For more than fifty years, Spanierman Gallery cultivated a reputation as one of the country’s preeminent galleries dedicated to American Art. Founded by Ira Spanierman in 1961, the gallery initially offered a wide selection of material, including silver, arms and armor, Old Master, European and American art. Over time, Spanierman chose to focus exclusively on American art, a move that would establish the gallery as a tour-de-force in the field. Well-known for his outstanding ‘eye’ and dedication to connoisseurship, Spanierman was trusted by institutions and private collectors alike. The gallery was known to have sold to hundreds of museums across the United States and abroad while fostering the development of some of the country’s most prestigious private collections.
In addition to its reputation as a dealer, Spanierman Gallery was esteemed in the industry for its dedication and support of art scholarship. As a young man starting off in the business, Ira Spanierman recalled researching and identifying paintings through tedious research at the Frick Art Reference Library. These hours of study left an indelible mark on Spanierman who would go on to publish catalogue raisonnés for artists such as Theodore Robinson, John Henry Twachtman, Willard Metcalf, and co-sponsor the catalogue on the work of Winslow Homer.
When Spanierman Gallery closed in 2014 an impressive inventory remained. We are pleased to offer a selection of these works from the estates acquired by the gallery including those of Dora Maar, Solomon Ethe, Vaclav Vytlacil, John F. Carlson, Joseph Amar, James and Myron Lechay, Martha Walter, Mercedes Matter, Lamar Briggs, Sumiye Okoshi and Robert Emmett Owen.
Margaret Jordan Patterson 1867–1950
Although raised in Boston, Massachusetts and Maine, Margaret Jordan Patterson was born aboard a ship in Surabaya, East Java in 1867 because her father was a sea captain. This early exposure to the vibrancy of nature, and coastal scenes in particular, appears to have stayed with Patterson on her way to becoming an artist. After taking a correspondence course with Louis Prang, Patterson studied at the Pratt Institute in New York City as well as with the Spanish painters Claudio Castellucho in Florence and Ermengildo Anglada-Camrasa in Paris. Back in America, the artist Ethel Mars taught Patterson to make color woodcut prints in 1910 and this became Patterson's preferred medium.
Generally, Patterson's bright compositions include trees, flowers, and a range of landscapes, frequently with bodies of water. Her woodcuts show a deep understanding of color balance and she uses high relief to produce a dreamlike realism. Patterson was awarded for her artwork at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. Along with being a prolific artist, Patterson taught for many years at Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts and public schools elsewhere in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Prior to her death in Boston in 1950, Patterson had exhibited widely and several important institutions now hold examples of her work, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In recent years, collectors have increasingly come to admire the graceful nuance of Patterson's oeuvre, with her compositions garnering higher prices at auction.
Auction Results Margaret Jordan Patterson
