mount Pedernal. The ossified curves of Dead Cottonweed Tree (1943) contain dramatic pools of light and dark, providing a foil to the warm, breathing quality of this painting, Cottonwood Tree (Near Abiquiu). The aural quality of this feathered cottonwood compels a feeling guided by O’Keeffe’s use of form of color.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE

<br>In Diego Rivera’s portrait of Enriqueta Dávila, the artist asserts a Mexicanidad, a quality of Mexican-ness, in the work along with his strong feelings towards the sitter. Moreover, this painting is unique amongst his portraiture in its use of symbolism, giving us a strong if opaque picture of the relationship between artist and sitter. <br> <br>Enriqueta, a descendent of the prominent Goldbaum family, was married to the theater entrepreneur, José María Dávila. The two were close friends with Rivera, and the artist initially requested to paint Enriqueta’s portrait. Enriqueta found the request unconventional and relented on the condition that Rivera paints her daughter, Enriqueta “Quetita”. Rivera captures the spirit of the mother through the use of duality in different sections of the painting, from the floorboards to her hands, and even the flowers. Why the split in the horizon of the floorboard? Why the prominent cross while Enriqueta’s family is Jewish? Even her pose is interesting, showcasing a woman in control of her own power, highlighted by her hand on her hip which Rivera referred to as a claw, further complicating our understanding of her stature. <br> <br>This use of flowers, along with her “rebozo” or shawl, asserts a Mexican identity. Rivera was adept at including and centering flowers in his works which became a kind of signature device. The flowers show bromeliads and roselles; the former is epiphytic and the latter known as flor de jamaica and often used in hibiscus tea and aguas frescas. There is a tension then between these two flowers, emphasizing the complicated relationship between Enriqueta and Rivera. On the one hand, Rivera demonstrates both his and the sitter’s Mexican identity despite the foreign root of Enriqueta’s family but there may be more pointed meaning revealing Rivera’s feelings to the subject. The flowers, as they often do in still life paintings, may also refer to the fleeting nature of life and beauty. The portrait for her daughter shares some similarities from the use of shawl and flowers, but through simple changes in gestures and type and placement of flowers, Rivera illuminates a stronger personality in Enriqueta and a more dynamic relationship as filtered through his lens. <br> <br>A closer examination of even her clothing reveals profound meaning. Instead of a dress more in line for a socialite, Rivera has Enriqueta in a regional dress from Jalisco, emphasizing both of their Mexican identities. On the other hand, her coral jewelry, repeated in the color of her shoes, hints at multiple meanings from foreignness and exoticism to protection and vitality. From Ancient Egypt to Classical Rome to today, coral has been used for jewelry and to have been believed to have properties both real and symbolic. Coral jewelry is seen in Renaissance paintings indicating the vitality and purity of woman or as a protective amulet for infants. It is also used as a reminder, when paired with the infant Jesus, of his future sacrifice. Diego’s use of coral recalls these Renaissance portraits, supported by the plain background of the painting and the ribbon indicating the maker and date similar to Old Master works. <br> <br>When combined in the portrait of Enriqueta, we get a layered and tense building of symbolism. Rivera both emphasizes her Mexican identity but also her foreign roots. He symbolizes her beauty and vitality but look closely at half of her face and it is as if Rivera has painted his own features onto hers. The richness of symbolism hints at the complex relationship between artist and sitter.

DIEGO RIVERA

Led by a triumvirate of painters of the American Scene, Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood took on the task of exploring, defining, and celebrating the Midwest as a credible entity within the geographical, political, and mythological landscape of the United States. Their populist works were figurative and narrative-driven, and they gained widespread popularity among a Depression-weary American public. The landscapes Grant Wood painted, and the lithographs marketed by Associated American Artists were comforting reminders of traditional Midwestern values and the simplicity of country life. Yet, Wood's most iconic works, including American Gothic, were to be viewed through the lens of elusive narratives and witty ironies that reflect an artist who delighted in sharing his charming and humorous perspective on farm life. <br> <br>In 1930, Wood achieved national fame and recognition with American Gothic, a fictionalized depiction of his sister, Nan, and his family dentist. Frequently regarded as the most famous American painting of the twentieth century, to fully grasp American Gothic's essential nature, one must recognize Wood's profound connection to his Iowan roots, a bond that borders on a singular fixation and the often-brutal confrontation between the moral and cultural rigidity of Midwest isolationism and the standards that prevailed elsewhere in America. This war of values and morality became dominant throughout Wood's oeuvre. Their fascination with American Gothic may have mystified the public, but the story, told in the attitude of a farmer and his wife, is as lean and brittle as the pitchfork he carries. Their attitude, as defiant as it is confrontational, is an unflinching dare to uppity gallery-goers to judge their immaculate well-scrubbed farm. American Gothic became an overnight sensation, an ambiguous national icon often interpreted as a self-effacing parody of midwestern life. Yet it also served as an unflinching mirror to urban elite attitudes and their often-derisive view of heartland values and way of life. In Grant Wood's hands, the people of the Midwest have stiffened and soured, their rectitude implacable. <br> <br>Portrait of Nan is Grant Wood's most intimate work. He may have been motivated to paint it to make amends for the significant scrutiny and harsh treatment his sister received as American Gothic's sternly posed female. Grant poured his heart into it as a sign of sibling love. Intent upon painting her as straightforward and simply as possible so as not to invite unintended interpretations, Wood's deep attachment to the portrait was significant enough for him to think of it as having irreplaceable value. When he moved from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City in 1935, he designed his entire living room around the work. It occupied the place of honor above the fireplace and was the only painting he refused to sell. <br> <br>The lithograph July Fifteenth, issued in 1938, proves his mystical vision of the Iowan heartland is anything but a pitchfork approach. Drawings assumed central importance in Wood's output, and this work is executed in meticulous detail, proving his drawings were at least as complex, if not more so, than his paintings. The surface of the present work takes on an elaborate, decorative rhythm, echoed throughout the land that is soft, verdant, and fertile. Structurally, it alludes in equal measure to the geometry of modern art and the decorative patterning of folk-art traditions. This is a magical place, a fulsome display of an idealized version of an eternal, lovely, and benign heartland. <br> <br>The Young Artist, an en plein air sketch, may have been produced during, or slightly after, what Wood called his "palette-knife stage" that consumed him in 1925. Having not yet traveled to Munich where, in 1928, he worked on a stain-glass window commission and came under the influence of the Northern Renaissance painters that sparked his interest in the compositional severity and detailed technique associated with his mature works, here, he worked quickly, and decisively. The view is from a hilltop at Kenwood Park that overlooks the Cedar River Valley near Cedar Rapids, where he built a house for his sister, Nan.

GRANT WOOD

WILLEM DE KOONING - Woman in a Rowboat - oil on paper laid on masonite - 47 1/2 x 36 1/4 in.

WILLEM DE KOONING

Alexander Calder was a key figure in the development of abstract sculpture and is renowned for his groundbreaking work in kinetic art; he is one of the most influential artists of the Twentieth Century. "Prelude to Man-Eater" is a delicately balanced standing sculpture that responds to air currents, creating a constantly changing and dynamic visual experience. <br> <br>Calder's Standing Mobiles were a result of his continuous experimentation with materials, form, and balance. This Standing Mobile is a historically significant prelude to a larger work commissioned in 1945 by Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. "Prelude to Maneater" is designed to be viewed from multiple angles, encouraging viewers to walk around and interact with it. <br> <br>The present work is a formal study for Man-Eater With Pennant (1945), part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The work is also represented in "Sketches for Mobiles: Prelude to Man-Eater; Starfish; Octopus", which is in the permanent collection of the Harvard Fogg Museum. <br> <br>Calder's mobiles and stabiles can be found in esteemed private collections and the collections of major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Tate Gallery in London among others.

ALEXANDER CALDER

<div>Having unwittingly inserted himself into the Pop Art conversation with his Great American Nude series, Tom Wesselmann spent the rest of his career explaining that his motivation was not to focus excessively on a subject matter or to generate social commentary but instead, to give form to what titillated him most as beautiful and exciting. His disembodied Mouth series of 1965 established that an image did not have to rely on extraneous elements to communicate meaning. But it was his follow-up performances with the Smoker series and its seductive, fetish allure that raised his standing among true sybarites everywhere. Apart from perceiving smoking as cool and chic, a painting such as Smoker #21 is the consummate celebration of Wesselmann’s abilities as a painter. Enticed by the undulating smoke, Wesselmann took great pains to accurately depict its sinuous movements and observe the momentary pauses that heightened his appreciation of its sensual nature. Like all of Wesselmann’s prodigious scaled artworks, Smoker #21 has the commanding presence of an altarpiece. It was produced during long hours in his impressive Manhattan studio in Cooper Square, and the result is one of sultry dynamism — evocative, sensual, alluring, sleek, luscious, and perhaps, even sinister — a painting that flaunts his graphic supremacy and potent realism varnished with his patented sex appeal flair.<br> <br><br> <br>Tom Wesselmann expanded upon the success of his Great American Nudes by focusing on singular features of his subjects and began painting his Mouth series in 1965. In 1967, Wesselmann’s friend Peggy Sarno paused for a cigarette while modeling for Wesselmann’s Mouth series, inspiring his Smoker paintings. The whisps of smoke were challenging to paint and required Wesselmann to utilize photographs as source material to capture the smoke’s ephemeral nature properly. The images here show Wesselmann photographing his friend, the screenwriter Danièle Thompson, as she posed for some of Wesselmann’s source images.</div>

TOM WESSELMANN

Trained as a woodcarver, Emil Nolde was almost 30 years old before he made his first paintings. The early paintings resembled his drawings and woodcuts: grotesque figures with bold lines and strong contrasts. The style was new, and it inspired the nascent movement Die Brücke (The Bridge), whose members invited Nolde to join them in 1906. But, it was not until the garden became his locus operandi by 1915 that he built upon his mastery of contrasting luminosities to focus on color as the supreme means of expression. Later, Nolde claimed “color is strength, strength is life,” and he could not have better characterized why his flower paintings reinvigorate our perception of color. <br> <br>Much of the strength of Nolde’s dramatic, Wagnerian-like color sensibilities is the effect of staging primary colors, such as the deep reds and golden yellows of Sonnenblumen, Abend II, against a somber palette. The contrast highlights and deepens the luminosity of the flowers, not just visually, but emotionally as well. In 1937, when Nolde’s art was rejected, confiscated, and defiled, his paintings were paraded as “degenerate art” throughout Nazi Germany in dimly lit galleries. Despite that treatment, Nolde’s status as a degenerate artist gave his art more breathing space because he seized the opportunity to produce more than 1,300 watercolors, which he called “unpainted pictures.” No novice in handling watercolor, his free-flowing style of painting had been a hallmark of his highly-charge, transparent washes since 1918. Sonnenblumen, Abend II, painted in 1944, is a rare wartime oil. He let his imagination run wild with this work, and his utilization of wet-on-wet techniques heightened the drama of each petal. <br> <br>Nolde’s intense preoccupation with color and flowers, particularly sunflowers, reflects his continuing devotion to van Gogh. He was aware of van Gogh as early as 1899 and, during the 1920s and early 1930s, visited several exhibitions of the Dutch artist’s work. They shared a profound love of nature. Nolde’s dedication to expression and the symbolic use of color found fullness in the sunflower subject, and it became a personal symbol for him, as it did for Van Gogh.

EMIL NOLDE

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR - Fillette a l'orange - oil on canvas - 25 3/4 x 21 3/8 in.

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR

No artist bridged the gap between European Modernism and American Abstract Expressionism the same way Hans Hofmann did. The reason is simple. He was trained in Parisian academies prior to World War I and was friendly with Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and, most significantly, Robert and Sonia Delaunay. Conversely, his endeavors as a teacher and later, as a mature artist in full command of his abilities were stimulated — made possible even — by the exhilarating New York milieu that gave rise to Abstract Expressionism. So perhaps it is not surprising that unlike most of the Abstract Expressionists who pursued a single iconographic look — Rothko’s soft-edged rectangles, Franz Klein’s enlarged calligraphic strokes, Clyfford Still’s dark, ragged shapes — Hofmann was constantly reaching for different and contradictory effects. That meant his paintings were wildly varied and that they carved a wide swath toward the most exciting avenues available to contemporary abstraction. Hofmann proved to be a gallant experimenter, refusing to settle on a single style for long. <br> <br>The Climb was painted in 1960 at a time when most American painters were pushing abstraction in new directions. Not surprisingly, as an outlier, it does not evoke Hofmann’s usual “push and pull’ technique. But it is very much a painting of its time, marked by a sensuousness and a deft, painterly touch. It suggests what Irving Sandler characterized as Hofmann’s hedonistic touch, an optimistic celebration of the lyrical abstraction that overcame the burning darkness of painting in the 40s and trumped even the lighter palette of Pollock or Pousette-Dart that emerged later. While the passages of The Climb are brushed rather than poured or stained, it reflects the delicate lyricism of his former student, Helen Frankenthaler who, since 1952 had experimented with floating areas of color, absorbed into the canvas with watercolor-like ease. She, in turn, had inspired a generation of Color Field painters including Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. On the other hand, these short bands and prismatic slurries recall those halcyon days in Paris when Hofmann worked through color theory with his good friend Robert Delaunay and thought a lot about prisms. Hofmann not only retained elements of Synthetic Cubism, but the lessons he learned from the Fauves and the artists who verily invented abstraction, Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich, Frantisek Kupka, and Piet Mondrian to name a few of the key players. The Climb is a glorious expression of a painter drawing from both the past and the present, painting in a playful, but not frivolous manner fully informed and prepared to express his abilities as a painter, simply, and with great conviction. <br> <br>As New York City became the avant-garde’s global hub in the 1940s, radical, new approaches to art, such as action painting and abstraction, took root among the informally grouped New York School painters. By 1950, Abstract Expressionism was well underway, but the movement was often overlooked by institutions. When the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its plan to exhibit a survey of contemporary American painting, many of the New York School painters felt there was a bias against more “progressive” art in the museum’s selection process, prompting them to draft an open letter protesting the show. <br> <br>The letter garnered attention, and Life magazine published an article on the protest in January 1951, “The Irascible Group of Advanced Artists Led Fight Against Show.” To accompany the article, Nina Lee photographed 15 of the 18 painters who signed the letter, including Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyford Still, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. Today, this article is considered a turning point in the prominence of Abstract Expressionism, and the artists involved are often referred to as the “Irascibles.”

HANS HOFMANN

Alexander Calder executed a surprising number of oil paintings during the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s. By this time, the shock of his 1930 visit to Mondrian’s studio, where he was impressed not by the paintings but by the environment, had developed into an artistic language of Calder’s own. So, as Calder was painting The Cross in 1948, he was already on the cusp of international recognition and on his way to winning the XX VI Venice Biennale’s grand prize for sculpture in 1952. Working on his paintings in concert with his sculptural practice, Calder approached both mediums with the same formal language and mastery of shape and color. <br> <br>Calder was deeply intrigued by the unseen forces that keep objects in motion. Taking this interest from sculpture to canvas, we see that Calder built a sense of torque within The Cross by shifting its planes and balance. Using these elements, he created implied motion suggesting that the figure is pressing forward or even descending from the skies above. The Cross’s determined momentum is further amplified by details such as the subject’s emphatically outstretched arms, the fist-like curlicue vector on the left, and the silhouetted serpentine figure. <br> <br>Calder also adopts a strong thread of poetic abandon throughout The Cross’s surface. It resonates with his good friend Miró’s hieratic and distinctly personal visual language, but it is all Calder in the effective animation of this painting’s various elements. No artist has earned more poetic license than Calder, and throughout his career, the artist remained convivially flexible in his understanding of form and composition. He even welcomed the myriad interpretations of others, writing in 1951, “That others grasp what I have in mind seems unessential, at least as long as they have something else in theirs.” <br> <br>Either way, it is important to remember that The Cross was painted shortly after the upheaval of the Second World War and to some appears to be a sobering reflection of the time. Most of all, The Cross proves that Alexander Calder loaded his brush first to work out ideas about form, structure, relationships in space, and most importantly, movement.

ALEXANDER CALDER

<div>In the mid-1920s, Rufino Tamayo embarked on the crucial development phase as a sophisticated, contemporary colorist. In New York, he encountered the groundbreaking works of Picasso, Braque, and Giorgio de Chirico, along with the enduring impact of Cubism. Exploring painterly and plastic values through subjects sourced from street scenes, popular culture, and the fabric of daily life, his unique approach to color and form began to take shape. It was a pivotal shift toward cosmopolitan aesthetics, setting him apart from the nationalist fervor championed by the politically charged narratives of the Mexican Muralist movement.  By focusing on the vitality of popular culture, he captured the essential Mexican identity that prioritized universal artistic values over explicit social and political commentary. The approach underscored his commitment to redefining Mexican art on the global stage and highlighted his innovative contributions to the modernist dialogue. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div>Like Cézanne, Tamayo elevated the still life genre to some of its most beautifully simple expressions. Yet high sophistication underlies the ease with which Tamayo melds vibrant Mexican motifs with the avant-garde influences of the School of Paris. As "Naturaleza Muerta" of 1935 reveals, Tamayo refused to lapse into the mere decoration that often characterizes the contemporary School of Paris art with which his work draws comparisons. Instead, his arrangement of watermelons, bottles, a coffee pot, and sundry items staged within a sobering, earthbound tonality and indeterminant, shallow space recalls Tamayo's early interest in Surrealism. An overlayed square matrix underscores the contrast between the organic subjects of the painting and the abstract, intellectualized structure imposed upon them, deepening the interpretation of the artist's exploration of visual perception and representation. In this way, the grid serves to navigate between the visible world and the underlying structures that inform our understanding of it, inviting viewers to consider the interplay between reality and abstraction, sensation and analysis.</div>

RUFINO TAMAYO

The world of Marc Chagall cannot be contained or limited by the labels we attach to it. It is a world of images and meanings which form their own splendidly mystical discourse. Les Mariés sous le baldaquin (The Bride and Groom under the Canopy) was begun as the artist entered his 90th year, a man who had known tragedy and strife, but who never forgot life’s moments of rapturous pleasure. Here, the dreamy delights of a Russian village wedding with its arrangements of well-worn attendees are brought to us with such happy wit and cheerful innocence that there is no resisting its charm. Using a golden toned emulsion combining oil and opaque, water-based gouache, the warmth, happiness, and optimism of Chagall’s usual positivism is wrapped in a luminous radiance suggesting the influence of gold-leaf religious icons or early Renaissance painting that sought to impart the impression of divine light or spiritual enlightenment. Using a combination of oil and gouache can be challenging. But here, in Les Mariés sous le baldaquin, Chagall employs it to give the scene an otherworldly quality, almost as if it has just materialized out of his mind’s eye. Its textural delicacy creates the impression that light is emanating from the work itself and gives a spectral quality to the figures floating the sky.

MARC CHAGALL

The Pop Art Movement is notable for its rewriting of Art History and the idea of what could be considered a work of art. Larry Rivers association with Pop-Art and the New York School set him aside as one of the great American painters of the Post-War period. <br> <br>In addition to being a visual artist, Larry Rivers was a jazz saxophonist who studied at the Juilliard School of Music from 1945-1946. This painting's subject echoes the artists' interest in Jazz and the musical scene in New York City, particularly Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side. <br> <br>“Untitled” (1958) is notable bas the same owner has held it since the work was acquired directly from the artist several decades ago. This work is from the apex of the artists' career in New York and could comfortably hang in a museum's permanent collection.

LARRY RIVERS

Painted by young Grant Wood shortly after the second of three European tours he took during the 1920s, The Young Artist extends the artist's interest in painting en plein air begun in northern France. The pointillism of Seurat appealed to Wood, and palette knife painting consumed him in 1925. Yet he had not yet traveled to Munich where, in 1928, he came under the influence of the Northern Renaissance painters, which sparked his interest in the compositional severity and detailed technique associated with his mature works. Painting quickly and decisively, Wood produced The Young Artist from a hilltop at Kenwood Park that overlooks the Cedar River Valley near Cedar Rapids, where he built a house for his sister, Nan.

GRANT WOOD

<div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Martha's Vineyard played a pivotal role in Thomas Hart Benton's artistic journey, offering him both inspiration and respite from urban life. His first visit to the sparsely populated island in 1920 marked a turning point, allowing him to escape the sweltering New York summers and find clarity in the island's serene environment. At a time before the island was deluged by the fabulously wealthy, Vineyard was a freewheeling community of artists and intellectuals that gave the ever-inquisitive Benton much-needed stimulation. It is here that Benton's bold colors and dynamic compositions achieved contour inflections, pictorial rhythms, and a strong-hued palette, which we associate with his mature style. Inspired early by Cézanne, Benton's landscapes transcend fleeting impressions. Yet he never abandoned the influence of Synchronism and its focus on color harmonies, tempo, and rhythm. That latter influence drives the energy and spirit of "Keith's Farm, Chilmark," organized into horizontal bands of visual information, creating a sense of motion and unity.</font></div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>With its rolling pastures to the Atlantic Ocean and tranquil cloud formations beyond, the view over the Keith Farm pastures is one of the island's most spectacular. Overlooking Menemsha Pond to the Vineyard Sound, Benton captured and distilled the essential nature of the place, transforming it into a picturesque and personally significant composition. His use of modern techniques to strip the landscape down to its basic tendencies embodies pride in regional America and a reverence for the country's natural beauty in ways the streets of New York never could. Simultaneously, Benton imbues the work with what his daughter, Jessie, noted: music played a vital role in her father's art, informing a sense of motion using sinuous forms, each rendered in flowing complementary and contrasting colors and 'twisting, always moving, moving, moving.' Typical of Benton's best paintings, "Keith's Farm, Chilmark" is a well-orchestrated work that pulls individual elements into a unifying scheme of visual rhythm — a testament to his mastery of landscape painting and deep connection to Martha's Vineyard.</font></div>

THOMAS HART BENTON

PIERRE BONNARD - Soleil Couchant - oil on canvas - 14 1/2 x 22 1/2 in.

PIERRE BONNARD

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT - Untitled (Pigeon Anatomy) - oil, graphite, and chalk on paper - 22 x 30 in.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

DAMIEN HIRST - Forgotten Thoughts - butterflies and household gloss on canvas - 48 x 48 in.

DAMIEN HIRST

<div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Deeply influenced by his populist views and commitment to social realism, Thomas Hart Benton became an advocate for the common man, often depicting the struggles and resilience of ordinary Americans in his work. Coal strikes were frequent occurrences in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and <em>"Mine Strike"</em> is a visually compelling account of such an uprising, rich with social commentary. At the time, Benton traveled the nation seeking inspiration for a mural project and was particularly interested in social issues. In 1933, he illustrated the modern social history of the United States for <em>“We the People”,</em> published by Harper & Brothers, New York. <em>"Mine Strike"</em> is carefully constructed to highlight the chaos and human drama. </font></div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>The figures are robust and grounded, reflecting Benton's signature style of muscular forms. The scene, though aggressive and violent, displays commitment and sacrifice. Two officers fire on the strikers, one of whom has fallen to the ground, shot. Set against the backdrop of an imposing mining complex, a towering black structure known as a 'tipple' looms ominously over the strikers. Its darkly sinister anthropomorphic shape contrasts sharply with the lighter, more organic human figures — an appearance intensified by its coal chutes resembling mechanical arms. This visual metaphor of industrial oppression underscores the pervasive threat posed by the coal mining industry and those paid to protect its interests.</font></div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Through <em>"Mine Strike,"</em> Benton not only documents a specific historical moment but also critiques the broader socio-economic conditions of his time. His depiction of the workers' plight is a powerful statement on the exploitation and struggles the working-class faces. Benton's political leanings towards advocating for social justice and his commitment to portraying the reality of American life are vividly encapsulated in this painting, making it a poignant and enduring piece of art.</font></div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Benton made two compositions about strike activities during this time: this painting and another, <em>“Strikebreakers”</em>, painted in 1931. Of the two, Benton used <em>"Mine Strike"</em> as the basis for a well-known lithograph issued in 1933. Benton described the scene as a "Strike battle" in the coal country. This is an imaginary reconstruction of a situation only too common in the late twenties and early thirties."</font></div>

THOMAS HART BENTON

Sympathetic in his portrayal of farmers and field workers and favoring themes of dedication and hard work, Thomas Hart Benton created hundreds of studies depicting the struggle for existence that was the brutal day-to-day life for so many Americans at that time. Hoeing Cotton has much of the dark, moody pallor that evokes the hardship of southern farming during the Great Depression. Staged as if held in suspended anticipation of an impending storm, Benton utilizes the dynamic interplay between sky and landscape to deepen the thematic impact of rural life in the deep south. These elements highlight the connection between people and their environment and the enduring spirit of resilience.

THOMAS HART BENTON

FRANZ KLINE - Untitled, No. 7246 - oil on paper laid on board - 18 1/8 x 23 1/4 in.

FRANZ KLINE

HANS HOFMANN - Song of Love - oil on canvas - 36 1/4 x 48 1/4 in.

HANS HOFMANN

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI - Cariatide - blue crayon on buff paper - 24 x 18 in.

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI

HANS HOFMANN - Untitled - oil on canvas - 25 x 30 1/4 in.

HANS HOFMANN

HIROSHI SENJU - Waterfall - natural pigments and platinum on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board - 36 x 46 in.

HIROSHI SENJU

Max Weber moved to Paris in 1905 when the city was the epicenter of artistic innovation. His early works demonstrate the contemporaneous influence of Fauvism’s bold color palette and Cubism’s fragmented representation of reality. However, Weber did not merely imitate these styles; he integrated and reinterpreted them to create something his own. Weber’s importance lies not just with his abstract works, but also in his role as a conduit of modernist ideas. Weber played a crucial role in the transatlantic dialogue that helped shape the course of American art in the twentieth century. His depictions of female figures showcase a synthesis of the abstract and the representational, capturing the essence of his subjects while breaking away from traditional figurative works.

MAX WEBER

Informed by his devout Catholic faith, Rouault's artistic evolution was unique amongst modernists. Captivated by the vibrant colors and how light passes through medieval stained-glass windows, he applied thick, rich layers of paint and amplified raw and bold forms awash with deep blues within heavy black lines. Rouault often supported strong recurring religious themes dedicated to the power of redemption. Carlotta serves neither that higher calling nor the marginalized suffering of subjects that included clowns, prostitutes, and crucifixions. Instead, Carlotta is an opportunity to admire Rouault's more subtle color variations and the dynamic interplay between the rough, tactile quality of the impasto and the softer, more diffused effect of the scumbled passages of a model unencumbered by themes of human pain and despair.

GEORGES ROUAULT

CAMILLE PISSARRO - Paysage avec batteuse a Montfoucault - pastel on paper laid down on board - 10 3/8 x 14 3/4 in.

CAMILLE PISSARRO

RICHARD SERRA - Cape Breton Horizontal Reversal No. 16 - litho-crayon on two sheets of handmade paper - 19 3/4 x 55 7/8 in.

RICHARD SERRA

JOHN CHAMBERLAIN - ASARABACA - industrial weight aluminum foil with acrylic lacquer and polyester resin - 20 x 23 x 22 in.

JOHN CHAMBERLAIN

Genieve Figgis is a notable figure in the contemporary Irish art scene, recognized for her clever and critical group portraits that often poke fun at long-ago social conventions. A relative latecomer to painting, she caught the attention of American appropriation artist Richard Prince on Twitter, who went on to purchase one of her works and introduced her to the influential circles of the New York art community. Figgis' work playfully critiques affluent middle-class consumption habits and luxurious lifestyles, as immortalized by artists of the past, and brings such subjects firmly into the present day with a mixture of satire and raw, authentic portrayals of life. Think of Figgis as reaching across the sands of time to Daumier or Hogarth, whose work frequently offered a satirical look at contemporary society, joining artists engaged in social satire and known for their keen observational skills.

GENIEVE FIGGIS

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE - Anooralya Yam Story - synthetic polymer paint on linen - 60 1/4 x 48 in.

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE

Roger Brown is known for his personal and often fantastical imagery and highly stylized paintings with figures and objects that reflect his interest in everyday experiences. Acid Rain explores themes of modern life and social commentary that reflect the role of the artist in society and the potential of art to instigate change. On a more personal level, the theme of acid rain may symbolize corrosive emotional or psychological states, such as depression, anxiety, or the feeling of being overwhelmed by circumstances beyond one's control. Just as acid rain was a largely unseen but devastating environmental problem, the crisis of the emerging HIV/AIDS epidemic likely motivated Brown to create the work to process personal grief, critique the inadequate response from political leaders, and advocate for compassion, understanding, and medical research.

ROGER BROWN

Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series evokes the artist's delicate balance of light and color, his thoughtful composition, and the subtle integration of landscape elements, all of which simulate the coastal ambiance of his studio in Santa Monica. In the early 1990s, Diebenkorn revisited the themes and aesthetic sensibilities of the Ocean Park series by leveraging various printmaking techniques to extend his exploration of the abstract language he developed in his paintings. "High Green, Version I" exemplifies this pursuit, suggesting the compositional strategies, palette, and spatial concerns that define the Ocean Park series while also showcasing the unique possibilities of printmaking for reinterpreting these elements.

RICHARD DIEBENKORN

JOAN MIRO - L'Oiseau - bronze and cinderblock - 23 7/8 x 20 x 16 1/8 in.

JOAN MIRO

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

Andy Warhol is synonymous with American art in the second half of the 20th century and is known for his iconic portraits and consumer products, mixing popular culture and fine art, redefining what art could be and how we approach art. While many of Warhol’s works may not represent famed individuals, his depictions of inanimate objects elevate his subjects to a level of celebrity. Warhol first depicted shoes early in his career when he worked as a fashion illustrator and returned to the theme in the 1980s, combining his fascination with consumerism and glamour. With his constant desire to fuse high and low culture, Warhol chose to highlight something that is so ubiquitous as shoes. The subject can denote poverty or wealth, function, or fashion. Warhol glamorizes the pile of footwear, covering them with a patina of glitzy diamond dust, further blurring the meaning between utilitarian need and stylized statement piece.

ANDY WARHOL

Robert Motherwell's "Open" series, which began in the late 1960s, represents a significant direction in his work, emphasizing openness and spatial complexity through minimalistic compositions. Based on the window as a metaphorical motif rich in introspection and intimacy, "Open Study in Tobacco Brown" is intended to reflect the relationship between the interior self and the external world. It also demonstrates a commitment to exploring the boundaries of abstraction, the interplay of forms, and the emotional depth of color. "Open Study in Tobacco Brown" was produced in 1971, a transitional year when the artist divorced wife Helen Frankenthaler and met German photographer Renate Ponsold, whom he would marry the following year.

ROBERT MOTHERWELL

KEITH HARING - Untitled (Figure Balancing On Dog) - aluminum - 35 1/2 x 25 x 29 in.

KEITH HARING

"Wigwam rouge et jaune", a captivating gouache painting by Alexander Calder, is a vibrant exploration of design and color. Dominated by a lattice of diagonal lines intersecting near their pinnacle, the composition exudes a dynamic balance. Calder introduces an element of whimsy with red and yellow diamond shapes, infusing the piece with playfulness and creating a festive atmosphere. Red balls at the right-leaning lines' apex evoke a whimsical impression, while smaller gray spheres atop left-leaning lines offer contrast and equilibrium. Calder's masterful fusion of simplicity and vital design elements makes Wigwam rouge et jaune a visual delight.

ALEXANDER CALDER

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

Deborah Butterfield holds a significant place within the pantheon of American sculptors, renowned for her pioneering spirit and mastery of diverse mediums. Crafted in formed-wielded steel, "Beacon" is a testament to her boldness and dedication to pushing artistic boundaries. Butterfield embraced the challenges of this demanding medium, and it is a fusion of innovation and tradition. With its modern aesthetic characterized by sweeping, elegant lines, this horse sculpture is a source of enchantment, inviting viewers into a realm where contemporary art converges with timeless beauty. Beacon honors the classic grace of the equine form and reaffirms Butterfield's position as a visionary within the landscape of modern sculpture.

DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD

SALVADOR DALI - The Harbinger (Mystische Hochzeit) - ink, gouache and watercolor on cardboard - 10 1/2 x 8 1/8 in.

SALVADOR DALI

SALVADOR DALI - Adam et Eve - gouache, watercolor and ink on cardboard - 10 1/2 x 8 in.

SALVADOR DALI

<div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Harry Bertoia’s “Sonambient” sculptures are a mesmerizing blend of art, sound, and science, and this 36-tine piece is a quintessential example of his innovative genius. Meticulously crafted with 36 rods aligned in a precise six-by-six configuration on a square base, this 77-inch-tall work embodies the harmonious intersection of visual beauty and auditory wonder.</font></div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Made from beryllium copper, a material favored by Bertoia for its superior acoustic properties and aesthetic appeal, the rods have developed a rich walnut-like patina over time. This patina adds to the sculpture’s visual allure, enhancing its historical and artistic value, and reflects a natural aging process that the artist himself, a naturalist, would have admired. When activated by touch or the movement of air, the rods produce a perceptible, fixed note accompanied by a range of ethereal tones, transforming the sculpture from a static object into a dynamic, multisensory experience. The long, swaying motion of the tall rods, reminiscent of the undulating desert grasses that inspired the artist initially, adds a captivating visual dimension. The cattail-like finials further evoke natural forms, underscoring Bertoia’s inspiration derived from the natural world.</font></div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Bertoia’s 36-tine “Sonambient” sculpture is more than a visual masterpiece; it profoundly explores sound, material, and participatory interaction. It exemplifies Bertoia’s belief in art as an immersive and evolving experience, where each encounter offers discoveries and sensations. Through this work, Bertoia has created a timeless piece that continues to captivate and inspire, highlighting his artistic vision's enduring power and deep connection to nature’s spiritual qualities.</font></div>

HARRY BERTOIA

No artist bridged the gap between European Modernism and American Abstract Expressionism like Hans Hofmann did. The reason is simple: he was trained in Parisian academies before World War I and friendly with Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Robert and Sonia Delaunay, giving him a level of familiarity with European Modernism that no other Abstract Expressionist possessed. Untitled (View of Provincetown Harbor) combines elements of that early time, the unrestrained color of the Fauves in broadly brushed passages with the promise of the automatist painting of the New York School to come. It is highly gestural, blending the motifs and speed of Raoul Dufy's brush with a more masculine, bolder projection, suggesting the roots of Action Painting.

HANS HOFMANN

"A drawing is simply a line going for a walk." <br>-Paul Klee <br> <br>A significant draftsman, Paul Klee's works on paper rival his works on canvas in their technical proficiency and attention to his modern aesthetic. As an early teacher at the Bauhaus school, Klee traveled extensively and inspired a generation of 20th Century Artists. <br> <br>Klee transcended a particular style, instead creating his own unique visual vocabulary. In Klee's work, we see a return to basic, geometric forms and a removal of artistic embellishment. "Der Hafen von Plit" was once owned by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the First Director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

PAUL KLEE

ANDY WARHOL - Goethe - silkscreen in colors - 38 x 38 in.

ANDY WARHOL

Known for his fascination with fame, celebrity, and cultural icons, Andy Warhol occasionally reached beyond his contemporaries to include historical figures. Of particular interest, Goethe's theories on color emphasized how colors are perceived and their psychological impact, contrasting with the prevailing Newtonian physics-based understanding of color as a scientific phenomenon. Although there is no direct link that Goethe's color theory directly inspired Warhol to select him as a subject, it thematically highlights how we view Warhol's art as engaging with historical traditions to symbolize a bond between their respective fields and eras. In this sense, the work serves as an homage and a cross-temporal collaboration, linking Warhol's visual language with Goethe's awareness of color as a potent, stimulating element in perception.

ANDY WARHOL

RODOLFO MORALES - Untitled - oil on canvas - 37 1/4 x 39 1/4 in.

RODOLFO MORALES

JENNIFER BARTLETT - Counting Polygon - oil on canvas - 34 1/4 x 46 1/2 x 2 in.

JENNIFER BARTLETT

A veteran of the battle of Verdun, Fernand Leger witnessed the horror and staggering loss of over 1 Million of his fellow countrymen during World War I. This horrific experience of fighting in the trenches of Europe left an indelible mark on the artist. The modern and mechanized aspects of this new form of warfare, with tanks, modern artillery, and gruesome tactics, inspired Leger to create some of his greatest masterpieces. <br> <br>The Present drawing, executed in 1930, is a relic from the decade following the First World War. Untitled (1930) was purchased from the Katherine Kuh galley in Chicago- and has been impeccably preserved by the family of the original purchaser. It is exceedingly rare to find drawings like Untitled outside of Museum collections.

FERNAND LEGER

Irving Norman was born in 1906 in Vilna, then part of the Russian Empire, now Lithuania. Norman's immigration to New York City in 1923 was short-lived, as he would return to Europe to fight as part of the Abraham Lincoln battalion against the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. After the War, Norman would eventually settle in Half Moon Bay, California, where he embarked on a prolific studio practice. <br> <br>Norman's work portrays the horrors of war and his firsthand knowledge of totalitarian dictatorships. Norman's work has been described as "Social Surrealism," and his grand scenes are immediate and arresting. The large-scale works of Norman truly capture the power of his lived experiences; they are as much a visual record as they are a warning for the future, intended to inspire change.

IRVING NORMAN

JESSIE ARMS BOTKE - Two White Peacocks - oil on board - 29 1/4 x 24 1/2 in.

JESSIE ARMS BOTKE

ALEX KATZ - Peter - oil on masonite board - 15 7/8 x 7 1/8 in.

ALEX KATZ

Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans series marks a pivotal moment in his career and the Pop Art movement. The series, consisting of 32 canvases, each depicting a different flavor, revolutionized the art world by elevating mundane, everyday consumer goods to the status of high art. The screen print Pepper Pot from 1968 employs his signature style of vivid, flat colors and repeated imagery, characteristic of mass production and consumer culture. Screen printing, a commercial technique, aligns with Warhol's interest in blurring the lines between high art and commercial art, challenging artistic values and perceptions.

ANDY WARHOL

WILLIAM WENDT - Laguna Hills - oil on canvas - 25 x 30 in.

WILLIAM WENDT

The essential and dramatic declaration “Let there be light” of Genesis is not so far removed from Mary Corse’s recollection of the moment in 1968 when the late afternoon sun electrified the reflective road markings of Malibu as she drove east. In an instant, the glowing asphalt markings provided the oracle she needed to realize she could ‘put light in the painting and not just make a picture of light’. Using the same glass microbeads utilized by road maintenance services, she layers and embeds the prismatic material in bands and geometric configurations creating nuanced glimmering abstract fields which shift as the viewer moves in relationship to the work. Move to one side and dimness brightens to light. Walk back and forth and you might feel a rippling effect from its shimmering, prismatic effects. <br> <br>A photographic image of a Mary Corse microsphere painting is not only a dull representation, but it also misses the point – it is experience dependent art that requires participation to ‘be’. Of course, “Untitled” (1975) defies that one-point static perspective and instead, depends upon a real time, interactive art experience which heightens awareness of the body in space as the viewer experiences shifts of retinal stimulation, sensation and feeling. It is a rare bird. Unusually petite at two-foot square, its design, geometry and color belie her earlier revelation that led to a devotion to her usual reductive palette. Instead, it is a bold statement in sequined color, its center field bounded at the corners by a sparkling red stepped motif that separates it from its starry night sky corner spandrels. It may not include a star motif, but it has the glamour and presence that belongs along Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

MARY CORSE

Ansel Adams photographs are © The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. Reproduced with permission.

ANSEL ADAMS

<div><font size=3 color=black>Harry Bertoia's “Sonambient” sculptures are renowned for their meditative qualities, inviting viewers into a serene and contemplative state. Among the five “Sonambients” in our exhibition, even this most petite sculpture stands out with its remarkable sonic capabilities. This work, with its 64 tines, each capped with long, slender finials, produces a high-timbered sonority that is surprisingly robust. The delicate yet powerful sound offers an auditory experience that encourages reflection and heightened awareness.</font></div> <br> <br><div><font size=3> </font></div> <br> <br><div><font size=3 color=black>A pivotal aspect of the “Sonambient” sculptures' evolution was the involvement of Bertoia's brother, Oreste, whose expertise as a musician enabled him to help Harry reconceptualize these sculptures, not just as visual or kinetic art but as instruments capable of producing an immersive soundscape. This collaboration highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of Bertoia's work, merging the worlds of sculpture and music. Experimenting with rods and tines of different metals, varying in length and thickness, he discovered a wide range of tones and textural droning sounds. Exhilarated by their ethereal, otherworldly resonance and his brother's encouragement, Bertoia filled his historic barn in Bally, Pennsylvania, with more than sixty “Sonambient” sculptures. It became a kind of orchestral studio and laboratory where he recorded albums and held concerts, and the once lowly barn became a hallowed place—a chapel of sorts—where visitors experienced it as a pilgrimage and a place of profound inspiration and meditation.</font></div>

HARRY BERTOIA

ANSEL ADAMS - Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite, CA - silver gelatin print - 19 x 14 1/2 in.

ANSEL ADAMS

LÉON AUGUSTIN LHERMITTE - Laveuses, le soir - pastel on paper laid on canvas - 17 1/2 x 13 3/4 in.

LÉON AUGUSTIN LHERMITTE

MARY ABBOTT - Untitled - oil and oil stick on paper mounted to canvas - 23 x 29 in.

MARY ABBOTT

Karl Benjamin and his peers Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, and John McLaughlin hold a distinctive place in the history of American abstract art. Known for their precise, geometric forms and clean edges emphasizing flatness, they are California's Hard-edge painters who emerged in the late 1950s. Unlike Ellsworth Kelly, for example, their work reflects a brightness, clarity, and palette that suggests California's natural and built environment rather than the more urban and industrial influences felt on the East Coast. Furthermore, compared to the competitive art scene on the East Coast, the California group was a relatively small and close-knit community of artists with a sense of collaboration and shared exploration that contributed to a cohesive movement with a distinct identity.

KARL BENJAMIN

The Arts and Crafts Movement in Great Britain and the corresponding ripples that made their way across the Atlantic Ocean were felt in the work of Jesse Arms Botke (1883-1971). Botke was born in Chicago, Illinois but found her home in California, where she had a successful career working first in Carmel and later in Southern California. <br> <br>Rich textures, extensive use of gold leaf, and highly stylized birds would become synonymous with Botke's mature work as she established herself as one of the West Coast’s leading decorative mural painters of the 20th century. <br> <br>"The White Peacock" (1922) shows an idyllic landscape with Botke's signature bird subject matter; the white peacock and cockatoos were among her favorite aviary subjects. Her work today can be found in countless museum collections, including the Art Institute, Chicago.

JESSIE ARMS BOTKE

ANDY WARHOL - Northwest Coast Mask - screenprint in colors on Lenox Museum Board - 38 x 38 in.

ANDY WARHOL

ROBERTO MATTA - L'epreuve - oil on canvas - 29 1/2 x 25 1/2 in.

ROBERTO MATTA

PABLO PICASSO - Femme assise en pyjama de plage - linocut - 21 1/2 x 17 in.

PABLO PICASSO

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT

Andrea-WEB-POST

ANDREA RICO DAHLIN

Senior Director
Jackson Hole, Wyoming

[email protected]

c: 913 306 4982

o: 307 200 6090

With over 20 years in the industry, Andrea holds a BA in Art History with a Minor in Fine Art from Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, and a MA in Modern Art, Connoisseurship, and History of the Art Market from Christie’s Education, New York, NY. She brings expertise from her experience in both museums and auction houses, having worked at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City and Christie’s in New York.

Since joining Heather James Fine Art in 2015, Andrea has secured consignments and helped build notable private and museum collections with important artists, which include Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Henri Matisse, Edgar Degas, Norman Rockwell, Andrew Wyeth, Elaine de Kooning, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann.

IN THE NEWS

NEWS

Recently Sold Top Works

Heather James Fine Art provides a wide range of client-based services catered to your specific art collection needs. More...

NEWS

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher Installations

With many years of experience curating museum exhibitions and creating corporate collections, Chip Tom and Heather James Fine Art were the perfect match for the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP More...

NEWS

Sell Your Blue Chip Works With Heather James

Heather James Fine Art is actively seeking Blue Chip artworks of art across all major genres and mediums. More...

NEWS

Heather James Fine Art Museum Loans

Heather James Fine Art has been honored to facilitate loans of artworks to museum exhibitions globally. More...

NEWS

Claude Monet Recently Sold Works

Monet and his works are a specialty for us at Heather James Fine Art, having sold dozens of his paintings over the years. More...

NEWS

The Art Market March 2023

Heather James Fine Art co-founder Jim Carona discusses the art market resilience and offers insights into investing in art during bear financial times. More...

PRESS

Heather James loaned Van Gogh included in “Van Gogh in America” draws crowd

October 2, 2022
Heather James loaned Van Gogh included in "Van Gogh in America" draws enthusiastic crowd.
View Article

PRESS

Heather James loans major Van Gogh to “Van Gogh in America”

September 30, 2022
Heather James loans "Harvest in Provence," which Van Gogh painted in 1888, inspired by the landscape and colors of Arles, France, to Detroit Institute of Art for "Van Gogh in
View Article

PRESS

Jackson Hole News & Guide Highlights Heather James Four Centuries of Art

September 7, 2022
Jackson Hole News & Guide Highlights Heather James Four Centuries of Art - including Monet, O'keeffe, Kahlo, Warhol, Chagall and more.
View Article

NEWS

Art Market Resilience

Heather James Fine Art co-founder Jim Carona reviews the art market’s performance during previous recessionary periods and offers key observations as to why the art market has proven to be More...

PRESS

Jackson Hole News & Guide Features Heather James New Works

August 10, 2022
Jackson Hole News & Guide features Heather James new works including Monet, Picasso, Warhol and more.
View Article

NEWS

Art as an Investment

Fine Art is listed among the best bets for 2022. See our in depth analysis of art as an asset in your portfolio. More...

VIDEO

Getting to Know Heather James Fine Art

Celebrating over 25 years, the Heather James team opens up about what our mission means to us. More...

NEWS

Celebrating 25 Years of Heather James Fine Art

In 2021, Heather James Fine Art celebrated 25 years in business. In that time, we have placed over 6,500 works of art with collectors More...

NEWS

Heather James Opens London Consultancy

HJFA has operated internationally since founding 25 years ago. Our London consultancy, led by Emma Barnes, represents an exciting new chapter that allows us to serve clients more directly in More...

PRESS

Jackson Hole News & Guide reports Heather James gives collectors rare finds

Sep 8, 2021
Jackson Hole News & Guide reports Heather James gives collectors rare finds
View Article

VIDEO

Women Artists with Andrea Rico-Dahlin

Andrea Rico-Dahlin, Senior Director, Heather James Fine Art speaks about pioneering women artists on view at our Jackson Hole gallery More...

VIDEO

De Kooning with Andrea Rico-Dahlin

Andrea Rico-Dahlin, Senior Director, Heather James Fine Art speaks about Elaine and Willem de Kooning on view at our Jackson Hole gallery More...

VIDEO

Latin American Masters with Andrea Rico-Dahlin

Andrea Rico-Dahlin, Senior Director, Heather James Fine Art speaks about Latin American masters on view at our Jackson Hole gallery More...

NEWS

Jackson Hole Gallery Walkthrough – Summer 2021

Join us for a video tour of our Jackson Hole, Wyoming gallery location featuring art by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Frida Kahlo, and Elaine de Kooning, among many others More...

NEWS

Gustave Caillebotte’s Garden

Painted in 1877, Vue du Jardin de l’Artiste gives us valuable insight into Caillebotte’s impressionistic development and the genesis of his intimate friendship with Monet. More...

CATALOGS

Revolutions in Modern Art

In Revolutions in Modern Art, we hope to shed light on how Modern art’s greatest names have changed the course of art history. More...

CATALOGS

Heather James Fine Art – About Us

Heather James Fine Art has been in business for over 25 years, presenting important works spanning time periods and genres including Contemporary, Modern, Impressionist, American, Latin American, and Old Masters. More...

VIDEO

Edward Hopper Exhibition

Our exhibition of work by Edward Hopper in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, presents a personal look at the artistic history of the quintessential American artist. The paintings and works on paper More...

CATALOGS

Edward Hopper exhibition catalog

More...

VIDEO

The Paintings of Sir Winston Churchill – Jackson Hole exhibition

More...

VIDEO

Heather James Fine Art – Jackson Hole Gallery 2016

More...

VIDEO

Heather James Fine Art – Jackson Gallery

More...

SERVICES

Heather James Fine Art provides a wide range of client-based services catered to your specific art collecting needs. Our Operations team includes professional art handlers, a full registrar department and logistical team with extensive experience in art transportation, installation, and collection management. With white glove service and personalized care, our team goes the extra mile to ensure exceptional art services for our clients.

ESTATE AND TAX PLANNING

COLLECTIONS MANAGEMENT 

DIVESTITURES

LOGISTICS MANAGEMENT

APPRAISALS

FINANCIAL

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

 

  • home-services
  • Svc_hirst
  • Services-brian1
  • Svc_Warhol
  • Svc_kapoor

GET TO KNOW US

FEATURED ART

On May 15, 1886, a visual manifesto for a new art movement was born when Georges Seurat’s crowning achievement, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte was unveiled at the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition. Seurat can claim title as the original “Scientific Impressionist” working in a manner that came to be known as Pointillism or Divisionism. It was, however, his friend and the confidant, 24-year-old Paul Signac and their constant dialogue that led to a collaboration in understanding the physics of light and color and the style that emerged. Signac was an untrained, yet a blazingly talented, Impressionist painter whose temperament was perfectly suited to the rigor and discipline required to achieve the painstakingly laborious brushwork and color. Signac quickly assimilated the technique. He also bore witness to Seurat’s arduous two-year journey building myriad layers of unblended dots of color on the colossally-sized La Grande Jatte. Together, Signac, the brash extrovert, and Seurat, a secretive introvert, were about to subvert the course of Impressionism, and change the course of modern art.

PAUL SIGNAC

Cottonwood Tree (Near Abiquiu), New Mexico (1943) by celebrated American artist Georgia O’Keeffe is exemplary of the airier, more naturalistic style that the desert inspired in her. O’Keeffe had great affinity for the distinctive beauty of the Southwest, and made her home there among the spindly trees, dramatic vistas, and bleached animal skulls that she so frequently painted. O’Keeffe took up residence at Ghost Ranch, a dude ranch twelve miles outside of the village of Abiquiú in northern New Mexico and painted this cottonwood tree around there. The softer style befitting this subject is a departure from her bold architectural landscapes and jewel-toned flowers. <br> <br>The cottonwood tree is abstracted into soft patches of verdant greens through which more delineated branches are seen, spiraling in space against pockets of blue sky. The modeling of the trunk and delicate energy in the leaves carry forward past experimentations with the regional trees of the Northeast that had captivated O’Keeffe years earlier: maples, chestnuts, cedars, and poplars, among others. Two dramatic canvases from 1924, Autumn Trees, The Maple and The Chestnut Grey, are early instances of lyrical and resolute centrality, respectively. As seen in these early tree paintings, O’Keeffe exaggerated the sensibility of her subject with color and form. <br> <br>In her 1974 book, O’Keeffe explained: “The meaning of a word— to me— is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Color and shapes make a more definite statement than words.” Her exacting, expressive color intrigued. The Precisionist painter Charles Demuth described how, in O’Keeffe’s work, “each color almost regains the fun it must have felt within itself on forming the first rainbow” (As quoted in C. Eldridge, Georgia O’Keeffe, New York, 1991, p. 33). As well, congruities between forms knit together her oeuvre. Subjects like hills and petals undulate alike, while antlers, trees, and tributaries correspond in their branching morphology. <br> <br>The sinewy contours and gradated hues characteristic of O’Keeffe find an incredible range across decades of her tree paintings. In New Mexico, O’Keeffe returned to the cottonwood motif many times, and the seasonality of this desert tree inspired many forms. The vernal thrill of new growth was channeled into spiraling compositions like Spring Tree No.1 (1945). Then, cottonwood trees turned a vivid autumnal yellow provided a breathtaking compliment to the blue backdrop of Mount Pedernal. The ossified curves of Dead Cottonweed Tree (1943) contain dramatic pools of light and dark, providing a foil to the warm, breathing quality of this painting, Cottonwood Tree (Near Abiquiu). The aural quality of this feathered cottonwood compels a feeling guided by O’Keeffe’s use of form of color.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE

<br>In Diego Rivera’s portrait of Enriqueta Dávila, the artist asserts a Mexicanidad, a quality of Mexican-ness, in the work along with his strong feelings towards the sitter. Moreover, this painting is unique amongst his portraiture in its use of symbolism, giving us a strong if opaque picture of the relationship between artist and sitter. <br> <br>Enriqueta, a descendent of the prominent Goldbaum family, was married to the theater entrepreneur, José María Dávila. The two were close friends with Rivera, and the artist initially requested to paint Enriqueta’s portrait. Enriqueta found the request unconventional and relented on the condition that Rivera paints her daughter, Enriqueta “Quetita”. Rivera captures the spirit of the mother through the use of duality in different sections of the painting, from the floorboards to her hands, and even the flowers. Why the split in the horizon of the floorboard? Why the prominent cross while Enriqueta’s family is Jewish? Even her pose is interesting, showcasing a woman in control of her own power, highlighted by her hand on her hip which Rivera referred to as a claw, further complicating our understanding of her stature. <br> <br>This use of flowers, along with her “rebozo” or shawl, asserts a Mexican identity. Rivera was adept at including and centering flowers in his works which became a kind of signature device. The flowers show bromeliads and roselles; the former is epiphytic and the latter known as flor de jamaica and often used in hibiscus tea and aguas frescas. There is a tension then between these two flowers, emphasizing the complicated relationship between Enriqueta and Rivera. On the one hand, Rivera demonstrates both his and the sitter’s Mexican identity despite the foreign root of Enriqueta’s family but there may be more pointed meaning revealing Rivera’s feelings to the subject. The flowers, as they often do in still life paintings, may also refer to the fleeting nature of life and beauty. The portrait for her daughter shares some similarities from the use of shawl and flowers, but through simple changes in gestures and type and placement of flowers, Rivera illuminates a stronger personality in Enriqueta and a more dynamic relationship as filtered through his lens. <br> <br>A closer examination of even her clothing reveals profound meaning. Instead of a dress more in line for a socialite, Rivera has Enriqueta in a regional dress from Jalisco, emphasizing both of their Mexican identities. On the other hand, her coral jewelry, repeated in the color of her shoes, hints at multiple meanings from foreignness and exoticism to protection and vitality. From Ancient Egypt to Classical Rome to today, coral has been used for jewelry and to have been believed to have properties both real and symbolic. Coral jewelry is seen in Renaissance paintings indicating the vitality and purity of woman or as a protective amulet for infants. It is also used as a reminder, when paired with the infant Jesus, of his future sacrifice. Diego’s use of coral recalls these Renaissance portraits, supported by the plain background of the painting and the ribbon indicating the maker and date similar to Old Master works. <br> <br>When combined in the portrait of Enriqueta, we get a layered and tense building of symbolism. Rivera both emphasizes her Mexican identity but also her foreign roots. He symbolizes her beauty and vitality but look closely at half of her face and it is as if Rivera has painted his own features onto hers. The richness of symbolism hints at the complex relationship between artist and sitter.

DIEGO RIVERA

Led by a triumvirate of painters of the American Scene, Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood took on the task of exploring, defining, and celebrating the Midwest as a credible entity within the geographical, political, and mythological landscape of the United States. Their populist works were figurative and narrative-driven, and they gained widespread popularity among a Depression-weary American public. The landscapes Grant Wood painted, and the lithographs marketed by Associated American Artists were comforting reminders of traditional Midwestern values and the simplicity of country life. Yet, Wood's most iconic works, including American Gothic, were to be viewed through the lens of elusive narratives and witty ironies that reflect an artist who delighted in sharing his charming and humorous perspective on farm life. <br> <br>In 1930, Wood achieved national fame and recognition with American Gothic, a fictionalized depiction of his sister, Nan, and his family dentist. Frequently regarded as the most famous American painting of the twentieth century, to fully grasp American Gothic's essential nature, one must recognize Wood's profound connection to his Iowan roots, a bond that borders on a singular fixation and the often-brutal confrontation between the moral and cultural rigidity of Midwest isolationism and the standards that prevailed elsewhere in America. This war of values and morality became dominant throughout Wood's oeuvre. Their fascination with American Gothic may have mystified the public, but the story, told in the attitude of a farmer and his wife, is as lean and brittle as the pitchfork he carries. Their attitude, as defiant as it is confrontational, is an unflinching dare to uppity gallery-goers to judge their immaculate well-scrubbed farm. American Gothic became an overnight sensation, an ambiguous national icon often interpreted as a self-effacing parody of midwestern life. Yet it also served as an unflinching mirror to urban elite attitudes and their often-derisive view of heartland values and way of life. In Grant Wood's hands, the people of the Midwest have stiffened and soured, their rectitude implacable. <br> <br>Portrait of Nan is Grant Wood's most intimate work. He may have been motivated to paint it to make amends for the significant scrutiny and harsh treatment his sister received as American Gothic's sternly posed female. Grant poured his heart into it as a sign of sibling love. Intent upon painting her as straightforward and simply as possible so as not to invite unintended interpretations, Wood's deep attachment to the portrait was significant enough for him to think of it as having irreplaceable value. When he moved from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City in 1935, he designed his entire living room around the work. It occupied the place of honor above the fireplace and was the only painting he refused to sell. <br> <br>The lithograph July Fifteenth, issued in 1938, proves his mystical vision of the Iowan heartland is anything but a pitchfork approach. Drawings assumed central importance in Wood's output, and this work is executed in meticulous detail, proving his drawings were at least as complex, if not more so, than his paintings. The surface of the present work takes on an elaborate, decorative rhythm, echoed throughout the land that is soft, verdant, and fertile. Structurally, it alludes in equal measure to the geometry of modern art and the decorative patterning of folk-art traditions. This is a magical place, a fulsome display of an idealized version of an eternal, lovely, and benign heartland. <br> <br>The Young Artist, an en plein air sketch, may have been produced during, or slightly after, what Wood called his "palette-knife stage" that consumed him in 1925. Having not yet traveled to Munich where, in 1928, he worked on a stain-glass window commission and came under the influence of the Northern Renaissance painters that sparked his interest in the compositional severity and detailed technique associated with his mature works, here, he worked quickly, and decisively. The view is from a hilltop at Kenwood Park that overlooks the Cedar River Valley near Cedar Rapids, where he built a house for his sister, Nan.

GRANT WOOD

WILLEM DE KOONING - Woman in a Rowboat - oil on paper laid on masonite - 47 1/2 x 36 1/4 in.

WILLEM DE KOONING

According to the catalogue raisonné compiled by The Brandywine River Museum of Art, the preliminary drawing for Puritan Cod Fishers was completed by N. C Wyeth prior to his death in October 1945. The entry records an image of the sketch as well as the artist’s inscriptions and its title, Puritan Cod Fishers, characterized by the catalogue as ‘alternate’. In either case, the large-scale canvas is a unique work that Andrew Wyeth later recalled was painted solely by his hand, a demarcated collaboration of the father’s design and composition brought to fruition by a remarkable son’s execution. For Andrew, it must have been a deeply felt and emotional experience. Given his father’s attention to detail and authenticity, the lines of the small sailing craft represent a shallot, in use during the sixteenth century. On the other hand, Andrew likely deepened the hues of the restless sea more so than his father might have, a choice that appropriately heightens the perilous nature of the task.

Andrew Wyeth & N. C. Wyeth

Alexander Calder was a key figure in the development of abstract sculpture and is renowned for his groundbreaking work in kinetic art; he is one of the most influential artists of the Twentieth Century. "Prelude to Man-Eater" is a delicately balanced standing sculpture that responds to air currents, creating a constantly changing and dynamic visual experience. <br> <br>Calder's Standing Mobiles were a result of his continuous experimentation with materials, form, and balance. This Standing Mobile is a historically significant prelude to a larger work commissioned in 1945 by Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. "Prelude to Maneater" is designed to be viewed from multiple angles, encouraging viewers to walk around and interact with it. <br> <br>The present work is a formal study for Man-Eater With Pennant (1945), part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The work is also represented in "Sketches for Mobiles: Prelude to Man-Eater; Starfish; Octopus", which is in the permanent collection of the Harvard Fogg Museum. <br> <br>Calder's mobiles and stabiles can be found in esteemed private collections and the collections of major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Tate Gallery in London among others.

ALEXANDER CALDER

N.C. Wyeth’s extraordinary skills as an illustrator were borne of impeccable draftsmanship and as a painter, his warmly rich, harmonious sense of color, and ability to capture the quality of light itself. But it is his unmatched artistry in vivifying story and character with a powerful sense of mood that we admire most of all — the ability to transport himself to the world and time of his creation and to convey it with a beguiling sense of conviction. That ability is as apparent in the compositional complexities of Treasure Island’s “One More Step, Mr. Hands!” as it is here, in the summary account of a square-rigged, seventeenth-century merchant ship tossed upon the seas. The Coming of the Mayflower in 1620 is a simple statement of observable facts, yet Wyeth’s impeccable genius as an illustrator imbues it with the bracing salt air and taste that captures the adventuresome spirit of the men and women who are largely credited with the founding of America. That spirit is carried on the wind and tautly billowed sails, the jaunty heeling of the ship at the nose of a stiff gale, the thrusting, streamed-limned clouds, and the gulls jauntily arranged to celebrate an arrival as they are the feathered angels of providence guiding it to safe harbor. <br> <br>The Coming of the Mayflower in 1620 was based on two studies, a composition drawing in graphite and a small presentation painting. The finished mural appears to have been installed in 1941.

N.C. WYETH

Between Île-de-France and Burgundy and on the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest lies the medieval village of Moret-sur-Loing, established in the 12th century. When Alfred Sisley described its character to Monet in a letter dated 31 August 1881 as “a chocolate-box landscape…” he meant it as a memento of enticement; that its keep, the ramparts, the church, the fortified gates, and the ornate facades nestled along the river were, for a painter, a setting of unmatched charm. An ancient church, always the most striking townscape feature along the Seine Valley, would be a presence in Sisley’s townscape views as it was for Corot, and for Monet at Vétheuil. But unlike Monet whose thirty views of Rouen Cathedral were executed so he could trace the play of light and shadow across the cathedral façade and capture the ephemeral nature of moment-to-moment changes of light and atmosphere, Sisley set out to affirm the permanent nature of the church of Notre-Dame at Moret-sur-Loing. Monet’s sole concern was air and light, and Sisley’s appears to be an homage keepsake. The painting exudes respect for the original architects and builders of a structure so impregnable and resolute, it stood then as it did in those medieval times, and which for us, stands today, as it will, for time immemorial. <br> <br>Nevertheless, Sisley strived to show the changing appearance of the motif through a series of atmospheric changes. He gave the works titles such as “In Sunshine”, “Under Frost”, and “In Rain” and exhibited them as a group at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars in 1894, factors that suggest he thought of them as serial interpretations. Nevertheless, unlike Monet’s work, l’église de Moret, le Soir reveals that Sisley chose to display the motif within a spatial context that accentuates its compositional attributes — the plunging perspective of the narrow street at left, the strong diagonal recession of the building lines as a counterbalance to the right, and the imposing weight of the stony building above the line of sight.

ALFRED SISLEY

Trained as a woodcarver, Emil Nolde was almost 30 years old before he made his first paintings. The early paintings resembled his drawings and woodcuts: grotesque figures with bold lines and strong contrasts. The style was new, and it inspired the nascent movement Die Brücke (The Bridge), whose members invited Nolde to join them in 1906. But, it was not until the garden became his locus operandi by 1915 that he built upon his mastery of contrasting luminosities to focus on color as the supreme means of expression. Later, Nolde claimed “color is strength, strength is life,” and he could not have better characterized why his flower paintings reinvigorate our perception of color. <br> <br>Much of the strength of Nolde’s dramatic, Wagnerian-like color sensibilities is the effect of staging primary colors, such as the deep reds and golden yellows of Sonnenblumen, Abend II, against a somber palette. The contrast highlights and deepens the luminosity of the flowers, not just visually, but emotionally as well. In 1937, when Nolde’s art was rejected, confiscated, and defiled, his paintings were paraded as “degenerate art” throughout Nazi Germany in dimly lit galleries. Despite that treatment, Nolde’s status as a degenerate artist gave his art more breathing space because he seized the opportunity to produce more than 1,300 watercolors, which he called “unpainted pictures.” No novice in handling watercolor, his free-flowing style of painting had been a hallmark of his highly-charge, transparent washes since 1918. Sonnenblumen, Abend II, painted in 1944, is a rare wartime oil. He let his imagination run wild with this work, and his utilization of wet-on-wet techniques heightened the drama of each petal. <br> <br>Nolde’s intense preoccupation with color and flowers, particularly sunflowers, reflects his continuing devotion to van Gogh. He was aware of van Gogh as early as 1899 and, during the 1920s and early 1930s, visited several exhibitions of the Dutch artist’s work. They shared a profound love of nature. Nolde’s dedication to expression and the symbolic use of color found fullness in the sunflower subject, and it became a personal symbol for him, as it did for Van Gogh.

EMIL NOLDE

In 1955, Sir John Rothenstein, representing the Trustees of the Tate Museum, approached Winston Churchill about donating one of his paintings "as a gift to the nation." Churchill was flattered, but felt he did not deserve such an honor as an artist. Eventually, Churchill agreed and sent two candidate paintings to the Tate – On the Rance and Loup River. No record exists regarding his own thoughts on the works he submitted, but one can safely say that Churchill thought highly of On the Rance, especially since it was not one of the paintings Rothenstein identified as a strong option. Loup River, which clearly matched Rothenstein's taste, was selected. Not only was On the Rance not returned, but somehow it ended up, without any inventory record, in a basement storeroom at the Tate. In the storeroom it sat for almost a half century, when it was discovered by an intern. The Churchill family was notified and eventually the painting was auctioned in June 2005, where it set a new auction record for Churchill's work, despite the lot notes hardly touching on the Tate’s possible acquisition. In a letter to the buyers, Churchill’s daughter, Lady Soames, summarized what had occurred in somewhat more detail. <br> <br>St. Malo is a walled city in Brittany, France on the coast of the English Channel. The city was nearly destroyed by bombings during WWII.

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

Alexander Calder executed a surprising number of oil paintings during the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s. By this time, the shock of his 1930 visit to Mondrian’s studio, where he was impressed not by the paintings but by the environment, had developed into an artistic language of Calder’s own. So, as Calder was painting The Cross in 1948, he was already on the cusp of international recognition and on his way to winning the XX VI Venice Biennale’s grand prize for sculpture in 1952. Working on his paintings in concert with his sculptural practice, Calder approached both mediums with the same formal language and mastery of shape and color. <br> <br>Calder was deeply intrigued by the unseen forces that keep objects in motion. Taking this interest from sculpture to canvas, we see that Calder built a sense of torque within The Cross by shifting its planes and balance. Using these elements, he created implied motion suggesting that the figure is pressing forward or even descending from the skies above. The Cross’s determined momentum is further amplified by details such as the subject’s emphatically outstretched arms, the fist-like curlicue vector on the left, and the silhouetted serpentine figure. <br> <br>Calder also adopts a strong thread of poetic abandon throughout The Cross’s surface. It resonates with his good friend Miró’s hieratic and distinctly personal visual language, but it is all Calder in the effective animation of this painting’s various elements. No artist has earned more poetic license than Calder, and throughout his career, the artist remained convivially flexible in his understanding of form and composition. He even welcomed the myriad interpretations of others, writing in 1951, “That others grasp what I have in mind seems unessential, at least as long as they have something else in theirs.” <br> <br>Either way, it is important to remember that The Cross was painted shortly after the upheaval of the Second World War and to some appears to be a sobering reflection of the time. Most of all, The Cross proves that Alexander Calder loaded his brush first to work out ideas about form, structure, relationships in space, and most importantly, movement.

ALEXANDER CALDER

During the early 1870s, Winslow Homer frequently painted scenes of country living near a small farm hamlet renowned for generations for its remarkable stands of wheat, situated between the Hudson River and the Catskills in New York state. Today Hurley is far more famous for inspiring one of Homer’s greatest works, Snap the Whip painted the summer of 1872. Among the many other paintings inspired by the region, Girl Standing in the Wheatfield is rich in sentiment, but not over sentimentalized. It directly relates to an 1866 study painted in France entitled, In the Wheatfields, and another, painted the following year after he returned to America. But Homer would have undoubtedly been most proud of this one. It is a portrait, a costume study, a genre painting in the great tradition of European pastoral painting, and a dramatically backlit, atmospheric tour de force steeped in the quickly fading gloaming hour light buoyed with lambent, flowery notes and wheat spike touches. In 1874, Homer sent four paintings to the National Academy of Design exhibition. One was titled, “Girl”. Might it not be this one?

WINSLOW HOMER

Tom Wesselmann was a leader of the Pop Art movement. He is best remembered for large-scale works, including his Great American Nude series, in which Wesselmann combined sensual imagery with everyday objects depicted in bold and vibrant colors. As he developed in his practice, Wesselmann grew beyond the traditional canvas format and began creating shaped canvases and aluminum cut-outs that often functioned as sculptural drawings. Continuing his interest in playing with scale, Wesselmann began focusing more closely on the body parts that make up his nudes. He created his Mouth series and his Bedroom series in which particular elements, rather than the entire sitter, become the focus. <br>  <br>Bedroom Breast (2004) combines these techniques, using vivid hues painted on cut-out aluminum. The work was a special commission for a private collector's residence, and the idea of a bedroom breast piece in oil on 3-D cut-out aluminum was one Wesselmann had been working with for many years prior to this work's creation. The current owner of the piece believed in Wesselmann's vision and loved the idea of bringing the subject to his home. <br> <br>It's one of, if not the last, piece Wesselmann completed before he passed away. The present work is the only piece of its kind - there has never been an oil on aluminum in 3D at this scale or of this iconography.  

TOM WESSELMANN

In 1945, with the war ended and Churchill having suffered a surprising defeat in the general election, he accepted an invitation from Field Marshall Sir Harold Alexander to join him at his Italian villa on the shore of Lake Como. Churchill enjoyed his host's generous hospitality and focused his attention and energy on capturing the region on canvas. He produced fifteen paintings, which embody how painting absorbed his attention and offered an elixir that helped him recharge. This iconic painting was featured in a January 1946 article in LIFE, and has been selected as a color illustration in multiple editions of Churchill’s book, Paintings as a Pastime.

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

<div>Painted from an unusually high vantage, “Riviera Coast Scene” vividly conveys the formidable distance and breadth of the scene from the perch where he set his easel.  Interestingly, Paul Rafferty did not include this painting in his book Winston Churchill: Painting on the French Riviera, believing it could likely be a scene from the Italian Lake District, where Churchill also painted in the same time period.  Paintings by Churchill can function as a glimpse into his extensive travels and his colorful life. Churchill most likely painted “Riviera Coast Scene” during a holiday at Chateau de l’Horizon, home of Maxine Elliot, a friend of his mother. Elliot, originally from Rockland, Maine, was a successful actress and socialite.  Within this painting, we see the influence of the Impressionists who utilized unusual viewpoints, modeled after Japanese woodblock prints, but also evidence of their attempts to push the boundaries of the landscape genre.</div>

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

Located on the French Riviera between Nice and Monte Carlo, the Bay of Eze is renowned for its stunning location and spectacular views. As you can see on pages 80-81 of Rafferty's book, this painting skillfully captures the dizzying heights, set just west of Lou Sueil, the home of Jacques and Consuelo Balsan, close friends of Winston and Clementine. <br> <br>The painting manipulates perspective and depth, a nod to the dramatic shifts of artists including Monet and Cézanne, who challenged traditional vantage points of landscapes. The portrait (i.e. vertical) orientation of the canvas combined with the trees, and the rhyming coastline channels the viewer’s gaze. The perceived tilting of the water's plane imbues the painting with dynamic tension.

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

The frame of reference for Irish American Sean Scully’s signature blocks and stripes is vast. From Malevich’s central premise that geometry can provide the means for universal understanding to Rothko’s impassioned approach to color and rendering of the dramatic sublime, Scully learned how to condense the splendor of the natural world into simple modes of color, light, and composition. Born in Dublin in 1945 and London-raised, Scully was well-schooled in figurative drawing when he decided to catch the spirit of his lodestar, Henri Matisse, by visiting Morocco in 1969. He was captivated by the dazzling tessellated mosaics and richly dyed fabrics and began to paint grids and stipes of color. Subsequent adventures provided further inspiration as the play of intense light on the reflective surfaces of Mayan ruins and the ancient slabs of stone at Stonehenge brought the sensation of light, space, and geometric movement to Scully’s paintings. The ability to trace the impact of Scully’s travels throughout his paintings reaffirms the value of abstract art as a touchstone for real-life experience. <br> <br> <br>Painted in rich, deep hues and layered, nuanced surfaces, Grey Red is both poetic and full of muscular formalism. Scully appropriately refers to these elemental forms as ‘bricks,’ suggesting the formal calculations of an architect. As he explained, “these relationships that I see in the street doorways, in windows between buildings, and in the traces of structures that were once full of life, I take for my work. I use these colors and forms and put them together in a way that perhaps reminds you of something, though you’re not sure of that” (David Carrier, Sean Scully, 2004, pg. 98). His approach is organic, less formulaic; intuitive painter’s choices are layering one color upon another so that contrasting hues and colors vibrate with subliminal energy. Diebenkorn comes to mind in his pursuit of radiant light. But here, the radiant bands of terracotta red, gray, taupe, and black of Grey Red resonate with deep, smoldering energy and evoke far more affecting passion than you would think it could impart. As his good friend, Bono wrote, “Sean approaches the canvas like a kickboxer, a plasterer, a builder. The quality of painting screams of a life being lived.”

SEAN SCULLY

The world of Marc Chagall cannot be contained or limited by the labels we attach to it. It is a world of images and meanings which form their own splendidly mystical discourse. Les Mariés sous le baldaquin (The Bride and Groom under the Canopy) was begun as the artist entered his 90th year, a man who had known tragedy and strife, but who never forgot life’s moments of rapturous pleasure. Here, the dreamy delights of a Russian village wedding with its arrangements of well-worn attendees are brought to us with such happy wit and cheerful innocence that there is no resisting its charm. Using a golden toned emulsion combining oil and opaque, water-based gouache, the warmth, happiness, and optimism of Chagall’s usual positivism is wrapped in a luminous radiance suggesting the influence of gold-leaf religious icons or early Renaissance painting that sought to impart the impression of divine light or spiritual enlightenment. Using a combination of oil and gouache can be challenging. But here, in Les Mariés sous le baldaquin, Chagall employs it to give the scene an otherworldly quality, almost as if it has just materialized out of his mind’s eye. Its textural delicacy creates the impression that light is emanating from the work itself and gives a spectral quality to the figures floating the sky.

MARC CHAGALL

Tom Wesselmann will undoubtedly be remembered for associating his erotic themes with the colors of the American flag. But Wesselmann had considerable gifts as a draftsman, and the line was his principal preoccupation, first as a cartoonist and later as an ardent admirer of Matisse. That he also pioneered a method of turning drawings into laser-cut steel wall reliefs proved a revelation. He began to focus ever more on drawing for the sake of drawing, enchanted that the new medium could be lifted and held: “It really is like being able to pick up a delicate line drawing from the paper.” <br> <br>The Steel Drawings caused both excitement and confusion in the art world. After acquiring one of the ground-breaking works in 1985, the Whitney Museum of American Art wrote Wesselmann wondering if it should be cataloged as a drawing or a sculpture. The work had caused such a stir that when Eric Fischl visited Wesselmann at his studio and saw steel-cut works for the first time, he remembered feeling jealous. He wanted to try it but dared not. It was clear: ‘Tom owned the technique completely.’ <br> <br>Wesselmann owed much of that technique to his year-long collaboration with metalwork fabricator Alfred Lippincott. Together, in 1984 they honed a method for cutting the steel with a laser that provided the precision he needed to show the spontaneity of his sketches. Wesselmann called it ‘the best year of my life’, elated at the results that he never fully achieved with aluminum that required each shape be hand-cut. “I anticipated how exciting it would be for me to get a drawing back in steel. I could hold it in my hands. I could pick it up by the lines…it was so exciting…a kind of near ecstasy, anyway, but there’s really been something about the new work that grabbed me.” <br> <br>Bedroom Brunette with Irises is a Steel Drawing masterwork that despite its uber-generous scale, utilizes tight cropping to provide an unimposing intimacy while maintaining a free and spontaneous quality. The figure’s outstretched arms and limbs and body intertwine with the petals and the interior elements providing a flowing investigative foray of black lines and white ‘drop out’ shapes provided by the wall. It recalls Matisse and any number of his reclining odalisque paintings. Wesselmann often tested monochromatic values to discover the extent to which color would transform his hybrid objects into newly developed Steel Drawing works and, in this case, continued with a color steel-cut version of the composition Bedroom Blonde with Irises (1987) and later still, in 1993 with a large-scale drawing in charcoal and pastel on paper.

TOM WESSELMANN

<div>Still lifes like<em> Oranges and Lemons (C 455) </em>give us an insight to the rich and colorful life of Churchill, just as his landscapes and seascapes do. Churchill painted <em>Oranges and Lemons</em> at La Pausa. Churchill would often frequent La Pausa as the guest of his literary agent, Emery Reves and his wife, Wendy.  Reves purchased the home from Coco Chanel.  While other members of the Churchill family did not share his enthusiasm, Churchill and his daughter Sarah loved the place, which Churchill affectionately called “LaPausaland”.  To avoid painting outside on a chilly January morning, Wendy Reves arranged the fruit for Churchill to paint. Surrounded by the Reves’s superb collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, including a number of paintings by Paul Cézanne, Oranges and Lemons illuminates Churchill’s relationships and the influence of Cézanne, who he admired. The painting, like Churchill, has lived a colorful life, exhibited at both the 1959 Royal Academy of Art exhibition of his paintings and the 1965 New York World’s Fair.</div>

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

It is not difficult to grasp how Robert Indiana’s brilliant two-row arrangement of four letters came to help empower a movement during the 1960s. Its origin emerged from deeply felt exposure to religion and from friend and mentor Ellsworth Kelly, whose hard-edged style and sensuous, unaccented color made a lasting impression. But as Indiana exclaimed, it was a moment of kismet that just happened when “LOVE bit me!” and the design came to him sharp and focused. Indiana, of course, put the design through many paces, and then the logo began to sprout up everywhere. The message, best conveyed in sculpture, stands in cities worldwide and has been translated into several languages, not least of which, is its Italian iteration, “Amor” with its fortuitous “O” also tilted to the right. But rather than being kicked by the foot of the “L”, this version lends a beautifully staged teetering effect to the “A” above. It gives a new, but no less profound, impression of love and its emotionally charged nature. In either case, Love’s tilted “O” imparts instability to an otherwise stable design, a profound projection of Indiana’s implicit critique of “the often-hollow sentimentality associated with the word, metaphorically suggesting unrequited longing and disappointment rather than saccharine affection” (Robert Indiana’s Best: A Mini Retrospective, New York Times, May 24, 2018). Repetition, of course has a nasty habit of dampening our appreciation for the genius of simplicity and, groundbreaking design. Late in life, Indiana lamented that “it was a marvelous idea, but also terrible mistake. It became too popular. And there are people who don’t like popularity.” But we, denizens of a world fraught with divisiveness and caught in turmoil, thank you. “Love” and its many versions are strong reminders of our capacity for love, and that is our best everlasting hope for a better future.

ROBERT INDIANA

The Pop Art Movement is notable for its rewriting of Art History and the idea of what could be considered a work of art. Larry Rivers association with Pop-Art and the New York School set him aside as one of the great American painters of the Post-War period. <br> <br>In addition to being a visual artist, Larry Rivers was a jazz saxophonist who studied at the Juilliard School of Music from 1945-1946. This painting's subject echoes the artists' interest in Jazz and the musical scene in New York City, particularly Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side. <br> <br>“Untitled” (1958) is notable bas the same owner has held it since the work was acquired directly from the artist several decades ago. This work is from the apex of the artists' career in New York and could comfortably hang in a museum's permanent collection.

LARRY RIVERS

Uniquely among Winston Churchill’s known work, “Coastal Town on the Riviera” is in fact a double painting with the landscape on one side and an oil sketch on the other. The portrait sketch bears some resemblance to Viscountess Castlerosse who was a frequent guest in the same Rivera estates where Churchill visited. Churchill painted her in C 517 and C 518 and gives us a larger picture of the people who inhabited his world. <br> <br>Of his approximately 550 works, the largest portion (about 150) were of the South of France, where Churchill could indulge in both the array of colors to apply to his canvas and in gambling, given the proximity of Monte Carlo.

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

Théo van Rysselberghe’s Portrait de Sylvie Lacombe, painted in 1906, is a classic masterwork by one of the most refined and consistent portrait painters of his time. The color is harmonious, the brushwork vigorous and tailored to its material task, her body and countenance true and revealing. The sitter is the daughter of his good friend, the painter Georges Lacombe, who shared a close association with Gauguin, and was a member of Les Nabis with artists Bonnard, Denis, and Vuillard, among others. We now know about Sylvie Lacombe because Van Rysselberghe is so skilled at rendering subtle facial expressions and through careful observation and attention to detail, provided insights into her inner world. He has chosen a direct gaze, her eyes to yours, an inescapable covenant between subject and viewer regardless of our physical relationship to the painting. Van Rysselberghe had largely abandoned the Pointillist technique when he painted this portrait. But he continued to apply color theory guidelines by using tints of red — pinks and mauves — against greens to create a harmonious ameliorated palette of complementary colors to which he added a strong accent to draw the eye – an intensely saturated, red bow asymmetrically laid to the side of her head.

THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE

JAN JOSEPHSZOON VAN GOYEN - River Landscape with a Windmill and Chapel - oil on panel - 22 1/2 x 31 3/4 in.

JAN JOSEPHSZOON VAN GOYEN

SALOMON VAN RUYSDAEL

CONTACT

Contact Us