Karl Yens

1903 Rocky Landscape Of Distant Mountains

1903

Small Rocky Mountain landscape by Sacramento, California artist Ruth Scott (American, 1891-1964). A purple sky looms over gigantic mountain p...

Tree-Filled Valley and Mountains in West Brighton Staten Island Watercolor 1905 Detailed watercolor by W. Lund (19th Century). This piece depicts a valley with lush trees an greener...

Late 19th century delicate watercolor of the harbor at Cape Ann, Gloucester, Massachusetts depicting rocks in the calm water along with seagulls and sailboats in the distance, by 19th century artist and Reverend William George Puddefoot (American, 1842-1925). Signed "W.G. Puddefoot" lower left. Titled on verso, "Cape Ann Scenery / Near Gloucester, Sunset". Presented in a carved giltwood frame and off-white mat. Reverend William George Puddefoot [1842-1925] (also known as W C Puddefoot) was an artist, traveler, lecturer and the field secretary for the American Home Missionary Society [1826-1893]. For his work, Puddefoot traveled all over the US, lecturing and doing missionary work, including: Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana Pennsylvania, California and Connecticut. He was known for being an extremely colorful character especially in his sermons and lectures. Puddefoot wrote the book Minute Man...

Beautiful early 20th century plein air-style landscape by Margaret Wherry Ziegler (American, 1909-1989), c.1930. Trees, rocks, and meadow grass and flowers bask under a blue sky in this sunny summer landscape scene. Signed and dated 1930 on verso stretcher bar. Presented in a vintage wood frame. Image size: 14.25"H x 12.25"W Ziegler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1909 At a young age she traveled with her parents to the Philippines, Japan, India, Italy, Greece, and Europe. She studied art at the Cincinnati Art Academy, Minneapolis Art Institute, the University of the Philippines, and the California College of Arts and Crafts. While in Japan she studied Japanese brush painting...

A watercolor depicting a mountain view and the lake Gruyère, (Lac De La Gruyère) in Switzerland by the American Impressionist and Tonalist Mary Rogers Williams (1857–1907). Signed M.R. Williams. On the verso, the artist wrote: ‘Painted in Gruyère July 1902.’ This is a newly discovered work by a rare woman artist who seldom appears on the art market. Small in scale, yet rich in atmosphere, power, and depth—a genuine little gem. Mary Rogers Williams was born in 1857, in Hartford, Connecticut, the fifth of six children to a local baker. Orphaned by the age of fourteen, she pursued art with remarkable determination, studying at Hartford’s Decorative Art Society and the Art Students League in New York under William Merritt Chase. Her early mentor was James Wells Champney. In 1888, she joined Smith College as associate professor of art, where she taught for nearly twenty years to help support her family. Alongside her academic career, she maintained a serious and evolving artistic practice, though much of it was pursued within the limitations of her era’s gender roles and financial pressures. Her work is often classified as a blend of Tonalism and Impressionism—movements that were just taking shape during her lifetime. Tonalists used subdued palettes to evoke mood rather than detail, while Impressionists leaned toward brighter colors and broader subjects. Williams, working independently of art-world factions, forged a style rooted in mood, light, and atmosphere. She painted luminous pastels, watercolors, and oils—portraits, landscapes, and intimate studies of daily life. Despite knowing figures like Whistler, William Merritt Chase, and Childe Hassam, she rarely aligned herself with any artistic “school” and found many male contemporaries pretentious or repetitive. She famously dropped out of Whistler’s Paris school, calling him “a pompous fop surrounded by fawners.” Though Mary Cassatt and Williams were both American Impressionists living in Paris, they never met—Cassatt enjoyed wealth and elite circles, while Williams was a self-reliant educator without patrons. Williams traveled extensively throughout Europe—from the Arctic Circle to the ruins south of Naples—often alone or with her sister. She bicycled through fjords, hiked to medieval towns, and visited chateaux and harbors, all while sketching prolifically. She is likely the only 19th-century woman artist whose travels and daily life can be traced in such vivid, personal detail: what she ate, how she felt about fellow travelers, what she paid for trams, how the air smelled, what she wore, and how she missed home. She documented everything—museum visits, church restorations, conversations with hotel guests, and her frustrations with men’s treatment of women artists. These letters, rediscovered in 2012 in a family boathouse, provide an extraordinary insight into not only her art but the intellectual and emotional texture of her life. Her writings reveal not only artistic insight but the immense workload she carried. At Smith, she taught studio art and art history, organized faculty events, curated student exhibitions, wrote essays, handled housework, and even cooked and cleaned for her own lodgings. On vacations, she cooked for her family; in Europe, she waxed floors, painted walls, repaired clothing, and stoked fires—all while maintaining her painting and travel schedule. Unlike many of her male peers, she had no assistants, no household staff, and little inherited wealth. Yet, as her letters reveal, she never saw herself as a victim—she relished challenges and even the absurdities of her era, from Italian waiters pushing marriage to department heads at Smith dismissing women’s artistic capacity. Despite these challenges, Williams exhibited widely during her lifetime: Paris Salon (1899) National Academy of Design (1903–04) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts New York Water Color Club, American Water Color Society, Art Association of Indianapolis, and more. She was praised in The New York Times, Hartford Courant, and Springfield Republican, and compared by peers to figures like Emily Dickinson—another New England woman of quiet yet profound artistic power. But unlike Dickinson, Mary Williams...

This original circa 1910 graphite landscape drawing is a rare and intimate work by renowned Colorado artist Charles Partridge Adams (1858–1942), celebrated for his mastery of the Ame...

A monumental 59" x 82" with frame oil on canvas painting of a rocky mountain vista by John Terelak. Signed and dated lower left and inscribed verso. It...

Untitled (Mountainside Trail), c. 1900 Watercolor on paper 6 1/8 x 7 3/4 in. Mat: 8 x 10 in.