Meet One of the Art World's Fastest-Rising Stars

Anna Weyant commands 7 figures for her paintings these days
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 2, 2022 7:45 AM CDT

If you happened across some of Anna Weyant's paintings in the summer of 2019, displayed on a beach towel at a Hamptons art fair and going for about $400 each, it would have been a wise investment to scoop one up. Because as the Wall Street Journal explains in a profile, the 27-year-old Weyant is currently one of the fast-rising stars in the art world. Her paintings—including "Summertime," which you can see here—now sell for north of $1 million at Christie's and Sotheby's. As Kelly Crow of the Journal writes: Weyant "is now internationally coveted for her paintings of vulnerable girls and mischievous women in sharply lit, old-master hues." Or this shortcut: "Imagine Botticelli as a millennial." The waiting list to buy one of her paintings is about 200 names long.

The story traces Weyant's rise: The native of Calgary, Canada, grew up with little interest in painting, but gravitated to the medium at the Rhode Island School of Design. Feeling vulnerable and scared in her new country, Weyant painted vulnerable and scared women and girls. Upon graduation, she was noticed by the right people on Instagram, including art critic Jerry Saltz, and helped along "by a savvy handful of artists, dealers, and advisers." One aspect of her life "being scrutinized in art circles," writes Crow, is that for the past year she has been dating 77-year-old Larry Gagosion, founder of the influential Gagosian gallery. Amid all the attention, Weyant continues to paint away in her quiet Manhattan apartment. After a big sale at Christie's, "people kept congratulating me,” she says, but "all I felt was pressure.” (Read the full story, which digs into Weyant's challenge of translating her meteoric rise into a sustained career.)

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