The New York artist Duncan Hannah has spent his accomplished career painting rich historical scenes marked with desire. His subjects are often cinematic, ranging from Hitchcock starlet Nova Pilbeam to French gangsters to the finely mustached William Powell. He also has a fondness for literary portraits, English schoolboy life, and the odd bit of erotica.

His new exhibition at J. Graham and Sons, the venerable Madison Avenue gallery, is distinguished by paintings of another recurring passion: classic roadsters. The Wolseley is the subject of The Mystery Road, driving across a stone bridge with what seems like suspicious intention. That should come as no surprise, it's the same car that appears in early Hitchcock thrillers like The Thirty Nine Steps. The boxy black car is anonymous with a touch of menace—it looks like there may be an abducted heroine in the back seat. Hannah is a longtime devotee of mid-century British Grand Prix, when drivers raced around pastoral tracks in Vanwalls and Aston Martins. His portraits of racers show cars speeding by alone—there's a private joy of speed, a liberating sense of motion.

Hannah gets inspiration from old English racing magazines that he's subscribed to since he was a boy. For more immediate inspiration he attends the vintage car race in Lime Rock, near his home in Connecticut. Every Labor Day weekend beautiful cars race along the Housatonic River. 'If a landscape needs a protagonist,' he told me, 'what could be better than a Jaguar XKE?'

—David Coggins

Duncan Hannah's works are on view September 7 – October 9, 2007 at James Graham & Sons