Tortoise Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Abstracted Bay Area skyline against a pink sunset creates beautiful and soft geometries in this small pastel urban landscape by San Francisco artist Chris...

Signed "Nell Blaine" upper left in pencil. Signed, titled, dated verso on sheet. Signed, titled, dated verso on backing panel. The artist. Exhibited at Fischbach Gallery, NYC, in 1994 (Gallery label verso, and wall label affixed verso). Purchased by private collectors c.1994. By descent. Tibor de Nagy Gallery, NYC (the artist's estate representative), exhibited 2020 (label verso). Exhibited at Fischbach Gallery, NYC, in 1994 (Gallery label verso, and wall label affixed verso). Tibor de Nagy Gallery, NYC (the artist's estate representative), exhibited 2020 (label verso). From her November 15, 1996 NYT obituary: Nell Blaine, a widely respected New York landscape painter and watercolorist, died yesterday at Mount Sinai Hospital. She was 74 and had homes in Manhattan and Gloucester, Mass. Ms. Blaine, who had been hospitalized since July, had been confined to a wheelchair since 1959, when she contracted polio. Ms. Blaine was born in Richmond, Va., in 1922, and first studied at the Richmond School of Art, now part of Virginia Commonwealth University. She moved to New York in 1942 to study painting with Hans Hofmann and later studied etching and engraving at Atelier 17 with Stanley William Hayter. During her first years in New York, her work, which had previously been tightly realist, turned abstract, inspired by Mondrian, Leger and Jean Helion. At one time she was the youngest member of the American Abstract Artists. She was also a founding member of the Jane Street Gallery, one of Manhattan's earliest artists' cooperatives, and had her first solo show there in 1945. Just as Ms. Blaine was becoming known as a promising abstract painter, and gaining the admiration of such critics as Clement Greenberg, she started to shift back to representation. Inspired in part by a trip with Larry Rivers in 1950 to Paris, where she was especially impressed by the work of Vuillard and Bonnard, she immersed herself in the tradition of 19th-century European painting. From the mid-1950's, she cultivated an increasingly painterly and colorful style, usually working directly from nature, or still life, with particular emphasis on the forms and hues of flowers. Her work retained a sense of all-over structure and pulsating energy that she nonetheless credited to abstract art. ''It all goes back to Mondrian,'' she would say. In the 1950's, Ms. Blaine was prominent among a circle of New York artists and poets that included John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, Mr. Rivers, Jane Freilicher, Leland Bell, Louisa Matthiasdottir, Robert De Niro Sr. and Rudy Burckhardt. She had her first solo show of representational work at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1953 and was represented by the Poindexter Gallery until it closed in 1978, and, in recent years, by the Fischbach Gallery. During the 1950's she supported herself as a commercial artist, designing brochures for art galleries. In 1955, she designed the original logo, column heads and layout for The Village Voice. In 1957, Ms. Blaine was featured in Life magazine as one of five leading young female artists in America. In 1959, after several months of traveling and painting in Greece, she contracted severe bulbar polio on the island of Mykonos. ''To Nell Blaine,'' an exhibition organized at Poindexter to raise money for her hospital bills, included the work of 79 artists, including Saul Steinberg, Robert Motherwell, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Mr. Rivers, Ms. Freilicher and Robert Rauschenberg. After eight months in a New York hospital, including five months in an iron lung...

A delightful watercolour study depicting a Cumbrian farm nestled in a mountain landscape in the Lake District. Sheep graze in the foreground and a bare winter tree nicely frames the ...

Colorful abstracted landscape of a garden porch in autumn with pumpkins by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). Signed "Les Anderson" lower right. Unframed. Image siz...

Abstract Still Life with Fruit in Watercolor on Paper Colorful still life with fruit by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). Several pieces of fruit appear to be sitting on a table with a purple cloth. The scene is highly abstracted, straddling the line between impressionism and non-representational. The background is brightly colored, adding vibrancy to the scene. Signed on verso and acquired from the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California. Unframed. Paper size: 14"H x 20"W Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson(American, 1928-2009) owned and operated the Bear Flag Gallery in San Juan...

A fine watercolour study of a game bird and hare in a pantry interior. Signed to the lower right. Presented in a part gilt frame.

This artwork "Untitled, Flowers" is a watercolor on paper by noted California artist Charlotte Britton, American, b.1938. It is signed at the middle left side by the artist. The artw...

Geoffrey Key. English ( b.1941 ). Horse With Rising Sun, 1989. Watercolor & Ink On Paper. Signed & Dated Lower Right. Image size 13.6 inches x 9.7 inches ( 34.5cm x 24.5cm ). Frame size 20.5 inches x 16.5 inches ( 52cm x 42cm ). Available for sale; this original painting is by Geoffrey Key and is dated 26th September 1989. The watercolor is presented and supplied in a sympathetic and contrasting contemporary frame (which is shown in these photographs) to suit the subject coloration, mounted using conservation materials and behind glass. This artwork and its presentation is in excellent condition. It wants for nothing and is supplied ready to hang and display. The watercolor is signed and dated lower right. Geoffrey Key is a leading figure in Northern contemporary art, widely regarded as Lancashire’s greatest living artist, noted for his realism, his expressive use of bold color and his graphic, linear style. His striking works, now much in demand, have established him as a major player of post war British figurative art. Geoffrey Key was born in Rusholme, Manchester in 1941. His mother, Marion, worked as an illustrator and encouraged him to draw and he took to this easily and with great enthusiasm. He was educated at Manchester's High School of Art, whose headmaster, Ernest Goodman, established the Salford Art Club. It is fitting that many years later, after Goodman's death, its members chose Geoffrey Key as Honorary President. In 1958 Key enrolled at the Manchester Regional College of Art, where he was tutored by the sculptor Ted Roocroft and the painter Harry Rutherford, both of whom influenced him greatly. After gaining the National Diploma of Design and the Diploma of Associateship of Manchester, the latter with distinction, Key took up a postgraduate scholarship in sculpture. His academic awards include the Heywood Medal in Fine Art and the Guthrie Bond Travelling Scholarship. Geoffrey Key’s early work included an important period of development during which he concentrated on painting and drawing a specific area of the Derbyshire landscape, the Whiteley Nab hill, south of Glossop. Key created literally hundreds of images of this one landscape and later revealed that the sole purpose of this dedicated period of study, was to build upon the firm foundation established by his academic training, whilst divesting himself of the influences he had absorbed in order to arrive at his own personal artistic language. In other words, this is where he found his own style. After graduating Key worked as a teacher at Duke Street Secondary Modern in Broughton, Salford, which later became Broughton Modern. In every spare moment though he painted and his talent was quickly recognised. As the likes of Salford Art Gallery, The Rutherston Loan Collection and North West Arts began to acquire his work he made the decision to relinquish his salary and to become a full time artist. Key was elected to membership of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts in 1968 and was a prize winner in 1971. During this time he was also commissioned by three North West England based companies – Mather & Platt, Richard Johnson & Nephew, and Wilson’s Brewery. The Richard Johnson & Nephew pictures are now held by the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester. In the 1980s the French company Société des Caves de Roquefort also commissioned Key’s work and further successful exhibitions were held in both the UK and abroad. In 1987 the Manchester Evening News asked Key to write an article on L. S. Lowry, who Key had known well, for a feature marking the centenary of the artist's birth. This article was accompanied by a contemporary drawing of Lowry by Key. Apart from LS Lowry, Key is arguably Lancashire’s best-known and most collected contemporary artist. Key says ‘I knew Lowry and he was a lovely...

This evocative watercolour and pencil work, inspired by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, depicts a soldier and maiden exploring a chest within an atmospheric, arched interior. The artist's us...

A touching scene depicting a mother sitting with her baby outside a cottage. Signed and dated in the lower left. Presented in a gilt frame with a beaded running pattern. On paper.

Bright abstracted landscape by Maxine "Mickey" Spencer (American, 1927-2011). Strong blues and magentas create an abstracted scene, evoking a body of water with trees...

Eiko Taniguchi Kahn (b. 1929) Untitled, c. 1960s Watercolor on board Each panel: 33 x 11 in. Framed: 45 1/2 x 32 x 1 in. Each panel signed bottom These stunning watercolor panels are beautifully mounted in a period frame. The frame needs some minor restoration but this would be a worthy repair, as it matches the artwork so nicely. Eiko Taniguchi Kahn was Japanese Artist who was born on January 24, 1929 in Fukuoka, Kyushu, Japan, to Tosuke Yamashita and Masano Taniguchi. She came to the United States in 1955, and was naturalized in 1958. She was the recipient of the President's award at the National Arts...