Highlights

Fine Art Gallery in Bedford, PA

19th Century Fine Art Legacy

The standard definition of a fine art gallery is a room or building in which visual art is displayed. A lot of times people use the terms fine art gallery and art museum interchangeably. Sometimes this is appropriate, but here in Bedford, Pennsylvania, we have the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art (SAMA) and, separately, the Bedford Fine Art Gallery. Joan and I are part of SAMA and we enjoy helping to create programing and exhibitions of art for the local community. Bedford Fine Art Gallery is; however, our sole venture and we are proud to have a great many works of art from many well listed artists, that are for sale to all art lovers.

Joan and I would have fit in well in the Victorian era, when commercial fine art galleries were at their peak. People back then wanted to own a piece of cultural heritage, as well as enjoy owning an aesthetically pleasing painting! We stick to those values and our customers have hundreds of pieces of fine art to fall in love with at Bedford Fine Art Gallery.

Many places today are referred to as art galleries, but these establishments do not maintain the high standards of a traditional fine art gallery. Too many times, people today are familiar with an art gallery that primarily sells prints, posters, and cheap frames. To us, there really is not a distinction between buying machine produced items there or at a “big box store.”

Some art galleries do have original works of art by local or regional artists; however, they may be taking advantage of these contemporary artists. Some fine art galleries today, for example, may charge the local or regional artists for exhibiting works at their gallery (these art galleries are typically referred to as a “Vanity Gallery”).

At Bedford Fine Art Gallery, it took us many years until we accepted works from contemporary artists to sell.

Our first love is Victorian art from the 19th and early 20th century, but we have also discovered contemporary artists who have the same talent and skills as the traditional artists.

A long time ago, people could only enjoy a fine art gallery in major cities, such as New York, London, or Paris. Today, thanks to the internet and our website, we are able to reach out to people all around the world (from our brick-and-mortar 1889 Victorian home in the small historic town of Bedford, Pennsylvania).

Our fine art gallery maintains the highest standards and our art is the best-of-the-best. Amazon, for example, selected Bedford Fine Art Gallery to obtain original 19th century paintings for a movie that they were filming during the pandemic. Amazon obviously could have found 19th century original fine art paintings at other businesses; however, they choose us (and were very pleased with the quality of the paintings for the back-drop of the movie). Another example of recognition of the quality of our art happened during a recent phone call with Sotheby’s. Long story short, Sotheby’s asked if we would team with them to sell our fine art through a buy-now market-place they established. At the time of writing this article, it has only been a couple months and we have only placed a few pieces on the Sotheby’s site, but we sold two paintings (the first one went to a customer in Singapore and the second one to a customer in Florida).

We have spent over 30 years developing our relationships with museums, collectors, art experts, restoration specialists, estates, and all art-lovers in general. We are a different type of fine art gallery. A lot of times, people think original 19th and early 20th century paintings are “dark” and they see examples of this at other art galleries and auction houses. At Bedford Fine Art Gallery, our paintings are how the artist intended them to be viewed. For example, we have the old varnish removed and the painting is professionally cleaned, as needed. We only get great quality pieces of fine art, but this simple professional cleaning of the painting makes a huge difference in colors, depth, subtle atmospheric affects, etc.

A lot of times today, a so-called fine art gallery does not have much of an internet presence. At Bedford Fine Art Gallery, we work very hard to make sure our customers get the best experience possible at the brick-and-mortar and on our website. Many years ago, when we started our fine art gallery, we set up our own photo studio. Joan takes all of the photographs of the fine art, in our photo studio. This allows us to get the most representative image of each piece of art and we never photoshop anything. Everyone loves their internet experience, as most of our sales are from folks that were not able to visit our fine art gallery.

We have a passion that drives us and we strive to be the most honest fine art gallery in the world! Our customers are the best and their testimonials, about their experience with our fine art gallery, tell other potential customers all they need to know about us and our fine art gallery!

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