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The article focuses on the painters in New York City. Lisbeth Firmin, a painter in a storefront studio in a small town in New York, use to paint the city's street scenes. Firmin shows her work at Michael Ingbar Gallery, where painting and photography by a number of artists with an affinity for architecture is displayed. Ironically, Firmin and most of her coevals tend to remove the masses of people from their paintings, focusing more on mood and structures, whether anonymous dwellings, instantly recognizable landmarks or the formidable skyline. These painters are part of a multifaceted tradition that flowered a century ago when Ashcan School artists like John Sloan limned quotidian life on the Lower East Side and Childe Hassam delighted in celebratory flags fluttering from the facades of fashionable Fifth Avenue. New York's bridges have been a theme of perpetual fascination for painters.

Fleet of foot, noble in stature, both helpmate and playmate to man, the horse for eons has been an object of fascination for artists. Prehistoric illustrators limned equine figures on the walls of caves at Lascaux, Leonardo da Vinci sketched horses and 20th-century artists as diverse as Franz Marc and Susan Rothenberg have found them of abiding interest. For many collectors, however, it is equine sporting art dating from the early 18th century to the present that is of special appeal. William Secord, president of the eponymous New York City gallery, feels the market for equine sporting art may be ready for the fast track. Last year, Secord a specialist in canine art, hopped into the paddock, figuratively speaking and held his first exhibition of horse paintings.

The article informs that hundreds of art collectors will gather in New York this spring, as May 22 to 29 officially has been proclaimed "New York Art Deco Week" in honor of the eighth World Congress on Art Deco. The event will feature walking tours and galas at such fabled sites as the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center and a Jazz Age Harlem nightclub.

Artist Pablo Picasso's "Boy with a Pipe," 1905, broke the world auction record for a painting in May when it sold for $104.2 million at Sotheby's New York. The soporific allegedly flavors the mood of many of Picasso's paintings of this period. The" Boy" had a salubrious effect on other lots included in the sale, establishing new world auction records for Sir Alfred Munnings ( $7.8 million), Jean-Frederic Bazille ( $5.3 million), William Blake ( $3.9 million) and Raoul Dufy ( $3.1 million).

This year marks the golden anniversary of The Winter Antiques Show in New York City. This staple on the calendar was born when members of The East Side House Settlement, its beneficiary, sold a trunk full of vintage couture at an antiques fair and, heady with success, started a show of their own. Over the decades, the show became a fulcrum for other events. One constant is the participation of Elinor Gordon, a Villanova, Pennsylvania, dealer of Chinese export porcelain. Gordon recalls selling an Order of Cincinnati plate years ago for $2,600, then watching it fetch $44,850 at an auction in 2002.