Art: Highest-Priced Painter

Contemplative art connoisseurs are a waning race, but their favorite painter, Armenian-born Hovsep Pushman, can still turn down an offer of $6,000 for one of his small canvases. Last fortnight, in fact, Artist Pushman did so. The values which move Mr. Pushman to such renunciations include the quality of the homes into which his pictures go, not every rich decor being fit for a Pushman. Of the Pushman values, the artist last week gave glimpses in the first interview he has ever given the press.

In the Pushman studio on Manhattan’s 57th Street, shrouded in a velvety dimness, are all the beautiful things which Artist Pushman loves and exquisitely paints. For 20 years they have been appearing in his still lifes: tiny porcelain vases, lustrous Aegean flasks, Tibetan figurines, pieces of splendid brocade, the yellowed pages of ancient books. In his tallboy, lined with crimson plush, are row upon row of Buddhas, Oriental gods of war, of laughter, or mercy, of unimaginable things. Mr. Pushman says gently:

“Some days when I open the doors they are all smiling at me. Other days they are all frowning and making bad faces. They have had a fight in the night.”

Artist Pushman is 65. He won his first scholarship 51 years ago at the Royal Academy in Constantinople, came with his family to the U.S. when he was 18. He studied in Paris for nine years, there confirmed his devotion to the man he considers the greatest of all still-life painters, Jean Chardin. His luminous, ale-brown eyes flash when he speaks of the exactions of technique, which so many modern artists seem to neglect. Last week he had on his easel what looked like a well-composed impressionist painting, the color masses and emergent figures just right. It represented five weeks’ work—only Stage One in a Pushman.

By faultless technique, but most of all by an extraordinary gift for color harmonies of plum reds, jade greens and opulent blues, he endows each small painting with a kind of finality of mood. Pushman admirers are quieted, looking into the silence he frames for them. He has no interest in the prize shows, none in modern painting or painters. He is one of two painters* who in 117 years have refused election to the National Academy.

In 1932, at Depression’s depth, 16 Pushmans were put on sale at his gallery, the Grand Central Art Galleries in Manhattan. Within 24 hours all 16 were sold at Pushman prices ($3,500 to $10,000). Sometimes called “the highest paid painter per square inch in the U.S.,” Artist Pushman lives quietly with Mrs. Pushman and their two sons in an apartment on Central Park West.

Very rarely Artist Pushman makes a statement about one of his paintings. He did so for a famous Pushman called The Book of Life. “In this picture,” he said, “there are several objects, namely, an iridescent vase containing a fading rose, a figure of a saint from the medieval ages, with a background of an ancient textile, against which rests an open manuscript—the last page of the Book of Life.

“Often I have wished that when my life, like the rose in the vase, reaches its drooping state and I come to the last page of my Book of Life, I may illuminate my page also with golden letters of my joy and contentment that I have lived. The figure of the saint which stands next to the book casts the evening shadow over the last page—my guardian spirit through the coming long night.”

* The other: Edward W. Redfield.