Two weeks ago, I was looking over the catalogues for the upcoming American auctions. I knew that this blog would be concerned with the auctions’ results, and I had already picked out a title for the post: “One Hopped, The Other Didn’t.” The paintings to be discussed were both by Edward Hopper, one of the great American artists of the 20th Century. Christie’s had what was probably the most important Hopper still in private hands, Chop Suey. The 1929 painting, a large, colorful scene of daily life in New York from the estate of the noted collector Barney Ebsworth, was an iconic piece, everything you could want in a Hopper. The estimate was $70-100 million, about double the previous record for a Hopper oil. Christie’s was on the money in its prediction: the painting was hammered down for $85 million. With the buyer’s premium, the final price was $91,875,000. Everyone knew that the bidding would be fast and furious for Chop Suey, but I had my doubts about the Hopper that was coming up at Sotheby’s three days later, even though it was approximately the same size as the record-breaking painting. Two Comedians was painted in 1966, the year before Hopper’s death. A man in his 80’s, he had been literally losing his touch; the later works seem cruder to me than the paintings done in middle age. Then there was the subject: two clowns taking a bow. While Hopper painted theatrical and burlesque scenes, they’re not what comes to mind when you think of his work. When Sotheby’s put an estimate of $12-18 million on Two Comedians, I...
Katherine Dreier was frantic. The opening of a one-person exhibition at The Art Center, her exhibition space in New York, had just begun. Attendees included some of the most notable names of the American avant-garde art world in 1926: Alexander Archipenko, James Daugherty, Louis Lozowick, Joseph Stella, and William and Marguerite Zorach, along with figures from the literary world such as Katherine Anne Porter, not to mention collectors with a real interest in the new art. A catalog had been prepared, ads and mailings had been done, the exhibition space was stylish, and the refreshments were those that only a well-to-do patron of the arts like Dreier could afford. There was only one problem: the artist wasn’t there. Jan Matulka eventually strolled in, but the damage had been done. Perhaps a round of profuse apologies, including hair-raising tales of the perils which had unavoidably detained him, might have soothed the situation, but Matulka was not the kind to kowtow to a patron. Dreier had been a very big fish in the small pond of American modernism for some years. A painter herself, she had exhibited in the now-famous Armory Show of 1913, where she saw Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. Dreier soon befriended and became a patron of the French artist. With Duchamp, she founded the Société Anonyme, one of the most adventurous venues for American modernism at that time and one that today rates a mention in any history of early 20th century American painting. Dreier had exhibited Matulka’s work with the Société Anonyme in a group show in 1920. Matulka had left the country shortly after...
Art dealers know that there are three cities you can sell to anyone – New York, Paris, and Venice. London is not as easy as you might think, and if you have a painting of, say, Cincinnati, you can sell it only in Southern Ohio. Someone in Atlanta won’t buy it. Collectors outside of New York will buy paintings of the Big Apple, but they won’t buy scenes of any other American city besides their own, no matter how well done. Paris and Venice have long been seen as romantic places, even if you’ve never been to them, but collectors won’t put on rose-colored glasses for any other city unless there’s a deep personal connection with the place. And aside from Paris and Venice, collectors of 19th and 20th century American art generally prefer that the paintings they collect be of American scenes. A George Inness landscape of Italy sells for a fraction of what a New England scene by the artist would bring. An Albert Bierstadt painting of the Matterhorn sells for much less than a landscape of the American West. This last fact can lead to “interesting” conversations between collectors and less-than-truthful dealers. Dealer: “And here we have a wonderful view of the Rockies by Bierstadt” Collector: “Isn’t that a castle up there on that far mountain?” Dealer: “Where? What are you talking about? That’s just a rock outcropping! Trust me, this is a Colorado scene!” These thoughts are spurred by a painting I recently acquired for sale: Haystack by the American artist John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902). Twachtman was one of the many young Cincinnati artists of...
If you asked a dealer in 19th and 20th century art to rate subjects in terms of popularity, he or she would undoubtedly put still life paintings of dead fish or game down at the bottom of the list (along with portraits) and put beach scenes at the top. Beach scenes have been enduringly popular with the general public, and no American artist illustrates this phenomenon better than Edward Henry Potthast (1857-1927). Born in Cincinnati to a cabinet maker and his wife, Potthast showed early artistic interest and was studying at a local art school by the age of 12. By the time he was a young man, he was working as a lithographer in a local printing firm. Like many of his contemporaries from applied arts backgrounds, he would move easily between fine and commercial art for the rest of his life. Potthast followed the example of many Midwestern artists of German ancestry and studied at the Royal Academy in Munich, where he absorbed the teachings of instructors steeped in the dark palette and bravura brushwork of the 17th century Old Masters. Only later would he study in Paris, where he picked up the bright tonalities of the Impressionists. He would divide his time between Cincinnati, earning money, and Europe for the next twenty years. In 1895 he moved to New York, which would be his artistic base for the rest of his life. Potthast would be just another of the solid but relatively unknown American artists from the decades around the turn of the last century had he not, at around the age of 50, stumbled onto...
In 1887 two girls were born who would grow up to be remarkable modernist artists. First to arrive, in Santa Rosa, California, was Marguerite Thompson. Two months later, Georgia O’Keeffe first saw the light of day in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Each would make a successful career in the artworld, achieving renown in a strongly male-dominated society. Their final reputations, however, would be completely uneven. Born the daughter of a well-to-do lawyer, Marguerite grew up in Fresno. She had been accepted at Stamford University but abandoned those studies for an extended visit to an aunt in Paris, where she wrote articles on the Latin Quarter for her hometown paper and studied in progressive art schools. She met Gertrude Stein and Picasso and became close friends with Ossip Zadkine. Greatly influenced by the work of Matisse and the Fauves, she exhibited at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Independants. By the time of her return to California in 1911, she was undoubtedly one of the most avant-garde American artists of her time. Against her parents’ wishes, she moved to New York a year later to marry William Zorach, whom she had met as a student in Paris. As Marguerite Zorach, she settled with her husband in Greenwich Village and exhibited in the famous Armory Show of 1913, through which mainstream America was introduced to modern art. O’Keeffe grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. After a year’s study at the Art Institute of Chicago, she moved to New York for two more years’ study at the Art Students League. For the four years following her studies, she worked as a commercial...
