Pocock Fine Art

Fort Lauderdale is known in the yachting world as the Venice of America – it’s home to more than 40,000 yachts and has an incredible 165 miles of waterways. Located only 23 miles north of Miami, the balmy weather is much the same, but the culture of Fort Lauderdale is quite different in many subtle ways. South Florida is known for its grand homes; properties change hands frequently and each new owner tends to build a monstrous home to their specs, only to have it torn down a few short years later and replaced with an even larger dwelling when a new owner comes along. With so much architectural rebirth and constant construction, the prevailing design aesthetic in South Florida is contemporary – new homes, new cars, new art. It’s understandable that the majority of galleries in the area cater to this demographic, but for my fellow collectors of fine art and antiques, it is fortunate that there remains a wonderful gallery that caters to the buyer looking for classic elegance.

Pocock Fine Art & Antiques is located on Las Olas Boulevard, a commercial stretch of restaurants, galleries, and shops that stretches east from downtown Fort Lauderdale towards A1A and the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a beautiful and refreshing location for a gallery devoted to fine art and antiques and in a city quite devoted to progress and the contemporary, it fills an important niche.

Walking into the gallery is like entering a museum, and undoubtedly there are more than enough incredible works lining the walls to fill a respectable museum. While there is an endless supply of art for sale in South Florida specifically marketed to the tourist market, this art most certainly does not fall into that category. With an emphasis on impressionist paintings of the early to mid 20th century, the art and antiques in the Pocock Gallery are fit for the walls and rooms of the most discerning collectors and the gallery is easily in the same league as the best galleries in New York and Europe. The gallery itself is reminiscent of the most luxurious of royal salons, decadent and rich, but at the same time very warm and inviting.

Before I delve too deeply into the histories of some of the incredible pieces in this gallery, I’ll introduce the owner to you. Stuart Pocock was born into the world of art and antiquities – his mother, Pauline, was one of the preeminent period antique dealers in Italy, operating private showrooms in Rome and Milan. With a keen eye for fine English furniture, Georgian silver, and art by 19th century British painters, Pauline Pocock made frequent trips to the British countryside. Her young sons, Stuart and Andrew, often found themselves along for the incredible ride, hunting for treasures and developing a formidable knowledge of art and history. After nearly two very successful decades as a dealer in Italy, Pauline and the family moved across the Atlantic, settling in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Pauline remained an integral and very active part of the gallery until she passed away in 2007, leaving her legacy in the capable hands of her son Stuart.

The first incarnation of the gallery opened in 1980 – three decades later, it is in its third location, the award winning Himarshee Landing Building. Since 2005 Stuart Pocock has been directing the operations of the gallery, and I can safely say that it is in very good hands. Everywhere that I travel, I like to meet good people. “Good” is quite an ambiguous word, but I take it to mean many things; kind, knowledgeable, genuine, honest… Having worked in the fashion industry for long enough, I have honed my senses to quickly identify the good people, because in life they are all too rare and are truly worth surrounding oneself with. In an art world filled with many people of questionable motives and morals, Stuart Pocock manages to be all of these things.

I don’t normally go into elaborate photographic details here, but for those who are interested in my process, this portrait of Stuart Pocock was photographed using natural light through a north facing window. I used a Canon 16-35mm f2.8 L lens, a wide angle zoom lens not typically used for portraits. Despite this…perhaps even because of this (I’ve never been a big fan of playing by the photographic rules) I occasionally enjoy using this lens for portraits. It lends a unique perspective, and in portraiture conveying a subject’s unique personality is the ultimate goal.

Impressionist paintings have always held an important place in my heart and I have not been to many galleries with as impressive a showing of impressionist artists as Pocock. The French impressionist painters were the rebellious, starving artists of their time – revolutionaries who challenged conventional art and defied critics. They experimented with new techniques and immersed themselves in the environments which they painted. Many of them even did their painting outside; a very radical concept, as most artists of the time painted only in their studios! They observed the way light behaved and painted what they observed first hand. Interestingly enough, the impressionists largely disliked photography and it’s instantaneous nature – they set out to produce a subjective image, rather than a flat, black and white image devoid of the constantly changing realities of wind, light, shadows, and movement. The early impressionist artists are inspirational, showing little concern for wealth, fame, or recognition. They painted what they believed in, and forever changed the world of art. As a photographer, I continue to take great influence from the works of impressionist artists.

During my visit to the Pocock Gallery I was lucky enough to see this painting by Antoine Blanchard in the process of being restored. Blanchard was born Marcel Masson in 1910 in a small village in France. He was trained as an artist in Rennes at Ecole des Beaux-Arts and following his studies there, specialized in street and landscape scenes. After moving to Paris in 1932 to study at Ecole Nationale Superieure Des Beaux- Arts, he fell in love with the city’s streets and culture and, of course, a young woman who captured his heart and would ultimately become his wife. Forced away from his art in 1939, he was called into military service to fight in the new world war that had just broken out in Europe. In 1942, alive and well, he was able to return to his wife and painting, and after some years of collecting old photographs of Paris from the turn of the century, he began painting more nostalgic scenes of La Ville-Lumière. For him, this was something of an artistic rebirth, and like many artists of the modern era, Masson chose to take on a new identity, painting under the name of Antoine Blanchard. The name was apparently chosen somewhat at random, picked out of the Paris phone book.

Regardless of how or why he chose his new name, the reinvented artist began to thrive in his new work, creating achingly beautiful paintings that shimmer and glow, capturing Paris in the most poetic of brush strokes. The work is similar in feel to that of Édouard Cortès, but while they were contemporaries, they both developed in their talents separately. By the late 1950′s, Blanchard’s work was in high demand around the world – so high, in fact, that some galleries resorted to a bit of trickery to get “Blanchard” paintings hanging in their galleries. Interestingly, it seems that the real Antoine Blanchard had regionally exclusive deals with certain galleries, leaving many other galleries out of luck when it came to meeting their customers’ demand for his work. Not to be left out of the fun and profit, these galleries simply hired other artists to paint similar paintings and sign them with Blanchard’s name, knowing that the average art collector would be none the wiser. The real Blanchard continued to paint until his death in 1988. Now, decades later and despite Antoine Blanchard having painted many works by his own hand, perhaps only ten to twenty percent of the paintings signed as Blanchard are truly by him.

Many of the copies are equally beautiful, and in recent years have also developed a following of their own and substantial value. Pocock Gallery has one of these copies as well. In the photo above that of the Marcel Masson/Antoine Blanchard painting, the painting ‘in the manner of Antoine Blanchard’ is the second from the left, titled “A View of Notre Dame from Quai St. Michel, Paris” They’re both gorgeous paintings, like everything in the gallery.

I could continue on for many hours about many more of the amazing pieces, all of which I would love to own, but it’s undoubtedly easier for both of us if you simply make a trip to Pocock Fine Art & Antiques or at the very least visit their website.