Mark Beard

Two Men

n.d.

Violet Oakley (1896-1961). Portrait of a Baby, ca. 1930. Conte crayon and pencil on laid paper, sheet measuring 11 x 14 inches. Framed measurement: 13.5 x 16.5 inches. Signed low...

Stately sanguine portrait of Leopold Hamilton Myers (Novelist) by Sir William Rothenstein (English, 1872-1945). Captured in Rothenstein's characteristic style, Myers looks directly at the viewer with a neutral expression. Although this portrait uses only two colors and minimal shading, the likeness of Myers is incredibly well captured. Leo (Leopold) Hamilton Myers (1881 – 1944) was a British novelist. Numerous examples like this one of the writer are in the Tate Museum. Initialed and dated in the lower right corner ("W.R. 1936") Inscription on verso indicating materials, subject, and artist. Presented in a new cream colored mat with foamcore backing. Mat size: 18"H x 12"W Paper size: 15.25"H x 10.75"W William Rothenstein (English, 1872-1945) was born into a German-Jewish family in Bradford, West Yorkshire. His father, Moritz, emigrated from Germany in 1859 to work in Bradford's burgeoning textile industry. Soon afterwards he married Bertha Dux, and they had six children, of which William was the fifth. Rothenstein was knighted in 1931. Rothenstein left Bradford Grammar School at the age of sixteen to study at the Slade School of Art*, London (1888-1893), where he was taught by Alphonse Legros, and the Académie Julian* in Paris (1889-1893), where he met and was encouraged by James McNeill Whistler, Edgar Degas and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Whilst in Paris he also befriended the Anglo-Australian artist Charles Conder, with whom he shared a studio in Montmartre. In 1893 he returned to England to work on "Oxford Characters" a series of lithographic* portraits. In Oxford he met and became a close friend of the caricaturist* and parodist Max Beerbohm, who later immortalised him in the short story Enoch Soames (1919). During the 1890s Rothenstein exhibited with the New English Art Club* and, in 1900, won a silver medal for his painting The Doll's House at the Exposition Universelle. In 1898 he co-founded the Carfax Gallery in St. James' Piccadilly with John Fothergill. During its early years the gallery was closely associated with such artists as Charles Conder, Philip Wilson Steer, Charles Ricketts and Augustus John. It also exhibited the work of Auguste Rodin, whose growing reputation in England owed much to Rothenstein's friendship and missionary zeal. The gallery was later the home for all three exhibitions of The Camden Town Group*, led by Rothenstein's friend and close contemporary Walter Sickert. Rothenstein is best known for his portrait drawings of famous individuals and for being an official war artist in both World War I and World War II. He was also a member of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters & Gravers. The style and subject of his paintings varies, though certain themes reappear, in particular an interest in 'weighty' or 'essential' subjects tackled in a restrained manner. Good examples include Parting at Morning (1891), Mother and Child (1903) and Jews Mourning at a Synagogue (1907) - all of which are owned by the Tate Gallery. The National Portrait Gallery owns over two hundred of his portraits. In 2011 the BBC and the Public Catalogue Foundation began cataloguing all of his paintings in public ownership online. Between 1902 and 1912 Rothenstein lived in Hampstead, London, where his social circle included such names as H.G.Wells, Joseph Conrad and the artist Augustus John. Amongst the young artists to visit Rothenstein in Hampstead were Mark Gertler...

Head Study, 1930 John Sloan (1871-1951) Signed Lower Right 10.5" x 9" Unframed 19" x 16.5" Framed Born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, John Sloan became one o...

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...

Stately portrait of George Arliss by Ivan Opffer (Danish, 1897-1980). Mr. Arliss is depicted wearing his signature monocle, looking directly at the viewer. Although this piece appears to be done rapidly, there is a clear confidence in Opffer's work - he was an accomplished portrait artist - and the resemblance to the subject is unmistakable. George Arliss (born Augustus George Andrews; 10 April 1868 – 5 February 1946) was an English actor, author, playwright, and filmmaker who found success in the United States. He was the first British actor to win an Academy Award – which he won for his performance as Victorian-era British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli in Disraeli (1929) – as well as the earliest-born actor to win the honour. He specialized in successful biopics, such as Disraeli, Voltaire (1933), and Cardinal Richelieu (1935), as well as light comedies, which included The Millionaire (1931) and A Successful Calamity (1932). Signed and dated "Ivan Opffer 1934" in the lower right. Titled "Mr. Arliss" in the lower left. Presented in a new off-white mat with foamcore backing. Mat size: 22"H x 16"W Art size: 17.5"H x 12"W Ivan Opffer (Danish, 1897-1980) was born in Nyborg, Denmark, on June 4, 1897, to a family of Danish scholars and journalists. His brother was Emil Opffer, a Danish merchant seaman and journalist who was known for his relationship with American writer Hart Crane. Ivan was raised in Mexico City and New York, where his anarchist father was the editor of a radical Danish-language newspaper. His involvement in painting and drawing began at an early age. At a summer workshop, he met and studied drawing with Winslow Homer, then went on to study at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League of New York. When the US entered World War I, Opffer was one of the members of the American Army Camouflage Corps, headed by Homer Saint-Gaudens (whose mother was a relative of Winslow Homer), the son of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. As a camoufleur, Opffer served with other artists and architects, some of whom became well-known, including Barry Faulkner, Sherry Edmundson Fry, Kimon Nicolaides, Robert Lawson, Abraham Rattner, Kerr Eby, and others. It was this same unit, while still in training in at Camp American University in Washington DC, that launched a camp newspaper called The Camoufleur. Only three issues were published before the unit’s deployment to France in late 1917. In the October 31 issue, a satirical portrait by Opffer of Homer Saint-Gaudens (titled “Our Boss”) was published on page 5. After the war, Opffer returned to New York, where he became known for his caricatures of leading Modern writers, among them James Joyce, Edgar Lee Masters, Siegfried Sassoon, George Bernard Shaw, Carl Sandburg, G.K. Chesterton, and Thomas Mann. In the years between the wars, Opffer married Betty à Beckett Chomley, and settled in Paris, where he was a student at the Academie Julliard. He also lived in London and Copenhagen, where his drawings were frequently published in newspapers and magazines. With the outbreak of World War II, he and his family returned to New York and lived in Greenwich Village. Among his friends in that era were William Butler Yeats, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald...

A portrait of a male head, in profile by BenFenske. The artist uses a variety of colors to convey a naturalist impression. Artist Bio Ben Fenske (b. 1978) although a native of Minn...

An early work on paper, by American Impressionist painter, Ben Fenske. It's rare to see a drawing like this from Fenske, especially of a self portrait. Fenske uses classical draftin...

A colorful self-portrait from Ben Fenske, staring at the viewer straight-on. Hues of red dominate. Unframed. Ben Fenske (b. 1978) although a native of Minnesota, and has been worki...

A pair of original red conte crayon drawings in their original frames featuring two young women in period clothing.

Sean Keating (Irish 1889-1977) "Self Portrait" c. 1950s Charcoal on Paper Signed Lower Right Framed Size: approx 20 x 16 inches A noted portrait and figure painter, influenced by both Romanticism and Realism, Sean Keating was an Irish nationalist painter who executed several iconic images of the Irish Civil war era, and of the ensuing period of industrialization. One of the great exemplars of representational painting in Ireland, Keating was an intellectual artist in that he set out to depict the birth and development of the Republic of Ireland, and his pictures are deliberately idealized even heroic. However, he held very conservative views about art - verging on the academic style - and was a committed defender of traditional Irish painting, considering much modern art to be bogus. Born in Limerick, Sean Keating studied drawing at the Limerick Technical School before winning a scholarship, arranged for him by William Orpen, to study fine art painting at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin. In 1914 he won the Taylor Scholarship and the following year exhibited three paintings at the Royal Hibernian Academy. Over the next period of years he spent time on the Aran Islands off County Galway, and then in London. He returned to Ireland in 1916 and painted the war of independence and the subsequent civil war. Works he completed at this time include the painting: Men of the South (1921) depicting a group of IRA men about to stage a military ambush, and An Allegory (c. 1922) which features a cluster of figures representing the fractures in the young Irish state. Meantime, in 1919, Keating was appointed an assistant teacher at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. Then in 1921, he staged his first one-man show at The Hall, Leinster Street. In 1923, he was elected to the Royal Hibernian Academy. In a Dublin exhibition of Irish art held in 1924, Keating was awarded the gold medal for his picture Homage to Hugh Lane - now hanging in the Hugh Lane Gallery. In the late 1920s, Keating was commissioned to record the building of the hydro-electric power generator at Ardnacrusha, near Limerick. He painted a number of paintings of this scheme. Not unlike the Soviet Realism School of painting, these paintings sought to promote the construction work as an achievement of heroic proportions. Keating's works began to attract interest abroad. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in London and, in 1930, he held a one-man show at the Hackett Gallery, New York. In 1931 Keating's one-person exhibition was staged at the Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin. In 1934 he was made professor of the National College of Art in Dublin, and Professor of Painting, three years later. His 1937 exhibition at the Victor Waddington Galleries attracted considerable interest. In 1939, he was asked to paint a wall-painting for the Irish pavilion at the New York World Fair and duly created a huge mural of fifty-four panels. He was President of the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1949 to 1962, exhibiting nearly 300 works during the period. In 1963, a retrospective exhibition was staged at the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, which was opened by Irish President de Valera...