Louis Oscar Griffith

Carolyn (Arms raised to her head)

c. 1924

Untitled (Woman by the Windows) Unsigned. Pastel on board, c. 1915 Created while the artist was in Giverny, France Provenance: Gift of the artist to his wife, Mary Hess Buehr by Descent to the artist's niece, daughter of Will Hess. David Salzman Robert Henry Adams Fine Art, Chicago Ronald C. Sloter, Columbus One of the early Chicago artists to adopt Impressionism, Karl Buehr became a figure and landscape painter. As a figure painter, his specialty became "gorgeously colored images of young women on porches overlooking brilliant summertime gardens." (Kennedy 98) His later work often showed a female figure with serious expression engaging the viewer with a direct stare. In his landscapes, he was noted for his strong coloration. In a December 1896 student exhibition at the Art Institute, a reviewer for the "Chicago Times Herald" described Buehr's landscapes as "blithe and joyous" with "country roads brilliant in sunlight . . . fields rich in summer verdure, under soft skies painted in a high, musical key." (Gerdts 68) Buehr was born as one of seven sons to a prosperous German family who immigrated to America and settled in Chicago in 1869. He was first exposed to his signature style of Impressionism in 1888 when he enrolled in night classes at the Art Institute while working in the shipping department of a lithographic firm near the Institute. He remained a student there until 1897 and was recognized in a "Chicago Times Herald" editorial of June 13, 1897 as one of the Institute's most outstanding pupils. The next year, his art career was temporarily put on hold when he briefly enlisted with the U.S. Army in the Spanish American War. In 1899, he resumed his art studies, this time with Frank Duveneck. He exhibited a painting at the Paris Salon of 1900. In 1905, thanks to a wealthy Chicago patron, Buehr and his family moved to France. They spent the following year in Taormina, Sicily, and spent time in Venice as well. In Paris, Buehr studied at the Academy Julian with Raphael Collin for two years. Then he went to England, enrolling in the London Art School but had returned to Paris by 1908. During this time, he began painting at Giverny, the home of Impressionist leader Claude Monet (1840-1926, and by 1912, Buehr was listing that village as his home address. One of his good friends and associates at Giverny was Frederick Frieseke. One of Buehr's paintings from that time, "News from Home", was exhibited in 1913 at the French Salon in Paris and at the annual exhibit of the Chicago Art Institute. It shows a woman in floral dress sitting on a porch with a background with potted flowers and lush greenery background. Of his painting done at Giverny, Buehr wrote in 1912 to William Macbeth of Macbeth Galleries in New York: "My figures painted in and around Giverny are costumed and in appropriate out door settings." (Gerdts 68) In 1914, he returned to the United States and took a teaching position in Chicago at the Art Institute, which he held for the remainder of his life. He was married to Mary Hess, a painter of miniatures and decorative works. In 1928-29, he was a guest artist at Stanford University. Courtesy: AskArt “Karl Albert Buehr (1866–1952) was a painter born in Germany. Buehr was born in Feuerbach - near Stuttgart. He was the son of Frederick Buehr and Henrietta Doh (Dohna?). He moved to Chicago with his parents and siblings in the 1880s. In Chicago, young Karl worked at various jobs until he was employed by a lithograph company near the Art Institute of Chicago. Introduced to art at work, Karl paid regular visits to the Art Institute, where he found part-time employment, enabling him to enroll in night classes. Later, working at the Institute as a night watchman, he had a unique opportunity to study the masters and actually posted sketchings that blended in favorably with student's work. Having studied under John H. Vanderpoel, Buehr graduated with honors, while his work aroused such admiration that he was offered a teaching post there, which he maintained for many years thereafter. He graduated from the Art Inst. of Chicago and served in the IL Cav in the Spanish–American War. Mary Hess became Karl's wife—she was a student of his and an accomplished artist in her own right. In 1922, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member. Art Studies in Europe In 1904, Buehr received a bronze medal at the St. Louis Universal Exposition, then, in 1905, Buehr and his family moved to France, thanks to a wealthy Chicago patron, and they spent the following year in Taormina, Sicily, where the artist painted local subjects, executing both genre subjects and landscapes as well as time in Venice. Buehr spent at least some time in Paris, where he worked with Raphaël Collin at the Académie Julian. Giverny and American Impressionism Prior to this time, Buehr had developed a quasi-impressionistic style, but after 1909, when he began spending summers near Monet in Giverny, his work became decidedly characteristic of that plein-air style but he began focusing on female subjects posed out-of-doors. He remained for some time in Giverny, and here he became well-acquainted with other well known expatriate America impressionists such as Richard Miller, Theodore Earl Butler, Frederick Frieseke, and Lawton Parker. It seems likely that Buehr met Monet, since his own daughter Kathleen and Monet’s granddaughter, Lili Butler, were playmates, according to George Buehr, the painter’s son. His other daughter Lydia died before adulthood due to diabetes. He returned to Chicago at the onset of World War I and taught at The Art Inst for many years. One of his noted pupils at the Art Institute was Archibald Motley...

Portrait of Dr. Auguste Soins Black chalk on paper, c. 1883 Signed with the artist’s estate stamp, Lugt 1305a lower right (see photo) Note: This possibly is the preliminary drawing f...

Signed with the estate stamp initials lower right, Lugt 388a (see photo) Provenance: Richard Norton Gallery, Chicago (label verso) Fairweather-Hardin Gallery, Chicago (label verso) ...

Unsigned Graphite on paper

Signed and dated in pencil verso Titled "Joseph Pennell" recto Annotated verso: Adolph a Dehn Oct. 5 1915 Tonight I saw a duplicate of Whistler -- "Joseph Pennell." Bu...

Young Lady in Profile (Dorothy Gibson) Graphite on paper, c. 1915 Signed lower right (see photo). The sitter for this drawing, along with a huge number of Harrison Fisher’s works, is the model, turned actress, Miss Dorothy Winifred Gibson (1889-1946). She was one of the lucky ones who survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. There is an in depth biographical sketch available on Wiki. "Dorothy Winifred Gibson (1889-1946) is arguably one of the most fascinating women of the twentieth century. Her story is more than deserving of its own film or TV show and yet, if it was to ever appear on the screen, it would be in serious danger of being criticised as ‘too unbelievable’ or ‘farfetched’. But believe me, readers, everything I am about to tell you about Dorothy Gibson is true... Early Life Dorothy Winifred Gibson (originally Dorothy Winifred Brown, before her father died when she was three years old and her mother remarried), was born in New Jersey on 17 May 1889. Between 1906 and 1911 (aged 17-22), she appeared on stage as a singer and dancer in a number of theatre and vaudeville productions, and in 1909 she began modelling for Harrison Fisher, a famous commercial artist. Dorothy soon became Fisher’s favourite muse, and her image was seen regularly on postcards, merchandising products and even on the covers of magazines like Cosmopolitan. During this time, Dorothy met and married a pharmacist named George Henry Battier Jr, but the couple soon separated and were divorced by 1913. As early as 1911, Dorothy began appearing in movies, starting out as an extra but soon taking the leading roles in a series of films by Éclair Studios. Praised for her natural acting style and comedic flair, she was a huge hit – and arguably the first actress to be promoted as a star in her own right. Surviving the sinking of the RMS Titanic On 17 March 1912, after starring in a string of movies, Dorothy and her mother, Pauline, took a trip to Europe – but after a few weeks Dorothy was called back to America by the studio to start working on a new series of films. Dorothy and her mother were in Paris when they booked their tickets on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic, and boarded at Cherbourg on 10th April. On the night the ship sank, Dorothy had ‘spent a pleasant Sunday evening playing bridge with a couple of friendly New York bankers’ (her words, in an interview with the New York Dramatic Mirror). Despite the request of a steward for them to finish, they carried on with their game and it was not until about 11:40pm that Dorothy returned to the stateroom she shared with her mother. It was at that point that she felt ‘a long drawn, sickening crunch’ and, while not exactly alarmed, she decided nonetheless to investigate. Quickly noticing that the deck was ‘lopsided’, she rushed back to her room to fetch her mother, and the pair returned to the boat deck. Dorothy and her mother escaped from the ship on the first lifeboat launched (number 7), and given how quiet it was on the boat deck at the time, she asked her bridge partners to join them. However, events took a turn for the worst when a hole was found in the bottom of the lifeboat, causing icy cold water to rush in and almost flood the boat. Luckily, though, Dorothy explained, ‘this was remedied by volunteer contributions from the lingerie of the women and the garments of men.’ It is hard for us now to imagine the terrors of that night – and the emotional damage it caused to those who survived. After the event, Dorothy told the Moving Picture World, ‘I will never forget the terrible cry that rang out from people who were thrown into the sea and others who were afraid for their loved ones.’ Unbelievably, though, Dorothy was to re-enact the experience a mere five days after it happened, when she starred in the first film about the disaster. It was a silent movie, called Saved From The Titanic, and was actually hugely successful and the first of many hit films about the sinking. In the movie, Dorothy even wore the same clothes she had been wearing when the ship sank – a white silk dress underneath a cardigan and polo coat. Shortly after the release of Saved from the Titanic Dorothy gave up acting. An affair to remember...

You meet the Spanish artist Alexandro Santana and you think, cripes, can he be for real? So handsome, so flamboyant, so seductive, so amusing -- you’...

You meet the Spanish artist Alexandro Santana and you think, cripes, can he be for real? So handsome, so flamboyant, so seductive, so amusing -- you’...

You meet the Spanish artist Alexandro Santana and you think, cripes, can he be for real? So handsome, so flamboyant, so seductive, so amusing -- you’...

You meet the Spanish artist Alexandro Santana and you think, cripes, can he be for real? So handsome, so flamboyant, so seductive, so amusing -- you’...

You meet the Spanish artist Alexandro Santana and you think, cripes, can he be for real? So handsome, so flamboyant, so seductive, so amusing -- you’...

MARC GONZ   THE HIDDEN GAZE     When confronted with the universe of Marc Gonz, we discover creations that seem to be the result of a working session of a hy...