About Us

Martha Richardson Fine Art, located at 38 Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay, focuses on the purchase and sale of high quality American and European paintings, drawings and sculpture. Owner Martha Richardson comes to the art market with an extensive background in the field. She studied art history as both an undergraduate and a graduate student, worked as an expert at two auction houses and ran her first gallery for 12 years. Martha actively advises collectors and is frequently consulted for appraisals and evaluations.

Martha has a Master of Arts degree in Italian Renaissance Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She has also completed her Ph.D. coursework and examinations at the same University.

Until 2006, Martha was co-owner of the Richardson-Clarke Gallery. In The Boston

Globe, art critic Nancy Stapen wrote that the Richardson-Clarke Gallery “has shown a flair for exhibiting high-quality works.” While running the gallery, Martha mounted numerous exhibitions including American Painters in Venice, Cape Ann Artists, Artists of New Hampshire, Americans in Paris, Drawings: William Morris Hunt and His Circle, American Still Lifes and The Watercolors of Truman Seymour, among others.

Prior to moving to Boston in 1988, Martha was employed by Sotheby's, New York. She was an Assistant Vice President and expert in the American Painting Department until she left the company to pursue her doctoral studies. While a doctoral student, she continued with the Sotheby's Appraisal Company as a consultant appraiser of American and European Fine Art. At this time, Martha taught in the American Arts Program at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art.

From 1988-1994, Martha was the Director of the Fine Arts Department at Grogan & Company, an auction house then located in Boston. She was responsible for evaluating and cataloguing the American and European paintings, drawings, sculpture and prints that were consigned for sale and for insurance and fair market appraisals of fine art.