John Howe

John Howe - Framed 20th Century Watercolour, Cars at the Club House

Unknown

A serene watercolour scene of sailing barges beach to the side of an estuary at sun down. Signed by the artist to the lower right. Well-presented in a double card mount and gilt-effe...

Dora C. Pritchett. Original watercolour depicting a Cornish town by the sea. Signed lower left. Well-presented in a crisp cream mount and solid oak frame. On watercolour paper.

Watercolor on paper of the New England coastline, probably New Hampshire. Signed in graphite, lower left: M.M. Brooks American, circa 1910.

The idyllic atmosphere of this local dock scene falls within a couple of styles one being regionalism, an American realist modern art movement that included paintings, murals, lithographs, and illustrations depicting scenes of rural and small-town America primarily in the Midwest and frequently associated with Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. The other style is romanticism wherein the scene depicted is a more desired or dramatic version of what actually is. “Untitled (Dock Scene)” is typical of a small town dock scene from Michigan where Culver lived or from places as far away as Maine, but what makes it important is its easy familiarity: water, gulls or terns, slanting wood shanties, scruffy dirt patches and course grasses. It is not idealized, but does set the tone of fresh air, the scream of birds and the sun on water. This piece has been professionally reframed with acid-free matting and museum glass. In a 1952 Detroit Free Press article, entitled “Artist Explains His Work,” Culver was asked why he painted the way he did. He stated: “I try to ‘see’ though not too exactly; I try to think though not too ponderously; I feel emotion yet I try not to become overwrought. I interpret rather than describe, and design rather than depict. I work with values, not light and shade; hence, when I am successful, I achieve substance rather than three-dimensional form, and this satisfies me as being wholly sufficient. In my work I wish to be serious without becoming a bore, exuberant without being frivolous, humorous without being silly. I believe that good paintings are conceived, not contrived; and I am interested in art much more than in pictures.” Charles Culver...