Early 20th Century Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Medium: Gouache and Watercolor on Board Signature: Unsigned Postcard illustration; publisher: (The Gray Lithograph Company), Circa 1903; The Male Gaze 120 years ago. We joke about how ridiculous it was when men got all titillated at the sight of a woman's ankles. It seems that it was thought ridiculous even then, when it was about the only part of a woman's legs a man was likely to get a glimpse of in public, as shown in this slyly humorous postcard illustration. Ostensibly, the cobbler has only a professional interest in studying the lady's footwear. In case you miss the point, he is reading the Observer and her stockings have a striking design to emphasize the ankle. As in later pinup art...

Medium: Ink, Charcoal and Watercolor on Paper Dimensions: 20.00" x 30.00"

LASZLO BARO MEDNYANSZKY 1852-1919 Beckó, Slovakia 1852-1919 Vienna (Hungarian) Title: Cityscape, 1912 Technique: Original Hand Signed and Dated Pencil Drawing on Paper s...

Medium: Pen and Ink on Board Dimensions: 16.00" x 12.00" Signature: Signed Lower Right "Man in prison with two jailers" - Book illustration.

Medium: Pen and Ink on Board Dimensions: 16.00" x 12.00" Signature: Signed Lower Left book illustration

Medium: Watercolor on Board Dimensions: 20.00" x 12.50" Signature: Signed Lower Left Early 1900's story illustration.

Date: 1906 Medium: Mixed Media on Board Dimensions: 19.00" x 22.00" Signature: Initialed K.R.W. Good Housekeeping Story Illustration Novebmer 1906. ...

Medium: Pastel on Paper Signature: Signed and Dated Lower Left

"The Rewards of Journalism," by Chester S. Lord and illustrated by Guernsey Moore for the Saturday Evening Post, September 9th, 1922.

Medium: Charcoal Drawing on Paper Signature: Signed Lower Right Story Illustration from The Saturday Evening Post

Medium: Watercolor on Paper Signature: Signed Lower Left Cover illustration for Life magazine's January 10, 1918 issue, with the caption, "Souvenirs for...

Signed and dated center right, Seam down center where two sheets attached is original. Some slight surface smudging outside figure area .

Published for the serialized Penrod and Sam stories in Cosmopolitan Magazine between 1910 and 1918 Signed Upper Left by the Artist

Frontispiece for Under the Lilacs by Louisa May Alcott for the 1906 edition published by Little, Brown, and Company The full caption reads: "A strange dog was sitting calmly among t...

Illustration for “Rembrandt” by Emil Ludwig for Cosmopolitan magazine, published May 1928, illustrated pages 56-57. The full caption reads: “For years Rembrandt preferred to paint t...

Sir Leslie Matthew Ward (aka Spy) 1851-1922 British Caricatures of Queen Victoria and Edward VII Charcoal on paper These satirical caricatures of Queen Victoria and Edward VII of...

Medium: Charcoal on Illustration Board Signature: Initialed Middle Left Contact for exact dimensions. Cosmopolitan Magazine #349 July 17/25

Medium: Watercolor on Paper Dimensions: 18.00" x 13.00" Signature: Signed Lower Left

Medium: Graphite on Paper Signature: Initialed Lower Left and Identified by a Label on Verso The Harpers Monthly, August 1909

Signature: Unsigned "More Precious than Rubies," by Katherine Sproehnle and Jane Grant, illustrated by Guernsey Moore for the Saturday Evening Post, June 7, 1924.

Signature: Initialed Lower Center "Writing for Print" by E. W. Howe and illustrated by Guernsey Moore for the Saturday Evening Post, December 6th, 1919.

Signature: Initialed Upper Center "Uncle Sam's Income," an interview with Martin B. Madden and illustrated by Guernsey Moore, August 18, 1923.

Signature: Initialed Center "Birth and Death of Industry," by Albert W. Atwood and illustrated by Guernsey Moore for the Saturday Evening Post, September 15, 1919.

Signature: Initialed Lower Center "Ten Thousad for Everybody," no author. Story illustration by Guernsey Moore for the Saturday Evening Post, March 16, 1924.

ARTUR MARKOWICZ 1872-1934 Podgórze (Poland) 1872-1934 Cracow (Polish) Title: Sketchbook II, 1915 Technique: A Sketchbook with 149 Pencil and Colour Pencil Drawings on Paper with Stamp Size: 16.5 x 20.5 cm. / 6.5 x 8.1 in. Additional Information: This is an original sketchbook...

Signature: Initialed Lower Center "The Big-Store Business," by Edward Hungerford and illustrated by Guernsey Moore for the Saturday Evening Post, November 26...

Medium: Pen and Ink on Paper Signature: Unsigned Titled in pencil and inscribed "Blue print-Rush-/March" beneath the composition, identified in a printed label affixed to the frame ...

LASZLO BARO MEDNYANSZKY 1852-1919 Beckó, Slovakia 1852-1919 Vienna (Hungarian) Title: Rooftops, circa 1912 Technique: Original Hand Signed Pencil Drawing on Paper size: ...

Jim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork by: Martha Walter (1875-1976) Born in Philadelphia in 1875, Martha Walter attended Girls’ High School followed by the Pennsylva...

Signature: Initialed Lower Center "Swelled Head in Business," by Albert W. Atwood and illustrated by Guernsey Moore for the Saturday Evening Post, July 29th, 1922.

Date: 1927 Signature: Signed Lower Left Dimensions: 23.00" x 14.25" Medium: Watercolor on Board Calendar illustration, image of woman singing.

Medium: Watercolor Dimensions: 16.00" x 20.00" Signature: Signed Lower Right

"Constance ripped the letter open and read it aloud." Illustration for the book Jerry Junior by Jean Webster (New York: The Century Co., 1907), illustrated page 149. The illustratio...

Medium: Drawing Dimensions: 6.63" x 8.00" Signature: Signed Lower Center

Medium: Watercolor and Gouache on Board Sight Size 6.00" x 8.00"; Framed 13.00" x 15.00" Signature: Signed Lower Right Likely done either for a magazine cover or for a postcard. Rev...

Art Sz: 9"H x 6'W Frame Sz: 18"H x 14 1/2"W w/ silver gilt frame Watercolour

Image: 9"H x 6"W Frame: 18"H x 14.5"W in silver gilt frame Original circa 1920s Watercolour

Art Sz: 9-7/8"H x 6"W Frame Sz: 16H" x 12-1/8"W

Walt Lauderback like Dean Cornwell represents the pinnacle of the Golden Age of American Illustration. Based on the signature, this watercolor of a family with dog on boat appears ...

Medium: Charcoal on Board Signature: Signed Lower Right

Medium: Pastel and Gouache on Board Signature: "Alice Beach Winter" Lower Right "Boy with Clarinet" is a cover illustration for Children Magazine, ...

Medium: Black Pen and Paper Signature: Signed Lower Left Subject matter features a group of men and women dressed in 1920's attire, gathered on a main street...

Signature: Initialed Lower Center "Self-Determination," by Robert Lansing and illustrated by Guernsey Moore for the Saturday Evening Post, April 9, 1921.

"Free Trade and Protection in Great Britain - Past and Present" by Francis W. Hirst and illustrated by Guernsey Moore for the Saturday Evening Post, March 1...

Signature: Initialed Along Lower Edge "Capital on Strike," by Albert W. Atwood and illustrated by Guernsey Moore for the Saturday Evening Post, October 8, 1921.

Signature: Initialed Lower Right Originally published in Saturday Evening Post December 20th, 1919 issue. Repeated in April 17th, 1920 issue of Saturday Evening Post as an insert de...

Signature: Initialed Lower Center "As Others See Us," by Princess Cantacuzene and illustrated by Guernsey Moore for the Saturday Evening Post, April 5, 1924.

Signature: Signed Center Right. "The Credit Trimmers," by Edward H. Smith and illustrated by Guernsey Moore for the Saturday Evening Post, May 13th, 1922.

Signature: Initialed Lower Center "How Shall Europe Be Set On Her Feet," by Frederick S. Bigelow and illustrated by Guernsey Moore for the Saturday Evening Post, August 9th, 1919.

Medium: Watercolor on Paper Dimensions: 18.00" x 13.00" Signature: Signed Lower Right

Medium: Charcoal and Ink Wash on Board Dimensions: 23.50" x 30.00" Signature: Signed Lower Right

Dolly Dingle's Story of Pinafore. Illustration possibly for children's booklet published by John H. Eggers Publishing Company, 1921. Watercolor on paper. 18 x 13 inches. Signed in lo...

Medium: Watercolor on Paper Dimensions: 18.00" x 13.00" Signature: Signed Lower Right

Medium: Watercolor on Paper Dimensions: 18.00" x 13.00" Signature: Signed Lower Right

Story illustration for “The Land of Heart’s Desire” by Myra Kelly for McClure’s Magazine, published July 1904, illustrated page 243. The full caption reads: "Thumped her right lusti...

Pabst Malt Extract, Original Advertisement, Art Nouveau Style, Milwaukee Wisconsin Date: Early 1900s Medium: Watercolor & Ink on Board Dimensions: 13" x 8.5" Signature: Unsigned Am...

Signed pencil on paper portrait drawing by Italian artist Amedeo Clemente Modigliani. The portrait is of Berthe Lipchitz who was the wife of Modigliani's friend, the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz. This work is a study for "Portrait of Jacques & Berthe Lipchitz" which hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago. Signature: Signed lower right Dimensions: Framed: 26.75"x18.25" Unframed: 18.75"x12.25" Provenance: The collection of Leopold Survage The collection of Dimitri Snegaroff The collection of Leopold Zborowski Galerie Charpentier - Paris 1958 Private french collection Galerie Pierre Levy - Paris Private collection - United Kingdom Exhibited: Galerie Charpentier - Cent Tableaux de Modigliani - Paris, 1958 Les Peintres de Zborowski - ~Foundation L'Hermitage, Lausanne 1994 Amedeo Modigliani Exhibition - Museo d'Arte Moderna, Lugano 1999 Amedeo Modigliani was born into a middle-class Jewish family and was the brother of Eugenio Modigliani, who later became the leader of the Italian socialist workers’ party prior to the rise of fascism. Modigliani suffered from poor health as a child and contracted pleurisy in 1895, followed in 1898 by typhus with pulmonary complications, which culminated in tuberculosis in 1901. He moved to Livorno to study under Guglielmo Micheli, who had himself been a pupil of Giovanni Fattori, one of the Macchiaioli group of painters who worked in strong colour patches (macchie) to achieve vivid light and colour effects; their approach came as a reaction against academic art in Italy and, in much the same way as the French Impressionists, they advocated painting from nature rather than aspiring to communicate any particular message or ideology. In 1902, Modigliani enrolled at the academy of fine arts in Florence. He travelled to Rome and Venice in 1903, where he devoted the bulk of his day to visiting museums. At around this time he started to read Dante, dreaming no doubt of the Vita Nuova; he also devoured the works of Leopardi, Carducci, d’Annunzio, Spinoza and Nietzsche. In 1906, Modigliani moved to Paris, lodging at the Rue Caulaincourt. At that juncture, nothing about him appeared to presage the brilliant career that was to follow. His arrival in the artists’ quarter, then known colloquially as the maquis - the labyrinthine tangle of narrow streets around today’s Avenue Junot in Montmartre - went virtually unnoticed by the artists already living and working there, including Picasso, Braque and Derain. Modigliani’s painting made next to no immediate impact and he was recognised primarily on account of his frail constitution, flashing eyes, innate elegance and intellectual prowess. He was accepted in the community that was Montmartre but never belonged to any particular ‘set’ or circle, and there is no record of his ever having been invited to Pablo Picasso’s studio, the famous ‘wash house’. The literate and highly articulate Modigliani opted instead for the companionship of Maurice Utrillo, an instinctual painter of whom it could charitably have been said that his conversation was, at best, limited. Nonetheless, Modigliani and ‘Litrillo’ (as Utrillo was commonly known to the street urchins - the ‘p’tits poulbots’) began to frequent the cabarets and dance halls of the Butte de Montmartre, and the nefarious hashish dens - post-Baudelaire ‘institutions’, frequented in the main by out-of-work writers and talentless artists. Modigliani developed an addiction, which, compounded by his alcoholism, took its toll. It also transformed him from an artist of limited ability into one devoid of bourgeois scruples. In his monograph, Modigliani: Sa Vie et Son Oeuvre, written in 1926 shortly after Modigliani’s death, André Salmon hinted at a ‘pact with the devil’. While somewhat overstating the case, this rather unpromising painter from Livorno metamorphosed virtually overnight into an artist of rare ability and sensitivity. The turning-point came in 1907, when Modigliani met Paul Alexandre, a doctor who befriended him, took him under his wing and purchased some of his work. The banal paintings he had turned out in Montmartre were suddenly superseded by exceptional works, produced first in Montmartre ( Cellist, 1909), and then in Montparnasse. In Montparnasse, Modigliani started to move in artistic circles, meeting Chaim Soutine, Marc Chagall, Jules Pascin and others, all of whom lived and worked in the building in the Rue Vaugirard known as ‘La Ruche’ (‘the beehive’). Then, in the Cité Falguière, he met the Romanian-born sculptor Constantin Brancusi, who encouraged him to take up sculpture, which he did, between 1909 and 1913. In 1914, several dealers, including the erstwhile poet Léopold Zborowski and the collector Paul Guillaume, tried with little success to market Modigliani’s paintings. From 1914 to 1916, Modigliani was caught up in a tempestuous affair with the English poet and journalist Beatrice Hastings. In 1917, however, he met Jeanne Hébuterne at the Colarossi Academy, who became his constant companion and model, and who gave birth to their daughter Jeanne in 1918. In 1918 and 1919, Modigliani and Jeanne spent time in Nice on the Côte d’Azur but by 1920 he was suffering from tubercular meningitis. His friends, Kisling and the Chilean Ortiz de Zarate, brought him and a pregnant Jeanne back to Paris, where he died on January 20 1920 in the Hôpital de la Charité. His last words were reputed to be: ‘Cara Italia’. Modigliani’s brother, by this time a socialist member of parliament, telegrammed instructions to ‘bury him as befits a prince’. Jeanne Hébuterne, a budding twenty-year-old painter, killed herself and her unborn child on the day of Modigliani’s funeral by jumping to her death from a fifth-floor window. Modigliani’s first paintings were undistinguished portraits in the Impressionist manner. After moving to Paris in 1907, his early work was influenced by the Swiss-born lithographer Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Pablo Picasso, the latter then in his ‘blue’ period. From the onset, Modigliani’s principal preoccupation was the human figure. After the artistic (and literal) limbo of Montmartre, when his output was confined to a few Expressionist-like paintings of street life, the theatre and the circus, Modigliani suddenly erupted on the scene in 1909 with Cellist, a robust, well-constructed and vividly coloured canvas that utterly exceeded all prior expectations. He had not taken part in the protracted debates that took place nightly in Picasso’s studio, but he had superficially assimilated the Cubist ideas developed by Picasso and Georges Braque. Above all, Modigliani had been influenced by African art, which was a key feature of the Cubist movement. He succeeded in treading a fine line between the coolly analytical Cubist approach and the all-too-common European perception of African art as a succession of exaggerated facial grimaces. It would appear that Modigliani had always been attracted to sculpture as a discipline. The friendly encouragement he received as of 1909 from Brancusi no doubt intensified his interest and reinforced his attempts to achieve a sustained simplicity of line and form. In 1910, he befriended the Russian artists Alexander Archipenko and Jacques Lipchitz, both of whom recorded Modigliani’s distaste for modelling in clay (which he referred to as ‘mud’), on the grounds that it degraded the art of sculpture. Like Brancusi, Modigliani believed in working directly, carving from wood in the case of two extant pieces, and from (sand)stone in others, with the exception of a few bronzes which were, presumably, modelled in clay before being cast into bronze. His sculpture was influenced by archaic and non-western cultures - early Graeco-Roman, African and Khmer - as well as heads carved on columns adorning the façades of Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals (Modigliani rarely sculpted a rear view of his figures). Up to approximately 1912, his sculptures take the form of tall cylinders, usually with elongated heads and shallow relief indentations or projections to indicate the hairline, facial features and neck. He departed from this style only infrequently, most notably in a small number of pieces believed to have been sculpted in 1913, which are characterised by a compressed, cubistic format and shallower and less distinct features. Modigliani eventually abandoned sculpture, presumably because of his general health and circumstances, and possibly due to the fact that his sculptures sold for even less than his paintings. During the years that he devoted to sculpture, Modigliani is recorded as producing only thirty canvases, although after 1913 his sculpture became reflected in his painting. Following his Montmartre days, Modigliani’s work developed in both quantitative and qualitative terms, presumably helped by the relative stability of his relationship with Jeanne Hébuterne. The first paintings after his short-lived sculptural phase saw him revert briefly to Neo-Impressionist pointillism, followed by a episode marked by Cubism, which was mainly evident in portraits of friends and fellow artists living and working in Montparnasse: Henri Laurens; Juan Gris (1915); Jacques Lipchitz and his Wife; Chaim Soutine; Léopold Sauvage; Paul Guillaume; Max Jacob; Béatrice Hastings con Capello (all 1916); Mlle Modigliani (1917); Léon Bakst; Léopold Zborowski; Concierge’s Son; Adolescent (1918); Mademoiselle Lunia Czechowska; Madame Zborowska; Portrait of the Artist’s Wife (1919). A large number of other portraits exist among his drawings, most of which were executed impromptu in the street or cafés. These quickly drawn portraits often exhibit an urgency and surprising lucidity. Examples include Portrait of the Gypsy Painter Fabiano de Castro; André Salmon (1918); Portrait of the Artist’s Wife (1919); and Lada, Author; Mario, Composer (1920). Whatever his shortcomings, Amedeo Modigliani ranks as one of the 20th-century’s greatest painters of the female form. The bulk of his painted nudes were produced in 1915-1916 (prior to that date they were predominantly drawings), and are taken from every walk of life, such as a regular at a Montparnasse café, or a waitress at the soup kitchen where he ate his meagre meals. In each instance, he invested his models with an almost aristocratic hauteur. This is exemplified in a number of paintings (usually based on numerous prior drawings): Flower Girl; Blonde Lady; Sleeping Nude (1917); Blonde Nude; Young Woman; Maria (1918); Pink Nude; Reclining Nude; Nude on a Divan; Woman with a Fan (1919); and Young Woman in a Chemise; Reclining Nude (1920). Modigliani painted his subjects in elongated, elliptic ovals: the swell of a breast, the pronounced curve of the pelvis, the fullness of the thigh, the symmetrically oval face and the graceful arabesque of the body. Facial features are reduced to a bare minimum, with the eyes typically empty, like those of a statue. He employed colour as a constructive material in much the same way as stone in sculpture, juxtaposing muted pinks, ochres and pale browns against discreet background tones supplied by décor and garments. The overall effect is to yield a flat image devoid of chiaroscuro but which captures the essence of a subject. It has often been remarked that his women, with their elongated heads and long, graceful necks, generally tilted to one side, possess a melancholy beauty akin to that of the Siena Madonnas (reproductions of which Modigliani kept pinned on his studio wall), which accounts for Modigliani’s soubriquet as the ‘painter of sorrows’. From 1917, the majority of his nudes, characterised by a more pronounced elongation of the female body and lighter palette, were modelled by Jeanne Hébuterne and Luna Czechowska. Very few artists have been the subject of so many monographs and biographies as Modigliani; the selection appended to this entry indicates only some of the more important of these. Too much, perhaps, has been made of his life as an artiste maudit, of his ‘accursed’ yet colourful life rather than the quality of his work. Some critics have detected in him an artist of great and persistent intellectual curiosity; others emphasise that he was a ‘gentleman to the end’ and stress his physical frailty, ignoring the fact that this was an integral component of his creativity. More seriously, his posthumous fame amongst the public at large acts both for and against him, as if his subsequent popularity has become a yardstick of his artistic ability. The mannerism of his style ensures that a ‘Modigliani’ is instantly recognisable, but his success in adapting Cubism and African art to a language and palette that are entirely his own places him squarely at the heart of the modern movement. Amedeo Modigliani’s work has featured in numerous group exhibitions, including: Paris in 1908, when he showed his Jewess and three other canvases; the Salon des Indépendants in 1910; and the Salon d’Automne in 1912, where he exhibited examples of his sculpture. His posthumous inclusion in the 1922 Venice Biennale was regarded in Italy as a complete fiasco, prompting the critic Giovanni Scheiwiller to paraphrase Charles Baudelaire’s remark to the effect that, ‘we know that precious few will understand us, but that shall be sufficient’. In 1917-1918, the Berthe Weill Gallery organised a one-man show at the instigation of Zborowski but, on the order of the then chief of police, some of Modigliani’s sensual nudes were withdrawn on account of alleged indecency. On 20 December 1918, the Paul Guillaume Gallery exhibited several paintings by Modigliani alongside others by Matisse, Picasso and Derain. All other exhibitions of Modigliani’s work have been held since his death. They include those at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris (1922); Galerie Bing (Paris, 1925 and 1927); Marcel Benhelm Gallery (Paris, 1931); Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels, 1933); Kunsthalle Basel (1934); American-British Art Center (New York, 1944); Galerie de France (Paris, 1945 and 1949); Gimpels Fils Gallery (London, 1947); Cleveland Museum of Art (1951); Museum of Modern Art (New York, 1951); Cantini Museum (Marseilles, 1958); Palazzo Reale (Milan, 1958); Galerie Charpentier (Paris, 1958); Chicago Arts Club (1959); Cincinnati Art Museum (1959); Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (Rome, 1959); Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1961); Perls Galleries (New York, 1963 and 1966); Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art (1968); Musée Jacquemart-André (Paris, 1970); Musée St-Georges (Liège, 1980); Tokyo Arts Centre (1980); Musée de l’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1970; a comprehensive exhibition of Modigliani’s sculptures...

Golfers, 1928 Fred Conway (American, 1900-1973) Signed and Dated Lower Right 18.5 x 24.5 inches 30.5 x 37 inches with frame A member of the faculty of the Washington University Art ...

A political satire illustration “Hanging by a Hair” originally published in the The Philadelphia North American newspaper circa 1902, edited by Edwin A Van Valkenburg and pubilshed b...

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...