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| Passion Investments: Art |
Native Sons
Elizabeth Harris
11/01/2006
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With the resurgence of interest today, rising prices flummox
some new collectors. In 2003, Kabiller bought five paintings by artists such as
Bierstadt, William M. Hart and Alfred Thompson Bricher, paying hundreds of
thousands of dollars for each one to Louis Salerno, owner of New York’s
Questroyal Fine Art. Kabiller would like to add a Church to his collection
because he loves the painter’s work and because Church is considered a master of
the period. He admits that he expects prices to continue to rise, but he
hesitates to cross the seven-figure mark for a painting until he becomes more
knowledgeable about this school. | JASPER FRANCIS Cropsey’s Winter. (Photograph by Questroyal Fine Art.) |
In his Park Avenue gallery, Salerno watches over 300 Hudson
River School works. He began collecting nearly 20 years ago, and developed a
business when his personal budget could not keep pace with the number of
paintings he wanted to buy. Today, the art he displays represents years of
collecting. In July, works by Bierstadt, Cropsey, Kensett and Heade shared wall
space in the four gallery rooms and offices open to the public. Far more were
stacked floor to ceiling in narrow storage slips he installed in closets. Up the
back stairs to his private apartment lay even more—the best and biggest canvases
Salerno is preparing to reveal by year’s end.In the past, U.S. collectors such as Salerno have dominated the
Hudson River School scene. Some are motivated by patriotic stirrings, like
Kabiller, who feels pride in the depictions of America’s wilderness and in the
country’s first native artistic style. European scenes by these painters often
sell at a discount to American vistas, Salerno says, pointing to a high-quality
Cropsey painting he has for sale for $250,000. Entitled Winter, it depicts the Swiss
mountains; it would sell for two or three times that amount if it showed
American peaks, Salerno says. But new interest may be coming from abroad, which
could drive prices even higher. Salerno recently sold a Hudson River School
painting of an American scene to a European buyer. They are beginning to find a
little more respect for American art, he says, and the Hudson River School in
particular.
Kornhauser also sees growing scholarly and institutional
interest overseas. Four years ago, London’s Tate staged an exhibition of U.S.
art, including Hudson River School paintings. Hartford’s "American Splendor"
will travel to Germany, Switzerland and Austria when it closes at the Wadsworth
Atheneum. "There’s a fascination with the new world—with the Native American
presence, the violence of laying claim to the land," she says. Elizabeth Harris is a staff writer for Worth.
Frame and Fortune
The Hudson River School painters viewed frames as integral parts of their paintings, believing
the right frame would convey an illusion of looking through a window to an
idealized world. Many Hudson River School artists, including Thomas Cole and
Frederic Church, designed their own frames. They incorporated natural motifs
such as vines, or, in Church’s case, Moorish designs like those he saw in the
Middle East.
An authentic frame may enhance the value of a painting. In
2005, Andrew Schoelkopf, cofounder of a New York gallery, inspected an unsigned
painting at a small auction. By examining the frame, he helped identify William
Bradford as the artist. "Seeing that original package all together, with the
frame that Bradford would have chosen for it, is very meaningful," he says,
crediting the frame for producing a winning $241,000 bid on a painting with an
estimate of approximately $40,000.
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