May Mott Smith

"A Martinique Native in French Guyana, " Black Female Portrait, Female Artist

circa 1925

Ernest Crichlow Portrait of a Woman, 1968 Signed and dated lower right Oil on canvas 55 x 40 inches Provenance Private Collection, Hempstead, New York Estate of the above A Harlem...

Edith Kramer (1916 - 2014) Still Life with Mask, n.d. Oil on canvas 26 x 20 inches Signed and titled on the stretcher Provenance: Estate of the artist Kramer was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary in 1916. At age 13 Kramer began art lessons with Friedl Dicker. Dicker was graduate of the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany and was an artist and art teacher of note. Kramer studied drawing, sculpture and painting, and was influenced by the method for teaching art developed by Bauhaus artist Johannes Itten. It was in 1934 after Kramer graduated from Realgymnasium that she, then 18, followed Dicker to Prague to continue to study under her. During this time in Prague, Kramer witnessed the therapeutic impact of art when she assisted Dicker in teaching art to the children of political refugees. With the threat of Nazi invasion looming, Kramer took refuge in America in 1938. In New York City, she worked for three years teaching sculpture at a progressive school called the Little Red School House. During World War II Kramer worked as a machinist at a tool and die shop in the Soho district of New York City. She stayed after her shift to draw the other workers in their industrial setting. These works were rendered in the social realist style. In 1947 Kramer visited some of the earliest known artwork, in the caves at Lascaux. Kramer spoke of these cave paintings as an example of the universal language of art. At the age of 33 she returned to New York City, with hopes of making a living as an artist. Still in her 33rd year, Kramer was offered a job at Wiltwyck School for Boys, a school and residential treatment facility for children with behavioral and emotional needs. This job was arranged for her by psychoanalyst and board member at Wiltwyck, Dr. Viola Bernard. Dr. Bernard gave Kramer the title, "Art Therapist," noting that few teachers were willing to work with such challenging students. It was here that Kramer worked with disturbed boys, ages 8 through 13, for the following seven years. Raised in a family which was interested in psychoanalytic theory, Kramer herself became a follower of Sigmund Freud. Kramer especially believed in the concept of sublimation. Freudian theory describes sublimation as a process in which primitive urges coming from the id are transformed into socially productive activities that lead to gratification of the original urge. Kramer's training was in art, art education and psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy. Kramer believed sublimation to be one of the most vital goals of art therapy...

Irene Rice Pereira Composition with Figure, 1951 Inscribed, signed and dated Salford/Pereira 2/51 (lr); inscribed I Rice Pereira/2669 Great Clowes St/Sa...

Eugene Higgins In Foreign Parts, circa 1913 Signed lower right Watercolor on paper Sight 17 x 13 inches Born William Victor Higgins in 1884 to a Shelbyville, Indiana farm family where the only art Victor was aware of as a child was his father's love of flowers. "He loved their forms and their colors, and he tended his garden as a painter might work a canvas." At the age of nine, Victor met a young artist who traveled the Indiana countryside painting advertisements on the sides of barns. He purchased paints and brushes so the young Higgins could practice his own artwork on the inside of his father's barn. He also taught Victor about art museums and especially about the new Chicago Art Institute. This information never left the young artist, and he saved his allowance until his father allowed him at the age of fifteen to attend Chicago Art Institute. He worked a variety of jobs to finance his studies both there and at the Academy of Fine Arts. Victor Higgins traveled to New York in 1908, where he met Robert Henri, who became a significant influence by depicting every-day scenes and stressing the importance of the spirit and sense of place as important factors in painting. Higgins was also greatly affected by the New York Armory Modernism Show of Marsden Hartley in 1913. While Victor Higgins was in Chicago he met former mayor and avid collector Carter H. Harrison who was to prove instrumental in the growth of Higgins career for several years. Harrison agreed to support Higgins for four years to go to Paris and Munich and paint and study in the great museums in Europe. While at the Academie de la Grande Chaumier in Paris (1910-1914) he met Walter Ufer, who was another Chicago artist being sponsored by Carter Harrison. This meeting was not only a life-long friendship, but the beginning of a great change in the way Higgins looked at "American" art. He decided that America needed it's own authentic style rather than the 19th Century classic style he was taught in Europe. Very soon after returning to Chicago in 1914, Harrison sent him and Walter Ufer on a painting trip to Taos, New Mexico for a year in exchange for paintings. Higgins made other similar agreements and was able to support himself with his painting. This trip was a life-changing experience and introduced Higgins to the authentic America he had been looking for. In 1914 Taos was an isolated village about twelve hours from Santa Fe on an impossible dirt road. But the colorful life of the pueblo people and the natural beauty drew a collection of artists who became the Taos art colony, from which the Taos Society of Artists was founded in 1915. Victor Higgins became a permanent resident within a year of his arrival and a member of the society in 1917, exhibiting with Jane Peterson in 1925 and with Wayman Adams and Janet Scudder in 1927. The members would travel around the country introducing the Southwest scenes with great success. He remained a member until the Society's dissolution in 1927. Higgins was the youngest member of the group of seven. Other members were Joseph Henry Sharp, Bert Phillips...

This striking charcoal portrait captures the essence of an African American woman with a unique black and white afro. The monochromatic medium emphasize...

Artist/ School: The work is signed and dates to the 1970's period. Title: Portrait of an Africa Woman, believed to be from Tanzania (according to previous owner). Medium: oil paint...

Allan Rohan Crite: 1910-2007. Well listed and important African American artist. He was born in Ne Jersey but moved at a young age to Massachusetts....

Nice vintage amateur painting, portrait of a Congolese woman, probably acrylic on canvas, signed T. Kamurna at the bottom right, marked on the back and...