Michael DeFrancesco

Contemporary seascape pastel boats water buildings scene harbor landscape signed

1999

"Looking North II-8" by Janet Richardson-Baughman is a pastel landscape drawing. The work is framed and matted with acid-free mat board. The signature is in the lower right in pencil...

"Looking North 2" by Janet Richardson-Baughman is a pastel drawing on paper, signed in the lower right corner. The work is framed and matted with acid-free mat board. This landscape ...

'Study for Connecticut at Putney' is an original pastel drawing by American artist Wolf Kahn. The landscape is an exploration of color and light: it is rendered in cool blues and purples with fields of subtle yellow, the pastels treated with the same gesture as Kahn's paintbrush on a canvas. Indeed, this pastel was a study executed en plein air for a painting – the painting now sometimes called 'Bend in the River' – that he later created in the studio. This process of creating studies, selecting the best of the studies, and then recreating them as paintings was typical of Kahn's studio process and makes this pastel a significant example of the artist's creative output. 9 x 11 inches, artwork 15.5 x 18.13 inches, frame Signed 'W. Kahn' lower right Framed to conservation standards using archival materials including 100 percent rag matting. Housed in a gold finish wood moulding. Acquired directly from the artist. Wolf Kahn, the youngest of four siblings, was born into a well-to-do artistic family. His father was the conductor of the Stuttgart Philharmonic Symphony, and his mother came from a family of art collectors.(1) During 1938, Kahn took his first art lessons, but most of his initial drawings were of military or historical events. The next year Kahn was sent to England for safety following the ascendancy of Hitler to power, and in 1940, he immigrated to the United States. In 1942, he entered New York's High School of Music and Art, and while there, he was employed by a commercial art firm doing illustrations. After a stint in the Navy, Kahn entered Hans Hofmann's school, and among his fellow students were Neil Blaine, Jane Freilicher, Allan Kaprow and Larry Rivers. His initial results were done with a dark palette and abstracted forms, and although Hofmann's style of teaching was difficult, Kahn has consistently praised him for teaching him the value of control and understanding.(2) Kahn's first exhibition was a 1951 group show in a loft with several other artists in lower Manhattan. From this impromptu show, a group effort evolved called the Hansa Gallery Cooperative.(3) In 1953, Wolf Kahn had a one-man show at this gallery, which was reviewed by Fairfield Porter, and at this same time bolder, more vivid colors began to appear in his work. By the mid-1950's, on a summer trip to Provincetown, Kahn's paintings indicated a new direction of softening warm colors in the manner of Bonnard. He was included in Meyer Shapiro's seminal exhibition, The New York School: The Second Generation at the Jewish Museum, and by the end of the 1950s, he had developed his abstracted landscape style for which he is best known. In 1966, he made his first "barn" painting on Martha's Vineyard that reduced the complexities of detail of the architecture to a more basic shape, a stylistic convention that is evident in the Museum's painting. Kahn has since commented frequently on his use of color as a unique and specific component of each work as the situation demands, where the gradual buildup of the colors resembles the beauty and translucent nature of pastels.(4) Since then Kahn has had one-person exhibitions at the Kansas City Art Institute, Chrysler Museum, San Diego Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art and the Columbus Museum, among others. His work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums throughout the United States. Footnotes: 1. Much of the biographical information is drawn from Justin Spring, Wolf Kahn (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996). 2. Spring, 21. Wolf Kahn draws this from a 1973 address to the College Art Association. 3. This group included Jane Wilson...

"Crossroads A-73" by Janet Richardson-Baughman is a pastel landscape drawing. The landscape figures a yellow field in the foreground and a cluster of deep green trees in the middle ground, behind which the tiniest strip of water is visible in light blue. On the distant horizon, a dark green hill meets a serene blue sky. Art size: 16" x 12" Frame size: 29 1/2" x 25 1/2" Framed to conservation standards. Matted with a cream-colored acid-free mat board and glazed in UV Clear Glass that filters 99% of UV Rays to inhibit fading. All this is housed in a traditional moulding in a gold finish. A move to an eighty-acre farm in Western Michigan from Detroit suited Janet Richardson Baughman to a tee. She and her three siblings loved country life and relished the many humorous adjustments to their new surroundings. The one-room schoolhouse she attended, for example, contrasted sharply with her earlier city school. Sports programs had been fairly sophisticated in the city. Rural sports consisted of her teacher piling everyone in her car, including the trunk, and then driving the children to another one-room schoolhouse for games. When Janet reached the sixth grade, a chapter in American history closed because all of the one-room schoolhouses were annexed by the nearest cities, but that unusual educational experience is something Janet fondly remembers. Growing up in a family that was very artistic, it is not surprising that Janet loved drawing. She and her brothers and sisters would make Christmas decorations for the Christmas tree and had ongoing art projects all year long. Her architect father was an artist in his free time. As the children have become adults, they are all involved in artistic endeavors from carving to sculpture. Janet's high school years were spent riding and showing her horses. "That was my life," she says. Living on the farm allowed her freedom to indulge her love of animals including the dogs that were so special to her. Active in 4H, Janet became an accomplished seamstress and an excellent cook. She took no art classes in high school although she sometimes helped her father with drafting. Starting college with the intention of majoring in speech and drama, Janet took an art class only because it was required. She found the art classes so appealing that she took one after another. Eventually, having taken every art class offered, the university had to design independent studies for her. With her beloved horses back on the farm, Janet discovered a new passion, and that was ceramics. First working as a waitress during college to earn income, Janet later became a Student Assistant and lived at the Ceramics Studio. As an assistant, she would make clay and glazes, fire the kiln, and assist the instructor however she could. At first, she had planned to become a high school teacher, but she was encouraged to earn her graduate degree and pursue her artistic endeavors, in addition to teaching. Janet graduated in 1975 with a BFA in Ceramics and Weaving from Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, MI. Following her mentor's advice, she went to Indiana State University in Indiana for her graduate work where she studied under Dick Hay...

Italian Cityscape Pastel on Strathmore paper, 1968 Signed and dated lower right with the estate signature with the initials RH Image size: 13 3/4 x 10 inches Condition: Excellent Pro...

An original realist drawing by American female artist Catherine Koenig. This work is featured in the Draw Near exhibition currently on view at Benjaman Gallery.

Original Pastel of Mallards flying over Wetlands in the English Countryside by 20th Century British Artist, Wendy Reeves. Art measures 20 x 14 inches F...

White sailboat. Paper, pastel 27x33 cm Victor Karnauh (1950, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR – 2012, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine) – a painter, ...