20th Century Still-life Drawings and Watercolors

Mary Abbott Flowers, circa 1950 Signed lower left Pastel on paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches Provenance: Aaron Galleries, Glenview, Illinois Among the early exponents of Abstract Expressio...

"Red Vase of Flowers on Orange Tablecloth" is a watercolor signed by Sylvia Spicuzza. This simple still life shows a vase on a table. Some of the flo...

Vintage French Oil Painting by Louise Alix (French, 1888-1980) *see notes below provenance stamp to the back watercolour painting on artist paper, unframed measures: 8.25 inches hig...

Surrealist landscape with skull and red daisy Watercolor on paper, 1960-1970 Unsigned Stamped with the artist's estate stamp verso (see photo) Provenance: Estate of the artist Refere...

Aka Beni Kosh Still Life with Flowers Colored pencil on paper Unsigned Signed with the estate stamp on reverse (see photo) Estate No. 716 Condition: Soft fold through image, wri...

Pensando en ti, Marzo 13, 2014 by Celso Castro Watercolor on archival paper Image size: 39.2 H in. x 28 in. W Unframed ____________ Undefined by medium, Celso Castro’s works each ca...

Enter the whimsical world of famed children's book illustrators husband and wife team Alice and Martin Provensen. On top of a heavy tree trunk sits a...

Vase at Dusk - Expressionist Still Life Original Oil Painting by Wright Brightly colored flowers sit in a vase on a table against hues of dark green giving the feel of darkness cree...

Work on tracing paper Support size 27.5 x 19.5 x 0.4 cm

James Tower. English ( b.1919 - d.1988 ). Still Life of Flowers in a Jug and a Plate of Fruit. Watercolor & ink. Image size 15.4 inches x 13 inches ( 39cm x 33cm ). Frame size 22.2 ...

A detailed ink on paper drawing of a still-life in an interior by artist Harold Haydon. Harold Emerson Haydon was born in Fort William, Ontario, Canada in 1909. Haydon came to Chi...

Recordando el gran artista Alberto Riano Mangos Marzo, 2014 by Celso Castro Black paint, and pastel on archival paper Image size: 39.2 H in. x 28 in. W Unframed ____________ Undefin...

Work on paper Support size 22 x 22 x 0.4 cm

Works on paper

A charming pastel study depicting pink roses in a ceramic pot. Captured in an impressionist style in a muted palette. Signed to the lower right. Presented in a part gilt frame with a...

Andy Warhol is arguably the most important American artist of the 20th century. In the 1950s, he was an in-demand and celebrated illustrator working for New York's toniest publicatio...

The murder of John Lennon. The birth of my children. Nixon’s resignation. Brain surgery. Driven by the desire to express myself, and leave a physical record of my life and times, I’v...

The murder of John Lennon. The birth of my children. Nixon’s resignation. Brain surgery. Driven by the desire to express myself, and leave a physical record of my life and times, I’v...

A really striking but calm still life painting by the Modern British artist Bernard Myers. Bernard Myers is a Modern British artist who deserves to be better known. His work succe...

Eduard Xavier Kapp (British, 1890 – 1978) Rose in bottle Ink pen Signed, inscribed and dated ‘For Paby, no7 out of 7 Kapp. 59’ (lower edge) 11 x 8.1/4 in. (28 x 21 cm.) Edmond Kapp ...

DOROTHY FITCHEW (1889-1975) “I Must Go Seek Some Dewdrops Here, And Hang a Pearl in Every Cowslip’s Ear.” Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, Scene I Signed l.l.: DOROTHY FITCHEW ...

To see more, scroll down to "More from this Seller" and below it click on "See all from this Seller." Hilary Hennes (née Hilary Miller) (1919 - 1993) Design for fruit bowls Waterco...

Eduard Xavier Kapp (British, 1890 – 1978) What’s the Time? Pen and crayon, tondo Signed and dated ‘Kapp 75’ (in the centre) 8.1/2 x 8.1/2 in. (21.6 x 21.6 cm.) Edmond Kapp was born in Islington, London, on 5 November 1890, of American and German Jewish parentage. He gave himself the middle initial ‘X’ – sometimes said to stand for Xavier – to distinguish himself from his father Emil Kapp, who was a wine merchant. However, his parents called him ‘Eddie’ while his wife and friends knew him as ‘Peter’. During his early years, Kapp was continually ill and, while convalescing, entertained himself by drawing at home. As his health improved, he attended Dame Alice Owen’s School, Islington (1903-10), with periods at Berlin University (1909) and L’Institut Français pour les Etrangers, Paris (1909). He then read Languages at Christ’s College, Cambridge (1910-13), though spent most of his time writing and drawing. Kapp took a studio in London, and worked intensively until the outbreak of the First World War, contributing to the Daily News, the Onlooker and other periodicals. During the war, he served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Sussex Regiment on the Western Front, and then in Intelligence, rising to the position of Staff Captain on Haig’s Staff. Finally, he founded and directed the Neutral Press Counter-propaganda Section. In 1919, Kapp returned to London and, after abortive periods at three art schools, worked alone. In that year, he made his name with an exhibition of caricatures, held at Furst’s Gallery, London, and accompanied by a catalogue introduced by Max Beerbohm. This soon led to contracts with three London periodicals and a book of caricatures, Personalities, published by Martin Secker. Through the 1920s and 30s, his drawings of musicians and other personalities appeared in a wide variety of periodicals, most notably Time & Tide; were collected in further volumes; and were exhibited at the Leicester Galleries. He considered himself to be a ‘character-portraitist’, producing images of psychological not satirical power, and disliking the term ‘caricature’. Between the wars, Kapp developed other aspects of his artistic talents, the desire to study and the search for subject matter often taking him abroad. For instance, work at the British Academy, Rome, under Antonio Sciortino...

A really striking but calm still life painting by the Modern British artist Bernard Myers. Bernard Myers is a Modern British artist who deserves to be better known. His work succe...

Watercolour on paper circa 1920 by French Impressionist painter Henri Duhem depicting white, red, pink and yellow flowers. Signed lower right. This painting is not currently framed b...

Barca de Refugiados, 1999 by Celso Castro Crayon and pastel on archival paper Image size: 45 H in. x 59 in. W On the back of the painting: Maranones "Lunes 23 de mayo 2016" Pencil...

The murder of John Lennon. The birth of my children. Nixon’s resignation. Brain surgery. Driven by the desire to express myself, and leave a physical record of my life and times, I’v...

Edmond Xavier Kapp (British, 1890 – 1978) Isaac Stern at work Inkpen Signed, inscribed and dated ‘Isaac Stern at work Kapp 51’ (lower right) 17.1/8 x 13.7/8 in. (43.3 x 35.3 cm.) Edmond Kapp was born in Islington, London, on 5 November 1890, of American and German Jewish parentage. He gave himself the middle initial ‘X’ – sometimes said to stand for Xavier – to distinguish himself from his father Emil Kapp, who was a wine merchant. However, his parents called him ‘Eddie’ while his wife and friends knew him as ‘Peter’. During his early years, Kapp was continually ill and, while convalescing, entertained himself by drawing at home. As his health improved, he attended Dame Alice Owen’s School, Islington (1903-10), with periods at Berlin University (1909) and L’Institut Français pour les Etrangers, Paris (1909). He then read Languages at Christ’s College, Cambridge (1910-13), though spent most of his time writing and drawing. Kapp took a studio in London, and worked intensively until the outbreak of the First World War, contributing to the Daily News, the Onlooker and other periodicals. During the war, he served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Sussex Regiment on the Western Front, and then in Intelligence, rising to the position of Staff Captain on Haig’s Staff. Finally, he founded and directed the Neutral Press Counter-propaganda Section. In 1919, Kapp returned to London and, after abortive periods at three art schools, worked alone. In that year, he made his name with an exhibition of caricatures, held at Furst’s Gallery, London, and accompanied by a catalogue introduced by Max Beerbohm. This soon led to contracts with three London periodicals and a book of caricatures, Personalities, published by Martin Secker. Through the 1920s and 30s, his drawings of musicians and other personalities appeared in a wide variety of periodicals, most notably Time & Tide; were collected in further volumes; and were exhibited at the Leicester Galleries. He considered himself to be a ‘character-portraitist’, producing images of psychological not satirical power, and disliking the term ‘caricature’. Between the wars, Kapp developed other aspects of his artistic talents, the desire to study and the search for subject matter often taking him abroad. For instance, work at the British Academy, Rome, under Antonio Sciortino...

Plum Branches and Flowers watercolor on wove paper, 1985 Signed and dated in pencil lower right corner From the artist's 1985 sketchbook Inspired by O'Sickey's love of Japanese and Chinese art and calligraphy. Provenance: Estate of the artist Condition: Excellent Image/Sheet size: 13 5/8 x 17 inches Joseph B. O’Sickey, Painter 1974 CLEVELAND ARTS PRIZE FOR VISUAL ARTS The title conferred on him by Plain Dealer art critic Steve Litt in a 1994 article, “the dean of painting in northeast Ohio,” must have pleased Joseph O'Sickey. It was more than 30 years since he had burst onto the local (and national) art scene. O’Sickey was already in his 40s in that spring of 1962 when he had his first one-man show at the Akron Art Museum and was signed by New York’s prestigious Seligmann Galleries, founded in 1888. In the decade and a half that followed, he would have seven one-man shows at Seligmann, which had showed the work of such trailblazing figures as Seurat, Vuilliard, Bonnard, Leger and Picasso, and appear in all of the group shows. O’Sickey took the Best Painting award in the 1962 May Show at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). He and would capture the same honor in back-to-back May Shows in 1964 and ’65, and again in 1967. The remarkable thing, noted the Plain Dealer’s Helen Borsick, was that he accomplished this sweep in a variety of painterly styles, even using that most hackneyed of subjects, flowers. “The subject doesn’t matter,” he told her, “what the artist brings to it is the important thing.” O’Sickey’s garden and landscape paintings were big and bold, eschewing delicate detail in favor of vitality and impact. The great art collector and CMA benefactor Katherine C. White, standing before one of O’Sickey’s vivid garden paintings, compared the sensation to “being pelted with flowers.” Though he might represent an entire blossom with one or two smudged brush strokes or a stem with a simple sweep of green, O’Sickey rejected the moniker of Impressionist—or Pointillist or Abstract painter or Expressionist. “My work,” he said, “is a direct response to the subject. I believe in fervor and poetic metaphor. I try to make each color and shape visible and identifiable within the context of surrounding colors and shapes. A yellow must hold its unique quality from any another yellow or surrounding color, and yet read as a lemon or an object, by inference. It does not require shading or modeling—the poetic evocation is part of the whole.” “The subject,” O’Sickey used to tell his students at Kent State University, where he taught painting from 1964 to 1989, “has to be seen as a whole and the painting has to be structured to be seen as a whole.” He liked to think of it as “a process of controlled rapture.” When, in the 1960s, fond childhood memories drew him to the zoo, he found himself responding to the caged animals in their lonely dignity (or indignity) with sharp-edged, almost silhouette-like forms that evoked Matisse’s paintings and cut-paper assemblages. One observer was left with the impression that the artist had “looked at these animals, past daylight and into dusk when they lose their details in shadow and become pure shapes, with eyes that are seeing the viewer rather than the other way around. This is a world of shape and essence,” wrote Helen Borsick. “All is simplification.” O’Sickey attributed his ability to capture his subjects with just a few strokes—in an almost iconographic way—to a rigorous exercise he had imposed upon himself over a period of several months. Limiting his tools to a large No. 6 bristle brush and black ink, he set himself the task of drawing his pet parakeet and the other small objects in its cage (cuttlebone, feeding dish, tinkling bell) hundreds of times. The exercise gave him “invaluable insights into painting. . . . Because of the crudity of the medium, every part of these drawings had to be an invention and every mark had to have its room and clarity.” Then he began adding one color at a time—“still with the same brush and striving for the same clarity”—and headed off to the zoo where “the world opened up to me. I learned how little it took to express the subject.” Born in Detroit at the close of the First World War, O’Sickey grew up in St. Stanislaus parish near East 65th and Fleet on Cleveland’s southeast side. (The apostrophe was inserted into the family’s proud Polish name by a clerk at Ellis Island.) An early interest in drawing and painting may have been kindled by the presence on the walls of Charles Dickens Elementary School, one of only three grade schools in the district with a special focus on the arts, of masterful watercolors by such Cleveland masters as Paul Travis, Frank N. Wilcox and Bill Coombes. As a youngster O’Sickey took drawing classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and he and his brother spent hours copying famous paintings; while a student at East Tech High School in the mid-’30s, he attended free evening classes in life drawing with Travis and Ralph Stoll at the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Institute, and Saturday classes at the Cleveland School (later the Cleveland Institute) of Art, where he earned his degree in 1940 under the tutelage of Travis, Stoll and such other legendary figures as Henry Keller, Carl Gaertner, William Eastman, Kenneth Bates...

White Iris & Spring Flowers Bouquet, Mid Century Floral Still Life Beautiful mid century floral watercolor still life of a bouquet with white irises and other blooming flowers by H...

An early 1940s fashion study featuring an advertisement for Lilly Daché Perfume. Provenance: Cornelia Steckl-Jurin, Founder of the Fashion Department at the School of the Art Instit...

Alberto Morrocco OBE RSA RSW RP RGI LLD DUNIV (Scottish, 1919 – 1998) Tomatoes gouache on board 11 x 15. ¾in. (28 x 40cm.) Provenance: Alberto Morrocco Studio Sale, Dundee

An early 1940s fashion study featuring an advertisement for Elizabeth Arden "Safari" Nail Polish at Marshall Field & Company. Provenance: Cornelia Steckl-Jurin, Founder of the Fas...

A charming gouache study depicting a selection of yellow and white wildflowers in a ceramic vase. The artist captures the still life scene in muted, earthy tones. Signed to the lower...

Inscribed in graphite to the reverse with the artist's name and date. On watercolour paper laid to backing card.

An early 1940s fashion study featuring an advertisement for Elizabeth Arden. Provenance: Cornelia Steckl-Jurin, Founder of the Fashion Department at the School of the Art Institut...

Work sold to benefit the CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF ART Joseph B. O’Sickey (American, 1918–2013) Still Life with Fruit Bowl Watercolor and ink on paper Signed lower left 11 x 14 inches ...

Well presented in a white card mount. Signed. On watercolour paper.

Signed to the lower right. On high quality watercolour paper.

Signed with initials to the lower right and signed in pencil in the margin. On high quality watercolour paper.

Signed to the lower right. On paper.

A substantial and vibrant, botanical watercolor by this well-listed and widely exhibited California woman artist. Signed lower right 'Sally Bookman' (Bri...

Raymonde Heudebert 1905-1991) Study of a hand holding a cigarette Pencil on paper Annotated “Jean de Vogué” on the back Dimensions of the drawing : 26 x 27 cm Dimensions of the frame...

A graphite on pencil drawing of Surrealist still life of an egg beater by artist Jan Matulka. A leading Modernist, Jan Matulka was born in Prague Czechoslo...

A graphite on pencil drawing of Surrealist still life of an egg beater by artist Jan Matulka. A leading Modernist, Jan Matulka was born in Prague Czechoslo...

A graphite on pencil drawing of Surrealist still life of an egg beater by artist Jan Matulka. A leading Modernist, Jan Matulka was born in Prague Czechoslo...

A graphite on pencil drawing of Surrealist still life of an egg beater by artist Jan Matulka. A leading Modernist, Jan Matulka was born in Prague Czechoslo...

Joseph Stella (1877-1946, American, Italian) "Flower Study". Crayon and pencil on paper. Signed lower left. Image 6 7/8” x 4 /34”. Framed 12 1/2” x 10”. Gallery label Beadleston Gallery N.Y. N.Y. Joseph Stella (American, June 13, 1877–November 5, 1946) was a Futurist painter known for his association with the American Precisionism movement and his works depicting industrial America. Stella was born in Lucano, Italy. In 1896, he relocated to New York, NY, to study medicine. After becoming interested in art, Stella left his medical studies and began to study art at the Art Students League of New York. While there, he studied under William Merritt Chase. During this time, Stella's early works featured a Rembrandt style...

Works on paper

This is a unique pencil drawing by the artist Andy Warhol. It was realised circa 1974. It is stamped twice by the estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, verso. It is also initialed 'VF' by Vincent Fremont of the Andy Warhol Foundation and inscribed with the identification number"RO-28.13", verso. Provenance: Estate of Andy Warhol. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York. Susan Sheehan Gallery...

A mid-century watercolour of white daisies in a terracotta jug. Presented in a contemporary wood veneer frame with card mount. Unsigned. On watercolour paper.

Painting measures 28" x 22" and framed 32" x 25 ½" x 2" Hand-signed "J.E. Costigan N.A." lower left. About this artist: John Costigan was a self-taught painter distinguished by hi...

Jehudith Sobel (1924-2012 ) Polish/Jewish artist (also known as Judyta Sobel) Judith Sobel was born in Lwow, Poland in 1924. After Word War II she attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz, Poland from 1947-1950, where she studied with the famous Abstract Constructivist, Wladyslaw Strzeminski and Stefan Wegner from whom she learned the principles of Modern Art as per the European Cubists. She was also part of the First Exhibit of Modern Art in Krakow in 1948/1949. From Poland she emigrated to Israel, where she exhibited and was collected by the major art museums of Israel including the Museum of Modern Art at Haifa. In 1956, Sobel came to New York on a scholarship and before that she lived in France for two years. Same year she received the First Prize at the Exhibition in the Saks Gallery...

Work sold to benefit the CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF ART Joseph B. O’Sickey (American, 1918–2013) Picnic Watercolor and ink on paper Signed lower left 14.75 x 22 inches Joseph O'Sickey,...

An accomplished still life of anemones in a bowl, painted in watercolours by Isabel Wrightson. Well- presented in a gilt-effect frame with wash-line m...

Joe Brainard Eucalyptus Leaves/Bolinas, 1971 Collage on thin board (with original labels from Fischbach Gallery, The Denver Art Museum and University...

A wonderful still life of sunflowers and salvias, captured in a few simple brushstrokes. Well-presented in a distressed gilt-effect frame with a white inner window and glazing. Unsig...

Machine Age Industrial WPA Era American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century Jo Cain (1904 - 2003) Elliot 17 ¼ x 35 ¾ inches Gouache on board, c. 1930s Signed lower left 27 x 46 in...