Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Josephus Augustus KNIP Tilbourg 1777 - Berlicum 1847 Picturesque landscape of the Alps with anthropomorphic rock Circa 1800 Watercolor, gouache and brown ink Signed lower left 47 x ...

Nancy Lamb, Strawberry Blip, 2020, Watercolor on Paper, 5.5 x 3.5" Contemporary American Still Life of Strawberry Cupcake, Dessert Treat. This fantastic ...

Eleanor Park Custis painted scenes as varied as the artist's travels: from her hometown of Washington, D.C., to the coastal towns of New England; from the prosperous fishing villages of Brittany, to Venice and the mountain villages and lakes of northern Italy. While Custis's subjects are diverse, her style is consistent and distinctive throughout this body of work. Her use of flat areas of color delineated by dark contours is reminiscent of the aesthetics of woodblock printing. Like many artists of the day, she was profoundly influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, and her adaptation of the aesthetic by 1924 led to her most productive artistic period. Eleanor Custis hailed from a socially prominent Washington, D.C., family. She was distantly related to Martha Custis Washington, America's first First Lady. Custis began three years of formal art training in the autumn of 1915 at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, and was guided and inspired by Impressionist artist Edmund C. Tarbell, one of the Ten American Painters, who became the Corcoran School's principal in 1918. Custis exhibited widely in many of the Washington art societies and clubs for much of her career. She was also a frequent exhibitor at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York City; her last one-woman show there was in April 1945. Custis's mature style emerged in scenes of the streets, wharves, and drydocks of seacoast villages from Maine to Massachusetts, which she visited during the summers of 1924 and 1925. She was working in Gloucester, Massachusetts in August 1924, and painted several gouaches of the town's wharves and winding streets, including In Gloucester Harbor and At the Drydock, Gloucester. During her stay, Custis may have met Jane Peterson or at least must have seen her work, the best of which was executed in Gloucester during the preceding ten years. The similarity between their styles is unmistakable, but, while it may be tempting to suggest that Custis was influenced by Peterson during her summer in Gloucester, the connection between their work is probably more a case of shared aesthetics and common European influences. Custis expanded her subject repertoire with three trips to Europe between 1926 and 1929, and was inspired by the Old World charm of Holland, northern France, Switzerland, and Italy, leading to such works as New Kirk, Delft, Holland, Market Day in Quimper, At the Foot of the Matterhorn, and The Town Square, Varenna. A Mediterranean cruise in 1934 introduced her to the Near East, and the bustling, colorful streets and bazaars of Cairo, captured in works like A Street in Cairo, Egypt and A Moroccan Jug...

Signed (at lower right): FJK

Nancy Lamb, Mile High Pie, 2020, Watercolor on Paper, 5.5 x 3.5" Contemporary American Still Life of a Chocolate, Mile High Pie Dessert Treat. This fant...

Nancy Lamb, Key Lime Lime, 2020, Watercolor on Paper, 5.5 x 3.5" Contemporary American Still Life of a Key Lime Pie, Dessert Treat. This fantastic zero-c...

Nancy Lamb, Kiss Cake, 2020, Watercolor on Paper, 5.5 x 3.5." Contemporary American Still Life of Hershey's Kiss Cake, Chocolate Dessert Treat. This fan...

Signed (at lower right): FJK

Peter Rabbit happened to be looking out of the dear Old Briar-patch as the young Fox ran past. Ink on paper, 1955 Signed "H. Cady," and dated 11-15 lower left (see photo) Annotated w...

Rembrandt van Rijn 1606-1669 Dutch Canal with a Large Boat and a Bridge Etching on paper New Hollstein Dutch 252: second state of two Signed and dated lower left: Rembrandt. f. 16...

This stunning Baroque study depicts a regatta boat, a type of vessel developed in eighteenth-century Venice for the regattas organized by the Serenissima during visits by royalty and...

David Dewey (B. 1946) Reader's Digest Headquarters, 1996 Watercolor on paper Sight: 24 x 18 1/2 in. Framed: 36 x 29 3/4 x 1 in. Living on the Maine coast, David Dewey is a watercolo...

PROVENANCE Private Collection, England Colonel Charles William Garnde Walker (1882 - 1974) Thence by descent to; Sir Michael Walker (1916 - 2001) Thence by descent We are grateful t...

WPA Post Office Mural Study Native American Scene Regionalism Social Realism Louise Emerson Ronnebeck (1901 - 1980) Proposal Sketch for Worland Wyoming Post Office WPA Mural Project Image: 7 x 15 inches Board 14 x 22 inches Watercolor on paper, attached to black/gray cardboard/thick paper c. 1937 Signed lower right Written in Louise's hand on mounting paper in white chalk/pencil: "Sketch for Mural...

Attributed to HUBERT ROBERT (Paris 1733 - 1808) Dancing couple (recto) Various sketches (verso) Red chalk and charcoal on the reverse numbered in pencil “4229” circa 1770 34 x 21 c...

John Livzey Ridgeway (American, 1859-1947) Signed: J. L. Ridgway Imperial Woodpecker, aka Ivory Billed Woodpecker, c. 1898 Gifted to Doris Barroll Amos in 1938 Original Watercolo...

This artwork titled "Danzantes de Colores from the "Colcha" series, 1989, is a watercolor and ink on hand made paper by noted American artist Amado Maurilio Pena...

This artwork titled "Woman in Purple" from the "Colcha" series, 1989, is a watercolor and ink on hand made paper by noted American artist Amado Maurilio Pena...

"Men in Barracks" WPA Mid 20th Century American Scene Realism Gay Modernism WWII. 18 x 24 inches Watercolor on paper. c. 1940s. Signed lower right. BIO ...

Pencil portrait of a brave signed by Joseph A. Imhof.

Standing Female Nude Colored chalks on tan Strathmore paper, c. 1975 Signed in chalk upper right (see photo) Condition: Excellent Housed in an 8 play acid free rag matting S...

Yellow Poppies by Texas artist Julie England is an Ink and Watercolor, Oil on Yupo paper. The size of Yellow Poppies is Image 26” x 40” Framed 31 ¼” x 45 ¼” Yellow Poppies by J...

This powerful pen and brown ink wash drawing is a study for an altarpiece depicting The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew. Signed and dated 1604, it was painted at the end of his life b...

Irises by Texas artist Julie England is an Ink and Watercolor, Oil on Yupo paper. THe size of Irises is Image 26” x 40” Framed 31 ¼” x 45 ¼” Art is...

Portrait of a semi-attired young woman titled "Regarding Agnes" by Duncan Hannah. Conte pencil on paper. Signed front lower right. Offered framed. Frame size: 10.75 x 8.75 inches ...

Original watercolor by Edward Lamson Henry looking back at barge travel through small New York state towns. Delaware & Hudson Canal, Ellenville N...

The attribution to Jan de Bisschop has been confirmed by the RKD with the following comment: "We base this attribution on the dark washes, the subject represented and the monogram". ...

Cool Afternoon by Texas artist Julie England is an Ink and Watercolor, Oil on Yupo paper. The size of Cool Afternoon is 11″ x 14″ Image 16″ x 21 3/4″...

This widely referenced pair of paintings is one of Francesco Conti’s most successful productions. Francesco Conti is one of the finest painters of 18th-century Florence. In the shimmering colors typical of his best work, he represents two opposite characters from the Bible: the virtuous Judith, whose courage saves her people by cutting off the head of the invader Holofernes, and the depraved Salome, who under the influence of her mother becomes responsible for the beheading of the prophet John the Baptist. The artist's talent lies in his ability to treat these two macabre subjects with a light touch, presenting us with two attractive women who seem to twirl with glee amidst the severed heads... 1. Francesco Conti, the “Florentine Tiepolo” Francesco Conti is a major painter of the Florentine school of the 18th century; he can even probably be considered, along with Giovanni Domenico Ferretti (1692-1768), as one of the two main painters of the second quarter of the Florentine 18th century. Born in Florence in 1682, Francesco Conti began his apprenticeship in the workshop of Simone Pignoni (1611 - 1698), a disciple of Francesco Furini; he was also influenced by the Venetian Sebastiano Ricci. A protégé of Marquis Riccardi, he accompanied him to Rome between 1699 and 1705, where he frequented Carlo Maratta's studio. He settled permanently in Florence in 1705. Painted exclusively on canvas, the majority of his work consists of religious subjects, altarpieces or private devotional works. It is likely that Conti himself was a devout churchgoer, as evidenced by his affiliation, in the third decade of the eighteenth century, to the Society of the Disciples of Saint-John-the-Baptist, and his entry, at the end of his life, into the fraternity of the Venerable Society of the Holy Trinity. In Florence, Conti worked for the Grand Duchy's major patrons, including the last Medici - in particular Giangastone and Annamaria Luisa, Electress Palatine - and confirmed his role as a reference painter under the Lorraine Regency, as master of the Public Drawing School, which was closely linked to the institute responsible for the manufacture of semi-precious stone mosaics, then located in the Uffizi complex. Matteo Marangoni, an art critic of the early 20th century, praised his "brushwork full of elegance and true spirit of the 18th century", pointing out that Conti was "probably one of the best colorists" of the Florentine school of his time. These two characteristics led the art historian Paolo dal Poggetto to nickname him the "Florentine Tiepolo". 2. Judith and Salome, two biblical characters opposing each other These two paintings form a pair presenting two biblical episodes, which have in common the depiction of a "heroine" carrying the severed head of a man. While the Salome episode might at first appear to be an echo of the Old Testament story of Judith, each character is the exact opposite of the other. Judith, whose story is told in the Book of Judith, is a beautiful young widow from Bethulia who, accompanied by her maid, went into the camp of the invading Assyrians and won the confidence of Holofernes, the general commanding the enemy army. Invited to a great feast on the fourth evening, she took advantage of Holofernes' drunkenness to cut off his head. “She went up to the bedpost near Holofernes’ head, and took down his sword that hung there. She came close to his bed, took hold of the hair of his head, and said, “Give me strength today, O Lord God of Israel!” Then she struck his neck twice with all her might, and cut off his head. Next she rolled his body off the bed and pulled down the canopy from the posts. Soon afterward she went out and gave Holofernes’ head to her maid, who placed it in her food bag...

Eileen Lake Crayon on paper, early1930's Initialed in pencil lower right (see photo) Titled and annotated verso "Eileen Lake, early 1930s girlfriend" Note: Eileen Hall Lake was an American poet and Adolf Dehn's girlfriend in the early 1930s. Provenance: Estate of the artist By descent Adolf Dehn, American Watercolorist and Printmaker, 1895-1968 Adolf Dehn was an artist who achieved extraordinary artistic heights, but in a very particular artistic sphere—not so much in oil painting as in watercolor and lithography. Long recognized as a master by serious print collectors, he is gradually gaining recognition as a notable and influential figure in the overall history of American art. In the 19th century, with the invention of the rotary press, which made possible enormous print runs, and the development of the popular, mass-market magazines, newspaper and magazine illustration developed into an artistic realm of its own, often surprisingly divorced from the world of museums and art exhibitions, and today remains surprisingly overlooked by most art historians. Dehn in many regards was an outgrowth of this world, although in an unusual way, since as a young man he produced most of his illustrative work not for popular magazines, such as The Saturday Evening Post, but rather for radical journals, such as The Masses or The Liberator, or artistic “little magazines” such as The Dial. This background established the foundation of his outlook, and led later to his unique and distinctive contribution to American graphic art. If there’s a distinctive quality to his work, it was his skill in introducing unusual tonal and textural effects into his work, particularly in printmaking but also in watercolor. Jackson Pollock seems to have been one of many notable artists who were influenced by his techniques. Early Years, 1895-1922 For an artist largely remembered for scenes of Vienna and Paris, Adolf Dehn’s background was a surprising one. Born in Waterville, Minnesota, on November 22, 1895, Dehn was the descendent of farmers who had emigrated from Germany and homesteaded in the region, initially in a one-room log cabin with a dirt floor. Adolf’s father, Arthur Clark Dehn, was a hunter and trapper who took pride that he had no boss but himself, and who had little use for art. Indeed, during Adolf’s boyhood the walls of his bedroom and the space under his bed were filled with the pelts of mink, muskrats and skunks that his father had killed, skinned and stretched on drying boards. It was Adolf’s mother, Emilie Haas Dehn, a faithful member of the German Lutheran Evangelical Church, who encouraged his interest in art, which became apparent early in childhood. Both parents were ardent socialists, and supporters of Eugene Debs. In many ways Dehn’s later artistic achievement was clearly a reaction against the grinding rural poverty of his childhood. After graduating from high school in 1914 at the age of 19—an age not unusual in farming communities at the time, where school attendance was often irregular—Dehn attended the Minneapolis School of Art from 1914 to 1917, whose character followed strongly reflected that of its director, Munich-trained Robert Kohler, an artistic conservative but a social radical. There Dehn joined a group of students who went on to nationally significant careers, including Wanda Gag (later author of best-selling children’s books); John Flanagan (a sculptor notable for his use of direct carving) Harry Gottlieb (a notable social realist and member of the Woodstock Art Colony), Elizabeth Olds (a printmaker and administrator for the WPA), Arnold Blanch (landscape, still-life and figure painter, and member of the Woodstock group), Lucille Lunquist, later Lucille Blanch (also a gifted painter and founder of the Woodstock art colony), and Johan Egilrud (who stayed in Minneapolis and became a journalist and poet). Adolf became particularly close to Wanda Gag (1893-1946), with whom he established an intense but platonic relationship. Two years older than he, Gag was the daughter of a Bohemian artist and decorator, Anton Gag, who had died in 1908. After her husband died, Wanda’s mother, Lizzi Gag, became a helpless invalid, so Wanda was entrusted with the task of raising and financially supporting her six younger siblings. This endowed her with toughness and an independent streak, but nonetheless, when she met Dehn, Wanda was Victorian and conventional in her artistic taste and social values. Dehn was more socially radical, and introduced her to radical ideas about politics and free love, as well as to socialist publications such as The Masses and The Appeal to Reason. Never very interested in oil painting, in Minneapolis Dehn focused on caricature and illustration--often of a humorous or politically radical character. In 1917 both Dehn and Wanda won scholarships to attend the Art Students League, and consequently, in the fall of that year both moved to New York. Dehn’s art education, however, ended in the summer of 1918, shortly after the United States entered World War I, when he was drafted to serve in the U. S. Army. Unwilling to fight, he applied for status as a conscientious objector, but was first imprisoned, then segregated in semi-imprisonment with other Pacifists, until the war ended. The abuse he suffered at this time may well explain his later withdrawal from taking political stands or making art of an overtly political nature. After his release from the army, Dehn returned to New York where he fell under the spell of the radical cartoonist Boardman Robinson and produced his first lithographs. He also finally consummated his sexual relationship with Wanda Gag. The Years in Europe: 1922-1929 In September of 1921, however, he abruptly departed for Europe, arriving in Paris and then moving on to Vienna. There in the winter of 1922 he fell in love with a Russian dancer, Mura Zipperovitch, ending his seven-year relationship with Wanda Gag. He and Mura were married in 1926. It was also in Vienna that he produced his first notable artistic work. Influenced by European artists such as Jules Pascin and Georg Grosz, Dehn began producing drawings of people in cafes, streets, and parks, which while mostly executed in his studio, were based on spontaneous life studies and have an expressive, sometimes almost childishly wandering quality of line. The mixture of sophistication and naiveté in these drawings was new to American audiences, as was the raciness of their subject matter, which often featured pleasure-seekers, prostitutes or scenes of sexual dalliance, presented with a strong element of caricature. Some of these drawings contain an element of social criticism, reminiscent of that found in the work of George Grosz, although Dehn’s work tended to focus on humorous commentary rather than savagely attacking his subjects or making a partisan political statement. Many Americans, including some who had originally been supporters of Dehn such as Boardman Robinson, were shocked by these European drawings, although George Grocz (who became a friend of the artist in this period) admired them, and recognized that Dehn could also bring a new vision to America subject matter. As he told Dehn: “You will do things in America which haven’t been done, which need to be done, which only you can do—as far at least as I know America.” A key factor in Dehn’s artistic evolution at this time was his association with Scofield Thayer...

RGRFinearts is pleased to offer this WPA Era drawing by Carl Pickhardt of construction workers. It is matted and drawn on slightly pinkish paper. A wonderful addition to a WPA or lab...

David Morrison was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa in 1956. He received his MFA in Printmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985. A visiting lecturer and guest artist at numerous universities, he is very involved in the world of printmaking, specifically stone lithography, and he is the Professor Emeritus at Indiana University’s Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis. Morrison has exhibited widely, and his work is included in numerous public collections including The Whitney Museum of American Art, The New-York Historical Society, The National Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Figge Art Museum, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, the Portland Museum of Art, Collection of Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa, to name a few. 'David Morrison’s drawings are in the Old Master tradition of still-life and natura morte, whose surface beauty with its signs of decay warn viewers about the transitory nature of all life. In many ways the artist’s refined drawings can be connected to the works of John James Audubon in the N-YHS collection, which, along with their birds, showcase fruit, leaves, and flowers whose signs of decay allude to the cycle of nature and the temporal nature of life. Audubon also tended to isolate his birds and settings against empty white backgrounds. Morrison’s portrayals of leaves also tie into the poetic celebration of nature and landscape found in the works of the Hudson River School. Most profoundly they relate to Asher B. Durand’s obsession with trees (see the 2010 Durand catalogue and the essay “‘A Magnificent Obsession’: Durand’s Trees as Spiritual Sentinels of Nature”). Nevertheless, in the case of the over-lifesize measurements and the leaf's and branch's isolation on the page, Morrison's watercolors are contemporary and modern in appearance, yet profoundly evocative of both past and future.' (Roberta Olson, Curator of Drawings The New-York Historical Society). Artist Statement My drawings of tree branches and trunks embrace nature. I love the springtime when there are eruptive explosions of buds with new leaves and berries. I am seduced by the sensual shape and color of the buds protruding from the branches. I love the firecracker explosion of the red and yellow berries of the crabapple. My drawings capture a moment of this existence. I am also fascinated with fallen tree branches with their scarification left by diseases, infestation, decomposition and storm damage. My drawings capture the degeneration cycle of plant materials and how they echo the living conditions of man and nature. I am interested in capturing the reality of their existence, with all the imperfections, echoing their fragile existence in nature, not an idealized beautification of nature like botanical illustrations. The drawings are hyper realistic: they capture minute details of the subjects that I portray, but they are only an illusion of the actual reality. I became obsessed with drawing branches...

This intensely expressive figure is a preparatory study for "Arab Market on the Tocria Plain", a painting exhibited at the 1865 Salon and now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille. 1...

David Morrison was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa in 1956. He received his MFA in Printmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985. A visiting lecturer and guest artist at numerous universities, he is very involved in the world of printmaking, specifically stone lithography, and he is the Professor Emeritus at Indiana University’s Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis. Morrison has exhibited widely, and his work is included in numerous public collections including The Whitney Museum of American Art, The New-York Historical Society, The National Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Figge Art Museum, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, the Portland Museum of Art, Collection of Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa, to name a few. 'David Morrison’s drawings are in the Old Master tradition of still-life and natura morte, whose surface beauty with its signs of decay warn viewers about the transitory nature of all life. In many ways the artist’s refined drawings can be connected to the works of John James Audubon in the N-YHS collection, which, along with their birds, showcase fruit, leaves, and flowers whose signs of decay allude to the cycle of nature and the temporal nature of life. Audubon also tended to isolate his birds and settings against empty white backgrounds. Morrison’s portrayals of leaves also tie into the poetic celebration of nature and landscape found in the works of the Hudson River School. Most profoundly they relate to Asher B. Durand’s obsession with trees (see the 2010 Durand catalogue and the essay “‘A Magnificent Obsession’: Durand’s Trees as Spiritual Sentinels of Nature”). Nevertheless, in the case of the over-lifesize measurements and the leaf's and branch's isolation on the page, Morrison's watercolors are contemporary and modern in appearance, yet profoundly evocative of both past and future.' (Roberta Olson, Curator of Drawings The New-York Historical Society). Artist Statement My drawings of tree branches and trunks embrace nature. I love the springtime when there are eruptive explosions of buds with new leaves and berries. I am seduced by the sensual shape and color of the buds protruding from the branches. I love the firecracker explosion of the red and yellow berries of the crabapple. My drawings capture a moment of this existence. I am also fascinated with fallen tree branches with their scarification left by diseases, infestation, decomposition and storm damage. My drawings capture the degeneration cycle of plant materials and how they echo the living conditions of man and nature. I am interested in capturing the reality of their existence, with all the imperfections, echoing their fragile existence in nature, not an idealized beautification of nature like botanical illustrations. The drawings are hyper realistic: they capture minute details of the subjects that I portray, but they are only an illusion of the actual reality. I became obsessed with drawing branches...

RGRFineArts is pleased to offer this fine pencil drawing of young people enjoing the beach by Carl Pickhardt done in the 1930s. This picture illustrates the fine craftsmanship that P...

"Arrows of St Sebastian" diptych 2 sepia ink drawings by Paula Craioveanu This is a set of 2ink drawings, showing in a modern vision the martyrdom of St Sebastian. These 2 drawings ...

Brodsky pairs gouache and watercolor to achieve the luster of her subject's plumage. Each carefully defined feather shimmers with a prism of color. Her attention to detail is enliven...

Industrial Landscape Contemporary American Watercolor Magic Realism 20th Century Henry Koerner (1915-1991) J&L Oxygen Plant 18 x 24 1/2 inches Watercolo...

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot," Joni Mitchell said. - - Created in 1969, at the dawn of the American environmental movement, artist Richard Erdoes draws a sequential narrative in the form of a coil. From inception to destruction, it illustrates a list of things that humans are doing to destroy the world we live in. The work was commissioned for school-age humans and executed in a whimsically comic way. Yet the underlying narrative is sophisticated and foreshadows a world that could be on the brink of ecological disaster. Graphically and conceptually, this work exhibits an endless amount of creativity and Erdoes cartoony style is one to fall in love with. Signed lower right. Unframed 12.4 inches Width: 12.85 inches Height is the live area. Board is 16x22 inches. Richard Erdoes (Hungarian Erdős, German Erdös; July 7, 1912 – July 16, 2008) was an American artist, photographer, illustrator and author. Early life Erdoes was born in Frankfurt,to Maria Josefa Schrom on July 7, 1912. His father, Richárd Erdős Sr., was a Jewish Hungarian opera singer who had died a few weeks earlier in Budapest on June 9, 1912.After his birth, his mother lived with her sister, the Viennese actress Leopoldine ("Poldi") Sangora,He described himself as "equal parts Austrian, Hungarian and German, as well as equal parts Catholic, Protestant and Jew..."[4] Career He was a student at the Berlin Academy of Art in 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power. He was involved in a small underground paper where he published anti-Hitler political cartoons which attracted the attention of the Nazi regime. He fled Germany with a price on his head. Back in Vienna, he continued his training at the Kunstgewerbeschule, now the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.[5] He also wrote and illustrated children's books and worked as a caricaturist for Tag and Stunde, anti-Nazi newspapers. After the Anschluss of Austria in 1938 he fled again, first to Paris, where he studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, and then London, England before journeying to the United States. He married his first wife, fellow artist Elsie Schulhof (d. xxxx) in London, shortly before their arrival in New York City. In New York City, Erdoes enjoyed a long career as a commercial artist, and was known for his highly detailed, whimsical drawings. He created illustrations for such magazines as Stage, Fortune, Pageant, Gourmet, Harper's Bazaar, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, Time, National Geographic and Life Magazine, where he met his second wife, Jean Sternbergh (d. 1995) who was an art director there. The couple married in 1951 and had three children.[6] Erdoes also illustrated many children's books. An assignment for Life in 1967 took Erdoes to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for the first time, and marked the beginning of the work for which he would be best known. Erdoes was fascinated by Native American culture, outraged at the conditions on the reservation and deeply moved by the Civil Rights Movement that was raging at the time. He wrote histories, collections of Native American stories...

Original watercolor on archival paper of a sailboat with a trailing dory heading out to sea. Attributed to the hand of Alexander Yaron. Signed lower right and dated 1980. Condition is excellent. Under glass. The artwork is matted and housed in a rounded front edge solid oak wood frame. Overall framed measurements are 27 by 34 inches. Provenance: A Sarasota, Florida gentleman. Alexander A. Yaron was born in Estonia in 1910, lived in China and the Philippines before moving to the United States in the 1950’s. He lived in New York as well as in Anaheim, California where he has a working studio. An autodidact and a versatile commercial artist, Alexander Yaron applied his talent in portraiture, photography, interior design, advertising, layout and illustration. His best known projects were illustrated art...

This vigorous drawing has long been attributed to Polidoro da Caravaggio: The Abduction of the Sabine Women is one of the scenes that Polidoro depicted between 1525 and 1527 on the façade of the Milesi Palazzo in Rome. However, the proximity to another drawing inspired by this same façade, kept at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and to other drawings inspired by Polidoro kept at the Musée du Louvre, leads us to propose an attribution to Biagio Pupini, a Bolognese artist whose life remains barely known, despite the abundant number of drawings attributed to him. 1. Biagio Pupini, a Bolognese artist in the light of the Roman Renaissance The early life of Biagio Pupini, an important figure of the first half of the Cinquecento in Bologna - Vasari mentions him several times - is still poorly known. Neither his date of birth (probably around 1490-1495) nor his training are known. He is said to have been a pupil of Francesco Francia (1450 - 1517) and his name appears for the first time in 1511 in a contract with the painter Bagnacavallo (c. 1484 - 1542) for the frescoes of a church in Faenza. He then collaborated with Girolamo da Carpi, at San Michele in Bosco and at the villa of Belriguardo. He must have gone to Rome for the first time with Bagnacavallo between 1511 and 1519. There he discovered the art of Raphael, with whom he might have worked, and that of Polidoro da Caravaggio. This first visit, and those that followed, were the occasion for an intense study of ancient and modern art, as illustrated by his abundant graphic production. Polidoro da Caravaggio had a particular influence on the technique adopted by Pupini. Executed on coloured paper, his drawings generally combine pen, brown ink and wash with abundant highlights of white gouache, as in the drawing presented here. 2. The Abduction of the Sabine Women Our drawing is an adaptation of a fresco painted between 1525 and 1527 by Polidoro da Caravaggio on the façade of the Milesi Palace in Rome. These painted façades were very famous from the moment they were painted and inspired many artists during their stay in Rome. These frescoes are now very deteriorated and difficult to see, as the palace is in a rather narrow street. The episode of the abduction of the Sabine women (which appears in the centre of the photo above) is a historical theme that goes back to the origins of Rome and is recounted both by Titus Livius (Ab Urbe condita I,13), by Ovid (Fasti III, 199-228) and by Plutarch (II, Romulus 14-19). After killing his twin brother Romus, Romulus populates the city of Rome by opening it up to refugees and brigands and finds himself with an excess of men. Because of their reputation, none of the inhabitants of the neighbouring cities want to give them their daughters in marriage. The Romans then decide to invite their Sabine neighbours to a great feast during which they slaughter the Sabines and kidnap their daughters. The engraving made by Giovanni Battista Gallestruzzi (1618 - 1677) around 1656-1658 gives us a good understanding of the Polidoro fresco, allowing us to see how Biagio Pupini reworked the scene to extract this dynamic group. With a remarkable economy of means, Biagio Pupini takes over the left-hand side of the fresco and depicts in a very dense space two main groups, each consisting of a Roman and a Sabine, completed by a group of three soldiers in the background (which seems to differ quite significantly from Polidoro's composition). The balance of the drawing is based on a very strongly structured composition. The drawing is organised around a median vertical axis, which runs along both the elbow of the kidnapped Sabine on the left and the foot of her captor, and the two main diagonals, reinforced by four secondary diagonals. This diamond-shaped structure creates an extremely dynamic space, in which centripetal movements (the legs of the Sabine on the right, the arm of the soldier on the back at the top right) and centrifugal movements (the arm of the kidnapper on the left and the legs of the Sabine he is carrying away, the arm of the Sabine on the right) oppose each other, giving the drawing the appearance of a whirlpool around a central point of support situated slightly to the left of the navel of the kidnapper on the right. 3. Polidoro da Caravaggio, and the decorations of Roman palaces Polidoro da Caravaggio was a paradoxical artist who entered Raphael's (1483 - 1520) workshop at a very young age, when he oversaw the Lodges in the Vatican. Most of his Roman work, which was the peak of his career, has disappeared, as he specialised in facade painting, and yet these paintings, which are eminently visible in urban spaces, have influenced generations of artists who copied them abundantly during their visits to Rome. Polidoro Caldara was born in Caravaggio around 1495-1500 (the birthplace of Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, who was born there in 1571), some forty kilometres east of Milan. According to Vasari, he arrived as a mason on the Vatican's construction site and joined Raphael's workshop around 1517 (at the age of eighteen according to Vasari). This integration would have allowed Polidoro to work not only on the frescoes of the Lodges, but also on some of the frescoes of the Chambers, as well as on the flat of Cardinal Bibiena in the Vatican. After Raphael's death in 1520, Polidoro worked first with Perin del Vaga before joining forces with Maturino of Florence (1490 - 1528), whom he had also known in Raphael's workshop. Together they specialised in the painting of palace façades. They were to produce some forty façades decorated with grisaille paintings imitating antique bas-reliefs. The Sack of Rome in 1527, during which his friend Maturino was killed, led Polidoro to flee first to Naples (where he had already stayed in 1523), then to Messina. It was while he was preparing his return to the peninsula that he was murdered by one of his assistants, Tonno Calabrese, in 1543. In his Vite, Vasari celebrated Polidoro as the greatest façade decorator of his time, noting that "there is no flat, palace, garden or villa in Rome that does not contain a work by Polidoro". Polidoro's facade decorations, most of which have disappeared as they were displayed in the open air, constitute the most important lost chapter of Roman art of the Cinquecento. The few surviving drawings of the painter can, however, give an idea of the original appearance of his murals and show that he was an artist of remarkable and highly original genius. 4. The façade of the Milesi Palace Giovanni Antonio Milesi, who commissioned this palace, located not far from the Tiber, north of Piazza Navona, was a native of the Bergamo area, like Polidoro, with whom he maintained close friendly ties. Executed in the last years before the Sack of Rome, around 1526-1527, the decoration of Palazzo Milesi is considered Polidoro's greatest decorative success. An engraving by Ernesto Maccari made at the end of the nineteenth century allows us to understand the general balance of this façade, which was still well preserved at the time. The frescoes were not entirely monochrome, but alternated elements in chiaroscuro simulating marble bas-reliefs and those in ochre simulating bronze and gold vases...

Bronx Post Office Mural Study WPA Horse Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern Jo Cain (1904 - 2003) Couriers of History Bronx Post Office Mural Study Horse in the Sun (with two ad...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally he is...