Flying The Colors: The Unseen Treasures Of American Marine Art

Hyannis Port, Mass.

:The collecting world is both more transparent and more opaque than ever before. While unprecedented publishing activity has accompanied the art market's global expansion, many private collections remain resolutely off-limits to prying eyes, sometimes for generations at a time.

Bucking the tide, Hyannis Port dealers Alan Granby and Janice Hyland have collaborated on Flying The Colors: The Unseen Treasures of Nineteenth Century American Marine Art, lifting the curtain on privately held masterworks, both academic and primitive. Owners' identities remain undisclosed — in the interest of confidentiality, not even photo credits are included — a disappointment offset by the authors' rigorous insistence on accurate photographic reproduction. Measuring more than 1 foot square and weighing six pounds, Flying The Colors is, in a word, lavish.

Granby and Hyland's third book is obliquely biographical, suggesting the trajectory of their careers and hinting at some key friendships made and collections built along the way. Former academics who left teaching careers to open an antiques shop in Dennis, Mass., they in 1985 became irretrievably immersed in marine art after buying and restoring the 1849 Hyannis Light overlooking Nantucket Sound, where they now do business by appointment.

Their first book, The Yachtsman's Eye , 2005, presented the collection of the late Glen S. Foster.

"Glen trained us to seek out masterpieces and scrutinize the most finite details of each work," write the authors, who were introduced to the fraternity of marine art collectors and dealers at Richard Bourne's Cape Cod auction gallery in the 1980s. Subsequent friendships with the prominent collectors S. Robert Teitelman and J. Welles Henderson, who paved the way for their Philadelphia Antiques Show debut in 1990, set them on their path to the top.

Their second book, Maritime Maverick: The Collection of William I. Koch , 2006, showcased the holdings of another leading collector and client who owns a house in nearby Osterville, Mass., and was the last American to win the America's Cup race, a title he captured in 1992. Flying The Colors is dedicated to Koch, who contributed in manifold ways.

Flying The Colors is a book that perhaps only Hyland and Granby, with their object files stretching back three decades and their acquaintance with the country's most active private collectors, could have produced. "On the strength of The Yachtsman's Eye and Maritime Maverick , roughly 60 collectors generously sent us transparencies or allowed us to photograph their pieces," Alan explains. In all, 55 artists are represented by 218 paintings and objects, most previously unpublished.