Gracious Galleries: Master Drawings New York

Master Drawings New York will return to New York City’s Upper East Side for the fourth consecutive year from Saturday 23 January to Saturday 30 January 2010, with a preview on Friday 22 January from 4-9pm. Twenty-two exhibitors from the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain will show an outstanding selection of work from the 16th to the 20th centuries with prices ranging from $2,000 to over $1million. The selection of works on paper includes oil sketches, watercolours, drawings in charcoal, pencil and pen and ink.

Master Drawings New York is based on the highly successful Master Drawings London, which was launched in 2001. This week long event in New York will provide collectors with an opportunity to buy works from twenty-two leading specialists, all within walking distance of one another on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. New this year are: Didier Aaron, Inc, Jill Newhouse Gallery, Addison Fine Arts, Monroe Warshaw, Richard A. Berman, José de la Mano Galería de Arte and Thomas Williams Fine Art Ltd.

Addison Fine Arts is exhibiting a beautiful study in red chalk on paper of a Male Nude in Profile (c. 1542) by Giovanni Battista Franco (1498-1561). Other highlights include two pen and ink drawings, the first by Rembrandt (1606-1669), An Actor in a Wide-Brimmed Hat, His Right Hand Raised, Half-Length, (c.1635), and the second by Bernardino Pintoricchio (1454?-1513), Study for a Lunette with Saint Matthew Seated on Books between Two Angels (c.1490-95). A striking dry brush oil sketch on paper by Castiglione (1609-1664) entitled, A Landscape with Shepherds, Cattle, and Sheep is being exhibited by David Tunick Inc. Mia N. Weiner’s exhibition includes a significant discovery of drawings by Adriaen van Ostade (1610-1685) and Laurent de La Hyre (1606-1656) as well as around 25 drawings formerly from the collection of Dr. William Suida, which have not been on the market for over 50 years.

Jill Newhouse Gallery is hosting a special exhibition of 40 drawings formerly from the Collection of Curtis O. Baer, an avid collector and passionate scholar of European drawings of all periods. Old Master drawings in the exhibition include a brown and black in drawing with wash entitled, Men on a Balcony by Leonard Bramer (1596-1674) and Moses at the Battle of Israel and Amalek, a drawing in brown ink and wash with pen and brush over black chalk by Niccolo Martinelli called Il Trometta (1540-1611). Later work in the exhibition includes Birdplay 1949 by Max Beckman (1884-1950) as well as drawings by Jean-François Millet, Auguste Rodin and Paul Klee.

Didier Aaron, Inc. is exhibiting around 50 French 18th-century drawings including The View of an Italian Park ,1775 by Jean Honoré Fragonard, a subject frequently depicted by the artist in his delightful rococo style after his stay in Rome between 1756 and 1761. Also focusing on European drawings is Thomas Williams Fine Art Ltd who is exhibiting a drawing entitled, Paolo and Francesca, in pen and black ink and grey wash and watercolour over traces of black chalk, set in the artist’s own mount by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867). The highlight of Crispian Riley-Smith’s exhibition is a drawing in pen and brown and black ink, and watercolour by Johannes Huibert Prins (1757-1806), signed and dated 1791, entitled A Capriccio View of a Dutch Town with a Canal by a Church (1791), which came from the van Eeghen family collection.

Drawings by Venetian artists can be seen with Nissman, Abromson Ltd who are exhibiting two small vedute drawings by Giacomo Guardi (1764-1835) entitled Veduta del Porto di Malamocco and Veduta del Lazzaretto Vecchio while Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd is exhibiting Giovnni Battista Tiepolo’s (1696-1770) beautiful Time and Truth (early 1740s). This drawing belongs with a group of three studies of figures of Time and Truth, a theme Tiepolo returned to frequently, the idea being to express the virtue of Truth being revealed by Time.

Among the highlights on show at W.S Fine Art Ltd/Andrew Wyld is a group of six of drawings by John Constable RA (1776-1837) covering a wide range of subject matter and period. The drawings range from early work - A Donkey with Panniers on a Country Path, which was executed when Constable was twenty to a drawing from his late period, The Cock at the Barn Door, c. 1833, in which the intense ink wash expresses the drama of breaking dawn. The exhibition at Trinity Fine Art Inc. includes five fine drawings by Richard Cosway RA (1742-1821), including Christ carrying the Cross, 1805-1810 and The Crucifixion, 1800 created for private contemplation. Cosway was known primarily as a miniaturist but was also an ardent student of the Bible, which resulted in a number of sketches of religious subjects. Also of interest is a bound volume of watercolours by Florentine botanist Tommaso Maria Chellini (late 17th early 18th century) and a calligraphy portrait of Louis XV. Signed and dated 1752, by Aaron Wolff Helingen, one of the major exponents of the revival of illuminated Hebrew manuscripts in the 18th century which quickly spread throughout eastern Europe. Among the drawings on show at Lowell Libson Ltd are six watercolours by Francis Towne (1739-1816) that span his most vital years and trace the development of Towne's artistic vision and draughtsmanship from the early 1770s to the later 1780s.

As well as Old Master Drawings, there will also be a wide variety of modern and contemporary works on view. Stephen Ongpin Fine Art is showing an untitled work by Jean Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), an artist who began by creating graffiti before establishing himself as a Neo-Expressionist painter, as well a Portrait of a Young Man by the renowned Russian Surrealist painter Pavel Tchelitchew (1898-1956). Focusing on the art of Mexico and Latin America, Mary-Anne Martinis showing Comiendo Chapulines (Eating Grasshoppers) (1977) by Francisco Toledo. Richard A Berman will exhibit a drawing by the Catalan painter and sculptor, Julio Gonzalez (1976-1942), Femme Assise (Seated Woman), 1936 while Dickinson will show Van Dongen’s (1877-1968), Femme au Chapeau, c.1908, a depiction of a fashionable women of Paris’s demi-monde, aimed at displaying her sensuality and sexuality with utter frankness.

Master Drawings New York, now in its fourth consecutive year, provides collectors with a rare opportunity to spend one week visiting twenty-two different galleries who specialise in drawings and are all located on the Upper East Side of New York City. Master Drawing London, which involves a similar number of outstanding galleries, will celebrate its 10th anniversary from July 3 - July 9 2010. December 2009

***

List of participants:

Didier Aaron, Inc. Jill Newhouse Gallery
Addison Fine Arts Nissman, Abromson Ltd
Antiquaire & The Connoisseur Inc. Stephen Ongpin Fine Art
Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd Crispian Riley-Smith
Richard A Berman Stiebel Ltd
Dickinson Trinity Fine Art Inc.
Margot Gordon Fine Art David Tunick Inc
Lowell Libson Ltd Monroe Warchaw
James Mackinnon Mia N. Weiner
José de la Mano Galería de Arte Thomas Williams Fine Art Ltd
Martin Mary-Anne Fine Art W. S Fine Art Ltd/Andrew Wyld