Setting an artist’s world record during the 2015 Jackson Hole Art Auction, Jenness Cortez returns with new work celebrating history’s famed Western artists Written by
Laura Zuckerman
“By depicting artworks in her compositions, Cortez underscores a classic paradox of painting: the painting as a ‘window’ into an imagined space and as a physical object — both a metaphysical presence and a material entity. Cortez chooses to utilize her talent for realism to illuminate the ordinary.” — Trailside Galleries
In
a quiet corner of upstate New York, Jenness Cortez is creating paintings
that require as much classically trained talent as they do thought and research about the historical Western figures, events and artistic works at hand. A signature of her work is a painting within a painting, and Cortez often chooses historic pieces that evoke what she terms the cinematic quality of the American West. The works are always evocative of her layered reading and rendering of subjects that range from a Yosemite scene produced by Albert Bierstadt to famed bronzes by Frederic Remington. Such items are included in Four American Visionaries, the expansive acrylic-on-
mahogany panel featuring the interior of a Western home in which two Bierstadts, Remington’s Bronc Buster, a Charles Russell sculpture and one of Thomas Moran’s sweeping depictions of the Grand Canyon are subtly arranged in a sitting room tableau. The work exhibits remarkable attention to detail and consistency of theme. Left: Tools of the Trade | Acrylic on Mahogany Panel | 8 x 24 inches 148 WA
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Home on the Range | Acrylic on Mahogany Panel | 34 x 41 inches 2016 Jackson Hole Art Auction Entry
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Four American Visionaries fetched $128,700 at the Jackson Hole Art Auction last September, setting a world record for
Four American Visionaries Acrylic on Mahogany Panel | 33 x 40 inches
the artist and introducing to a general audience what was already well known to gallerists and collectors: Cortez is an
age by Cortez. She is among artists selected for Top Tier, the
established star in the Western art constellation.
premier competition that boosts anticipation surrounding
Her rise in that genre has been relatively recent, but
the Jackson Hole Art Auction. Chosen by invitation only,
Cortez’s visual narratives had already gained a following and
the contemporary artists in this select group hold exemplary
critical acclaim before she was urged several years ago to sub-
auction records. This year’s contest, which awards a $10,000
mit a painting to The Russell, the annual extravaganza that
cash prize to the artist whose work is of significant merit,
benefits the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana.
will be judged by the curators of such august institutions as
The invitation was tied to petitions by Joe Masterson,
the Gilcrease Museum, the Eiteljorg Museum of American
longtime member of the museum’s board. Masterson first
Indians and Western Art, and the Crystal Bridges Museum
encountered Cortez’s pieces at a gallery in Naples, Florida,
of American Art.
and he recognized excellence when he saw it. “I was very impressed with the quality of her work and
including Z.S. Liang, Mian Situ and Tucker Smith — is titled
how she articulates the different items in the story she is
Home on the Range and features an interior scene with a natu-
trying to tell,” Masterson says, adding that the technique
ral stone fireplace. Over the mantel hangs a completed version
employed by Cortez of placing paintings by celebrated artists
of a painting that was left unfinished because of the untimely
within paintings is equivalent to a paean.
death of illustrator-turned-artist Frank Tenney Johnson. His
“What she’s trying to do with her masterful renderings and her in-depth research is honor the artist,” he says. And there is much to honor in an original and in an hom-
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Cortez’s entry for the competition — which taps talents
painting, Somewhere on the Range, a nocturne featuring a cowboy on horseback, strongly appealed to Cortez. “I like the poetry of this image. The painting was seven-
eighths finished before he became ill and died rather suddenly [of spinal meningitis in 1939],” says Cortez. “I am finishing it as I believe he would have finished it, so he and I are collaborating.” The 2016 auction, brought to the upscale northwest Wyoming town by Trailside Galleries and Gerald Peters Gallery on September 16 and 17, includes a dreamy N.C. Wyeth, He Rode Away Following a Dim Trail Among the Sage, and a mist-drenched scene of a hunting bear by Robert Bateman, Above the Rapids — Gulls and Grizzly. Maryvonne Leshe, Jackson Hole Art Auction and Trailside Galleries partner, successfully sought to represent Cortez at Trailside in a relationship that has fostered mutual delight. She considers Cortez an inspired artist who is also a serious-minded person and businesswoman. And Leshe has been gratified by collectors’ enthusiasm for Cortez’s work, an admiration that led Four American Visionaries to break through the $100,000 ceiling at last year’s sale. It is rare for a female Western artist to command such sums, but Cortez is that woman and artist, says Leshe. “She’s filling an important niche in the gallery. Trailside tries to bring forward the best quality work, and she’s been a
Window on the West Acrylic on Mahogany Panel | 42 x 60 inches
An Autumn Romance Acrylic on Mahogany Panel | 24 x 20 inches
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terrific addition to the roster,� she says.
Alluring Acrylic on Mahogany Panel | 40 x 30 inches
Collectors never tire of gazing at a Cortez, as it nearly
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always results in perceiving a new dimension in the work.
ists and her partner in life and work, husband Leonard
For example, tomes are artfully placed throughout the
Perlmutter — the other half of Perlmutter Gallery in Averill,
interior and refer to historical Western events or figures,
New York — have pointed to the path she ultimately fol-
adding meaning.
lowed in her career, and yet, set her free to choose.
Cortez has worked in concert with muses and mentors
When Cortez was a teenager, a neighbor in the woods
for much of her life. Her parents, teachers, artists, galler-
of southern Indiana agreed to give her art lessons. That
neighbor, Dutch painter Antonius Raemaekers, was among
“I have a different way of telling a story than just illus-
mentors, including her parents, who were enamored with
trating an episode from history or relying on a generic motif
the visual world and aided Cortez in seeing people and her
about the West. I’m really trying to say something more than
surroundings in the full yet intimate fashion that informs the
what the observer already knows. It is not something that can
eye of an artist.
be captured in words; it is seen. There are people out there
Cortez is a graduate of the Herron School of Art and
who respond to this and they are like souls.”
Design in Indianapolis, Indiana, and furthered her formal
Collector Rusty Henderson is one of them. He has been
studies under Arnold Blanch at the Art Students League of
acquiring art for 45 years and he abides by the advice once
New York. She sold her first painting as an adolescent to
handed down by an expert.
an admiring Indiana teacher, and it is not an exaggeration
“There are 10 rules to buying art. The first nine are,
to say her work has been selling steadily, and sometimes
you need to like it. The tenth rule is, the artist needs to
spectacularly, ever since. For two decades, the artist was
have earned it,” he says. “When I saw Jenness’s work, all 10
known mostly for her sporting and horse paintings. In the
requirements were met. I love what I’m seeing, and there’s no
mid-1990s, Cortez turned to landscapes and, more recently,
question she’s earned her ability.
made Western themes her primary focus. The essence beneath the image is what empowers Cortez’s paintings, and that degree of insight has served as a
“It’s no easy task for her to produce what she’s producing,” Henderson adds. “She has to be enormously passionate about doing it.”
kind of calling for the artist. “The idea of craft as a spiritual work is very important to
Laura Zuckerman lives and writes in Salmon, Idaho. Her
me,” she says. “I find it builds contact with a reality that is not
work has appeared in such publications as The New York
often visible and it is important to communicate that.
Times Magazine and Chicago Tribune.
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