Find Arader Galleries Exhibiting at the Most Prestigious Art and Antiques Shows From Coast to Coast!

Arader Galleries has been busy exhibiting at simultaneous art and antiques shows in New York and Los Angeles. Lori Cohen, the director of our gallery in Philadelphia, designed and managed our booth at The Winter Antiques Show, held at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City; While Stephanie Waskins represented Arader Galleries at the Los Angeles Art Show. Both were certainly well attended and an experience not to be missed next year!

Arader Galleries booth at the LA Art Show
January 20^th-24^th 2010


Arader Galleries booth at the Winter Antiques Show
January 22^nd – 31^st 2010

For more information about this and next years shows please follow these links;

Winter Antiques Show: www.winterantiquesshow.com

FADA Los Angeles Art Show: www.laartshow.com

Extraordinary Wall Map of the Americas

Aaron Arrowsmith’s “Map of America” (1804) is one of the rarest and most significant maps he ever produced. An acclaimed British cartographer, Aaron Arrowsmith drafted accurate, detailed charts that earned him the titles of Hydrographer to the King of England and Geographer to the Prince of Wales, extremely important distinctions during an era when Britain ruled the seas. One of the first great British cartographers of North America, Arrowsmith introduced a new standard of excellence in mapmaking in the late eighteenth century and almost single-handedly made London the center for the cartographic trade. Arrowsmith built his great success on his ability to attract both commercial and general viewers through his combination of visual and scientific appeal.

This extraordinary wall map, engraved onto 4 sheets, depicts North and South America. It also shows the oceans that stretch between the Sandwich (Hawaii) and Cape Verdes Islands. Responding to the public’s demand for up-to-date maps of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase, Arrowsmith drew on a number of sources in order to create his much heralded “Map of America.” Building on his earlier map of North America, “A Map Exhibiting all the New Discoveries in the Interior Parts of North America” (1795), Arrowsmith made use of the accounts of Cook, Vancouver, Mears, and La Perouse in order to create his updated 1804 wall chart. Though Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and Alexander von Humboldt had not yet concluded their own expeditions of the continent, Arrowsmith was, nevertheless, able to incorporate the recent findings of Alexander Mackenzie. In 1789, Mackenzie had been commissioned by the North-West Fur Company of Canada (a rival of the Hudson Bay Company) to explore the Rocky Mountains and the Canadian Arctic. Mackenzie’s tour of some 2,990 miles was achieved in the astonishing period of 120 days, from Slave Lake to the Arctic shore and back. Mackenzie’s atlas, which was published with the account of Vancouver’s Pacific voyages in 1798, provided much of the coastal detail for Arrowsmith’s highly accurate depictions of British-controlled western Canada and Russian Alaska.

Please contact Arader Galleries San Francisco (tel: 415.788.5115) with any additional questions about this amazing map.

Arader Galleries at Los Angeles Art Show

A View of Huaheine

John Cleveley (1747-86)

Arader Galleries is happy to announce that we are participating in the 15th annual Los Angeles Art show! Hope you will stop by to see our extraordinary collection of antique prints and original paintings!

The Los Angeles Art Show
Los Angeles Convention Center
West Hall A, 1201 South Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, CA 90015

Opening Night Gala:
Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 7 - 10:30pm
2010 proceeds raise funds and awareness for two exceptional non-profits: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), LACMA's Art Museum Council and its Prints & Drawings Council, and Inner-City Arts.

General Show Hours:
Thursday, January 21, 2010, 11am - 8pm
Friday, January 22, 2010, 11am - 8pm
Saturday, January 23, 2010, 11am - 8pm
Sunday, January 24, 2010, 11am - 5pm

Developing California

Carleton Watkins
Three Brothers
Yosemite, CA
c. 1861


Thirty years ago, in the fall of 1979, Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco opened with an exhibition of photographs by noted nineteenth century photographer Carleton Watkins (1829-1916). Those original pieces have since been placed at auction and acquired by different museums nationwide, yet recently twenty-four of Watkins’s photographs, made between 1865 and 1881, were discovered and exhibited at Fraenkel Gallery in Carleton Watkins: Discoveries.

Carleton Watkins was born in upstate New York and arrived in San Francisco in 1851 during the gold rush. Watkins became one of the most important photographers of the nineteenth century, beginning his practice in 1861. He became interested in landscape photography and opened “Yosemite Gallery” on Montgomery Street. Watkins experimented with a number of developing photographic techniques of the time, favoring the “Mammoth Camera,” which used large glass plate negatives and a stereographic camera. Famous for his series of photographs of Yosemite Valley, these glass plates, cameras, tripods, chemicals and equipment had to be carried up and down the mountains, a monumental feat in its self. The contact albumen prints on display at the Fraenkel Gallery, with some exposures taking up to an hour each, include many of these Yosemite images as well as a diptych panorama of San Francisco and images taken in Menlo Park.

Further highlighting the development of California is the exhibition, Incompletely Visible: The Legacy of the Bay Area Missions at The Society of California Pioneers in San Francisco. This exhibition investigates the arrival of Spanish Missionaries to California’s Pacific Coast and the integration of their teachings and practices with those of the Native Americans. The exhibition included photographs of the 21 California Missions, including Mission San Antonio (1880), Mission Santa Barbara (1880) and Mission Santa Clara (1855) by Carleton Watkins; as well as maps, models, clothing, textiles and religious pieces and imagery. The arrangements of these pieces aim to develop the history, purpose and practices of the Missionaries and their effect and influences over the Native Americans. The Spanish Missionaries attempted to convert the Native Americans to Christianity and brought new livestock, fruits, grains and industry; while at the same time introduced diseases that killed thousands and destroyed their cultural traditions and practices.

These two exhibitions, through the use different mediums, inform viewers on the long history and development of California, and the influences that people, culture and technological advancements have had as the state developed. Arader Galleries in San Francisco is proud to have maps of early and modern-day California and engravings of early Native Americans and California Missions.

Holiday Schedule

Thursday, December 24th (Christmas Eve) –
Open 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Friday, December 25th (Christmas Day) and Saturday, December 26th – Closed

Monday 12/28 through Wednesday 12/30 – Open, regular hours

Thursday 12/31/09 (New Year’s Eve) – Open 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Friday 1/1/10 (New Year’s Day) – Closed

Saturday 1/2/10 – Open, regular hours

Happy Holidays!

Charity Shopping Event - December 10th

Arader Galleries Charity Shopping Event
December 10, 2009
11 am – 7 pm

Don’t miss this chance this find a truly unique gift while supporting your favorite charity!
Arader Galleries is celebrating the holidays with their first annual charity shopping event. 20% of any purchase you make during the event will go to the charity of your choice.

For inspiration on gifting art, visit our previous blog post on this topic.

Location: 432 and 435 Jackson Street, Historic Jackson Square, San Francisco
Please call 415.788.5115 for more information.

Botanical Mezzotints by Thornton

The Snowdrop by Dr. Robert John Thornton

There are many different techniques of printmaking from woodcut to aquatint, but only one style, mezzotint, allows the engraver to produce finite shades of gray and subtle details for “smoother transition between line and shade.” As the article, Made in the Shade, in the November 2009 Arts & Antiques magazine states, mezzotint is a printmaking technique developed in 1642 in the Netherlands by Ludwig von Siegen, who served as an aid to nobles of the Holy Roman Empire. In the mezzotint process, the engraver creates a very detailed and luxurious print by pressing a rocker, a chisel-like tool with evenly spaced teeth onto copper plate to create peaks and valleys. Mezzotints start black and work their way lighter through this process. When finished with the engraving, the engraver “scrapes and burnishes the surface to shape the image” bringing forth the desired image from the background. Through the use of color, the image comes alive as the ink sinks deep into the valley of the copper plates and the black of the peaks creates the lines and shadows.

The mezzotint technique traveled across Europe and became widely popular in England in the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. It was at this time, in the late eighteen century that English physician and botanical writer Dr. Robert John Thornton began engraving and printing a series of botanical illustrations using the mezzotint technique. Assembling the finest flower painters to paint original designs for the engravings, the series, Temple of Flora, was unsurpassed as a botanical document of the Romantic era. Mezzotint was a popular engraving technique in England because it was a faster process and less expensive than line engravings and other more intensive forms of printing. Arader Galleries in San Francisco is proud to exhibit Dr. Robert John Thornton’s mezzotint engravings from the Temple of Flora.

Thornton began to indulge his lifelong love for botany in 1799 when he began the engraving and printing process for the Temple of Flora, which includes five frontispieces, portraits and allegorical compositions with thirty-two plates of flowers. As with all of his brilliantly colored plates, in The Snowdrop, the blue, orange and white flowers stand vividly in the foreground against rolling, snow covered hills behind. This whimsical landscape engraving, in excellent condition, shows the range of tone and shade that the mezzotint process brings to an image, while the coloring and background adds to the dramatic velvety effect. Arader Galleries currently has a wide selection of Dr. Robert John Thornton’s mezzotints from The Temple of Flora available. For more information, please visit www.aradersf.com or call 415.788.5115.