Paul Gavarni Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

'Mon Colonel', pencil and crayon on paper, by noted French artist, Auguste Chabaud (circa 1914-1918). A delightfully simple drawing of a French Army colonel in profile along with clo...

Pencil, coloured pencil and chalk on paper, titled (lower left), signed (lower right), 31cm x 46cm, (51cm x 68cm framed). John Koch was an American painter and teacher, and an impo...

Blanche Grambs, whose career started with the WPA, was an extremely skilled draftsperson. Her birds are masterful. This charming piece places the yooun...

Reginald Marsh "Manhattan Bridge" NYC American Scene Modernism Watercolor WPA Urban Realism, 20 x 14 inches. Watercolor and pencil on paper, 1938. Signed...

An original pencil and indian ink drawing by listed Swedish Artist. Adolfo Rasmussum. He specialized in the movement of the human body when seeing a performance. His works are conce...

The Archibald Russell. 1935. Pencil and watercolour on watercolour board. 20 7/8 x 28 5/8. Mat line from a previous mount; otherwise excellent condition. Signed and dated in ink, low...

Mejdel Yaba. 20 September, 1918 Pencil, ink and watercolour on paper. 8 1/8 x 22. Provenance: The Fine Art Society. Annotated, upper left, "due N at ???' Dated on the ink drawing on ...

Superb original drawing in coloured conté pencils, heightened with white on oatmeal coloured vergé paper by Claudio Bravo. The work was created during the artist's Moroccan period, a...

This is a unique artwork. This is an original Hyman Bloom drawing of fellow artist and his very good friend Martin Sumers.I believe this was drawn at the “variations of a theme” at Sumers gallery in NYC. The last two photos show a poster and a card from their shows. it is not included in this listing, it is just for provenance. Provenance: Acquired from the Sumers estate collection. Hyman Bloom (March 29, 1913 – August 26, 2009) was a Latvian-born American painter. His work was influenced by his Jewish heritage and Eastern religions as well as by artists including Altdorfer, Grünewald, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Blake, Bresdin, James Ensor and Chaim Soutine. He first came to prominence when his work was included in the 1942 Museum of Modern Art exhibition "Americans 1942 -- 18 Artists from 9 States". MoMA purchased 2 paintings from the exhibition and Time magazine singled him out as a "striking discovery" in their exhibition review. His work was selected for both the 1948 and 1950 Venice Biennale exhibitions and his 1954 retrospective traveled from Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art to the Albright Gallery and the de Young Museum before closing out at The Whitney Museum of American Art in 1955. In a 1954 interview with Yale art professor Bernard Chaet, Willem de Kooning indicated that he and Jackson Pollock both considered Bloom to be “America’s first abstract expressionist”, a label that Bloom would disavow. Starting in the mid 1950s his work began to shift more towards works on paper and he exclusively focused on drawing throughout the 1960s, returning to painting in 1971. He continued both drawing and painting until his death in 2009 at the age of 9 Hyman Bloom (né Melamed) was born into an orthodox Jewish family in the tiny Jewish village of Brunavišķi in what is now Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire At a young age Bloom planned to become a rabbi, but his family could not find a suitable teacher. In the eighth grade he received a scholarship to a program for gifted high school students at the Museum of Fine Arts. He attended the Boston High School of Commerce, which was near the museum. He also took art classes at the West End Community Center, a settlement house. The classes were taught by Harold Zimmerman, a student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, who also taught the young Jack Levine at another settlement house in Roxbury. When Bloom was fifteen, he and Levine began studying with a well-known Harvard art professor, Denman Ross, who rented a studio for the purpose and paid the boys a weekly stipend to enable them to continue their studies rather than take jobs to support their families. He took Bloom and Levine on a field trip to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Bloom was impressed by the work of Rouault and Soutine and began experimenting with their expressive painting styles. In the 1930s Bloom worked sporadically for the Public Works of Art Project and the Federal Art Project (WPA), He shared a studio in the South End with Levine and another artist, Betty Chase. It was during this period that he developed a lifelong interest in Eastern philosophy and music, and in Theosophy. He first received national attention in 1942 when thirteen of his paintings were included in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition Americans 1942: 18 Artists from 9 States, curated by Dorothy Miller. MoMA purchased two of his paintings from that exhibition, and he was featured in Time magazine. The titles of his paintings in the exhibition reflect some of his recurring themes. Two were titled The Synagogue, another, Jew with the Torah; Bloom was actually criticized by one reviewer for including "stereotypical" Jewish images. He also had two paintings titled The Christmas Tree, and another titled The Chandelier, both subjects he returned to repeatedly. Another, Skeleton (c. 1936), was followed by a series of cadaver paintings in the forties, and The Fish (c. 1936) was one of many paintings and drawings of fish he created over the course of his career. Bloom was associated at first with the growing Abstract Expressionist movement. Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, who first saw Bloom's work at the MoMA exhibition, considered Bloom "the first Abstract Expressionist artist in America." In 1950 he was chosen, along with the likes of de Kooning, Pollock, and Arshile Gorky, to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. That same year Elaine de Kooning wrote about Bloom in ARTnews, noting that in paintings such as The Harpies, his work approached total abstraction: "the whole impact is carried in the boiling action of the pigment". In 1951 Thomas B. Hess reproduced Bloom's Archaeological Treasure in his first book, Abstract Painting: Background and American Phase, along with works by Picasso, Pollock, and others. Both de Kooning and Hess remarked on Bloom's expressive paint handling, a key characteristic of Abstract Expressionist painting. As abstract expressionism dominated the American art world, Bloom became disenchanted with it, calling it "emotional catharsis, with no intellectual basis." In addition, instead of moving to New York to pursue his career, he opted to stay in Boston. As a result he fell out of favor with critics and never achieved the kind of fame that Pollock and others did. He disliked self-promotion and never placed much value on critical acclaim. Many of Bloom's paintings feature rabbis, usually holding the Torah. According to Bloom, his intentions were more artistic than religious. He began questioning his Jewish faith early in life, and painted rabbis, he claimed, because that was what he knew. Over the course of his career he produced dozens of paintings of rabbis...

'The Parade of Fairground Wrestlers', India ink on art paper, Modern French School (early 1900s). Traveling shows often held promotional events before opening in local areas to generate enthusiasm for the spectacle. This is an intriguing depiction of the various acts on stage strutting their stuff before an audience of potential customers. On the platform, fairground wrestlers mix with clowns, dancers, a percussionist in bolero hat...

Arno Breker is an artist supported by the Nazi regime and a German sculptor whose neoclassical works meet the military aesthetic of the regime. Breker was ...

Lighthearted Illustration of Outdoor Pursuits This one of a fisherman signed "W. Steig" Provenance: from Mrs. Joseph B. Ryan, Commissioned by Joe Ryan for the bar at his ski resort, Mount Tremblant Lodge, in 1938. Mont Tremblant, P.Q., Canada Watercolor and ink on illustration board, sights sizes 8 1/2 x 16 1/2 in., framed. In 1938 Joe Ryan, described as a millionaire from Philadelphia, bushwhacked his way to the summit of Mont Tremblant and was inspired to create a world class ski resort at the site. In 1939 he opened the Mont Tremblant Lodge, which remains part of the Pedestrian Village today. This original illustration is on Whatman Illustration board. the board measures 14 X 22 inches. label from McClees Galleries, Philadelphia, on the frame backing paper. William Steig, 1907 – 2003 was an American cartoonist, sculptor, and, in his later life, an illustrator and writer of children's books. Best known for the picture books Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Abel's Island, and Doctor De Soto, he was also the creator of Shrek!, which inspired the film series of the same name. He was the U.S. nominee for both of the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Awards, as a children's book illustrator in 1982 and a writer in 1988. Steig was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1907, and grew up in the Bronx. His parents were Polish-Jewish immigrants from Austria, both socialists. His father, Joseph Steig, was a house painter, and his mother, Laura Ebel Steig, was a seamstress who encouraged his artistic leanings. As a child, he dabbled in painting and was an avid reader of literature. Among other works, he was said to have been especially fascinated by Pinocchio.He graduated from Townsend Harris High School at 15 but never completed college, though he attended three, spending two years at City College of New York, three years at the National Academy of Design and a mere five days at the Yale School of Fine Arts before dropping out of each. Hailed as the "King of Cartoons" Steig began drawing illustrations and cartoons for The New Yorker in 1930, producing more than 2,600 drawings and 117 covers for the magazine. Steig, later, when he was 61, began writing children's books. In 1968, he wrote his first children's book. He excelled here as well, and his third book, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (1969), won the Caldecott Medal. He went on to write more than 30 children's books, including the Doctor DeSoto series, and he continued to write into his nineties. Among his other well-known works, the picture book Shrek! (1990) formed the basis for the DreamWorks Animation film Shrek (2001). After the release of Shrek 2 in 2004, Steig became the first sole-creator of an animated movie franchise that went on to generate over $1 billion from theatrical and ancillary markets after only one sequel. Along with Maurice Sendak, Saul Steinberg, Ludwig Bemelmans and Laurent de Brunhofff his is one of those rare cartoonist whose works form part of our collective cultural heritage. In 1984, Steig's film adaptation of Doctor DeSoto directed by Michael Sporn was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. As one of the most admired cartoonists of all time, Steig spent seven decades drawing for the New Yorker magazine. He touched generations of readers with his tongue–in–cheek pen–and–ink drawings, which often expressed states of mind like shame, embarrassment or anger. Later in life, Steig turned to children's books, working as both a writer and illustrator. Steig's children's books were also wildly popular because of the crazy, complicated language he used—words like lunatic, palsied, sequestration, and cleave. Kids love the sound of those words even if they do not quite understand the meaning. Steig's descriptions were also clever. He once described a beached whale as "breaded with sand." Throughout the course of his career, Steig compiled his cartoons and drawings into books. Some of them were published first in the New Yorker. Others were deemed too dark to be printed there. Most of these collections centered on the cold, dark psychoanalytical truth about relationships. They featured husbands and wives fighting and parents snapping at their kids. His first adult book, Man About Town, was published in 1932, followed by About People, published in 1939, which focused on social outsiders. Sick of Each Other, published in 2000, included a drawing depicting a wife holding her husband at gunpoint, saying, "Say you adore me." According to the Los Angeles Times, fellow New Yorker artist...