After shifting to an online-only format for 2020, The American Art Fair will celebrate spring American Art Week in New York City by hosting a hybrid event from May 15 to 22. Rather than taking place at one central location, most of the 20 participants will allow collectors and art lovers to schedule a time to visit their gallery during a by-appointment Open House. Online highlights will also be available through The American Art Fair website as it was in October 2020.Arthur Dove (1880-1946), Landscape (Cagnes-sur-Mer), 1908-9. Oil on canvas, 18¼ x 22½ in. Courtesy Alexandre Gallery.

The 2021 dealers include Alexandre Gallery, American Illustrators Gallery, Avery Galleries, Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts, Conner • Rosenkranz, D. Wigmore Fine Art, DC Moore Gallery, Debra Force Fine Art, Forum Gallery, Godel & Co., Graham Shay 1857, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, John H. Surovek Gallery, Jonathan Boos, Kraushaar Galleries, Menconi + Schoelkopf, Meredith Ward Fine Art, Questroyal Fine Art, Thomas Colville Fine Art and Vose Galleries. Many will be hosting special exhibitions, while also highlighting other works from their galleries.

Debra Force Fine Art is hosting the exhibition An Adventurous Spirit: Julian Alden Weir this May and will pair that with art by other American impressionist painters. Included will be pieces from Rae Sloan Bredin, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Richard Edward Miller, Edward Potthast, Maurice Brazil Prendergast and John Singer Sargent.George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925), Grammy Ames’ House, No. 1, 1916. Oil on panel, 18 x 22 in., inscribed at lower left by the artist’s wife: ‘Geo Bellows / ESB’. Courtesy Hirschl & Adler Galleries.

In its online booth for The American Art Fair, D. Wigmore Fine Art will offer a selection of American realist paintings from 1919 to 1970, which show the artists’ continuous development. “Paintings by George Bellows, Rockwell Kent, John Marin, Reginald Marsh, Dale Nichols, Doris Lee and Sally Michel Avery convey shifts in subject matter and innovations in expression,” says gallery owner Deedee Wigmore. “Doris Lee’s painting of herself as The Archer was selected for our booth as it references both the classical goddess Diana and early American folk art weather vanes. Its inclusion also gives us the opportunity to mention the Westmoreland Museum of American Art’s September opening of a major traveling exhibition Simple Pleasures: The Art of Doris Lee.”Willard Leroy Metcalf (1858-1925), Returning Tide, 1908. Oil on canvas, 26 x 29 in., signed and dated lower right: ‘W.L. Metcalf’, ‘1908’. Courtesy Debra Force Fine Art.

Boston-based Vose Galleries will have a showcase of fine art from the 19th and 20th centuries as part of the virtual event. Included will be works by Martin Johnson Heade, William Trost Richards, Frank Weston Benson, Theodore Wendel, Charles Woodbury, Reynolds Beal, Charles Webster Hawthorne, Martha Walter and Jane Peterson. A corresponding exhibition with some of the gallery’s finest art available will be on view as well.Doris Lee (1904-1983), Archer. Oil on canvas, 39½ x 51½ in., signed lower right: ‘Doris Lee.’ Courtesy D. Wigmore Fine Art.

Godel & Co. will have selections of its recent acquisitions inventory on view including art from Thomas Doughty, Lemuel Wilmarth, William Mason Brown, David Johnson and Thomas Anshutz. One of the highlights is the oil painting Sunrise at Narragansett, Rhode Island by William Stanley Haseltine, whose artwork reflects the mid-19th-century art movement that asked to create close replicas of nature. This painting is a prime example from Haseltine’s mature period where he focused on scenes of the New England coast.

Beginning May 1, Hirschl & Adler Galleries will be staging an exhibition of new acquisitions that will be part of The American Art Fair’s online platform and available to view by-appointment during its Open House. One of the pieces displayed will be George Wesley Bellows’ Grammy Ames’ House, No. 1, from 1916.Frederick Kann (1884-1965), Untitled, ca. 1938. Oil and cork on canvas board, 18 x 24 in. Courtesy Meredith Ward Fine Art.

“For whatever reason, the pandemic has flushed out some great works of art from multi-generational private collections. The Bellows, for example, was acquired from Hirschl & Adler in 1976 and has remained in two generations of a Midwestern family,” says Eric W. Baumgartner, senior vice president at Hirschl & Adler Galleries. “Among our other noteworthy recent acquisitions is a magnificent sporting painting by Frank Benson, which has been in one family’s collection since the patriarch acquired it from Benson—his friend and hunting companion—in the 1920s. A magical 1949 Charles Burchfield watercolor called Cobwebs in Autumn was acquired by the father of its current owner in the mid-1950s, perhaps as a memento of the subject of his thesis at Harvard University in 1942.”William Stanley Haseltine (1835–1900), Sunrise at Narragansett, Rhode Island, 1863. Oil on canvas, 18¼ x 31¾ in., signed and dated lower right: ‘W.S. Haseltine, N.Y. 1863’. Courtesy Godel & Co., Inc.

This marks the first time The American Art Fair is happening May as well as the official move of the event to springtime. The fair’s founder, Thomas Colville says, “We are initiating a comprehensive collaboration under the umbrella of American Art Week with The American Art Fair, lectures and other programming, museum and gallery exhibitions, and the spring American paintings sales to make New York in May a destination for collectors and curators.”

The 2022 American Art Fair is schedule for May 14 to 17 and will take place at its usual venue, the Bohemian National Hall on East 73rd Street.  —

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