Gary Lee Shaffer

Colorful Trees in a Forest Grove, Expressionist Oil Pastel Drawing, Circa 1960

Circa 1960

Very well executed original pastel on archival paper of New York City at night with beacon by the well known American artist, Leon Dolice. Signed lower right. Circa 1930. Condition is excellent. Beautifully gallery framed with stained mahogany wood frame. Under glass. Overall framed measurements are 21 by 30 inches. Birham Wood Galleries, East Hampton, New York provenance. Exhibited artwork. See photo gallery labels verso. Leon Dolice was born in Vienna, Austria on August 14, 1892, the son of a machinest/welder. He went on to study art in Europe and viewing the works of the Masters. Dolice immigrated to the United States in 1920, finding a retreat in the European Bohemianism of Greenwich Village, he picked the streets of this landmark neighborhood as his first subjects. Concentrating on etching and with the encouragement of new found friends and artists such as George Luks and Herb Roth, he soon ventured out and devoted all his time to chronicling the architecture, back streets, dock scenes and other nostalgia that was fast disappearing from the face of Manhattan, mainly in copperplate etchings. A favorite subject for him was the Third Avenue El near one of his New York City studios on Third Avenue. He won accolades for his work, and although he traveled the East Coast recording landmarks in other cities including Washington DC, Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia, he always returned to his new home Manhattan. A decline in popular favor for etchings led him to put aside his plates in the late 1930s and devote some ten years to pastels, linocuts and painting. His subject matter was almost exclusively New York City street scenes, but figurative works, country scenes, and even experiments with Abstract Expressionism at the height of its new found favor in the 1940s punctuated his career. In 1953, after learning of the forthcoming demise of the Third Avenue El, in the shadow of which he had maintained his studio for over a decade, he once again took to his plates and press and created a final series of Third Avenue and or other New York City landmarks that were then threatened with extinction. His work brings to light aspects of nostalgic New York that survives today only in small part, whether in architecture or in spirit. Dolice's works are in a number of notable museums and private collections, including the Museum of the City of New York; The New York Public Library Print Collection; The New York Historical Society; Georgetown University Lauinger Library; The Print Club of Philadelphia and others. In the past few years, his work has been exhibited at Hofstra Museum, Long Island, NY; with the Montauk...

Leon Dolice New York Harbor Nocturne, circa 1930-40 Signed lower right Pastel on paper 12 x 19 inches The romantic backdrop of Vienna at the turn of the century had a life-long inf...