Lawrence Philp

"Insiders Say Too Much is Enough" Lawrence Philp, Abstracted Surrealist Forms

circa late 1970s

William M. Hart (1823 - 1894) Interior of a Stable Oil on canvas 17 x 12 inches Provenance William Macbeth Gallery, New York Mrs. Mabel Brady Garvan Collection Christie's New York, Sporting Art, November 28, 1995, Lot 116 Ann Carter Stonesifer, Maryland Estate of above Brunk Auctions, Asheville, North Carolina, January 27 2018, Lot 777 Exhibited New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Life in America, April 24 - October 29, 1939, no. 123, illustrated. New York, Macbeth Gallery, 1892: Sixtieth Anniversary Exhibition, April 1952, p. 5, no. 18. Literature Turner Reuter Jr, Animal and Sporting Artists in America, Middleburg, Virginia, 2008, p. 306. Gary Stiles, William Hart: Catalogue Raisonné and Artistic Biography, no. 1126, illustrated. It should be noted that the Francis Patrick Garvan and Mrs. Mabel Brady Garvan collection, of which this painting was a part of, was one of the foremost American Art collections and now makes up a large part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Yale University Art Gallery collections. Born in 1823 in Paisley, Scotland, William Hart emigrated with his parents to the United States at the age of nine and settled in Albany, New York. It was here that Hart first began his artistic training when he was placed under the tutelage of Messrs, Eaton & Gilbert, the prestigious coach-makers from Troy, New York. During this time, Hart learned how to decorate coach panels, covering them with either landscapes or figurative compositions. At the age of seventeen, he was eagerly contemplating an artist’s profession. Consequently, he left the mechanical trade of coach-making and began expanding his artistic pursuits to more refined endeavors. Hart followed coach-making with decorating window shades and later developed an interest in portraiture. Around 1840, he established his first formal studio in his father’s woodshed in Troy. There, he created many likenesses of individuals, affording him a nominal income. Once, he remarked that he felt prouder over his first fee of five dollars for painting a head then for the larger sums he would command later in his career. Nevertheless, his wages from portraits during this early period proved insufficient. Thus, he expanded into landscape painting, allowing him to barter his works or sell them for modest prices. In 1842, Hart moved to Michigan in an attempt to further his success; portraiture remained his primary means of support. Unfortunately, his experiences in the West were disappointing. Hart spent three years living a rough existence until he finally returned to Albany in 1845. Upon his return, he fully devoted himself to the art of landscape painting. Despite his failing health, he worked diligently to perfect his skill until 1849 when he traveled abroad to his native land of Scotland. This trip was made possible through the generosity of his patron and advisor, Dr. Ormsby of Albany. For three years, he studied in the open-air, creating brilliant sketches of the Scottish Highlands and the surrounding British Isles. Returning to Albany once more in 1852, Hart enjoyed improved health and was reinvigorated with purpose. The following year, he moved to New York and opened a studio, promoting himself as a specialist in landscape painting. Hart became a regular contributor to the National Academy of Design. His works received a great deal of attention from artists and connoisseurs alike, all of whom praised him for his fresh, self-taught style. In 1855, he was designated as an associate of the National Academy of Design; three years later he was elected to Academician. In 1865, he was unanimously chosen to be the first president of the Brooklyn Academy of Design. It was during his tenure there that he delivered his famous lecture The Field and Easel, which emphasized the distinguishing principles of landscape art in America. Hart argued that landscape painters should express the “look of the place” being depicted.Critics during the 1870s noted his sensitive balance between capturing a strict “real” interpretation of nature and that of a more “ideal” sentimental tone. For instance, in 1869, Putnam Magazine noted that Hart brought back “exquisite studies” of the surrounding Tappan...

Adolph Schreyer (1828 - 1899) Arab Scouts, n.d. Oil on canvas 33 3/4 x 56 inches Signed lower right Housed in an exceptional period American handcarved frame Provenance: Sheridan Art Gallery, Chicago Private Collection, Chicago Traffic Club of Chicago Schreyer expert Dr. Christoph Andreas has kindly confirmed the authenticity of this work. With the increase in travel by steamship and the political involvement of European powers in North Africa and the Middle East in the nineteenth century, paintings depicting the scenery, daily life, and customs of North African and Middle Eastern people became an object of fascination among European and American audiences. The German artist Christian Adolf Schreyer...

Mary Russell Smith Feathered Tribe, 1871 Signed and dated lower left Oil on canvas 9 1/2 x 14 3/4 inches The daughter of theater scenery and landscape painter Russell Smith (1812–1...

Walter Shirlaw (1838 - 1909) The Coming Storm Oil on canvas 18 x 26 inches Signed lower right Exhibited: The Boston Art Club. Walter Shirlaw, born on August 6, 1838, was only three (fourteen according to one obituary) when he came to Hoboken, New Jersey from his place of birth, Paisley, Scotland. As a young man, he found work as a bank note engraver, a profession that he continued in Chicago, where he lived between 1865 and 1870. But already in 1861 he was exhibiting genre paintings at the National Academy of Design. In 1868, Shirlaw was a member of the Chicago Academy of Design, which would become the Art Institute of Chicago, after changing its name from the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Shirlaw spent the years 1870-77 in Munich, at the height of the movement led by Wilhelm Leibl in which a low-keyed, dark palette, combined with bold, virtuoso brushwork, were applied to realist subject matter. Michael Quick (in Quick, Ruhmer, and West, 1978, p. 28) defined the time of Shirlaw's arrival (1870-73) as an especially experimental period in progressive German painting. Shirlaw's teachers, however, sided with tradition. The genre painter Arthur Ramberg (1819-1895) and Wilhelm von Lindenschmidt (1829-1895), his successor at the Munich Academy, taught Shirlaw composition. The painter of genre scenes and landscapes, Alexander von Wagner (1838-1919) was Shirlaw's teacher in painting. T. H. Bartlett (in American Artists and Their Works, 1889, vol. 1, p. 23) mentioned that Shirlaw regarded Leibl as too realistic. Shirlaw won a scholarship at the Academy in 1874, the year in which he executed Toning the Bell (Art Institute of Chicago). Meanwhile, he was active as one of the "Duveneck Boys" in Polling. Sheep Shearing in the Bavarian Highlands (Private collection), painted under Lindenschmidt's direction in 1876, is regarded as one of Shirlaw's most important pictures. He exhibited it upon his return to America at the National Academy in the following year; in 1878, it won an Honorable Mention in Paris. In 1877, the second school year of the Art Students League, Lemuel E. Wilmarth announced that he would be returning to teach at the NAD. Frank Waller (1842-1923) took over as president of the ASL, and Shirlaw was hired to teach painting and drawing. The appointment was endorsed by Waller: "In Munich . . . he was regarded as one of the strongest of the American students and had the strong personality which would attract and influence others to have confidence in him, was so genuine in his artistic impulses and in his interest in the development of art in this country. . . ." (quoted by Landgren, 1940, p. 32). The hiring of Shirlaw and William Merritt Chase seemed to signify a preference of Munich over Paris among the members of the Art Students League, however, while Chase was under Leibl's spell, Shirlaw was strictly academic. During the fourth season at the ASL, Shirlaw taught composition. Thomas Wilmer Dewing...

Muddle. 2014. Oil on canvas, 100x80 cm The artist Vadim Kovalev was born in 1968 in the capital of Latvia, Riga, where he is also presently living and creating his works. When Vad...

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