Art & Antiques

Made of wood and masterfully carved in the round, “The Immaculate Virgin” is a prime example of Spanish colonial sculpture. With boldly executed folds and pleats in the Virgin’s billowing mantle, this work showcases the excellent artistry of the Ecuadorian colonial era and that of the Quito School in particular. Of all Spanish colonial polychrome sculpture, Ecuadorian creations are the most prized. In this case, the Virgin Mary is set on a half-moon supported by a cloud and winged putti, traditional iconography for these types of pieces. She stands in a subtle contrapposto with her hands folded in prayer and her lips slightly parted, as if she were about to speak. In addition to having a youthful face, the Virgin wears a delicate silver crown. Her intricately carved hair tumbles gracefully…

SPECIFICALLY COMMISSIONED by England’s King George I for the British Ambassador to Russia and placed in the ambassador’s St. Petersburg home, this secrétaire-cabinet exudes power in every detail. From its craftsmanship and materials to its exceptional artistry and subject matter, the cabinet (c.1716–1721) was surely meant to be a potent reminder of England’s political and cultural importance. It is a work of historic and royal significance. Unique in its design, the cabinet’s outer doors open to reveal multiple interior spaces, including 15 separate drawers organized around a central cupboard that conceals another set of doors and an interior space. Royal family portraits, including one of King George in mezzotint (an early metal printing technique), adorn each door. A broken pediment at its apex depicts a simplified royal coat of arms. The presence…

LOUIS STERN Fine Arts, in association with Addison Rowe Gallery, will exhibit the Modernist works of New Mexico-based artist Raymond Jonson in Raymond Jonson: Medium and Message. While he began as an abstract painter, in the 1930s Jonson started abandoning abstract forms and figures for pure explorations of color and mood. In these “absolute” paintings, as Jonson called them, he was able to transcend any political, social, or economic references and provide a view directly into his spirit. During this time, he co-founded the Transcendental Painting Group, which was a group of artists with similar objectives who understood painting as a form of spiritual exercise and communication. Jonson was an established member of New Mexico’s artistic community, teaching at the University of New Mexico for 20 years and director of a…

“ANCIENT NUBIA: Art of the 25th Dynasty from the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston” will open this month at Atlanta’s High Museum. Featuring more than 200 works of art and material culture, the exhibition will give visitors a view into this sophisticated civilization that is rooted in recent historical scholarship proving that ancient Nubia was its own nation-state, independent of ancient Egypt and with its own systems of trade, government, and commerce as well as artistic and scientific innovations. The works on view are drawn from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s vast collection of Nubian artworks and artifacts—the largest such collection outside of Africa. Among them are treasures like the Statue of King Senkamaniskan (643-623 BCE), a nearly five-foot-tall granite gneiss sculpture of the king. There are also…

“SERGE CHARCHOUNE: The Early Years,” a museum-style exhibition of works by the Russian-born, French painter will be on view at New York’s Rosenberg & Co. through July 11. This is the first posthumous solo exhibit of the artist’s work in New York, and features 36 pieces drawn from his early artistic period. Charchoune defied easy categorization during his career, as he drew from Cubism, abstraction, and representation throughout his life. Concerning the years between 1916 and 1930, this show explores Charchoune’s period of experimentation while he navigated the influences of the European avant-garde. By 1916, he was living in Barcelona among the many other artists who had fled to Spain as World War I began. It was there that he began developing his own style, dubbed “Ornamental Cubism,” although he was also…

PAINTER DAVID Ligare’s series of still lifes, Drapery Paintings: 1978-2023, will be on view at Winfield Gallery in Carmel-by-the-Sea through July 8. Ligare’s inspiration for these pieces dates back to the mid-1970s, when he first started painting images of white drapery piled on a table outside, on the deck of his house in Big Sur. After exploring this concept for a few years, he decided he wanted to do something different with the drapery; he started asking a friend to throw a piece of drapery into the air, so he could photograph it in a dynamic, floating state. These photographs became the basis for a series of paintings that Ligare created and named after Greek islands, in a nod to the influence of Greek Classicism on his work. “The paintings were meant…