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Our first painting of 2015 as part of our Great British Art series is by William Turner – this one is called Fisherman at Sea and it’s a beautiful and moody portrait of Britain’s maritime history. It also happens to be Turner’s first painting exchibited at the Royal Academy in 1796.

About the painting:

The first oil painting Turner exhibited at the Royal Academy, this is a moonlit scene in the tradition of Horace Vernet, Philip de Loutherbourg and Joseph Wright of Derby. These painters were largely responsible for fuelling the 18th-century vogue for nocturnal subjects. The sense of the overwhelming power of nature is a key theme of the Sublime. The potency of the moonlight contrasts with the delicate vulnerability of the flickering lantern, emphasising nature’s power over mankind and the fishermen’s fate in particular. The jagged silhouettes on the left are the treacherous rocks called ‘the Needles’ off the Isle of Wight.

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“Coffee is definitely the same as art, it revives our dying soul.”
-Gerome Nicolas Dela Pena


Have you ever even thought about using nice, warm, aromatic coffee in your mug to paint a painting? Pornchai Lerthammasiri did. As an accomplished watercolor artist, Pornchai wanted to do something new – more challenging. Coffee was his choice.

The technique he talks about sounds easy, all you need is just coffee mixed with water, a brush and watercolor paper. Not at all, according to Pornchai, it took him 6 years to master the right texture of coffee and water. If too much coffee I used, the texture will be too elastic to paint with and cause unwanted glittering flakes on the paper. Furthermore, it did not dry easily and the coffee could peel off from the paper or become molded. After extensive experimentation, I can prove that my paintings will stay in the same condition even after 6 years now.”



"I would like my audience to see something new and creative, something close to their daily lives that can be applied to art. It is like giving others a sample of the challenge. Who knows? After seeing my coffee paintings, some people may decide to use wine to paint (laugh)."

For all the artists out there, this is a new challenge for you guys! Coffee as an art is definitely one way to revive our dying soul. Here is one video showing how it can be done!

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Miroslaw Szeib's paint.

Alexander Averin ~ In The Rose Garden

This is the Moss Garden found in the beautiful Carnarvon Gorge National Park QLD. This feature, at 3.6km from the camping area, is situated in Violet Gorge, a side gorge in the Hellhole Gorge complex. A waterfall tumbles over a large rock overhang into an icy pool. The rock walls are dripping with water and support a prolific growth of ferns, mosses, liverworts and homworts. These small delicate plants fall easily. A beautiful delicate ecosystem that is preserved for future generations.

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Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Country Road 1890

Granddaughter of French dealer whose collection was confiscated by Nazis opens New York gallery

Marianne Rosenberg says she plans to continue the family legacy of working with contemporary artists, as well as show the Modern art her ancestor promoted




Pablo Picasso, Invitation, 1919

The granddaughter of one of the world’s leading dealers of Modern and Impressionist art, whose collection was looted by the Nazis, is launching her own gallery on New York’s Upper East Side.

Marianne Rosenberg, a partner at Squire Sanders law firm in New York, has signed a lease on a space measuring around 1,500 sq. ft in the ground floor of a townhouse on East 66th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenue, in what was formerly the home of the Dickinson Gallery. The gallery, Rosenberg & Co, is scheduled to open on 7 March and will focus on the secondary Modern market, and also work with contemporary artists.

The first exhibition, “Inspired by History”, will include a range of works referring to the family’s personal history and cultural influence. “My family established their businesses in Paris in the early 20th century and thereafter forged exclusive relationships with artists such as Pablo Picasso—whom my grandfather Paul Rosenberg represented for over two decades—Braque, Matisse, many prominent Cubist artists, Giacomo Manzù, Peter Kinley, just to name a few,” Marianne Rosenberg says. “The inaugural exhibition will celebrate the works and artists from those early periods onwards to the 1980s, and will showcase pieces that are directly part of the history.” The exhibition runs until 25 April.

Many of the paintings, sculptures and works on paper in the exhibition will be for sale, except those with sentimental value for the family such as Still Life with Knife, Glass, and Fruit, 1919, a drawing that the artist Juan Gris dedicated to Léonce Rosenberg, Marianne’s great-uncle, or an invitation to her grandfather’s gallery, which was designed by Pablo Picasso in 1919.
Marianne’s grandfather Paul Rosenberg was part of an art-dealing dynasty that included his father, Alexandre, and brother, Léonce. He was known for promoting Modern art after the First World War.

But, with the Second World War on the horizon in the 1930s, Paul made plans to relocate his collection and leave Paris. He opened a gallery in New York in 1940, but was unsuccessful in getting his entire collection to safety: the Nazis confiscated around 400 works for Hitler’s planned Führermuseum in Austria. The family has been tireless in its efforts to find the missing works, and it is estimated that they have recouped around 340 pieces. None of the works in the show are among those confiscated by the Nazis.

“By opening Rosenberg & Co. I have a great opportunity to honour my family’s heritage and their legacy in the history of art dealers,” Marianne Rosenberg says. “I look forward to beginning a new chapter in my family’s tradition of supporting contemporary artists.”

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Happy Lovers (c. 1760-65) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, is one of about 800 objects that American art collector Norton Simon purchased from Joseph Duveen. Over the years, Simon sold most of the collection off, but about 130 objects remain at the Norton Simon Museum in California.

British art dealer Joseph Duveen once said, rather astutely: "Europe has a great deal of art, and America has a great deal of money."


French sculptor Claude Michel (called Clodion) made this terracotta sculpture, Bacchante Supported by Bacchus and a Faun, in 1795.

Starting in the late 1800s, in London first, later New York, the Duveen family sold precious European Old Master paintings, sculptures, tapestries, furniture, to rich American collectors. For the first half of the 20th century, Duveen was arguably the world's greatest art dealer and some of the greatest works of art in America got here thanks to the Duveens.

American mega-millionaire Norton Simon (whose businesses included Hunt-Wesson Foods, Canada Dry and Avis) started collecting art in 1954. In the 1960s, the business mogul bought up the House of Duveen lock, stock and barrel. In Southern California, an exhibition at Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum tracks the Duveen-Simon connection. It was an ambitious act of commerce — and, maybe, love.

Early on, Simon bought art to decorate his new home. No Old Masters for him; he was primarily buying work made in the 19th century, says curator Carol Togneri. "He was not comfortable purchasing religious pictures, certainly, or pictures from early centuries," she says.

Instead, he bought works by the Impressionists, Renoir and his pals. Then, in 1957, a small painting from the early 16th century broadened Simon's collecting eye. Bust Portrait of a Courtesan, attributed to Giorgione, shows a bosomy redhead, with a slightly disdainful look and a nice outfit.



There was — and still is — debate as to whether Bust Portrait of a Courtesan (circa 1509) really is a Giorgione.

"I think of her as being incredibly dreamy," says Togneri. "She looks like she is caught up in some sort of thought. For me, I think this is the ultimate in terms of beauty, but also mystery. We don't know who she is."

Simon began negotiations for the picture. He dealt with Edward Fowles, then owner of the Duveen Brothers gallery in Manhattan. It took him five years. He brought the painting home, lived with it a while, returned it, took it again. There was — and still is — debate as to whether the painting really is a Giorgione.

"Simon said if he was going to spend $190,000 on a picture he wanted to make sure he was comfortable with it and the attribution," Togneri says.

Finally he bought it, and 17 other Old Masters — Rubens, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, plus, eventually the entire kit and kaboodle and the Duveen building and library in New York — for $4 million. In the end, Simon got almost 800 art objects from Duveen. Over the years he sold off most of them. Today, in Pasadena, only about 130 are left.

"It became a game for him," says Togneri. "I don't want to denigrate his love of art, but he had this zeal to find the best for the cheapest amount of money."

Simon was a canny art-handling businessman — much like the Duveens. They operated in the highly competitive 19th and 20th century art worlds, where dealers gave code names to people and paintings.

"There was a lot of espionage," says Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery in London. "A lot of maids and butlers being paid by rival dealers. Duveen himself had a lots and lots of servants in his pay."
Duveen wanted to know what people were thinking about buying "so he would pay their butlers to give him information," Togneri says.

Duveen's discoveries, persuasiveness and taste covered the walls of wealthy American homes with marvelous works of art. Later, those works became the cornerstones of American museums.
"Consider how much of what you see today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, actually had either been handled or directly supplied by Duveen."

- Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery in London

"The best way to go about thinking about this is just to consider how much of what you see today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, actually had either been handled or directly supplied by Duveen," says Penny. "Mellon, Kress and Widener: those were the founding collections. Above all, [Andrew] Mellon who paid for the building and gave it to the American people. If you go onto the National Gallery of Art website and sort the items out by Duveen — which I recently tried to do — I stopped at 100 pages. The National Gallery of Art in Washington is in large part there thanks to Duveen."


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The empty frame from which thieves cut Rembrandt's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee remains on display at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The painting was one of 13 works stolen from the museum in 1990.

Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum houses a world-class art collection. But in the last two decades it's been better known for the art that isn't there — half a billion dollars' worth of masterpieces that disappeared from its walls 25 years ago.

That robbery — which included the loss of three Rembrandts, a Vermeer, a Manet and sketches by Degas — has haunted Boston, law enforcement and the art world ever since. Boston Globe reporter Stephen Kurkjian has spent the last two decades investigating the heist. He's the author of the book Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World's Greatest Art Heist. He tells NPR's Renee Montagne how it happened:

"Two men dressed in police uniforms rang the bell to the employees' entrance of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum," he says. "They showed up on the monitor screen of one of the two night watchmen who were on duty that night. ... They said, 'We're here to investigate a disturbance,' so he buzzed them in."

Rick Abath was the security guard who buzzed the "policemen" in. At the time of the robbery, he had just dropped out of Berklee College of Music. "I was playing in a band and working night shift at the museum," Abath told our colleagues at StoryCorps. "I was just this hippie guy who wasn't hurting anything, wasn't on anybody's radar, and the next day I was on everybody's radar for the largest art heist in history."

Kurkjian talks with Montagne about how the heist happened, and why thieves would want to steal art so priceless it can't even be resold.


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This is a review that some would say is about art in its rawest form. And they would be correct. Others would say it's about art in its purest form. And they would also be correct.

What this is, is a review of an exhibit of paintings by Tyler Bell currently on display at Small World Coffee on Witherspoon Street in Princeton, titled "Sunday Drive-Places and Places By Tyler Bell."

Tyler is autistic. He is also an artist. His art is not what we're used to seeing in museums, on gallery walls, in coffee shops across America. It is not representational. It is often not even what we might call abstract. But what it is, is the art spirit deep within this 22-year-old painter breaking through the barriers of autism and manifesting itself on canvas in bold colors and shapes.

Because Tyler is verbally handicapped, his mother, Liz Bell, tells his story. She speaks of him being diagnosed at age 3 and how she and her husband, Peter Bell, have endeavored to keep Tyler "immersed in the real world."

A quote attributed to Johann Wofgang von Goethe, "If you treat an individual as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become all that he is capable of becoming" seems to be one that guided Tyler's parents in his upbringing.

The paintings on display in this exhibit are all bold both in design and color and are windows through which we're offered glimpses into Tyler's imagination. He often paints plein air with Lambertville artist Gary Giordano and many of the paintings on display are Tyler's interpretations of specific sites in Lambertville: A laundromat, a church, the 5 & 10.

"Yellow Building With Chimney" is the Laundromat. There's a "House With a Green Roof" and "Blue Green House With Black Roof." And the painting from which the exhibit draws its title is a grey car with black windows and jazzy white spoke wheels.

The faces part of the exhibit is comprised of portraits about which Liz Bell points out, "the eyes are always blue, the lips are always red. It's just what comes through in his art."

On exhibit are "Yellow Face," "Hispanic Woman," and "Blue Ribbons" which was taken from a picture of a classic princess.

"Girl In Green Shirt," in this exhibit is his portrait of Catherine Haggerty, a middle school teacher in Jersey City who worked along with Tyler in designing the motif and painting "Star, The Wishing Ox" that was part of the Hopewell Valley Stampede and was on display throughout the summer on Pennington-Rocky Hill Road.

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