Pre-eminent showcase

Press Contact:
Anne Edgar, [email protected], cell 646 567 3586
Press Preview: Friday, January 20, 2017, 1 pm to 4 pm

MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK, THE WORLD’S
PRE-EMINENT SHOWCASE FOR FINE DRAWINGS,
RETURNS TO THE UPPER EAST SIDE IN JANUARY

Annual Week-Long Event Spans 23 City Blocks and 7 Centuries
in Drawings by Cocteau, Degas, Delacroix, Gainsborough, Gauguin,
Hockney, Klimt, Marsh, Picasso, van Gogh, Vasari, and Others

NEW YORK, NY -- More than a score of the world’s leading art dealers will exhibit rare drawings, watercolors and oil sketches from the 14th to the 20th centuries during Master Drawings New York (MDNY) from Saturday, January 21, to Saturday, January 28, 2017.

Now in its 11th year, the annual week-long event presents a flurry of concurrent exhibitions clustered along Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side. The event includes pop-up presentations by leading dealers from London, Paris, Florence, and Vienna, and special exhibitions mounted in private gallery spaces by top New York specialists. Having spent months gathering rarities for the January 2017 edition, the 24 exhibitors will unveil surprises in the form of new discoveries and drawings not seen on the market for decades.

“Drawings are often called the first draft of art history—and that’s the excitement, really,” says Crispian Riley-Smith, MDNY Director and co-founder. “Simply by studying strokes on a page, one can become privy to an artist’s first intention. And because drawings have been less systematically documented over the centuries than paintings, unknown works still surface with some regularity.”

“MDNY reminds us that art history is forever changing. Each year we offer visitors a kind of one-off, serendipitous tour of art that’s determined by the best of what’s recently emerged on the market,” Riley-Smith concludes.

In January, the week of events will be anchored in the Academy Mansion at 2 East 63rd Street. Five dealers will occupy rooms in the historic building and a special loan exhibition celebrating the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut, will be featured there.

Described below is a small selection from the hundreds of European and American drawings of historical importance and of top quality and provenance, dating from the 1300s to the mid-1900s, on exhibition and offer in Master Drawings New York 2017.

SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS: An Uptown Stroll
At the Academy Mansion on East 63rd Street, the visitor will encounter Italian drawings shown by Christopher Bishop of Norwalk, Connecticut, amongst them an ink- and chalk-drawn figure of a sower, as seen from the back by Jacopo Bassano (1510-1592), a pupil of Veronese and considered one of the great painters of the 16th century. In another room, James Faber of Day & Faber, London displays “Cosmographer with anastrolabe and compass in a landscape,” a seemingly effortless yet exacting ink drawing by the Italian Baroque painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Il Guercino. The mansion also features presentations by Pandora Old Masters, New York, and Charles Beddington from London.

A block north from the mansion, Stephen Ongpin from London will set up shop at Dickinson Gallery. He will exhibit a wide array of drawings from 1352 to the late 20th century, including Paul Gauguin’s masterfully restrained study of the head of a Breton woman in a traditional cap; Pablo Picasso’s signed nude in red pencil; and Eugène Delacroix’s watercolor of a Moroccan man, limned in bleached pastel colors evoking the country’s intense sunlight.

At Didier Aaron, the visitor will encounter an octagonal pen and ink drawing by Giorgio Vasari, the 16th century Italian painter, architect, and writer best known for his important Lives of the Artists. In portraying an angel sitting astride a globe, the drawing demonstrates Vasari’s mastery of foreshortening: “Allegory of Eternity” is a study for the main fresco of the central vault in the refectory at Monteoliveto, Naples.

David Tunick, a returning exhibitor, is showing Vincent van Gogh’s “La Plaine de la Crau,” an ink over pencil that bristles with life in one of van Gogh's genres, landscape, which excited popular attention when the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented an exhibition of van Gogh drawings in 2005. Tunick also will exhibit a gossamer-like portrait in blue pencil by Gustav Klimt along with several other Vienna Secession drawings he has been holding for a family, unseen and off of the market, for 37 years.

A remarkable drawing by one of the most original chroniclers of 1930s and 40s New York is to be encountered two blocks up at Kraushaar Galleries. Here Reginald Marsh sketches Coney Island as a wild amalgam of figures, male and female, teeming with life — and reveals how thoroughly he had mastered the tradition of Old Master figure drawing.

From London, Guy Peppiatt brings a selection of fine drawings that includes a seascape dated 1830 by the British artist John Sell Cotman. Anchoring the scene is a boat with a billowing sail, tinted orange from a bright lemon-yellow sun burst and surrounded by the moody blues and blue greens of cloud, sky and sea. Purchased from a private collection, the watercolor is an important late work by one of the most important artists of the Norwich school.

Peppiatt is exhibiting at Arader Galleries on Madison Avenue between 78th and 79th Streets, as are Mattia and Maria Novella Romano. The Romanos are bringing drawings from the 16th century through the mid-20th century. Of special interest is an ink drawing by Umberto Brunelleschi (1879-1949), an artist little-known in the U.S., who moved to Paris in 1919, becoming a noted illustrator and theater designer. On view will be “The war puppeteer,” an ink on brown paper, with pencil traces heightened with tempera, in which a biting social commentary is belied by the delicate, Art Nouveau tracery of its allegorical scene.

Approaching East 79th Street, Wienerroither & Kohlbacher, exhibiting at Shepherd W&K Galleries, is showing a standing figure by Egon Schiele. In wet-looking, almost muddied, patches of black and red-browns, set against broad white strokes, Schiele conjured a flattened space that echoes his subject’s gesture: she covers her face with her hands.

Towards the end of an uptown stroll through Master Drawings New York, the visitor arrives at the Jill Newhouse Gallery. As part of an intimate showing of 19th century French drawings, Newhouse will present Edgar Degas’s Dancer (Melina Darde), a black chalk drawing heightened with white on paper—an iconic image in French art, only recently acquired by Newhouse from a private collection.

SYMPOSIUM
January 24, 2017
Drawings, Connoisseurship, and Scholarship Today:
Discussion with the Editorial Board of Master Drawings

Master Drawings Editor Jane Turner and associate editors Margaret Morgan Grasselli, John Marciari, and Jennifer Tonkovich will discuss the current state of research and publishing in the field of master drawings. Master Drawings remains the leading international journal for the study of drawings and the editors will discuss recent trends in scholarship, problems in the field, questions of connoisseurship, and plans for future issues.

MDNY 2017 EXHIBITIORS

Charles Beddington, London; Christopher Bishop Fine Art, Norwalk, Connecticut; David Tunick, Inc, New York; Day & Faber, London; Découvert Fine Art, Rockport, Massachusetts; Didier Aaron Inc, New York; Guy Peppiatt Fine Art Ltd, London; James Mackinnon, London; Jill Newhouse Gallery, New York; Nissman Abromson, Ltd, Brookline, Massachusetts; Kraushaar Galleries, New York; Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York; Les Enluminures, Chicago, New York, Paris; Mark Murray Fine Paintings, New York; Martyn Gregory, London; Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art, New York; Mia Weiner, Norfolk, Connecticut; Mireille Mosler Ltd, New York; Monroe Warshaw, New York; Pandora Old Masters Inc., New York; Pia Gallo, New York; Mattia & Maria Novella Romano, Florence; Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, London; W&K, Wienerroither & Kohlbacher, Vienna.

ABOUT MDNY

Masters Drawings New York, the pre-eminent event for drawings on the calendar of art lovers, began as a casual gallery crawl during the Old Masters auctions and The Winter Antiques Show in New York. Since its founding in 2005 by Margot Gordon, an Old Masters specialist based in the city, and Crispian Riley-Smith of London, the week has grown into a highly anticipated occasion.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Date: Saturday, January 21, to Saturday 28, 2017
Hours: 10 am to 6 pm daily, except Sunday, 2 pm to 6 pm
Admission: Free
Friday 20 January , 2017
Opening Preview: 4 pm to 8 pm
Press Preview: 1 pm to 4 pm

Master Drawings New York may be visited online at https://www.masterdrawingsnewyork.com/.

Press Inquiries:

Anne Edgar, Anne Edgar Associates
646 567 3586 and anne @anneedgar.com

Other Inquires:
Allison Wucher
New York Representative
650 743 23334 and [email protected]