Pencil Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Joseph Stella was a visionary artist who painted what he saw, an idiosyncratic and individual experience of his time and place. Stella arrived in New York in 1896, part of a wave of Italian immigrants from poverty-stricken Southern Italy. But Stella was not a child of poverty. His father was a notary and respected citizen in Muro Locano, a small town in the southern Appenines. The five Stella brothers were all properly educated in Naples. Stella’s older brother, Antonio, was the first of the family to come to America. Antonio Stella trained as a physician in Italy, and was a successful and respected doctor in the Italian community centered in Greenwich Village. He sponsored and supported his younger brother, Joseph, first sending him to medical school in New York, then to study pharmacology, and then sustaining him through the early days of his artistic career. Antonio Stella specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis and was active in social reform circles. His connections were instrumental in Joseph Stella’s early commissions for illustrations in reform journals. Joseph Stella, from the beginning, was an outsider. He was of the Italian-American community, but did not share its overwhelming poverty and general lack of education. He went back to Italy on several occasions, but was no longer an Italian. His art incorporated many influences. At various times his work echoed the concerns and techniques of the so-called Ashcan School, of New York Dada, of Futurism and, of Cubism, among others. These are all legitimate influences, but Stella never totally committed himself to any group. He was a convivial, but ultimately solitary figure, with a lifelong mistrust of any authority external to his own personal mandate. He was in Europe during the time that Alfred Stieglitz established his 291 Gallery. When Stella returned he joined the international coterie of artists who gathered at the West Side apartment of the art patron Conrad Arensberg. It was here that Stella became close friends with Marcel Duchamp. Stella was nineteen when he arrived in America and studied in the early years of the century at the Art Students League, and with William Merritt Chase, under whose tutelage he received rigorous training as a draftsman. His love of line, and his mastery of its techniques, is apparent early in his career in the illustrations he made for various social reform journals. Stella, whose later work as a colorist is breathtakingly lush, never felt obliged to choose between line and color. He drew throughout his career, and unlike other modernists, whose work evolved inexorably to more and more abstract form, Stella freely reverted to earlier realist modes of representation whenever it suited him. This was because, in fact, his “realist” work was not “true to nature,” but true to Stella’s own unique interpretation. Stella began to draw flowers, vegetables, butterflies, and birds in 1919, after he had finished the Brooklyn Bridge series of paintings, which are probably his best-known works. These drawings of flora and fauna were initially coincidental with his fantastical, nostalgic and spiritual vision of his native Italy which he called Tree of My Life (Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth Foundation and Windsor, Inc., St. Louis, illus. in Barbara Haskell, Joseph Stella, exh. cat. [New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994], p. 111 no. 133). Two Wood Ducks...

Beautiful floral still life by American artist Jane Piper (1916-1991) . Pastel, oil crayon and pencil on tracing paper. Image measuring 13 x 15.5 inches in original frame measuring 2...

Arlene Shechet Summer Set 8, 2005 Watercolor monoprint on dieu donné hand made paper 21 × 27 1/2 inches Signed and dated in graphite on the front Exquisite watercolor monoprint on di...

Bold mid century modern abstracted pastel on paper still life of several terra cotta jugs and vessels distilled down to their most basic shapes and ar...

300K, 100 OBVERSE RIGHT "WATERMELON NOTE" by Rodrigo Spinel Chinese ink on Fabriano paper 250 g. Image size: 30 cm H x 15 cm W Frame size: 43 cm H x 28 cm W x 4 cm D Ivory Wood Br...

PLENTY is a new watercolor on Fabriano paper by Fleur Thesmar. The artwork measures 22x30". Note the gentle complexity of the composition, the suggestion of dollops of ice cream and fruit, or piles of colorful clothes, or a fanciful landscape. The scale grows large and small, far away and right in your lap! From Fleur Thesmar – "My memory invents places and shapes, finding new games of mirrors thanks to mathematical models and theories. Shapes resembling bowls of fruit, balloons, landscapes and so on, actually fulfill a dream of mine to free the imagination and let the viewer invent as well." Having moved her family from France to America, artist Fleur Thesmar closely observed the changes in her world – from the seemingly obvious such as surrounding landscapes, the light of day and weather, the flowers, trees and shorelines – to the smaller less obvious shifts, such as how one behaves in a new world, in a new home, how one cherishes certain belongings and certain memories. Her artistic practice is borne out of that close observation and shift in perspective, and has led to a number of successful gallery shows in the U.S. and internationally. Fleur Thesmar has shown at Beacon Gallery in Boston MA, 440 Gallery, Brooklyn NY, Old West Museum, Cheyenne WY, Belmont Art Gallery, Belmont MA, and Salon Ile-de-France 2020, Bourg-La-Reine, France. Her work is on permanent display at the Tower Hill Botanic...

TWO ROSES is a new watercolor on Fabriano paper by Fleur Thesmar. The artwork measures 30x22", and is a striking composition in tones of rose, pink, gold and green. It's a courageous work of art, seemingly a reflection or a symmetry but of course they are two distinct, complex flowers. From Fleur Thesmar – "Standing on top of each other like mystic roses...

300K, 100 OBVERSE LEFT "WATERMELON NOTE" by Rodrigo Spinel Chinese ink on Fabriano paper 250 g. Image size: 30 cm H x 15 cm W Frame size: 43 cm H x 28 cm W x 4 cm D Ivory Wood Bro...

Roberto Burle Marx, 2021 (Framed) by Rodrigo Spinel From The Series Terms And Conditions 2.0. Chinese ink on Fabriano paper 250 g. Frame size: 46 cm H x 38 cm W x 6 cm D Image size:...

Vivid watercolor still life with colorful expressionist pink and purple hues, of a bright table with watermelon, pears, and flowers on heavy paper by Monterey artist Les Anderson (Am...

Abstracted still life of a vase of red flowers and fruit blending into an abstract expressionist watercolor composition by Les Anderson (American, 1928-2009). Signed "Les Anderson" l...

3.3M, 1000 REVERSE RIGHT "WATERMELON GRAND" by Rodrigo Spinel Chinese ink on Fabriano paper 250 g. Image size: 30 cm H x 15 cm W Frame size: 43 cm H x 28 cm W x 4 cm D Ivory Wood ...