Gabriel Van Schnell

1946 Dutch Expressionist watercolour by Gabriel Van Schnell

1946

Robert Trenaman Back (British, 1922 – 2004) A moody coastal scene Gouache on paper with gum arabic 9.3/4 x 18.1/4 in. (24.5 x 46.5 cm.) Robert Trenaman Back is best known as a marit...

Jean Dufy (French, 1888 – 1964) Vue de port du Havre, circa 1925 Watercolour on paper Signed ‘Jean Dufy’ (lower right) and inscribed on the reverse 19.1/4 x 23.1/4 in. (48.5 x 59 cm....

English School, 18th Century A traveller before a Hilltop Coastal Fort Watercolour and ink on paper 10.1/2 x 15.1/2 in. (26.7 x 39.5 cm.) This early watercolour was initially though...

William Black (British, fl.66-69) Three boats Watercolour and ink pen Inscribed with title, signed and dated `Three Boats William Black 68’ (lower edge) 8 x 5.3/4 in. (20.3 x 14.7 cm.) William Black is a little known and underrated member of the St Ives artist group who, having worked as an architect after the Second World War, went on to work as an artist following the inheritance of money in the early 1950s. He was a self taught artist, producing numerous deconstructivist sculptures in the 1960s. He moved to St Ives in Cornwall where he knew artists such as Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo. There is a clear architectural element to the sculptures that he made . They illustrate an assemblage of fragmented shapes and forms of a deconstructivist nature. William Black’s artwork is very much rooted in the time and Cornish School...

John Doyle MBE, PPRWS (British, b. 1928) Sunset, Sienna, circa 1986 Acrylic and watercolour on paper 7.3/8 x 11.1/2 in. (18.8 x 29.5 cm.) Provenance: The Catto Gallery, London John Doyle was born in Siddenham Hill, though apparently conceived in Venice. John Ward, a lifelong friend took him to Venice and stuck him in front of Maria della Salute at 5 o’clock in the morning and said ‘paint that!’. On returning to England he placed three pictures in the Academy which all sold immediately. After 18 years at the Royal Watercolour Society, he was elected President in 1997. He used to show with Anthony Spink in St. James’, London. He has had many personal exhibitions in London, and four in the Chapter House of Canterbury Cathedral...

John Doyle MBE, PPRWS (British, b. 1928) Sunrise through mist, San Giorgio, Venice, circa 1986 Acrylic and watercolour on paper Monogrammed (lower left) and further signed on the rev...

Mid-century artist Lawrence Kupferman paints a madly eerie New York street scene. An exaggerated upward view of two 19th-century walk-ups is split by a forced perspective of a downwa...

Signed lower right, in graphite, 'Rainey Bennett' (American, 1907-1998) and dated 1958; titled, verso, 'Romantic Landscape' and accompanied by original ...

Miniature Landscape Provenance: Virginia Field, Arts administrator; New York, N.Y. Assistant director for Asia House gallery. (she was friends with John von Wicht and Andy Warhol) Born in 1897, Ben-Zion Weinman celebrated his European Jewish heritage in his visual works as a sculptor, painter, and printmaker. Influenced by Spinoza, Knut Hamsun, and Wladyslaw Reymont, as well as Hebrew literature, Ben-Zion wrote poetry and essays that, like his visual work, attempt to reveal the deep “connection between man and the divine, and between man and earth.” An emigrant from the Ukraine, he came to the US in 1920. He wrote fairy tales and poems in Hebrew under the name Benzion Weinman, but when he began painting he dropped his last name and hyphenated his first, saying an artist needed only one name. Ben-Zion was a founding member of “The Ten: An Independent Group” The Ten” a 1930’s avant-garde group, Painted on anything handy. Ben-Zion often used cabinet doors (panels) in his work. Other members of group included Ilya Bolotowsky, Lee Gatch, Adolf Gottlieb, Louis Harris, Yankel Kufeld, Marcus Rothkowitz (later known as Mark Rothko), Louis Schanker, and Joseph Solman. The Art of “The Ten” was generally described as expressionist, as this style offered the best link between modernism and social art. Their exhibition at the Mercury Gallery in New York held at the same time as the Whitney Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, included a manifesto concentrating on aesthetic questions and criticisms of the conservative definition of modern art imposed by the Whitney. Ben-Zion’s work was quickly noticed. The New York Sun said he painted “furiously” and called him “the farthest along of the lot.” And the triptych, “The Glory of War,” was described by Art News as “resounding.” By 1939, The Ten disbanded because most of the members found individual galleries to represent their work. Ben-Zion had his first one-man show at the Artist’s Gallery in Greenwich Village and J.B. Neumann, the highly esteemed European art dealer who introduced Paul Klee, (among others) to America, purchased several of Ben-Zion’s drawings. Curt Valentin, another well-known dealer, exhibited groups of his drawings and undertook the printing of four portfolios of etchings, each composed of Ben-Zion’s biblical themes. Ben-Zion’s work is represented in many museums throughout the country including the Metropolitan, the Whitney, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Phillips Collection, Washington. The Jewish Museum in New York opened in 1948 with a Ben-Zion exhibition. “Ben-Zion has his hands on the pulse of the common man and his natural world” As he emerged as an artist Ben-Zion never lost his gift for presenting the ordinary in ways that are vital, fresh and filled with emotions that are somber and exhilarating, joyous and thoughtful, and ultimately, filled with extraordinary poetic simplicity. Ben-Zion consistently threaded certain subject matter—nature, still life, the human figure, the Hebrew Bible, and the Jewish people—into his work throughout his life. "In all his work a profound human feeling remains. Sea and sky, even sheaves of wheat acquire a monolithic beauty and simplicity which delineates the transient as a reflection of the eternal. This sensitive inter- mingling of the physical and metaphysical is one of the most enduring features of Ben-Zion's works." (Excerpt from Stephen Kayser, “Biblical Paintings,” The Jewish Museum Catalogue, 1952). Along with ben Shahn, William Gropper, Chaim Gross and Abraham Rattner he was an influential mid century Jewish American...

A fantasy scene with Elves and a beautiful girl lost in thought at the base of a tree. Elizabeth Mary Watt, G.S.W.A. In 1919, she was elected as ...

Watercolor on paper

Watercolor on paper