Upcoming Art Auction > Only rarely does an extraordinary Orientalist watercolor appear on the market, and now that time has come. Painted in 1873 by the Englishman John Frederick Lewis, “A Reception in the Harem” has been in a private U.S. collection since 1961, when the current owner bought it from a London dealer. It has never been seen publicly since, and can now be visited by appointment at Bonhams London, which will offer it at auction on March 26, 2025.

JOHN FREDERICK LEWIS’S “A RECEPTION IN THE HAREM”
Bonhams, London
bonhams.com

In her catalogue essay, scholar Emily Weeks says this is a larger version of Lewis’s oil painting now at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. Lewis was a master in both oil and watercolor, renowned then and now for jewel-like color and intricate detail. Weeks adds that Lewis “perfected an idiosyncratic approach to watercolor that could rival oil painting in the intensity of its hues (achieved through mixing watercolor pigments with Chinese white)” and in its precise brushstrokes, making it appear as “finished” and laboriously executed as an oil. Blessed with such talents, Lewis “systematically produced two nearly identical versions” of every major scene, one in each medium.

Britons’ fascination with the daily lives of fashionable women in Middle Eastern harems grew from the 18th century onward. The reclining figure on the blue divan at the scene’s center is Lewis’s wife, Marian, and her ornate surroundings were inspired by the reception room of their Cairo home. The Lewises lived in the Egyptian capital for 10 years, and in 1846, no less a tourist than the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray envied Lewis’s “dreamy, hazy, lazy, tobaccofied life” there.

Before it came to America in 1961, this watercolor was owned by a series of well-known connoisseurs and ogled at well-attended exhibitions in 1878, 1887, 1891, and 1898. Because it may go right back into a private collection on March 26, art lovers visiting London this winter are strongly encouraged to go see it at Bonhams.

Attention Art Collectors!
May 20-22, 2025: Visit the Plein Air Convention & Expo’s robust pop-up art gallery at the Nugget Casino Resort in Reno, Nevada, where hundreds of artists, including our master faculty, will have studio and plein air works on display and ready to purchase. Register for the full event at PleinAirConvention.com now.

View artist and collector profiles here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

The Lyme Academy of Fine Arts is presenting “True To Form: Academic Figure Studies from the Late 19th to Early 20th Centuries,” an exhibition that celebrates the significance of the human figure in academic art training. The exhibition is on view through April 27, 2025 and will feature a curated selection of 26 works.

More from the organizers:

The human body has been a central motif in art for centuries, serving a variety of symbolic, philosophical, and aesthetic roles. From the classical and Renaissance periods to the 19th century, the nude in particular became a key focus for developing technical proficiency and expressing universal human experiences. Within the academic tradition, institutions like the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris believed the ability to depict the human body was the benchmark of an accomplished artist, and that mastery of anatomy, proportion, and movement was essential to the visual language of art.

Curated by Lyme Academy Co-Artistic Directors Amaya Gurpide and Jordan Sokol, this exhibition explores a period in art history when technological, scientific, and societal changes inspired a transition from idealized representations of the body to more direct, observational studies. The works featured here – generously loaned by the Art Students League of New York and several private collectors – reveal this shift away from classical idealization toward a more naturalistic understanding of the human form. So too, they offer a glimpse into the academic training and philosophies that defined a transformative era.

“With this exhibition, we invite visitors to reflect on the enduring relevance of the human figure in art, and to appreciate the rich legacy of academic training that continues to inspire artists and educators today,” says Sokol. “The human figure remains central to the curriculum at Lyme Academy and continues to play a vital role in contemporary art. While modern expressions have become infinitely varied, this exhibition offers an opportunity to locate the figure’s origins in the foundational studio exercises that began centuries ago.”

For more information, please visit lymeacademy.edu/exhibitions.

J. M. W. Turner paintings on view > Celebrate the 250th anniversary of James Mallord William Turner’s birth by seeing twelve of his watercolors from the Taft Museum of Art and the Cincinnati Art Museum. On view at the Taft Museum of Art through June 15, 2025, “J. M. W. Turner: Watercolor Horizons” is the first exhibition to bring together the entirety of the two museums’ luminous works by Turner in this medium.

More from the Museum:

Considered one of Britain’s greatest landscape painters, Turner (English, 1775–1851) was a master of the art of watercolor. A prolific artist and intrepid traveler, he was especially drawn to mountains, alpine lakes, glaciers, river valleys, and the sea, as well as the human presence within these dramatic settings. Watercolor Horizons features views of Switzerland, Germany, France, England, Scotland, and Italy. The exhibition explores Turner’s skill with a brush on paper through these remarkable landscapes, examples of his innovative techniques, and painting tools from the era on loan from local collections.

“’J. M. W. Turner: Watercolor Horizons’ is a rare opportunity to see these treasures up close and in person,” said the exhibition’s curator Tamera Lenz Muente. “Each is filled with exquisite color and mind-blowing details that you can examine with magnifying glasses we’ll have in the gallery. Paired with a tea from the café or a family program, the Turner birthday experience at the Taft is one not to miss.”

For tickets to see these J. M. W. Turner paintings, visit taftmuseum.org/Turner250.

Attention Art Collectors!
May 20-22, 2025: Visit the Plein Air Convention & Expo’s robust pop-up art gallery at the Nugget Casino Resort in Reno, Nevada, where hundreds of artists, including our master faculty, will have studio and plein air works on display and ready to purchase. Register for the full event at PleinAirConvention.com now.

View more art museum announcements here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

Celebrity Portraits in Print History > Before the 18th century, consumers in Great Britain and its American colonies lacked access to images of famous people other than monarchs. Broad circulation of engraved portraiture changed all that; now people could put a recognizable likeness or caricature with a name they had read about. Soon a market emerged for images of writers, actors, criminals, athletes, politicians, military figures, social climbers, models, and fashionable society women.

This year, the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum — one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg — is presenting the exhibition “Celebrity in Print,” which pairs portrait prints with porcelain, silver, archeological fragments, and other artifacts that together illustrate the powerful impact celebrities made.

According to Katie McKinney, Colonial Williamsburg’s curator of maps and prints, “Just as today we use ever-expanding technologies to shape and share our image, so artists, actors, politicians, athletes, and socialites of the past used the printed word and images to expand their influence and fame.”

“Celebrity in Print”
DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum
Williamsburg, Virginia
colonialwilliamsburg.org
through November 8, 2025

Among the most recognizable of colonial government notables was Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790). In a 1763 mezzotint made after a portrait painted by Mason Chamberlin, several of Franklin’s most famous experiments are depicted around him, including the lightning rod. After the print was published in England, his son ordered 200 copies to sell in Philadelphia. Franklin himself greatly enjoyed handing the print out to friends and correspondents, as this was one of his favorite likenesses.

Actors were often depicted in costumes or striking poses from their most famous roles. Their printed portraits often served as inspiration for ceramic figurines and were transferred to handkerchiefs, snuffboxes, and drinking vessels. One example featured in “Celebrity in Print” (and illustrated here) is the British comedic actor Henry Woodward (1714–1777).

This pair includes a print and a porcelain figure showing him as “The Fine Gentleman” in David Garrick’s first play, Lethe, or Esop in Shades, first performed in London in 1740. Woodward’s character, dressed in an absurd outfit, poked fun at the wealthy Englishmen who traveled through Europe on their “Grand Tour.”

Upon their return, it was feared that they would adopt foreign dress, customs, and tastes. Garrick’s play was soon performed to huge acclaim in New York, Philadelphia, Annapolis, and Charleston.

Printed likenesses also celebrated ordinary people who led extraordinary lives. In the 18th century, 50 was the threshold of “old age.” It is not surprising, then, that Margaret Patten, who in 1737 claimed to be 136 years old, attracted attention. The mezzotint engraving of her is based on a portrait by John Cooper that was painted at the request of local officials to commemorate her long life.

The exhibited prints — and also other examples kept elsewhere at Colonial Williamsburg — can be explored in depth on two 65-inch touchscreens available for visitors’ use in the galleries.

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art holds a superb collection of nearly 1,250 European drawings, watercolors, and pastels, but can rarely display them as they are sensitive to light. On view this season is the exhibition “Paper, Color, Line,” featuring 65 masterworks dating from the 16th through the late 20th centuries.

This trove is particularly strong in the 19th and 20th centuries, and among the talents represented are Courbet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Schiele, Klee, and Miró. Another collection strength is theatrical designs, including works by Picasso, Léon Bakst, and Natalia Goncharova. Led by its curator of European art, Oliver Tostmann, the museum has made some exciting discoveries, all documented in the Wadsworth’s first ever catalogue devoted to this material.

“Paper, Color, Line”
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum
Hartford, Connecticut
thewadsworth.org
Through April 27, 2025

Watch a special two-part series that exposes the secret criminal network dealing in Nazi art theft during World War II.

In the decade leading up to 1945, it’s estimated that the Nazis stole one-fifth of all artwork in Europe – the majority from Jewish families and other “undesirables” – in a culture war that was designed to rewrite European history. But that was just the beginning. A new two-part “Secrets of the Dead” special reveals the secret networks of curators and dealers, many of them Nazis like Bruno Lohse (the “Plunderer”) who made fortunes on the back of Nazi-looted art, perpetuating a decades-long war crime that has never been fully exposed or resolved.

Plunderer: The Life and Times of a Nazi Art Thief premieres on Wednesdays, February 19-26, 2025 at 10/9con PBS (check local listings), pbs.org/secrets and the PBS App.

Historian Jonathan Petropoulos, the John V. Croul Professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College, investigates the life of former Nazi art dealer Bruno Lohse, Hermann Göring’s one-time “man in Paris.” Petropoulos conducted multiple interviews with Lohse over the course of nearly 20 years until the German’s death in 2007.

To uncover the truth about the extent of the Nazi-looting operation, and just what role Lohse played, Petropoulos also speaks with gallery owners, curators, art investigators, Lohse’s close friends, and descendants of victims of Nazi art theft. Looking at breathtaking masterpieces and an extensive archive of personal letters, “Plunderer” reveals the dark underbelly of the international art world, much of it built upon wartime tragedy.

“Nazi art looting was the greatest art scandal of the 20th century,” said Petropoulos. “I had no idea the shocking discoveries this investigation would uncover, nor the tangled mess I was getting myself into.”

“While some of the reveals are thrilling, it’s important to remember that most of the looted art has never been recovered and most of those involved have suffered no consequences,” said producer John S. Friedman. “My hope is that this documentary will spark an interest in helping these families regain their lost pieces, which, for them, mean more than just the art’s monetary value – it also represents a link to their past.”

Watch: “Plunderer: The Life and Times of a Nazi Art Thief” premieres on Wednesdays, February 19-26, 2025 at 10/9con PBS (check local listings), pbs.org/secrets and the PBS App.

By David Masello

Architect Peter Pennoyer is reluctant to cut and paste a document or fire up the CAD drawing software typical in his industry. Instead, he and his staff architects prefer to do much of their designing by hand, actually drawing the moldings and staircases, fireplace surrounds, and coffered ceilings that figure into his residential projects.

“Hand drawing connects you to the human scale,” says Pennoyer from his New York office, where for decades he has been designing scores of America’s most notable, traditionally styled residences. The latest are featured in his book Peter Pennoyer Architects: City/Country (Rizzoli). “You realize quickly that drawing teaches you humility, and you realize that people, architects in particular, who drew regularly in their day did it better than we can today. Some things should be difficult. Struggle isn’t always bad.”

Such methodologies echo why Pennoyer has remained fascinated by “The Architect’s Dream” (above), an 1840 canvas by Thomas Cole (1801–1848) that is in the permanent collection of Ohio’s Toledo Museum of Art. Within a span of just five weeks, Cole, also a trained architect, painted this monumental canvas for his commissioning client, I. Town, a prominent New York architect of the day. The painting reveals a kind of timeline of architectural styles through the ages.

“The moment I saw the Cole, I remember being absolutely stunned,” Pennoyer recalls. “He probably made a smaller-scale sketch of this, a cartoon. He was astonishingly talented at then laying down paint on a canvas.”

The scene, which depicts an amalgam of idealized buildings — a glowing neo-Gothic church, the looming form of an Egyptian pyramid, an arched Roman aqueduct, towering obelisks, circular edifices, an Assyrian temple — is presented to the viewer as a skyline of structures. Indeed, the architectural panorama is viewed from what Pennoyer surmises is a Romanesque-style loggia, its opening framed by billowing green curtains.

Fronting the array of structures is a public gathering space populated by an inestimable number of people, who appear to be attending a ceremony. Of the buildings the artist chose to depict, Pennoyer feels confident that “Cole is definitely editorializing, holding up the Greek as the pinnacle of architecture. Where does the brightest light shine in the painting? On the Greek temple.”

A visit to Pennoyer’s Manhattan office reveals not only teams of architects busy at their drafting tables, but also floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with architectural volumes, pattern books, and monologues — a repository of design wisdom and inspiration practically on the scale of the lost library of Alexandria.

In a metaphorical sense, then, it is fitting that Pennoyer is able to “read” even more into Cole’s scene than is initially presented to the viewer. Pennoyer points to the architect in the painting, who is depicted lounging atop a column, surrounded by volumes larger than he. “I’m an old-fashioned footnotes person,” he says, “and I’m pretty sure I remember learning that Town paid Cole for the work in architectural treatises.” Pennoyer surmises that such volumes might have included Claude Perrault’s 17th-century editions of his translations of the tenets of Roman architect Vitruvius. (Pennoyer has two copies in his office.)

“Just as hand drawing connects you to the human scale, so here does Cole relate the scale of the architecture,” Pennoyer emphasizes. Recognizing that computer technology does have its advantages, Pennoyer zooms up the image on his screen and comments on the crowd that appears to be marching in a procession from the Greek temple. “The fires suggest a pagan ritual, but while we can’t get in the head of Cole, it’s impressive to see how much he manages to pile on in this painting.”

***

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Attention Art Collectors!
May 20-22, 2025: Visit the Plein Air Convention & Expo’s robust pop-up art gallery at the Nugget Casino Resort in Reno, Nevada, where hundreds of artists, including our master faculty, will have studio and plein air works on display and ready to purchase. Register for the full event at PleinAirConvention.com now.

View more artist and collector profiles here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

ON VIEW: This is the first exhibition to explore the forgotten history of the sala de estrado …
“A Room of Her Own: The Estrado and the Hispanic World”
Hispanic Society Museum & Library
New York City
hispanicsociety.org
Through March 9, 2025

The Hispanic Society Museum & Library (HSM&L) is presenting “A Room of Her Own: The Estrado and the Hispanic World.” This is the first exhibition to explore the forgotten history of the sala de estrado, an area in elite homes where the woman of the house could escape the expectations of her class in order to receive visitors, display her valuable objects, sew, play and listen to music, consume luxuries such as hot chocolate, and even (in a few cases) practice witchcraft.

These spaces emerged during the Islamic occupation of Spain and became widespread throughout the Hispanic world, including the Americas, but slowly disappeared as the Spanish Empire collapsed in the 19th century.

References to them appears in travelers’ accounts, inventories, legal records, and works of fiction, yet scholars have generally overlooked the profound impact such spaces had on women’s self-expression, physical autonomy, sociability, and intercultural exchange, not to mention their collecting practices. Particularly ignored have been the non-European women who used such spaces.

Curated by Alexandra Frantischek Rodriguez-Jack, the checklist includes many works from the HSM&L collection never exhibited before. Among them are paintings, books, engravings, lacquer boxes, mother-of-pearl tables, and carpets. The exhibition will be complemented by a series of live concerts featuring classical music composed by women of Iberian descent.

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida Paintings on View > The Norton Museum of Art is the only U.S. venue of the exhibition “Sorolla and the Sea,” which has been organized for it by the Hispanic Society Museum & Library (New York City). On view are approximately 40 works highlighting a fascination with the seaside harbored by the Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863–1923). This is the first Sorolla exhibition to be mounted in Florida, and also the first large presentation of a 20th-century European painter at the Norton in 18 years.

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida Paintings: “Sorolla and the Sea”
Norton Museum of Art
West Palm Beach, Florida
norton.org
Through March 16, 2025

Sorolla grew up in Valencia on the Mediterranean coast and returned there often from his home in Madrid to paint and draw inspiration. Revered for his unique blend of realism and modernism, replete with unmixed colors and vigorous brushwork, Sorolla was hailed by no less a contemporary than Claude Monet as “The Master of Light.” On view nearby will be the Norton’s own paintings by Monet and another admirer of Sorolla, John Singer Sargent.
The exhibition encompasses the full range of Sorolla’s seaside works, including people relaxing on the beach and fishermen hard at work there.

It opens with two self-portraits, one of his palettes, and a lively bronze bust of Sorolla sculpted by his friend Mariano Benlliure y Gil. Also on loan are three works painted by Spanish contemporaries and the famous portrait Sorolla painted of his friend Louis Comfort Tiffany. Two Sorolla works in the Norton’s collection round out the selection.

About the Norton Museum of Art:
The Norton Museum of Art was founded in 1941 by Ralph Hubbard Norton (1875-1953) and his wife Elizabeth Calhoun Norton (1881-1947). Norton was an industrialist who headed the Acme Steel Company in Chicago. He and his wife began collecting to decorate their home, but then he became interested in art for its own sake and formed a sizable collection of paintings and sculpture. In 1935, Mr. Norton semi-retired, and the couple began to spend more time in the Palm Beaches. They contemplated what to do with their art collection and eventually decided to found their own museum in West Palm Beach, to give South Florida its first such institution. In 1940, construction began on the Norton Gallery and School of Art located between South Olive Avenue and South Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach. Mr. Norton commissioned Marion Sims Wyeth of the distinguished firm of Wyeth, King & Johnson to design the Museum. The Art Deco building opened to the public on February 8, 1941. Norton continued to add to his collection until his death in 1953, and the works that he and his wife gave the Museum form the core of the institution’s collection today.

View more art museum announcements here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

“Rachel Ruysch — Nature into Art,” the first-ever retrospective of the Dutch still life painter Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), is set to launch its international tour at Munich’s Alte Pinakothek, part of the Bavarian State Painting Collections. Until now, relatively scant attention has been paid to this successful female artist who spent her six-decade-long career in Amsterdam.

Rachel Ruysch — Nature into Art
Alte Pinakothek
Munich
pinakothek.de
Through March 16, 2025 (and more)

Ruysch became renowned for painting large, highly detailed flower arrangements — sumptuous bouquets and fruits teeming with insects and butterflies. She was the daughter of Frederik Ruysch, a professor of anatomy and botany, whose collection of specimens inspired her. In 1701, she became the first woman admitted to the artistic society Confrerie Pictura in The Hague, and seven years later she was appointed court painter to the Elector Palatine in Düsseldorf. Moreover, she was the mother of 11 children.

On view are more than 200 exhibits, including Ruysch’s most important works borrowed from public and private collections across Europe and the U.S. These are complemented by manuscripts, prints, drawings, and specimens, as well as paintings by her teacher Willem van Aelst and her contemporaries, including other women. The curatorial team has partnered with botanists, zoologists, and historians of science to contextualize Ruysch’s work.

The exhibition will move to Ohio’s Toledo Museum of Art (April 13–July 27, 2025), which was the first American museum to acquire Ruysch’s work (in 1956), and finally the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (August 23–December 7, 2025).