John Edward Thompson Art

Simka Simkhovitch (Russian/American 1893 - 1949) This came with a small grouping from the artist's family, some were hand signed some were not. These were studies for larger paintings. This is a miniature watercolor and gouache vibrant, colorful bouquet of flowers in a vase. Simka Simkhovitch (Симха Файбусович Симхович) (aka Simka Faibusovich Simkhovich) (Novozybkov, Russia May 21, 1885 O.S./June 2, 1885 N.S.—Greenwich, Connecticut February 25, 1949) was a Ukrainian-Russian Jewish artist and immigrant to the United States. He painted theater scenery in his early career and then had several showings in galleries in New York City. Winning Works Progress Administration (WPA) commissions in the 1930s, he completed murals for the post offices in Jackson, Mississippi and Beaufort, North Carolina. His works are in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Born outside Kyiv (Petrograd Ukraine) into a Jewish family who owned a small department store. During a severe case of measles when he was seven, Simcha Simchovitch sketched the views outside his window and decided to become an artist, over his father's objections. Beginning in 1905, he studied at the Grekov Odessa Art School and upon completion of his studies in 1911 received a recommendation to be admitted to the Imperial Academy of Arts. Though he enrolled to begin classes in architecture, painting, and sculpture at the Imperial Academy, he was dropped from the school roster in December because of the quota on the number of Jewish students and drafted into the army. Simchovitch served as a private in the 175th Infantry Regiment Baturyn [ru] until his demobilization in 1912. Re-enrolling in the Imperial Academy, he audited classes. Simka Simkhovitch exhibited paintings and sculptures in 1918 as part of an exhibition of Jewish artists and in 1919 placed 1st in the competition "The Great Russian Revolution" with a painting called "Russian Revolution" which was hung in the State Museum of Revolution. In 1922, Simkha Simkhovitch exhibited at the International Book Fair in Florence (Italian: Fiera Internazionale del Libro di Firenze). In 1924, Simkhovitch came to the United States to make illustrations for Soviet textbooks and decided to immigrate instead. Initially he supported himself by doing commercial art and a few portrait commissions. In 1927, he was hired to paint a screen for a scene in the play "The Command to Love" by Fritz Gottwald and Rudolph Lothar which was playing at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway. Art dealers began clamoring for the screen and Simkhovitch began a career as a screen painter for the theater. Catching the attention of the screenwriter, Ernest Pascal, he worked as an illustrator for Pascal, who then introduced him to gallery owner, Marie Sterner. Simkhovitch's works appeared at the Marie Sterner Gallery beginning with a 1927 exhibit and were repeated the following year. Simkhovitch had an exhibit in 1929 at Sterner's on circus paintings. In 1931, he held a showing of works at the Helen Hackett Gallery, in New York City and later that same year he was one of the featured artists of a special exhibit in San Francisco at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park. The exhibit was coordinated by Marie Sterner and included four watercolors, including one titled "Nudes". He is of the generation of Russian Soviet artists such as Isaac Pailes, Serge Charchoune, Marc Chagall, Chana Orloff, Isaac Ilyich Levitan, and Ossip Zadkine. In 1936, Simkhovitch was selected to complete the mural for the WPA Post office project in Jackson, Mississippi. The mural was hung in the post office and courthouse in 1938 depicted a plantation theme. Painted on the wall behind the judge’s bench, “Pursuits of Life in Mississippi”, a depiction of black workers engaged in manual labor amid scenes of white professionals and socialites, was eventually covered over in later years during renovations due to its stereotypical African American imagery. Simka painted what he thought was typical of Jackson. His impression of pre-civil rights Mississippi was evidently Greek Revival column houses, weeping willow trees, working class families, and the oppression of African Americans. He painted African American men picking cotton, while a white man took account of the harvest and a white judge advised a white family, calling it Pursuits of Life in Mississippi. Though clearly endorsed by the government and initially generally well-received, the mural soon raised concerns with locals as the climate toward racial segregation began to change. The main concern was whether depictions that show African Americans in subjugated societal roles should be featured in a courtroom. The following year, his painting "Holiday" won praise at an exhibition in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1940, Simkhovitch's second WPA post office project was completed when four murals, "The Cape Lookout Lighthouse and the Orville W. Mail Boat", "The Wreck of the Crissie Wright", "Sand Ponies" and "Canada Geese" were installed in Beaufort, North Carolina. The works were commissioned in 1938 and did not generate the controversy that the Jackson mural had. The main mural is "The Wreck of the Crissie Wright" and depicts a shipwreck which had occurred in Beaufort in 1866. "The Cape Lookout Lighthouse and the Orville W. Mail Boat" depicted the lighthouse built in 1859 and the mail boat that was running mail during the time which Simkhovitch was there. The boat ran mail for the area until 1957. "Sand Ponies" shows the wild horses common to the North Carolina barrier islands and "Canada Geese" showed the importance of hunting and fishing in the area. All four murals were restored in the 1990s by Elisabeth Speight, daughter of two other WPA muralists, Francis Speight...

Modern Abstracted Still-Life with Antique Coffee Grinder by Anthony Rappa Modern textural still-life by California artist Anthony Rappa (America...

This work is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s Untitled (Farm in Winter), 1940s, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 26 x 30 inches, presented in an original frame Julius Delbos...

The paintings are drawn with oil on the canvas. Midnight in the magic garden. Hurray! The series of paintings "My funny birds" continues. Bright contrasts. Fancy flowers. Each of the...

Sonoma Kitchen Table - after Henri Matisse - Still Life with Geranium An exceptional painting of Still Life with Geranium styled after and Henri Matisse by Bay area and Sonoma artist...

Red Poppies in Vase French School, mid 20th century signed oil on canvas, unframed canvas: 21.5 x 15 inches provenance: private collection condition: poor condition (ie: paint loss a...

Landscape, 1940, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches, signed, dated and titled verso: “Marcel Cailliet ’40 – S.C.” and “Marcel Cailliet Landscape”; likely exhibited at the annual juried st...

An original oil on canvas by listed New York female artist Enid Smiley.

Six O-Clock, c. 1942, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, signed and titled several times verso of frame and stretcher (perhaps by another hand), marked “Rehn” several times on frame (for the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York City, who represented Craig at the time); Exhibited: 1) 18th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings from March 21 to May 2, 1943 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. #87, original price $450 (per catalog) (exhibition label verso), 2) Craig’s one-man show at the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, New York City, from October 26 to November 14, 1942, #10 (original price listed as $350); and 3) Exhibition of thirty paintings sponsored by the Harrisburg Art Association at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg in March, 1944 (concerning this exhibit, Penelope Redd of The Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) wrote: “Other paintings that have overtones of superrealism inherent in the subjects include Tom Craig’s California nocturne, ‘Six O’Clock,’ two figures moving through the twilight . . . .” March 6, 1944, p. 13); another label verso from The Museum of Art of Toledo (Ohio): original frame: Provenance includes George Stern Gallery, Los Angeles, CA About the Painting Long before Chris Burden’s iconic installation outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Urban Light, another artist, Tom Craig, made Southern California streetlights the subject of one of his early 1940s paintings. Consisting of dozens of recycled streetlights from the 1920s and 1930s forming a classical colonnade at the museum’s entrance, Burden’s Urban Light has become a symbol of Los Angeles. For Burden, the streetlights represent what constitutes an advanced society, something “safe after dark and beautiful to behold.” It seems that Craig is playing on the same theme in Six O-Clock. Although we see two hunched figures trudging along the sidewalk at the end of a long day, the real stars of this painting are the streetlights which brighten the twilight and silhouette another iconic symbol of Los Angeles, the palm trees in the distance. Mountains in the background and the distant view of a suburban neighborhood join the streetlights and palm trees as classic subject matter for a California Scene painting, but Craig gives us a twist by depicting the scene not as a sun-drenched natural expanse. Rather, Craig uses thin layers of oil paint, mimicking the watercolor technique for which he is most famous, to show us the twinkling beauty of manmade light and the safety it affords. Although Southern California is a land of natural wonders, the interventions of humanity are already everywhere in Los Angeles and as one critic noted, the resulting painting has an air of “superrealism.” About the Artist Thomas Theodore Craig was a well-known fixture in the Southern California art scene. He was born in Upland California. Craig graduated with a degree in botany from Pomona College and studied painting at Pamona and the Chouinard Art School with Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Barse Miller among others. He became close friends with fellow artist Milford Zornes...

Wonderful modernist landscape painting. Francis Kelly was born in 1927 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He received his early education in Chicago and California. He served in the United States Navy from 1944 to 1948 when he entered the Art Center School, Los Angeles. During 1951 in 1952 he lived in Paris, attending the Academie de la Grande, Chaumiere. In 1953 he went to the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, and then to the University of California at Los Angeles, where he was graphic laboratory assistant to John Paul Jones. Awarded a Fulbright Grant in 1955 he came to the Graphic Department of the Central School, London. The St. George's Gallery first introduced his etchings in Britain. In 1958 Kelly was awarded the Stacy Grant for painting. His work has been shown at Royal Academy Exhibitions and he has traveled extensively. In 1966 he was appointed Art organizer for the U.S. Embassy "Festival of Arts in Humanities". His paintings were shown in the exhibition "Five American Artists in Britain". During 1976 he acted in a similar capacity on behalf of Windsor & Newton Ltd., who sponsored an exhibition of American artists commemorating the U.S. Bicentennial. He appeared in the film Science in Art. Kelly has studied painting conservation at the Courtald Institute. In 1967 he was sent to the Italian Art and Archives Rescue Fund to Florence to restore flood damaged paintings. In 1971 his book, Art Restoration, was published by David and Charles and in the U.S. by McGraw-Hill. His second book, The Studio and The Artist was published in 1975. Kelly's work has been shown at 24 museums in Great Britain and numerous galleries. Acquisitions have been made by many public and private collections, universities and educational services. During more than 40 years in Britain he has found a growing affinity with the countryside, observing less the well-known landmarks but rather more the timeless rural lanes and by-ways as yet still unspoiled by building and industry. A member of the group in Brighton preserving Brighton's West Pier, he has produced a series of works recording the ravages of time on this finest of Victorian structures.

Untitled (Collapsed Shacks), c. 1940s, oil on canvas, signed lower left, 20 ½ x 26 ½ inches, presented in a period frame This work is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: ...

framed: 23 x 19.75 image: 15.5 x 11.5 Nicolai S. (Nicola) Cikovsky (1894 - 1984) was active/lived in New York / Russian Federation. Nicolai Cikovsky is known for Shore landscape, figure, still life and portrait painting, printmaking. His mural "Irrigation," and "Gathering Dates" is at the Department of Interior, Washington, D.C. (WPA, GSA) 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...