Abel Warshawsky
Mid Century Portrait of Artist Doris Rohr of Carmel
1952

Name: Mid Century Portrait of Artist Doris Rohr of Carmel
Brand: Abel Warshawsky
Price: 4400 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Wonderful mid century portrait of Carmel artist Doris Estelle Rohr by listed California artist Abel George (Buck) Warshawsky (American, 1883-1962). Signed "A.G. Warshawsky Dec. 22 52" lower right corner. Displayed in a giltwood frame. Image, 24"H x 20"W. A Cleveland Impressionist landscape painter, Abel Warshawsky left Cleveland for New York in 1905 and then spent some years in Paris as an expatriate. In 1910, he returned to Cleveland where he taught art with William Sommer and exhibited paintings continuously through the 1940s. He was born on December 28, 1883, in Sharon, Pennsylvania, though he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He studied with Louis Rorimer at the Cleveland Art Institute, with additional work at the Art Students League, and the National Academy of Design, the latter two institutions in New York City, where Warshawsky went in 1905. The artist traveled to Paris in 1908, where he met Amedeo Modigliani, Paul Signac and Auguste Renoir, as well as American artists Winslow Homer, Leon Kroll, Hugo Robus and William Zorach. Though he returned to Cleveland in 1910, where he was a member of the Cincinnati Art Club and taught with William Sommer, he maintained a studio in Paris for thirty years, and was quite active in the art world there. He traveled often through France and Italy, returning on a yearly basis to the United States to sell his work, exhibiting from the 1910s to the 1950s. With the death of his first wife, and war threatening in the 1930s, Warshawsky left Europe, building a studio in Monterrey, California, teaching classes, painting portraits, and figures against the backdrop of the Northern California coastline. Warshawsky, a member and president of the Carmel Art Association, was a painting partner and friend of California artist Sidney Sargent Freeman. Largely a painter known for his busy, impressionistic scenes of life on the streets of Paris, Abel Warshawsky spent about thirty years in France. He mastered two styles: his own variant of French impressionism and a striking realism, which he applied to his many penetrating and superb portraits. Warshawsky painted portraits of John W. (Jack) Raper, 1870-1950, a columnist for "The Cleveland Press" in 1940, and his brother David, 1893-1989, in 1944 in Taxco, Mexico, which are in the collection of the City Club of Cleveland. The latter was a gift to the collection by the sitter's son and his wife, David and Lee Warshawsky. Abel Warshawsky's younger brother, Alexander L. Warshawsky, 1887-1945, was also a painter. Abel Warshawsky has five paintings in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as work in the Minneapolis Art Institute, Minnesota; Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; and the Luxembourg Museum, Paris, France. The 1920 portrait of his wife, titled "Paris Unconquered," is set against a background vista of that city. The painting served as the frontispiece of his book of the same title, published in 1957. "Memories of an American Impressionist", a book about Abel G. Warshawsky, edited by Ben L. Bassham, was published by Kent State University Press, in 1980. Nancy Dustin Wall Moure's article, "Abel Warshawsky," appeared in Art of California, in September 1990. His work was part of the exhibition, in 2002, "The Many Faces of Cleveland: A Century of Portraiture", at the Cleveland Artists Foundation. Abel Warshawsky died in 1962. His papers from 1930-1960 are in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. They include a manuscript of the artist's unpublished autobiography, "My Brush With Life," as well as typescripts of two versions of Warshawksy's autobiography, "The Autobiography," and "Adventures with Color and Brush," which is a revision of the former, ending in 1941. Letters to his second wife, Ruth; six albums of photographs of artwork; sketchbooks and miscellaneous other materials are also included.

Creator:

Abel Warshawsky (1883 - 1962, American)

Creation Year:

1952

Dimensions:

Height: 27 in (68.58 cm)Width: 32 in (81.28 cm)Depth: 3 in (7.62 cm)

Medium:

Oil,Masonite

Movement & Style:

American Impressionist

Period:

1950-1959

Condition:

some yellowing due to age toning.

Gallery Location:

Soquel, CA

Reference Number:

Seller: 911stDibs: LU542190782

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Abel Warshawsky

Largely a painter known for his busy, Impressionistic scenes of life on the streets of Paris, Abel Warshawsky spent about 30 years in France. He mastered two styles: his own variant of French impressionism and a striking realism, which he applied to his many penetrating and superb portraits. While his street scenes are modern in their depiction of boisterous, fleeting contemporary activity, the portraits embody the spirit of Old Europe. Their sincerity and integrity have a counterpart in the portraits of Charles W. Hawthorne, the great teacher of Provincetown. Warshawsky, born in Pennsylvania and was raised in Cleveland. He began his studies at the Cleveland Art Institute under Frederick Carl Gottwald. Then the artist went to the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design in New York: as teachers he listed H. Siddons Mowbray, Louis Loeb, and Winslow Homer. Like many twentieth-century impressionists, Warshawsky maintained the impressionist's favorite subject matter, urban life, but later abandoned the closely juxtaposed, regular brushstrokes for broad areas of color. His bird's-eye views of the boulevards of Paris recall Monet's famous Boulevard des Capucines, complete with "tongue-lickings" to represent pedestrians, and some of his works are highly impressionistic. Washer Women at Goyen is especially stunning with its limited palette of green and violet, its expressive use of controlled impasto, the delicate surfaces of the building, rendered all in violet, and the freely painted ripples of water below. Warshawsky's The Memories of an American Impressionist, written in 1931, describes an American artist's life in Paris, ca. 1909 to 1930. His preferred hangout was the Café du Dôme on the boulevard Montparnasse, where "meeting one's fellow craftsmen — talking shop, and exchanging ideas in general — was the main diversionAt the Dôme, Warshawsky met Richard Emil Miller, Lionel Walden, Max Bohm, Frederick Frieseke, Lawton Parker, Louis Ritman, the modernists Alfred Maurer, John Marin, Jules Pascin and Signac: in short, more than a handful of expatriates who made the Café du Dôme their lively art club, intellectual hub, and social center. Warshawsky painted at Vernon, not far from Giverny; the accommodations were cheaper than those at Giverny.. Later he was joined by Leon Kroll, Ivan Olinsky, and Samuel Halpert. During the war years, Warshawsky volunteered to manage a labor squad at a supply warehouse. Warshawsky packed all of the 1920s into the last chapter. The relentless heat of the Midwest, lingering "Victorian" dress codes, and Prohibition drove Warshawsky back to France, where he was made a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur. For a while, he was involved with the artists' colony on the Spanish island of Mallorca. The events of the second world war made it necessary for Warshawsky to return to the States; he settled on the Monterey Peninsula and was active in the Carmel Art Association. The artist died in Monterey on 31 May 1962.