Spanierman Gallery, LLC at East Hampton is pleased to announce the opening on November 27, 2009 of Little Gems for the Holiday Season . This exhibition presents fifty small-scale works that are ideal for holiday gifts. More affordable than larger examples of equal quality, the selections in this exhibition also provide many opportunities for new collectors.

Since we are able to hold most of these images in our hands—grasping an entire scene at once—they provide us with a sense of mastery over the miniature worlds that unfold before us. This feeling is especially the case in views of water and sky, several of which are featured in the exhibition. The grandeur of a flaming sunset in Alson Skinner Clark's Sea and Sky, California (1936) and the dots of color denoting bathers on a beach in Charles Horwood's At the Shore (1960s) make these works seem sparkling jewels. Images by Clark, Robert Henri, Henry Prellwitz, and Howard Russell Butler convey the way that artists often used small panels, on which they could paint directly, to turn their immediate experiences into artistic conceptions, focusing on patterns of reflected light, simplifying landscapes into a few simple shapes, or accentuating a form or color. For example, Hayley Lever organized Harbor Scene (ca. 1920s) so that the red fishing shack grabs our attention over the rest of the scene.

Artists used small formats to capture quietly observed moments in nature, often drawing from the Tonalist tradition. In Landscape (ca. 1880s) John Francis Murphy zoomed in on a spot of ground, his cropping of trees and land creating an abstract, gently toned arrangement. In Waning Light, Dreaming Egrets (2000), the contemporary landscapist and wildlife painter John Felsing used graphite to create a work that has the look of an old calotype. A hilly ridge blurs into its reflection in the water, eliciting meditation on how separate our vision is from life's realities. The contemporary artist Leonard Green recalls the work of William Merritt Chase and his Tonalist antecedents in glimpses of the Long Island landscape and of Manhattan seen through a hazy overlay, with the result that his works are arrangements of tonal shapes rather than literal representations. Whistlerian interpretations of New York City streets are the domain of Glen Cooper Henshaw in which the artist's pastel colors harmonize with his shaded papers.

Still life is especially amenable to intimate schemes. Paul de Longpré used it for watercolors in which he closely studied the petals of yellow and red roses. Contemporary artist Sarah Lamb created an elegant image of plums, large and small, set into rhythmic balance on a white ground. Contemporary artist Clifford Smith captures the living nature of an iris amid a garden's leaves, expressing his longstanding passion for flowers. A fascination with botany is present in the precise watercolors on calfskin of another contemporary artist, Karen Kluglein, who combines a heightened sense of detail with a sensuous treatment. Light seems to glance off of the crinkled edges of Acer Rubrum (Maple Leaf), (2008) and shine forcefully on the leafage and fruit in Crown of Leaves (Cameo Apple), (2007).

Other works in the show are by Gershon Benjamin, Eliot Candee Clark, Robert Henrion, Edna Hopkins, Charles Salis Kaelin, Ada C. Murphy, Agnes Pelton, Henry Prellwitz, and Amédée Rosier.