WORK OF THE WEEK: Nantucket Afternoon by Donald Demers

Donald Demers
Nantucket Afternoon
oil on canvas
20 x 36 inches

Nantucket Afternoon by Donald Demers depicts one of the most iconic Nantucket scenes of the famous cat boats sailing past Brant Point Light on a perfect summer afternoon. Nantucket Afternoon is one of the featured works in Cavalier Galleries summer Maritime Masters exhibition closing on Monday, August 31st. Cavalier Galleries has assembled a fine exhibition of Maritime and Nautical themed art that will interest both art appreciators and Maritime history buffs. A wonderful collection of fine art paintings, photographs, sculpture and selected historical objects have been brought together to create a compelling online exhibition that celebrates the beauty and nostalgia of Maritime history, classic ships and all things nautical.  

Donald Demers was born in 1956 in Lunenburg, Massachusetts. His interest in painting maritime subjects began while spending his summers on the coast of Maine. He attended the School of the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, and the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, MA. Demers maritime experience came as a crew member aboard many traditional sailing vessels including schooners and square-riggers. He continues to be an avid sailor. His professional career began as an illustrator and expanded into the field of fine art. His illustrations can be found on many book covers and in national publications such as Reader’s Digest, Sail Magazine, Field & Stream, Sports Afield, Yankee, and National Geographic. Demers’ paintings have been featured in a number of publications including American Artist magazine, Artist magazine, Plein Air magazine, Fine Art Connoisseur , Art and Antiques, Yachting magazine, Nautical Quarterly, Nautical World, Offshore magazine, and Maine Boats and Harbors. His work has also been featured and discussed in a number of texts including Concordia Yawls, The First Fifty Years, by Elizabeth Meyer, Marine Painting and Yachts on Canvas, both authored by James Taylor, of Greenwich, England. Yacht Portraits published by Sheridan House, A Gallery of Marine Art, Rockport Publishers, an instructional textbook titled Marine Painting, Techniques of Modern Masters published by Watson Guptill and Bound for Blue Water written by J. Russell Jinishian and published by Greenwich Workshop. Demers is a “Fellow” of the American Society of Marine Artists, an elected member of the Guild of Boston Artists, an elected member of the California Art Club, and a signature member of PAPA (Plein Air Painters of America).  He has won a record seventeen awards at the Mystic International Marine Art Exhibition, Mystic, CT. including the Rudolph J. Schaefer Maritime Heritage Award in 2006.  Demers’ illustrations have been recognized by the Museum of American Illustration four times in their national competition representing the finest examples of work in the field. 

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203.869.3664 or art@cavaliergalleries.com

STATE OF THE ARTS with Ron Cavalier on WPKN-FM (89.5)

Richard Pheneger & Peggy Nelson take a look at the arts on "State of the Arts" WPKN-FM radio. Get the word on what's happening with Cavalier Galleries in this interview with owner Ron Cavalier!

Click the link to listen:

STATE OF THE ARTS with Ron Cavalier on WPKN-FM

WORK OF THE WEEK: Exuma Breeze by Stephen Scott Young

Stephen Scott Young
Exuma Breeze
watercolor on cotton rag
10 1/2 x 11 1/4 inches

In 1985 Stephen Scott Young won first prize in watercolor in American Artist's national art competition. Since then his career has flourished and his paintings have met with critical acclaim often being compared to the work of other realist masters such as Wyeth, Homer, and Eakins. Young's work has developed toward ever-increasing depth of space and ever-greater facility in handling the human figure. For his sense of dramatic design and luminous, clear color, Young perhaps owes most to Homer.Young has been said to draw with his watercolors meticulously constructing them with careful stippling. Young creates his images with careful accuracy and has the ability to create figures that are not simply flat but have volume and weight. A virtuoso realist in the classic tradition, Stephen Scott Young remains an anomaly on the modern scene. Young's paintings are not simply nostalgic but address the concerns of contemporary life. Visually, they possess an indisputably modern abstract power of design. Thematically, they deal with issues of race and human dignity that are particularly pertinent to the current American social condition.

Born in Hawaii, Stephen Scott Young spent most of his early life traveling around the United States. Eventually settling in Florida, where he attended the Ringling School of Art and Design. Young has devoted his career to depicting the southern United States and the Bahamas. Exhibited nationally and internationally, Young is one of the nation's premiere realist watercolorists and etchers. Young's work is on display at several major American museums, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Butler Institute of American Art, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. He is featured in the permanent exhibits of the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and the Greenville County Museum in South Carolina. In May of 2012, Young began exhibiting a retrospective of the past twenty five years of his career painting the Bahamas. The opening at Christie's in New York City coincided with the publication of Once Upon an Island: Stephen Scott Young in the Bahamas, written by art historian William H. Gerdts.

Stephen Scott Young was recently featured in Garden & Gun magazine discussing his work and Bahamian influences. The article can be read HERE. 

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203.869.3664 or art@cavaliergalleries.com

WORK OF THE WEEK: Portrait III by Zhang Li

Zhang Li
Portrait III
oil on linen
31 5/8 x 25 5/8 inches

Artist Zhang Li has been called "China's Rembrandt" and it's easy to see why. Zhang Li's chosen genre is portraiture, permeating with dark, moody amber hues. Using painting techniques borrowed from the past he creates a tableaux through an arduous process of wrinkling, washing, erasing and molding. Li is heavily influenced by Europe’s Old Masters, with a distinctively Chinese perspective that captures the grace of local tribal people in broad, striking strokes.

At the age of 30 Zhang Li emerged as one of China's most talented painters. His meticulously crafted portraits shown at the country's 2nd International Arts Exhibition were immediately admired by both academics and collectors. Zhang Li's European inspiration developed from China's opening to the world in the 1980s, which presented Li's generation of painters the ability to experience and study original European oil paintings. “Their understanding increased by leaps and bounds and many Chinese painters, including Zhang Li, started to believe that only through the history of oil painting could its mysteries be discovered.” explains renowned critic, Go Zheng Yu. This new ability to study European art more easily diverted painters such as Zhang Li from the influences of traditional Chinese schools of oil painting, which had remained entrenched since the 1930s. “Zhang Li has been attacking the ‘blind zone’ of China’s past oil painting with European style. His painting style is classically refined, but not in the familiar European way,” notes Go Zheng Yu. “Zhang Li worships works by Rembrandt, as well as Courbet and Degas, but his subjects are not the French ballet, the Italian opera or the British court. On the contrary, they convey the profound softness and purity of local tribes. His choice of subjects from Tibet and the hills of southwest China has become his trademark.

Born in Beijing in 1959, Zhang Li joined the army in 1976 and enrolled in the PLA Art Academy in 1979, where he became a teacher after graduation in 1983. He is a member of the Chinese Artists Association and Associate Professor of Fine Arts Department of the PLA Art Academy. His works have been exhibited at domestic and international exhibitions and received numerous prestigious prizes. His paintings are in the collections of top museums, private, and corporate collections. In 1988, after being presented at the "First Chinese Oil Painting Exhibition", his works were sent to Japan for further exhibition. In 1989, his works joined the "Third Asian Arts Exhibition" and were collected by Fukuoka Art Museum of Japan. He gained the top prize at the International Portrait Exhibition held by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2000. Zhang Li's paintings continue to be among the most sought after of Chinese oil paintings by collectors both in China and internationally.

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203.869.3664 or art@cavaliergalleries.com

WORK OF THE WEEK: Syros by Louis Jaquet

LOUIS JAQUET
Syros
oil on canvas with 24 karat gold
31 7/16 x 39 5/16 inches

Syros is a Greek island in the Cyclades, in the Aegean Sea.This is the island where Greek tradition and western influence come to a harmonious marriage. Ermoúpoli (meaning “the city of Hermes”) is the island’s capital town and was the first important trade and industrial center of the country in the 19th century. Evidence of this glorious past can be seen in public buildings, neoclassical houses, and beautiful squares that have contributed to Ermoúpoli being declared a National Historic Landmark by the Greek government, ensuring that its architectural and cultural integrity are preserved. Examples of the island's stunning architecture and landscape can be seen in Louis Jaquet's painting, Syros.

Born in Paris in 1944, in a family of antique dealers and sculptors, Louis Jaquet started out as a wood sculptor in his family trade. His display of talent led to commissions to restore fine Boulle furniture and later the opportunity to restore paintings by masters such as Perugino and Tintoretto. In 1967 Louis painted and sculpted in Central Italy, where he also worked on restoring works by Perugino and Tintoretto. He did extensive fresco work in several chapels in Italy and Switzerland. Louis was later accepted to the prestigious Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts. While in Paris, he met surrealist innovator Salvador Dali and was moved by his ingenious ability to transmit his wild imagination into paintings. Although influenced by Dali, an early friendship with William Congdon, a member of New York's "Action Painting" school of the 1940s (of which Jackson Pollack was also a member) was Louis' principal inspiration. This was a break from abstract expressionism to the process itself of painting freely. Jaquet was later recognized in important Italian art catalogues for his "Homage to Jackson Pollock". In 1972 Louis graduated from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts which marked the beginning of his world traveling and painting. Louis feels, for himself, travels are a necessity. Traveling feeds his creativity and provides answers to his inner questions.

The seventies saw him through the Middle East, Afghanistan, Turkey, and India. The richness of the experiences acquired in these countries and Israel gave him a deep faith in human resilience and the essential beauty of humanity. In India he learned to create his own oil paint by mixing in organic pigments and natural elements, adding life to his subjects. His paintings are tapestries of color ranging from the soft luminescence of dream-like pastels to richly layered jewel tones embedded with quartz and gold. The myriad of experience and creative focus lends innocence to Louis' painting that comes only from mature introspection. Louis Jaquet continues to travel extensively. He maintains a studio in Italy, Southern France and Paris. He is listed in the prestigious Benezit, the encyclopedic directory of artists.

Contact us for pricing and inquiries about this work: 

203.869.3664 or art@cavaliergalleries.com