Levi Wells Prentice

"Gooseberries, " Levi Wells Prentice, Hudson River School Forest Still Life

circa 1899

Everett Lloyd Bryant (1864 - 1945) Floral Bouquet Still Life Oil on canvas 30 x 25 inches Signed lower right; signed on the reverse and on stretc...

Albert Swinden (1901 - 1961) Still Life of Fruit, 1937 Oil on canvas 18 x 30 inches Provenance: Graham Gallery, New York Albert Swinden (1901–1961) was an English-born American abstract painter. He was one of the founders of the American Abstract Artists, and he created significant murals as part of the Federal Art Project. Albert Swinden was born in Birmingham, England in 1901. When he was seven, he moved with his family to Canada, and in 1919 he immigrated to the United States. He lived in Chicago, where he studied for about a year and a half at the Art Institute. He then relocated to New York City, where his art education continued briefly at the National Academy of Design. He soon changed schools again, to the Art Students League, which he attended from 1930 to 1934. He studied with Hans Hofmann and gained an appreciation for Synthetic Cubism and Neoplasticism. According to painter and printmaker George McNeil, Swinden "could have influenced Hofmann ... He was working with very, very simple planes, not in this sort of Cubistic manner. Swinden was working synthetically at this time." While still a student, Swinden began teaching at the Art Students League, in 1932. Swinden married Rebecca Palter (1912–1998), from New York. Their daughter, Alice Swinden Carter, also became an artist. Carter, who attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, received an award from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston for her large sculptures. Swinden was hired for the Federal Art Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and he is best known for the murals which he painted as part of that project. In 1935, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia attended the opening of the inaugural exhibit at the Federal Art Project Gallery, accompanied by Audrey McMahon, New York regional director for the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project. Among the works on display was Abstraction, a sketch by Swinden; it was the design for a mural planned for the College of the City of New York. A newspaper account described it as consisting of "brightly colored T-squares, triangles and rulers in horizontal, vertical and diagonal positions". La Guardia asked what it was, and upon being told it was a mural design, he said he didn't know what it depicted. Someone joked that it could be a map of Manhattan. The displeased mayor stated that "if that's art, I belong to Tammany Hall." (Tammany Hall, which the Republican mayor referenced, was the New York Democratic Party political society.) Fearing that the mayor's negative attitude could jeopardize the future of abstract art within the Federal Art Project, McMahon dispatched an assistant to summon an artist who could speak to the mayor in defense of abstraction. The assistant returned with Arshile Gorky. Swinden played an important role in the founding of the American Abstract Artists. In 1935, he met with three friends, Rosalind Bengelsdorf, her future husband Byron Browne, and Ibram Lassaw, with the goal of exhibiting together. The group grew and started meeting in Swinden's studio, which adjoined those of Balcomb and Gertrude Greene...

Marsden Hartley Lemons and Pear, circa 1922-23 Oil on canvas 9 x 10 3/4 inches Provenance: Adelaide Shaffer Kuntz, Bronxville (Hartley’s friend and patron) Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York (acquired from the above) Private Collection, Stamford, Connecticut (acquired from the above) Barridoff Galleries, Portland, Maine, April 7, 1984, Lot 29 (as Still Life with Pear and Lemons) Richard Ward Foster (acquired at above sale) Sotheby's New York, American Art, October 6, 2017, Lot 32 Private Collection (acquired from the above) Exhibited: (possibly) Kantstrasse, Berlin, Private showing in artist’s studio, 1923. (possibly) New York, Bertha Schaefer Gallery, Still Life Painting by European and American Painters, 1944. Born in Lewiston, Maine, Marsden Hartley became one of the most famous early modernist artists of twentieth-century American art, known for landscapes, still lifes, and some portraits. His painting showed a focus on monumental shapes, especially clouds and landscape forms, and his unique style has been described by critic Sadakichi Hartmann as "an extreme and up-to-date impressionism" and "emerging modernism that evolved through Impressionism". (Gerdts 291) He had a lonely, insecure childhood because his mother died when he was eight years old, and he was raised by an older sister when his father left to remarry. He studied art in Cleveland, Ohio and then in 1898 went to the Chase School in New York and at the National Academy of Design. He continued to spend much time in Maine painting landscapes, and by 1909 had his first exhibition, which was held at New York Gallery 291, run by Alfred Stieglitz. There he became involved with a social circle of modernists that included Georgia O'Keeffe, Arthur Dove, and John Marin. In 1912, he first went to Europe where he had further exposure to modernism, and from 1913 to 1915 he was in Germany. In Paris, he experimented with Cezanne-like still lifes and was befriended by Gertrude Stein. In Germany, he was influenced by Expressionism, and especially by military pageantry. It is said that his greatest contribution to early 20th-century American modernism has been his brilliant synthetic military icons known as German Officer Portraits. He developed a close homosexual relationship with a handsome young Prussian officer who was killed in World War I. Being encouraged by Stieglitz to explore American subjects, Hartley turned to American Indian objects...

Edward Millman (1907 - 1964) Candelabra, 1962 Signed lower right; titled and dated on the reverse Oil on canvas 41 3/4 x 31 1/2 inches Provenance: The ...

Nicholas Alden Brooks Still Life with Pink Ewer and Sheet Music, 1891 Signed and dated lower right Oil on canvas 20 1/8 x 16 inches Considerable mystery surrounds the name Nicholas Alden Brooks. Other than having been active in New York City between 1880 and 1904, very little is known about the artist. There are no records of any art societies showing him as a member or his having participated in any exhibits. The name Brooks, in fact, could possibly be a pseudonym for Robert Fullington, whose name appears on theatrical memorabilia in Brookss trompe loeil still-life paintings. William Harnett...

Suzanne Lalique The Tailor Shop, 1929 Signed and dated upper left Oil on canvas 13 x 16 inches Suzanne Lalique was born in 1892, the daughter of René Lalique and Alice Ledru. She wa...

Signed lower right & dated 1888.

George Harvey was born in 1800 in Tottenham, England but moved to the United states at 20 years old and spent several years in the west before he established himself in New York City...

Signed lower left and dated 1894. Edward C. Leavitt, born in 1842, has been described as "Providence, Rhode Island's leading still-life painter" in the late 19th Century. (Zellman...

During her lifetime, Davis was best known for her exquisitely-painted floral still lifes, which she exhibited to much acclaim in New York from the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s. As an a...

Signed lower left. Edward Chalmers Leavitt, artist, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, March 9, 1842, the son of Rev. Jonathan and Charlotte Esther (Stearns) Leavitt. His patern...

Oracle by Ben Weiner, American (1980) Oil on Canvas, signed verso Size: 64 x 96 in. (162.56 x 243.84 cm)