Joseph O'Sickey

Mountain and Sky, Deer Island, Maine

1985

Untitled Watercolor on paper, c,. 1890 Unsigned Provenance: Estate of the artist Image/Sheet size: 3 1/4 x 4 1/8 inches From Wikipedia "Francis Augustus Lathrop (June 22, 1849 – Oct...

Horses Leaving the Barn Watercolor on paper, 1940 Signed and dated lower left corner (see photo) Condition: Excellent Image: 14 1/2 x 21” Frame: 25” x 31” Provenance; Associated American Artists, New York (see photo of label) Mamdouha and Elmer Holmes Bobst Displayed in an original wormy chestnut frame with OP3 Acrylic. Most probably from the AAA Dehn watercolor exhibition of 1940. Vintage original framing chosen by the artist. Note: Elmer Holmes Bobst (1884–1978) was an American businessman and philanthropist who worked in the pharmaceutical industry. His wife, Mamdouha, was also well known philanthropist. Bobst was born in Lititz, Pennsylvania. He aspired to become a doctor, but instead, he taught himself pharmacology. After his wife Ethel composed his interview letter, he became manager and treasurer of the Hoffman-LaRoche Chemical Works by 1920. When Bobst retired from the company in 1944, he was one of the nation's highest paid corporate executives. In 1945 he took charge of the ailing William Warner Company (later Warner–Lambert) and he remained board chairman until his retirement. Bobst had close connections to President Dwight Eisenhower, but was also a close friend of President Richard Nixon. Note: In 1940, the year of this watercolor, Dehn and Elizabeth Timmerman visited Waterville, MN on their way to Colorado Sprint, Colorado where Dehn was to teach lithography and watercolor. This watercolor is obviously a view of the area around Waterville. Adolf Dehn, American Watercolorist and Printmaker, 1895-1968 Adolf Dehn was an artist who achieved extraordinary artistic heights, but in a very particular artistic sphere—not so much in oil painting as in watercolor and lithography. Long recognized as a master by serious print collectors, he is gradually gaining recognition as a notable and influential figure in the overall history of American art. In the 19th century, with the invention of the rotary press, which made possible enormous print runs, and the development of the popular, mass-market magazines, newspaper and magazine illustration developed into an artistic realm of its own, often surprisingly divorced from the world of museums and art exhibitions, and today remains surprisingly overlooked by most art historians. Dehn in many regards was an outgrowth of this world, although in an unusual way, since as a young man he produced most of his illustrative work not for popular magazines, such as The Saturday Evening Post, but rather for radical journals, such as The Masses or The Liberator, or artistic “little magazines” such as The Dial. This background established the foundation of his outlook, and led later to his unique and distinctive contribution to American graphic art. If there’s a distinctive quality to his work, it was his skill in introducing unusual tonal and textural effects into his work, particularly in printmaking but also in watercolor. Jackson Pollock seems to have been one of many notable artists who were influenced by his techniques. Early Years, 1895-1922 For an artist largely remembered for scenes of Vienna and Paris, Adolf Dehn’s background was a surprising one. Born in Waterville, Minnesota, on November 22, 1895, Dehn was the descendent of farmers who had emigrated from Germany and homesteaded in the region, initially in a one-room log cabin with a dirt floor. Adolf’s father, Arthur Clark Dehn, was a hunter and trapper who took pride that he had no boss but himself, and who had little use for art. Indeed, during Adolf’s boyhood the walls of his bedroom and the space under his bed were filled with the pelts of mink, muskrats and skunks that his father had killed, skinned and stretched on drying boards. It was Adolf’s mother, Emilie Haas Dehn, a faithful member of the German Lutheran Evangelical Church, who encouraged his interest in art, which became apparent early in childhood. Both parents were ardent socialists, and supporters of Eugene Debs. In many ways Dehn’s later artistic achievement was clearly a reaction against the grinding rural poverty of his childhood. After graduating from high school in 1914 at the age of 19—an age not unusual in farming communities at the time, where school attendance was often irregular—Dehn attended the Minneapolis School of Art from 1914 to 1917, whose character followed strongly reflected that of its director, Munich-trained Robert Kohler, an artistic conservative but a social radical. There Dehn joined a group of students who went on to nationally significant careers, including Wanda Gag (later author of best-selling children’s books); John Flanagan (a sculptor notable for his use of direct carving) Harry Gottlieb (a notable social realist and member of the Woodstock Art Colony), Elizabeth Olds (a printmaker and administrator for the WPA), Arnold Blanch (landscape, still-life and figure painter, and member of the Woodstock group), Lucille Lunquist, later Lucille Blanch (also a gifted painter and founder of the Woodstock art colony), and Johan Egilrud (who stayed in Minneapolis and became a journalist and poet). Adolf became particularly close to Wanda Gag (1893-1946), with whom he established an intense but platonic relationship. Two years older than he, Gag was the daughter of a Bohemian artist and decorator, Anton Gag, who had died in 1908. After her husband died, Wanda’s mother, Lizzi Gag, became a helpless invalid, so Wanda was entrusted with the task of raising and financially supporting her six younger siblings. This endowed her with toughness and an independent streak, but nonetheless, when she met Dehn, Wanda was Victorian and conventional in her artistic taste and social values. Dehn was more socially radical, and introduced her to radical ideas about politics and free love, as well as to socialist publications such as The Masses and The Appeal to Reason. Never very interested in oil painting, in Minneapolis Dehn focused on caricature and illustration--often of a humorous or politically radical character. In 1917 both Dehn and Wanda won scholarships to attend the Art Students League, and consequently, in the fall of that year both moved to New York. Dehn’s art education, however, ended in the summer of 1918, shortly after the United States entered World War I, when he was drafted to serve in the U. S. Army. Unwilling to fight, he applied for status as a conscientious objector, but was first imprisoned, then segregated in semi-imprisonment with other Pacifists, until the war ended. The abuse he suffered at this time may well explain his later withdrawal from taking political stands or making art of an overtly political nature. After his release from the army, Dehn returned to New York where he fell under the spell of the radical cartoonist Boardman Robinson and produced his first lithographs. He also finally consummated his sexual relationship with Wanda Gag. The Years in Europe: 1922-1929 In September of 1921, however, he abruptly departed for Europe, arriving in Paris and then moving on to Vienna. There in the winter of 1922 he fell in love with a Russian dancer, Mura Zipperovitch, ending his seven-year relationship with Wanda Gag. He and Mura were married in 1926. It was also in Vienna that he produced his first notable artistic work. Influenced by European artists such as Jules Pascin and Georg Grosz, Dehn began producing drawings of people in cafes, streets, and parks, which while mostly executed in his studio, were based on spontaneous life studies and have an expressive, sometimes almost childishly wandering quality of line. The mixture of sophistication and naiveté in these drawings was new to American audiences, as was the raciness of their subject matter, which often featured pleasure-seekers, prostitutes or scenes of sexual dalliance, presented with a strong element of caricature. Some of these drawings contain an element of social criticism, reminiscent of that found in the work of George Grosz, although Dehn’s work tended to focus on humorous commentary rather than savagely attacking his subjects or making a partisan political statement. Many Americans, including some who had originally been supporters of Dehn such as Boardman Robinson, were shocked by these European drawings, although George Grocz (who became a friend of the artist in this period) admired them, and recognized that Dehn could also bring a new vision to America subject matter. As he told Dehn: “You will do things in America which haven’t been done, which need to be done, which only you can do—as far at least as I know America.” A key factor in Dehn’s artistic evolution at this time was his association with Scofield Thayer...

Spring Landscape with house and figure A preliminary watercolor for a color aquatint, illustrated on line, title unknown Signed lower left in block letters (see photo) Watercolor and...

Temple of Isis Philae (verso) Dpouoble sided watercolor, 1902 Signed on front lower left: "Henry Bacon" and dated 1902 Note: The Temple of Isis is located on the Island of Philae at ...

untitled (Rocks along the Coast) Gouache and watercolor on paper, c. 1950 Signed with the estate stamp signature lower left (see photo) This is a preliminary study for a large exhibition painting...

The Duomo, Florence Watercolor, 1914 Signed and dated lower center edge (see photo) Florence Cathedral, formally the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, is the cathedral of Florence, Italy. It was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to a design of Arnolfo di Cambio and was structurally completed by 1436, with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi. Condition: Excellent Image size: 16 3/4 x 14 1/2 inches Frame size: 24 1/4 x 22 inches Donald Shaw MacLaughlan was born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada on November 9, 1876. His family moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1890 where he began to experiment with different art media; watercolor, oil painting and finally, etching – with a few attempts at lithography. He spent much of his early years at the Boston Public Library studying the work of printmakers, from Durer and Rembrandt to the 18th century English, French and Italian masters. Like many American artists of the time MacLaughlan traveled to Europe to study in Paris, enrolling in the Ecole des Beaux Arts and studied further with Jean Leon Gerome and Jean Paul Laurens. In 1899 he began producing etchings, which became his major interest until his death in 1938. He became acquainted with James NcNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and other artists who created etchings and spent time studying the etchings of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) and other old masters in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale. Both Rembrandt and Whistler would have major influences on his art. In 1900 he created a set of 25 etched views of Paris and in 1901 exhibited two etchings in the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He returned to the U.S. in 1903, then went back to Paris the following year. He traveled extensively in Europe, visiting England, Switzerland, Italy and Spain as well as various locales in France. His etched views of Venice were well-known. MacLaughlan exhibited views of Paris, Rouen, Normandy and Italy in 1906 in a solo show at the American Art Association Galleries in Paris. He also displayed his work in the 1906 exhibitions of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Société des Peintres-Graveurs Français. MacLaughlan even instructed other expatriate Canadian artists then living in Paris, most notably Clarence...

Signed "Nell Blaine" upper left in pencil. Signed, titled, dated verso on sheet. Signed, titled, dated verso on backing panel. The artist. Exhibited at Fischbach Gallery, NYC, in 1994 (Gallery label verso, and wall label affixed verso). Purchased by private collectors c.1994. By descent. Tibor de Nagy Gallery, NYC (the artist's estate representative), exhibited 2020 (label verso). Exhibited at Fischbach Gallery, NYC, in 1994 (Gallery label verso, and wall label affixed verso). Tibor de Nagy Gallery, NYC (the artist's estate representative), exhibited 2020 (label verso). From her November 15, 1996 NYT obituary: Nell Blaine, a widely respected New York landscape painter and watercolorist, died yesterday at Mount Sinai Hospital. She was 74 and had homes in Manhattan and Gloucester, Mass. Ms. Blaine, who had been hospitalized since July, had been confined to a wheelchair since 1959, when she contracted polio. Ms. Blaine was born in Richmond, Va., in 1922, and first studied at the Richmond School of Art, now part of Virginia Commonwealth University. She moved to New York in 1942 to study painting with Hans Hofmann and later studied etching and engraving at Atelier 17 with Stanley William Hayter. During her first years in New York, her work, which had previously been tightly realist, turned abstract, inspired by Mondrian, Leger and Jean Helion. At one time she was the youngest member of the American Abstract Artists. She was also a founding member of the Jane Street Gallery, one of Manhattan's earliest artists' cooperatives, and had her first solo show there in 1945. Just as Ms. Blaine was becoming known as a promising abstract painter, and gaining the admiration of such critics as Clement Greenberg, she started to shift back to representation. Inspired in part by a trip with Larry Rivers in 1950 to Paris, where she was especially impressed by the work of Vuillard and Bonnard, she immersed herself in the tradition of 19th-century European painting. From the mid-1950's, she cultivated an increasingly painterly and colorful style, usually working directly from nature, or still life, with particular emphasis on the forms and hues of flowers. Her work retained a sense of all-over structure and pulsating energy that she nonetheless credited to abstract art. ''It all goes back to Mondrian,'' she would say. In the 1950's, Ms. Blaine was prominent among a circle of New York artists and poets that included John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, Mr. Rivers, Jane Freilicher, Leland Bell, Louisa Matthiasdottir, Robert De Niro Sr. and Rudy Burckhardt. She had her first solo show of representational work at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1953 and was represented by the Poindexter Gallery until it closed in 1978, and, in recent years, by the Fischbach Gallery. During the 1950's she supported herself as a commercial artist, designing brochures for art galleries. In 1955, she designed the original logo, column heads and layout for The Village Voice. In 1957, Ms. Blaine was featured in Life magazine as one of five leading young female artists in America. In 1959, after several months of traveling and painting in Greece, she contracted severe bulbar polio on the island of Mykonos. ''To Nell Blaine,'' an exhibition organized at Poindexter to raise money for her hospital bills, included the work of 79 artists, including Saul Steinberg, Robert Motherwell, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Mr. Rivers, Ms. Freilicher and Robert Rauschenberg. After eight months in a New York hospital, including five months in an iron lung...

ARTIST: Trevor Frankland PPRWS RBA RI RE LG (1931-2011) British TITLE: "Grand Tour Revisited No.4" SIGNED: lower right MEDIUM: watercolour on paper...

A colorful, expressive fauvist watercolor landscape of a pond in the forest (Pan Pacific Exposition Palace Ruins) by Charles Henry Harmon(American, 1895-1936). Presented in a giltwoo...

Farm in Autumn with Pumpkins in Watercolor on Heavy Paper Colorful landscape of a farm in autumn with pumpkins by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (Americ...

Farm in Autumn with Corn and Pumpkins in Watercolor on Heavy Paper Colorful landscape of a farm in autumn with pumpkins by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderso...

Abstracted Bay Area skyline against a pink sunset creates beautiful and soft geometries in this small pastel urban landscape by San Francisco artist Chris Cacciotti (American, 20th C...