Painting Life Stories: What Sargent Exhibit!?

John Singer Sargent, Mrs. Hugh Jackson, 1907, Oil on Canvas, 58 x 39 in., Private Collection

I recently saw many examples of the best work of John Singer Sargent, my favorite painter, in an exhibition in New York City that hardly anybody knows about. More than 40 oil paintings, watercolors and drawings are currently on view in an elegant brownstone on East 70^th Street just a few doors down from the Frick. Usually, crowds are lined up around the block to view a Sargent exhibit, but when I walked up the steps to the first-floor gallery on opening day I was the only visitor to the exhibition. I was greeted very warmly by several staff members, including one attractive young woman who shared some information with me about Sargent and the unheralded exhibit itself. Almost all of the works are in private collections and about a third of them are available for purchase.

At first I thought the staff might have incredulously mistaken me for the client they were expecting to arrive shortly, until I learned that the same warm reception was afforded to all the starving artists I later told about the exhibit. “Tell all your friends.” I was advised. And I was happy to be the bearer of such good tidings to all I encountered in the following days. It was the first decent scoop I’ve had since my journalism days 35 years ago. Not only was the reception uncharacteristically welcoming for a New York City gallery, all visitors of no account, financially speaking, are gifted with the gallery’s beautiful hardcover exhibit catalogue! Incredible!

I learned about the exhibit while perusing one of those glossy art magazines at the local Barnes and Noble. The magazine featured the exhibit in a cover story that told you all you wanted to know about the exhibit except the address of the gallery, which I was unfamiliar with. I confirmed this fact with a fellow browser, a tall, lanky, long-haired, globe-trotting plein-air artist from the Netherlands by the name of George America. Mr. America was as puzzled as I was. But at least the gallery listed its website address on its two-page ad in the magazine, which I eagerly looked up when I got home.

So there you are. A little serendipity cheers the cloudy existence of this woebegone New York City painter.

Oh, and by the way, the magnanimous gallery that is spreading such low-key goodwill among my fellow urban artists is Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, LLC. You could look it up.