(William) Davenport Griffen

Untitled (Country Landscape with Figures)

1936

A small, colorful Modernist landscape painting by Harold Haydon, depicting "Western View from Sun Deck on Ajax Mt., Aspen, Colo.", dated 1955. This pain...

A "Thumb Box" (diminutive) painting of the Gospel Hall in Calais, VT by Harold Haydon. Harold Emerson Haydon was born in Fort William, Ontario, Canada i...

A "Thumb Box" or diminutive painting by Harold Haydon depicting a mountain at sunset. Harold Emerson Haydon was born in Fort William, Ontario, Canada in...

A "Thumb Box" (Diminutive) painting of Vermont by Harold Haydon. Harold Emerson Haydon was born in Fort William, Ontario, Canada in 1909. Haydon came ...

A painting depicting a lighthouse in Martha's Vineyard by Francis Chapin, from around 1950. Francis Chapin, affectionately called the “Dean of Chicago Painters” by his colleagues, w...

A view of Oak Bluffs, MA on Martha's Vineyard by Francis Chapin, from around 1950. Francis Chapin, affectionately called the “Dean of Chicago Painters” by his colleagues, was one of...

Joseph Stella (1877 - 1946) Tree, Trunk, and Roots, Bronx, New York, circa 1924 Oil on canvas 12 x 16 inches inscribed in another hand Joseph Stella/Estate and bears Joseph Stella Estate stamp (on the reverse) Provenance: The Estate of the Artist Rabin & Kreuger, New Jersey Parke Bernet Galleries, New York, March 14, 1968, Lot 147 ACA Galleries, New York Thence by descent Stella was born June 13, 1877 at Muro Lucano, Italy, a mountain village not far from Naples. He became painter laureate of Muro Lucano when he was in his teens with a representation of the local saint in the village church. Stella immigrated to America in 1896 and studied medicine and pharmacology, but upon the advice of artist friend Carlo de Fornaro, who recognized his undeveloped talent, he enrolled at the Art Students League in 1897. Stella objected to the rule forbidding the painting of flowers, an indication of his lifelong devotion to flower painting. He also studied under William Merritt Chase in the New York School of Art and at Shinnecock Hills, Long Island in 1901-1902, displaying the bravura brushwork and dark Impressionist influence of Chase. Stella liked to paint the raw street life of immigrant society, rendering this element more emotionally than the city realists, the Aschcan School headed by Robert Henri. Stella went through a progression of styles--from realism to abstraction--mixing media and painting simultaneously in different manners, reviving styles and subjects years later. The "Survey" sent Stella to illustrate the mining disaster of 1907 in Monongah, West Virginia, and in 1908 commissioned him to execute drawings of the Pittsburgh industrial scene. Steel and electricity became a major experience in shaping his responses to the modern world, and Stella succeeded in portraying the pathos of the steelworkers and the Pittsburgh landscape. Stella went abroad in 1909 at the age of thirty-two, lonely for his native land. He returned to Italy, traveling to Venice, Florence and Rome. He took up the glazing technique of the old Venetian masters to get warmth, transparency, and depth of color. One of Stella's paintings was shown in the International Exhibition in Rome in 1910 and was acquired by the city of Rome. The influence of the French Modernists awakened his dormant individuality. His friendship with Antonio Mancini, a Futurist, also played a role in his new style. At the urging of Walter Pach...

SALE ONE WEEK ONLY “Study of Mt. Vesuvius" is a small intimate painting of an active volcano that has at times wrecked great destruction. As seen from a distance, it is a calm blue ...

Vivid, modernist Mt. Hamilton landscape attributed to Luke Stamos (American, 20th century). Oil on canvas. Unsigned. Unframed. Image size: 18"H x 24"W. This art work is in the distinctive realistic style of Luke Stamos. We certify that the work is by the hand of Luke Stamos. Artists statement: "I was born in Chicago, and began studying art at the Chicago Art Institute at age 5. When my family moved to San Francisco in 1944, I became aware of California’s splendid outdoor life, and began to pursue a life-long hobby of hunting and fishing. While attending high school in Daly City...

Oil on canvas painting by the Russian/American artist, Nicolai Cikovsky. Signed lower left. In good unrestored condition. Housed in custom made wood and lemon gold gilt frame. Overal...

Oil on artist board original painting by the well known American artist, Nicolai Cikovsky. Thick vibrant colors with a vase of flowers, a banjo and a notebook with photographs with a rough sea as the background. Circa 1940. Condition is very good. Overall framed in a circa 1960 frame, 23 by 27.25 inches. Landscape and figure painter Nicolai S. Cikovsky, 1894-1984, was born in Russia, where he studied at the Vilna Art School, 1910-1914; the Penza Royal Art School, 1914-1918; and Moscow High Tech Art...

Abstract watercolor composition bearing the influence of the earlier color-block compositions of Paul Klee. Pawel August Kontny, (Polish-German-American artist) He was born in Laurahuette, Poland, in 1923, the son of a wealthy pastry shop owner. In 1939 he began studying architecture in Breslau where he was introduced to the European masters and to the work of some of the German Expressionists, soon afterward banned as "degenerate artists" and removed from museums throughout Germany by the Nazi regime. His studies were interrupted by World War II. Drafted into the German army, traveling in many countries as a soldier, he sketched various landscapes but in 1945, he was captured and held as a prisoner of war in Italy. After the war, he studied at the Union of Nuremberg Architects to help design buildings to replace ones destroyed in the war. He recorded his impressions of the local population and the landscapes through his watercolors and drawings. Pawel Kontny thereafter moved to Nuremberg, Germany, becoming a member of the Union of Nuremberg Architects and helping to rebuild the city's historic center. He soon decided to concentrate on his professional art career. He married Irmgard Laurer, a dancer with the Nuremberg Opera. Pavel Kontny 's career as an artist was launched with his participation in an all German exhibition, held at the Dusseldorf Museum in 1952. He held one-man shows in Germany, Switzerland and the United States. During his trip to the United States in 1960, Kontny became instantly enamored with Colorado, and decided to relocate to Cherry Hills with his wife and two children. He quickly established himself in the local art community, being affiliated for a time with Denver Art Galleries and Saks Galleries. His subject matter became the Southwest. During this time he received the Prestigious Gold Medal of the Art Academy of Rome. His extensive travel provided material for the paintings he did using his hallmark marble dust technique. he also worked equally in pastel, watercolor, charcoal and pencil-and-ink. in a style which merged abstraction and realist styles, influenced by Abstract Expressionist painting and South Western American landscapes. In the early 1960s he was one of only a few European-born professional artists in the state, a select group that included Herbert Bayer (1900-1985), a member of the prewar Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, Germany, and Roland Detre (1903-2001), a Hungarian modernist painter. As a Denver, Colorado resident, Pavel Kontny exhibited at galleries and museums throughout the United States, Germany and Japan. There, he was inspired by frequent trips to Native American pueblos in the Southwest, as well as by the study of the Plains Indians of Montana and Wyoming. Over the years Kontny had a number of students and generously helped young artist by hosting exhibitions at his Cherry Hills home. For many years he generously donated his paintings to support charitable causes in Denver. Influences during his European years included German pastelist C.O. Muller, German Informel painter Karl Dahmen and Swiss artist, Hans Erni. In the early 1950s his painting style showed the influence of the Die Brücke (The Bridge), a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905 who had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the twentieth century in Germany. By the middle of the decade his style incorporated more referential abstraction and total abstraction, resulting in part from his study of Hans Hartung, a German artist based in Paris who exhibited his gestural abstract work in Germany. The American moon landing in 1969 inspired Paul Kontny...