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Highlights of MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK week
Tenth Anniversary exhibitions at 30 Upper East Side galleries by the world’s top dealers in drawings and watercolors
Saturday January 23 – Saturday January 30 with Preview Friday Jan 22 4-8pm
In his Introduction to the Tenth Anniversary MASTER DRAWINGS week brochure, Colin Bailey, the new Director of The Morgan Library & Museum, notes that during the Age of Enlightenment, men like Pierre-Jean Mariette (1699-1774) — who currently is being celebrated at The Morgan — and his contemporary Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745) believed drawings were “the mind itself, the quintessence of art.”
NEW YORK October 21, 2015 – The Tenth Annual MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK week (www.masterdrawingsinnewyork.com) will take place January 23 through January 30, with a Preview scheduled for Friday, January 22, at 30 leading art galleries on the Upper East Side’s “Gold Coast’ in New York.
Timed to coincide with New York’s major January art-buying events, including the Old Master auctions and The Winter Antiques Show, over the past decade MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK has given top dealers from the US as well as the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy an opportunity to show their newest acquisitions to the largest assembly of drawings scholars and patrons to gather in New York each year.
Originally conceived as an annual walk-through, MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK has grown into a ‘must see’ event, receiving strong support as its range and influence has grown each year. Each exhibition is hosted by an expert specialist and many works on offer are newly discovered or have not been seen on the market in decades, if at all.
Critics applaud the fact that the most respected drawings dealers show important pencil, pen and ink and chalk, pastel and charcoal drawings, as well as oil on paper sketches and watercolours from the 16th through the 21st centuries.
New exhibitors in 2016 include Allan Stone Projects, (www.allanstoneprojects.com) a New York gallery founded in 1960 that has enjoyed sustained success mixing established artists with emerging and mid-career artists. Its exhibition is titled “Process and Presence: Mastery in Drawing” and includes figurative, landscape, still life and abstract works by prominent artists such as Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Wayne Thiebaud, Franz Kline, and Gaston Lachaise.
The 130-year old Kraushaar Galleries, (www.kraushaargalleries.com) a highly recognized fine art source for important American art of the first half of the 20th century, as well as selected contemporary works, will be a new exhibitor at MASTER DRAWINGS week this year. Katherine Degn says Kraushaar will be featuring works by Marsden Hartley as well as Dorothy Dehner, among several important American artists. Kraushaar Galleries has a long history of exhibiting works on paper. Early shows included prints by European artists, which then expanded to include drawings and watercolors by Seurat, Picasso, Manet and Redon, among others. By the second decade of the 20th century the gallery was becoming increasingly American with watercolor and drawing exhibitions by the contemporaries Maurice Prendergast, John Sloan, William Glackens, Gifford Beal Charles Demuth, William and Marguerite Zorach and Guy Pène du Bois. Its commitment to works on paper continues with recent shows by younger artists such as Catherine Drabkin and Lee Walton while continuing its commitment to historical material. Other recent exhibitions include The Creative Process, 1930 – 1950; and Figuratively Considered – Works on Paper by Selected Artists Who Participated in the 1913 “International Exhibition of Modern Art
A third new exhibitor is Découvert Fine Art gallery of Rockport, MA, (www.decouvertfineart.com). Stephen Law says the galleries exhibition during MASTER DRAWINGS week will be titled “The Feminine Observed, 16th to 20th century, and New Acquisitions” and will include “Amorous Peasants (Gypsies) in a Bower” by Willem (Guilliam) De Heer (Amsterdam 1637-1681), a pen and brown ink on parchment.
Returning to MASTER DRAWINGS week this year is Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art, (www.mamfa.com), the well-known East Side gallery dedicated to the promotion of Mexican and Latin American art. Martin has been a leading force behind the emergence of Latin American art as a favorite of collectors, having previously launched Sotheby’s Latin American department.
At MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK the artworks on view cut across the full range of styles, centuries, mediums and genres and provide pricing options that are attractive both to seasoned and new collectors.
HIGHLIGHTS of the 2016 Tenth edition of MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK include an important Sonia Delaunay Cover Design for L’Album no. 1 (474 dating to 1916), at the Leonard Hutton Galleries whose show is titled Drawings and Watercolors: To Observe and Imagine. Sonia and Robert Delaunay were in Portugal from 1915-1917 where they formed an association called Corporation Nouvelle to stimulate “artistic action” to publish collaborative albums of poetry and art accompanied by interpretations executed in pochoir — a stencil process for making colored prints or adding color to a printed key illustration — by various artists including Cendrars, Apollinaire, Rossine and a group of Portuguese architects and critics. They intended to circulate exhibitions of the art of simultaneity throughout Europe. Sonia Delaunay executed numerous studies in gouache for the cover of Album No. 1, which unfortunately never appeared because of the difficulty a number of the artists experienced employing the pochoir technique. This work is listed as No. 474 in the artist’s inventory.
Lowell Libson Ltd., leading dealers in British art, will be showing a series of masterpieces including important works by Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, Samuel Palmer and John Robert Cozens. British Art: Recent Acquisitions will feature John Russell’s 1792 pastel portrait of Thomas Wignell, founder of the Chestnut Street Theater in Philadelphia, and John Constable’s “Sunset: a stormy evening” dating to the 1820s.
Mireille Mosler will be showing newly re-identified pen, chalk and pastel portraits of prominent Swiss collectors, Nina and Fritz Meyer-Fierz, by Jan Toorop. She says “These are quite remarkable portraits, commissioned by the collector, that were in the family for generations and only recently came on the market. The sitters were among the most important collectors in Switzerland at the time, and the earliest collectors of Van Gogh there. Well-known paintings of theirs are now in institutions in the United States and abroad, such as Vincent Van Gogh’s Madame Augustine Roulin with Baby, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cypresses in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The White House at Night in the Hermitage. The collection included paintings by Cézanne, Gauguin and Mondrian’s Boom A from 1913, now in the Tate in London. In 1916, Meyer’s substantial financial support to Theo van Doesburg allowed him to publish De Stijl, the influential journal of the movement’s theories. It is the first time this double portrait will be exhibited in the United States and since Toorop is one of the most important Dutch 20th century draughtsman, I believe these pastels will be of interest to American institutions.”
Van Doren Waxter gallery is showcasing “Richard Diebenkorn Early Color Abstractions 1949-1955” including several untitled gouache and graphite works by the artist from the early 1950s.
Marianne Elrick-Manley Fine Art will stage an exhibition of drawings titled A Trans-Atlantic-Modernist Joaquin Torres-Garcia and His Contemporaries 1898-1949 which includes 45 works on paper by Torres-Garcia as well as Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Julio Gonzalez, Alexander Calder, Pablo Gargallo, Georges Vantongerloo, and, among others, Jacques Lipchitz. A retrospective of the work of Torres-Garcia is on view through Feb 15 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Marianne Elrick-Manley’s show includes several drawings from Torres-Garcia’s early period in Barcelona such as “Dama” and an artist book of watercolors that he created during his time in Ville Franche France in 1926. The artist’s two year residence in New York in 1920-22 will be illustrated by a group of important and rare drawings including a page from one of his watercolor New York books. Later works from Paris and Uruguay are also featured.
London dealer Stephen Ongpin says, “I have taken part in every edition of MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK, and each year seems to be better than the previous one. I mean this not only in terms of the increasing number of private collectors, museum curators, scholars and lovers of drawings who visit my New York exhibitions each year during the week of MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK, but also in the number of sales I have made during that period. There is something special about having the opportunity each year to exhibit and discuss a wide variety of drawings with like-minded people who are equally passionate about the special allure of these often intimate insights into an artist’s creative process. Together with London and Paris, New York has long been one of the centers of the drawings market, and an event like MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK – despite the cold weather and often record snowfalls that seem to accompany the week! – only adds to that reputation.”
For the January, 2016 event, Stephen Ongpin plans a show of Italian drawings, “Renaissance to Futurism: Italian Drawings c.1500-1920” comprising about thirty drawings by artists working in Italy, ranging in date from the first years of the 16th century to the beginning of the 20th century, and will showcase drawings by a mixture of well-known artists and minor masters. He says, “Many of the drawings come from private collections, and have not been seen on the market for many years.” Among the earliest Italian drawings in the exhibition is a small but moving pen drawing of the Virgin and Child by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio of c.1500 and an important drawing by Perino del Vaga depicting a scene from the life of Julius Caesar, datable to the 1520’s.
Returning dealer Mia Weiner of Old Master Drawings in Connecticut says, “The tenth anniversary of MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK is a tremendous achievement. Dealers work hard to bring the best drawings they can muster and present them in an atmosphere conducive to their particular exhibition styles. That each show is unique in material as well as gallery design has been a delight for countless collectors and museum curators/directors.”
Weiner is bringing a group of stunning watercolors from the late 19th century including one of its greatest proponents, Giacinto Gigante, with two differing examples of his prowess; as well as two extraordinarily detailed watercolors by Luigi Bazzani, of Pompei.
Dealer Monroe Warshaw is staging a show titled Drawn to Mythology with a collection that goes beyond the best known Greek and Roman examples, and dates from the 16th to 20th centuries.
Pia Gallo offers fine old master and modern prints and drawings from her new gallery at 12 East 86th Street. For MDNY she is showing “American Masters: Pastels and Watercolors” including impressive works by Maurice Prendergast, such as “St. Mark’s Lion, Venice” and Frank Benson’s “Ellie Benson at age 3.”
Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art will feature “Drawings by the Muralists” a group of watercolors and sketches by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Rufino Tamayo, Leonora Carrington, Jean Charlot and Elena Climent. A highlight of this show is Orozco’s “Five Heads (Beggars)” a gouache from 1940 that came from the Estate of the American playwright, Elmer Rice, and has been in a private collection for almost 50 years.
Mark Murray Fine Paintings is showing “A Selection of Works on Paper” in its new location at 159 East 63rd Street. These include a select group of earlier works including an unusual pencil study of a Clothesline by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Fano on the Adriatic, an early J.M.W. Turner watercolor after Robert Cozens. A major highlight is a group of works on paper and select oils by American painter Walter Gay, and a strikingly beautiful portrait in colored chalk by Walter Gay’s good friend Paul César Helleu of Winaretta Singer, daughter of Singer sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer and wife of Prince Edmond de Polignac. Other European artists on view include Antoine-Louis Barye, Fritz Gärtner, Henri Joseph Harpignies, Sir Alfred Munnings, Sir Edward Poynter, and David Roberts. Works on paper by American artists Lockwood DeForest, Edwin Lord Weeks, John Whorf, and Reginald Marsh will also be featured in the exhibition.
New York Old Masters specialist Margot Gordon and London dealer Crispian Riley-Smith collaborated to organize the first the New York event and are delighted to see how well it has matured, with top tier dealers offering an incredibly diverse array of artworks from both legendary and less celebrated artists. A number of participating dealers also exhibit each July at a sister event, the annual LONDON ART WEEK, where Old Master auctions and museum exhibitions also vie for the attention of visiting museum officials and art patrons.
Margot Gordon says, “Drawings hold special appeal to art collectors. There are many different forms — from rapid sketches the Italians call “schizzi,” or first thoughts called “primo pensiero,” to studies and finished works in their own right. You are invited to enter the artist’s mind and share his passion on a very personal level. It’s a strong motivator to those who love art. What’s more, with such a wide range of offerings, and appealing prices, drawings are often the most accessible option to collectors seeking access to an artist’s process.”
Crispian Riley-Smith adds that “The backbone to the success of MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK is the continued support of our fantastic exhibitors who each year manage to find amazing drawings and make incredible discoveries, as well as curating interesting and stimulating shows. The interest from the public grows in this sector with new clients discovering this exciting field, and we are fortunate to enjoy the continued support of loyal clients.
“MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK has become popular with both private and institutional clients because it makes it convenient to see a number of exhibitions from the very top tier of world dealers in a single area of the city, and close by other venues they need to visit. For those interested in learning more about the quality and range of drawings on offer, there’s simply no better way to expose yourself to the very finest examples.”
Margot Gordon admits that, “Some visitors to our shows are surprised to see that not all our drawings date to the early centuries. We have several dealers who specialize in 20th and even 21st century works. In fact, our members display everything from medieval illuminations to preparatory studies by Raphael, to minimalist art and signed Picasso sketches. We particularly love the fact that curators, museum patrons, private collectors and the press all get to see the newest market offerings of each form at one time. It’s a model that works similarly well with our sister event in London.”
Riley-Smith says “With our format, dealers get to put their individual stamp on their own exhibitions and can entertain their private and museum clients as they like. We stage Private Previews for our clients the day before MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK officially begins. This year that will be Friday, January 22, from 4 to 8pm.”
With such a wide range of options on offer, Gordon and Riley-Smith point out that drawings and watercolours represent a wonderful collecting opportunity, especially to those forming a new collection. Price points range from several thousand dollars to several million. The www.masterdrawingsinnewyork.com web site offers details on participating dealers and their specialties, and suggestions on how to work with a dealer to build a collection.
In previous years, noted experts on the subject have contributed to the brochure, including John Marciari, the head of the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York, artist Eric Fischl, William Griswold, former Director of The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; and Cara Dufour Denison, Curator Emerita Drawings and Prints at The Morgan. Cara Denison says, “Master Drawings New York is an indispensable event for lovers of drawings.”
The Introduction to the 2016 MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK brochure has been written by Colin Bailey, (FULL COPY OF HIS INTRODUCTION BELOW) the recently appointed Director of The Morgan Library & Museum. Bailey is the former director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and previously spent 13 years at New York’s Frick Collection. Colin Bailey is a highly regarded specialist in 18th century French art and a recognized authority on the work of Pierre-August Renoir. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy in Art History from the University of Oxford.
Margot Gordon says, “We are thrilled to have Colin Bailey write the Introduction to our Tenth Anniversary MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK brochure. His reputation as both a scholar and someone who has staged important and impressive exhibitions, gives him a unique perspective on the appeal of drawings. We truly welcome his insights and know that people attending our exhibitions will learn a great deal reading what he has to say.”
MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK dealers …..
Didier Aaron – www.didieraaron.com
L’Antiquaire & The Connoisseur – www.lantiquaire.us
Richard A. Berman Fine Art richardberman@earthlink.net
Christopher Bishop Fine Art – www.oldmasterdrawingsandprints.com
C. G. Boerner – www.cgboerner.com
Dalva Brothers – www.dalvabrothers.com
Découvert Galleries – www.decouvertfineart.com
Pia Gallo – www.piagallo.com
Eric Gillis Fine Art – www.eg-fineart.com
Margot Gordon Fine Arts mgordonfinearts@aol.com
Martyn Gregory – www.martyngregory.com
Leonard Hutton Galleries – www.leonardhuttongalleries.com
Kraushaar Galleries – www.kraushaargalleries.com
Lowell Libson Ltd. – www.lowell-libson.com
James MacKinnon – www.james-mackinnon.com
Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art – www.mamfa.com
Mireille Mosler Ltd – www.mireillemoslerltd.com
Mark Murray Fine Paintings – www.markmurray.com
Jill Newhouse – www.jillnewhouse.com
Nissman, Abromson Ltd – mail@nissman-abromson.com
Stephen Ongpin Fine Art – www.stephenongpinfineart.com
Pandora Old Masters – www.pandoraoldmasters.com
Laura Pecheur – www.laurapecheur.fr
Guy Peppiatt Fine Art Ltd – www.peppiattfineart.co.uk
PRPH Rare Books – www.prphbooks.com
Crispian Riley-Smith Fine Arts – www.riley-smith.com/crispian
Mattia & Maria Novella Romano – www.antiksimoneromanoefigli.com
Allan Stone Projects – www.allanstoneprojects.com
David Tunick – www.tunickart.com
Monroe Warshaw – www.oldmasterdoodles.com
Van Doren Waxter – www.vandorenwaxter.com
Mia N. Weiner – www.oldmasterdrawings.com
If You Go
2016 MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK
Private Preview Friday, January 22, 2016 from 4 to 8 pm
Open to the public Saturday, January 23 – Saturday January 30 2016
January 22(Friday) 4-8pm Private view opening of Master Drawings New York
January 23(Saturday) Open weekend: 11 am to 6pm
January 24(Sunday) Open weekend: 2-6pm.
January 25(Monday) Open 11am-6pm
January 26(Tuesday) Open 11am-6pm
January 27(Wednesday) Open 11am-6pm
January 28 (Thursday) Open 11am-6pm
January 29(Friday) Open 11am-6pm
January 30(Saturday) Finish of Master Drawings New York at 6pm.
The 2016 brochure will be available at www.masterdrawingsinnewyork.com late in November. Past brochures are already on the web site.
For more information contact Susan Bishopric at susan@susanpr.com
MASTER DRAWINGS IN NEW YORK
Tenth Anniversary Brochure Introduction by
Colin B. Bailey, Director, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.
“I find there is a sort of contentment in knowing that a given work is from a given time, and by a given hand, and I greatly esteem this sort of knowledge.” For the great connoisseur and collector Pierre-Jean Mariette (1699-1774) – whom we are celebrating at the Morgan Library & Museum – aesthetic pleasure was indistinguishable from connoisseurship, defined with estimable understatement by his English contemporary Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745) as the “knowledge of hands.” These men of the Enlightenment were creating a new discipline – or science – in which simply admiring what was beautiful no longer sufficed. Mariette classified his drawings and prints by artist, school, date, and media – a system fundamental to museums, collectors, and dealers. In so doing, he adopted, and adapted, the taxonomies used in the natural sciences to identify and arrange archetypes. Drawings, Richardson noted, were “the mind itself, the quintessence of art.”
As the recently appointed sixth Director of the Morgan, I wish I could claim responsibility for organizing the Mariette show to coincide with the tenth anniversary of Master Drawings, New York. But of course, the project was planned long in advance, as are the presentations of dealers from the United States and abroad who flock to New York for the last week in January. Mariette, who came from a dynasty of print dealers and publishers, would also have appreciated the bonhomie and cordiality of this international group of collectors and curators who congregate in New York at this time. Just as he became part of the select group of connoisseurs, collectors, and artists who met in Pierre Crozat’s residence on the rue de Richelieu to study the banker’s peerless collection of old master drawings, so do the many participants in Drawings Week engage in close and careful looking and animated discussion in the various galleries and beyond, at events both formal and informal, throughout the week.
Two further comments, if I may. As we have discovered from the recent flowering of publications on Mariette as a collector and scholar of drawings, the presentation and mounting of his collection was of critical importance to him. He was manually dexterous, as well as intellectually pioneering. His fellow connoisseur, the Swedish count, Carl Gustaf Tessin (1695-1770), spoke admiringly of how his friend was able to “bring drawings back to life.” Mariette’s restorations, revisions, and occasional “improvements” were inspired by his desire to present the viewer with the best initial experience of a drawing, the first impression which he termed “le coup d’oeil.” In many ways this prefigures the collaboration between scholars, curators, and conservators of drawings. Mariette was all three, in some ways and his approach remains fundamental to our stewardship and understanding of these works today. Ever more sophisticated technical examination allows us to probe further into the material and creative processes by which an image assumes its final form and power.
Among the guests at the banker Crozat’s table, and among those with whom Mariette would have rubbed shoulders, were artists such as Charles Coypel and Antoine Watteau. It is worth reminding ourselves that, from the Enlightenment on, the study and delectation of drawings of the past have been intimately related to the creation of modern art itself. As Mariette’s fellow connoisseur – and Watteau’s patron- the Comte de Caylus noted in 1732: “Nothing excites the genius of a Painter, or gives him the inner fire so necessary to composition, as the examination of a fine drawing.” Living artists are impassioned, and, in some ways, privileged “consumers” of drawings of the past. At Drawings Week, we extend the warmest invitation to them. I know that I speak for my fellow directors of museums in the city when I say that we encourage them to avail themselves, by whatever means possible, of the graphic collections under our care.
Colin B. Bailey
Director, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.