Collectors and Historians
Published by J. Russell Jinishian, America's Leading Authority on Contemporary Marine Art.
An Insider's Guide
to Marine Art for
Collectors and Historians
Published by J.
Russell Jinishian, America's Leading Authority on Contemporary Marine Art.
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News From the Artists |
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The Civil War was also the
subject of a new series of paintings by Maryland artist Patrick O’Brien on
display this fall at the Skipjack Nautical Ware and Marine Gallery in
Portsmouth, Virginia, featuring everything from the Confederate privateer
Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Raider CSS Sumter to the battle of the
Monitor and the Merrimack, and the blockade runner Robert E. Lee in
Charleston Harbor being blockaded by the Union Navy. Many of these
paintings were also featured in a special article in the autumn issue of
Sea History magazine, the journal of the National Maritime Historical
Society. Knowing this they’ve made special effort to find the finest examples and to document their provenance and lineage. So for example, when they observe that their model of the Royal James, a Restoration period First Rate, is “the model of the Royal James that Samuel Pepys persuaded Anthony Dean (the builder of the model) to donate to Christ Hospital Mathematical School around 1675”, they have a tremendous amount of documentation to verify that. Their collection is a good example of strength that comes from being very focused when you’re collecting, so that every piece has coherence and a relationship to one another. Along the way they’ve made some discoveries about particular models and vessels that no one else had pieced together before. We recently ran into our old friend, marine artist Richard Loud. Most people don’t know that Dick attended Northeastern University on a football scholarship but got injured before he ever played a down-- bad for the team, but lucky for marine art lovers. His yachting scenes reflect the complete understanding of boats that he learned from his father, who was a professional yacht builder. After a successful one-man exhibition in the mid 1980s at Mystic Seaport, Dick’s career took off and he’s never looked back. One artist who recently retired from one aspect of his career in order to more actively pursue the other is Chesapeake Bay-based John Barber who handed off the management of his very successful print business to the Annapolis Marine Art Gallery so that he could pursue painting full time. He was on hand recently at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland to unveil his newest painting “Homeward Bound” which pictures the 1926, 42 foot catboat Selina II approaching St. Michaels. While this painting is selling for $45,000, the signed limited edition prints sell for $1,010. To purchase either, call John Barber Editions at 800-410-0727. The Annapolis Gallery also just published a complete index of nearly 120 prints of John’s paintings of the Chesapeake Bay that he has released over the last 30 years, sorting them by subject matter and giving year of publication size and edition size. From David Muller the director of the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum we have news of another marine art-oriented event. This one their First Annual Plein Aire Festival where over one hundred artists were asked this fall to come to Newport and paint the rich nautical environment of the harbor and the peninsula with all the proceeds from the sale of paintings to go to the museum’s educational fund. No one quite follows contemporary yacht racing and yacht building in New Zealand like 71 year-old marine artist Jim Bolland. Painting is Jim’s second career. He reports that he started painting when he retired in 1995, after being inspired by the paintings of John Mecray which he had seen published in Arte Navol, an Italian magazine on Marine art. Then Jim began corresponding with John, who was very encouraging. So now Jim is at the easel everyday at 6:00am and works till 4:00pm, six days a week. A former competitive racer himself, he publishes a newsletter entitled A Brush with Sail, reporting on who’s building what, sailing what and winning what in the yachting world in New Zealand. Fall newsletters give a full report on the development of competitive yacht racing in New Zealand from the World War I to the present, although the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron actually was founded in 1869, and the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club in Wellington, in 1883. Information about Jim’s newsletter and his paintings can be found at www.jimbolland.co.nz. Chris Blossom also traveled to Utah this past summer to the home of early 20th century Western painter Maynard Dixon in Mt. Carmel, Utah which is now run under the auspices of the Thunderbird Foundation. Along with other top Western landscape painters like Len Chmiel, Jim Morgan, Chris painted the landscape for a week, which was followed by a sale to raise money for the foundation. Len Mizerek has spent the last three years researching the history of “New Amsterdam”(it’s now just called lower Manhattan) as it appeared in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Now he’s part way into an ambitious project to recreate what Fort Amsterdam looked like when Wall Street was literally a wall, and everything north of it was in Manhattan’s untamed wilderness. Len has actually taken the City plans from the time period, combined with trips to museums in Amsterdam, and his extensive knowledge of computer programs (used primarily in the movies) to create complete three dimensional models of every building and street of New Amsterdam on the computer, so he can literally walk through it virtually much like a sophisticated scholarly video game. For an artist, of course, this is invaluable. He can pick the spot which gives him the best composition and adjust the lighting from early morning to dusk or late at night. It’s a fascinating project for an artist who has taken the lead doing firsthand research to recreate history and bring it to life in a palpable and enjoyable way. His ultimate goal is to create in the neighborhood of ten paintings from all angles. Early paintings have already found their way into the hands of discerning collectors, including the earliest Dutch church in Manhattan, which figured prominently in the Fort at that time, and still maintains a presence today. We got a nice note recently from an artist who used to exhibit regularly at the Mystic International Exhibition. She said, “I love the Marine Art Quarterly, news of artists that were around when I was. I’m very sorry I resigned from ASMA…I’m not very competitive or aggressive. I’m 97 but not sailing anymore,” signed Jessie Hull-Mayer. Gee Jessie, I think we can cut you some slack on that one. Thanks for your very nice note. The truth is that the marine art community is a close one, and many artists continue to actively pursue their passion, and work at it everyday, way beyond the age when most people consider retiring from their careers. There’s no telling what you can discover about an artist once a book is published. For example, in the case of Antonio Jacobsen (1850-1921), Danish born ship portraitist who did most of his painting in and around New York City and New Jersey, it’s been estimated that he produced as many as 5,000 paintings. So when Harold Sniffen, the Curator Emeritus at the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virginia (which houses a public collection of Jacobsen paintings second to none) decided to write the complete catalogue of Jacobsen, he probably figured this was fairly easy. The result published in 1984, is titled Antonio Jacobsen the Check List, which is literally 340 pages listing the known paintings of Antonio Jacobsen by ship name, accompanied by detailed data on the ships. From this we learn that Jacobsen often did as many as five or six paintings of particular vessels. Why you ask? Well, he might do one for the owner, and if there was more than one owner, he would do one for each of them; then one for a captain, or over the course of a ship’s life, more than one captain. So it wasn’t unusual. In fact, it was unusual to simply do one portrait and leave it at that. What Sniffen discovered during the production of his “definitive book”, was that there were many more paintings out there in people’s collections that he hadn’t known about. Hence an addendum was needed, in which he included at the end of the checklist, figuring okay, we found all of them and that’s it. But, of course that wasn’t the case, 900 more paintings were found, so a second addendum was published in 1994. And even now we’re sure that there are more Jacobsen paintings out there that haven’t been listed. Wow! While some artists keep pretty good track of what they’re painting, most artists are painters, not archivists, so it usually falls to someone else who lived during their lifetime or after it, to catalogue their creations. Such was the case with Kittery, Maine-based marine artist John Prentiss Benson, the lesser known brother of sporting artist Frank Benson. In 2002 the Benson descendants with the help of Nicholas J. Baker decided it was time to publish a definitive list of his paintings and chronicle his contributions to marine art. At that time they knew of the existence of thirty paintings, mostly in family members’ hands, thus Volume I of the Artist Legacy of John Prentiss Benson was published in November 2003. By then the list had grown to 612 paintings. By November 2007, the 60th anniversary of Benson’s death, Volume II and Volume III have been published, and the list is up to 775 paintings. Not surprising Volume IV is currently underway as the list has grown to over 800 paintings, and the editors are using their online presence to continually update the list before final publication of Volume IV. If you know the whereabouts of any John Prentiss Benson paintings you can reach the editors at www.johnpbenson.org. Also from Maine, Loretta Krupinski reports she’s hard at work on creating paintings for her book to be published by Downeast Books documenting the history of the fishing industry in coastal Maine. She’s been visiting historical societies up and down the coasts, going through hundreds of photographs to get imagery for her paintings. She likes to use photographs because they reflect what actually happened in a moment of time in 1868 or 1904. These people were doing ordinary work in certain types of vessels on the water. “Old buildings come and go, waterfronts change, and I couldn’t even attempt to make it up.” Reid Stowe is an artist who’s attempting to make a little history himself with what he calls a “conceptual art” piece which involves sailing his 70 foot schooner Annie from New York, for 1,000 days without touching land, thereby breaking Australian sailor John Sanders’1986-88 record of 657 days. Stowe who in 1999 charted and sailed a course in the shape of a sea turtle as a work of art says his current voyage “will take about the same time it would take a spaceship to get to Mars”. But even a conceptual artist can come up hard against reality— at last report Annie had collided with a tanker and Stowe was trying to figure out how to repair the significant damage at sea. Maybe he should have stuck to canvas and brushes— they’re a lot safer Reid! Wildlife fish and marine mammal sculptor Kent Ullberg, well-known around the world for his monumental bronze sculptures, has been feted with awards recently. He received the Award of Excellence at the 28th Annual International Exhibition at Mystic Seaport; the Members and Associates Award at the 94th Annual Exhibition at the National Arts Club sponsored by the Allied Artists of America; and the National Sculpture Society, at a black-tie dinner in New York City, awarded him the Henry Hering Award for his work with architect Jim Reeves. He also recently installed an 8 ft. bison cow and calf sculpture as part of the “Spirit of Nebraska Wilderness” at the First National Bank Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.. If you’ve ever taken a cruise from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida you’ll be familiar with Kent’s monumental “Three Stages of a Sailfish Ascending” sculpture, which is installed right outside the cruise ship terminal. It measures 150ft. long, has water constantly cascading over it, and is a magnificent sight day or night. One part of the sculpture shows a sailfish leaping totally out of the water. This was cast from a model Kent carved out of 7,000 lbs of clay in his studio. Now, that’s heavy-lifting! |
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ART WORLD AT LARGE |
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Some areas have virtually
self-perpetuating markets and investment systems. The Liv-Ex 100, which is
an investment index for great wines featuring 90% Bordeaux wines, is one
such entity. The New York Times reports its value rose 18% in 2005 and 49%
in 2006. As Peter Lunzer, who runs the fund has noted, “The demand from
Asia, Korea, China and Japan, where wine is perceived as a status symbol,
(just think of Rolls Royce or a Louis Vuitton bag) has increased
dramatically.” The fund has about 20 million dollars under management. I
guess the main difference between investing in wine as opposed to art is
that you can drink the wine if everything else goes south, but of course,
you don’t have to keep artwork in your cellar, and it will never go bad.
But as Stephen Decani, partner at Arch Financial Products, a wine
investment firm in London, observed “these kinds of investments are really
as much a lifestyle thing as an investment.” Science was employed once again recently, to determine once and for all, just who made the first color photograph. While Jacques Mande-Daguerre is credited with inventing the earliest form of photography in 1839, Rev. Levi Hill of Westkill, New York claimed that he invented color daguerreotypes in 1850, though he refused to discuss his actual process. And until this fall, no one knew whether his “Hillotypes,” as he called them, represented true color photography or photographs that had been colored subsequently. It turns out that the Getty Foundation took this challenge and examined 62 Hillotypes from the Smithsonian Institution using “non-destructive reflectants, fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy.” Now that sounds pretty serious! And the results are in, Yes, Hill had figured out a way to make these photographs in color. Although readers of his 1856 book in which he described a very complicated process using dangerous chemicals, turned out to have been duped— his descriptions were just a ruse to keep people from investigating his true process. So if you can’t trust the artist, who can you trust? Will that affect the value of Hill’s photographs and Hillotypes? I’m sure it will. |
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