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Figurative Paintings For Sale
Period: 1940s
Period: 1920s
This Week's Listings Only
NYC Subway Mid 20th Century American Modernism WPA Realism industrial Colorful
Located in New York, NY
NYC Subway Mid 20th Century American Modernism WPA Realism industrial Colorful "New York Subway," 36 x 48 inches. Oil on Masonite (backed with a wood frame), Signed and dated ’47 upper left. The colors of the painting are extraordinarily vibrant. The white gold frame, signed Richard Tobey...
Category

1940s American Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Masonite, Oil

Study for Saturday Evening Post Cover 'Boy with Lantern'
Located in Fort Washington, PA
This is a study for the 1926 Christmas issue of The Saturday Evening Post. December 25, 1926 Joseph Christian Leyendecker’s illustrations and advertisements fueled a collective visu...
Category

1920s Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

1940s American Impressionist Still Life Oil Painting with Flowers - Original Art
Located in Denver, CO
This original vintage 1945 oil painting beautifully captures a serene interior still life scene, featuring a vase of flowers, a delicate tea cup, and flowing drapery. Created by reno...
Category

1940s Abstract Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

"Winter Silence" Carl Wuermer, American Impressionism Quiet Snowy Landscape
Located in New York, NY
Carl Wuermer Winter Silence Signed lower left Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches Known for serene, realistic landscapes, he was a widely exhibited painter who won numerous awards includi...
Category

1920s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Mid Century Modern Surrealist Hawaiian Visionary Art - The Dream & the Dreamers
Located in Soquel, CA
Symbolic and surreal landscape with three women in a mystical garden setting walking toward a plaque "The dream and the dreamer are one" by Marguerite Louis Blasingame (American; 190...
Category

1940s Futurist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Stretcher Bars

Never the Twain Shall Meet, Cosmopolitan Illustration
Located in Fort Washington, PA
Date: 1923 Medium: Oil on Canvas Dimensions: 35.50" x 30.00" Signature: Signed Lower Left Never the Twain Shall Meet, Cosmopolitan illustration, 1923 This illustration appeared in Peter B. Kyne's story, Never the Twain Shall Meet. "'Ah!' said Tamea. 'You do not believe, then, that I am the Queen of Riva?' 'No,' retorted the health officer, 'I do not. You're the Queen of Hearts.''" It was also reproduced on page 76 of Dean Cornwell: Dean of Illustrators by Patricia Janis Broder, Collector's Press, 2000. Exhibited: Masters of the Golden Age: Harvey Dunn and His Students South Dakota...
Category

1920s Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Mid-Century Art Deco Figurine w. Dogs & Lilies Still Life by Nell Walker Warner
Located in Soquel, CA
Romantic still-life of a beautiful porcelain lady and her two dogs - perhaps Borzoi - set among a display of fresh cut lilies by listed artist Nell Walker Warner (American, 1891-1970). Signed "Nell Walker Warner" lower left. Displayed in a giltwood frame with linen liner. Image, 30"H x 36"L. Nell Walker Warner was born in Richardson County, Nebraska on April 1, 1891. She was educated in Colorado Springs, Colorado and graduated from the Lexington College in Missouri in 1910. She moved to California in 1916 where she studied and graduated from the Los Angeles School of Art and Design. After her marriage to Dr. Bion Smith Warner in 1920, the couple settled in La Canada. During the 1920's, Nell was the curator of the Tuesday Afternoon Club in Los Angeles and further studied with Nicolai Fechin, Paul Lauritz and Fritz Werner. Her floral paintings are radiant; an article in the Christian Science Monitor stated, ''California flowers...
Category

1940s Art Nouveau Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Linen

Rue de Paris
Located in Madrid, ES
EMILIO GRAU SALA Spanish, 1911 - 1975 RUE DE PARIS signed "Grau Sala" (lower right) oil on canvas 24 x 19-3/4 inches (61 x 50 cm.) framed: 29-3/8 x 25-1/4 inches (74.5 x 64 cm.) PRO...
Category

1940s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Porträt eines Ehepaares
Located in Wien, 9
Mein Sammlungsschwerpunkt vor Galeriegründung war (und ist es bis jetzt) die Kunst der Neuen Sachlichkeit und die ist vor allem ein deutsches Thema. Mich fasziniert der kühle und dis...
Category

1920s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Les Grands Boulevards - Post Impressionist City Landscape Oil by Lucien Adrion
Located in Marlow, Buckinghamshire
Signed figures in landscape oil on canvas circa 1920 by French post impressionist painter Lucien Adrion. The painting depicts people going about their daily lives on the streets of Paris, France on a sunny spring day with trams travelling along the boulevards. Signature: Signed lower right Dimensions: Framed: 33"x39" Unframed: 26"x32" Provenance: Galerie Vildrac - Paris (labels verso) Lucien Adrion was born May 25, 1889 in Strasbourg, France. He was was a French Post-Impressionist painter, draftsman, and printmaker known for his depictions of the French countryside and beaches, as well as Parisian life including landscape, still life, figure and landmark paintings. He began his initial studies in Strasbourg as a technical draughtsman. In 1907, at the age of eighteen, he left his hometown Strasbourg and traveled to Paris, where he found employment in a large drafting company to work as a fashion illustrator. Adrion changed his mind upon arrival and rather than working for a large company, he decided to peruse his artistic career by traveling to London, Munich and Frankfurt. As the World War broke out he had to go to Berlin, where he studied as an engraver with Hermann Struck, who was also the teacher of Marc Chagall. He remained in Berlin until the war ended and after the demobilization, Lucien would study engraving under Franz Ritter von Struck...
Category

1920s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Large Scale 1920s Portrait of Florence Foster Jenkins, Amateur Soprano Singer
Located in Soquel, CA
A fine, large-scale portrait of a Philadelphia lady, fabled soprano singer Florence Foster Jenkins, by Richard Langtry Partington (American, 19...
Category

1920s American Realist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Linen, Oil

Duclair - La Seine - Post Impressionist Oil, River Landscape by Robert Pinchon
Located in Marlow, Buckinghamshire
Fauvist signed oil on canvas riverscape circa 1920 by French post impressionist painter Robert Antoine Pinchon. The work depicts a view of the R...
Category

1920s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"His Master's Aim" Frank Califano, Trompe l'oeil, Photorealism, Italian Artist
Located in New York, NY
Frank Califano His Master's Aim, circa 1922 Signed lower right Oil on canvas 36 x 22 1/4 inches Provenance Zaplin-Lampert Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico Private Collection (acquired ...
Category

1920s Photorealist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Fine Impressionist American School Oil on Canvas; Family Picnic or Outing, 1925
Located in Baltimore, MD
This lovely impressionist painting portrays what appears to be a family outing or picnic. There are many beautifully dressed women with their children in a park setting. Oddly, what appears to be missing are men, or their husbands. Perhaps it’s a women’s organization that included their young children. The scene must depict late spring or summer, given the foliage and their beautiful dresses. The colors are bright and cheerful and the late impressionist style is clearly evident. The artist appears to have signed the painting lower left, but it is very difficult to completely decipher. The date, 1925, seems to be clearer. All in all, this work is a one-of-a-kind period painting that will enhance any sophisticated room or setting. The frame is a soft lemon gold period cove frame that may be just a bit older than the work by about 10 years. This work has been recently professionally repaired, cleaned and varnished. Both the painting and the frame are in very good condition. There are a few professional repairs to the canvas, only visible from the patches shown on the backside. The frame has a few minor blemishes here and there, expected with its age. The canvas measures 18” x 22” and the overall framed dimensions are 24 1/2” x 28 1/2”. Visible on the reverse side is a vintage label that reads “Art...
Category

1920s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Antique American Abstract Expressionist Vintage Framed New York School Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique American modernist abstract painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. Housed in a vintage frame. Image size, 18L x 24H.
Category

1940s Abstract Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Redhead Sitting next to Canoe painted in Arts and Crafts style
Located in Miami, FL
Masterfully designed scene of an attractive young Redhead sitting by a canoe under a tree with hanging Spanish moss. It is rendered in a quick Arts and Crafts style that is as abstract as it is representational. The viewer can stare at it endlessly and still discover new pictorial relationships. Every brush stroke and every dap a paint is perfectly placed. Signed lower left. Most likely for Saturday Evening Post or Colliers. Louderback is a painter/illustrator of the Golden Age of Illustration...
Category

1920s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Winter Snow - Gstaad - Impressionist Landscape Oil by William Samuel Horton
Located in Marlow, Buckinghamshire
Signed oil on canvas landscape by American impressionist painter William Samuel Horton. The piece depicts a view of the town of Gstaad in Southwestern Switzerland. The buildings and ...
Category

1920s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

“Reclining Figures”
Located in Southampton, NY
Beautiful oil on canvas painting with aerosol spray paint of two reclining figures by the well known Russian/American artist, Nahum Tschacbasov. Signed upper right and dated 1949. ...
Category

1940s Abstract Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

“Les Halles de Paris”
Located in Southampton, NY
Original oil on canvas painting of Les Halles de Paris by the London born artist, H.F. Root. Signed lower left. Circa 1945. Very good condition, no restorations. Les Halles de Paris was the largest food market...
Category

1940s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Mother and Child - Classic Portrait
Located in Miami, FL
This warm portrait looks like it could have been painted by Corot. Francis Luis Mora paints in that tradition. It's a small painting that invites the viewer to look closer. The art...
Category

1920s Academic Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Painting Oil On Canvas, a Reclining Nude by Legendre French school
Located in Gavere, BE
Painting Oil On Canvas, a Reclining Nude by Legendre French school of the 20th century Beautiful and large oil on canvas, French school from the 1920's representing a naked young rec...
Category

1920s French School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gold Leaf

Les Collines du Dauphine - Post Impressionist Oil, Landscape by Victor Charreton
Located in Marlow, Buckinghamshire
Beautiful signed oil on board landscape circa 1920 by sought after post impressionist painter Victor Charreton. The piece depicts a figure walking through green rolling fields with h...
Category

1920s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

'Mother and Child', Woman Impressionist, Paris, Académie Julian, Benezit
Located in Santa Cruz, CA
Initialed lower right, 'A.E.M' for Anna Elisabeth Munch (Danish, 1876-1960) and painted circa 1940. This notable Danish Modernist first studied with Karl Jensen (1889) and C. N. Overgaard (1891–1892). She later traveled and studied in Italy and, subsequently, at the Académie Julian under Jean Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant. After her return to Denmark, Munch became a student of the Impressionist Julius Paulsen (1895-1897) and made her début at the 1898 Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition. Munch became the first Danish woman to receive commissions for large devotional altarpieces and her early subjects were often derived from Nordic and Christian mythology. These themes were also explored in the large fresco commissions she completed after studying fresco with Joakim Skovgaard (1909-10). Munch continued her studies in both France and Italy and also traveled extensively to Sweden and Norway. Together with the writer Sophie Breum, Munch built a house on the island of Funen at the artist's colony of Kerteminde. Munch illustrated several of Breum's books and, through her, was introduced to the women's movement. She furthered her art studies with Fritz Syberg...
Category

1940s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Post Office WPA Mural Study American Scene Social Realism Modern 20th Century
By Carlos Lopez
Located in New York, NY
Post Office WPA Mural Study American Scene Social Realism Modern 20th Century Carlos Lopez (1910-1953) "Bounty" WPA Mural Study for Michigan Post Office 19 ½ x 22 ½ inches Oil on B...
Category

1940s American Realist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Afternoon Rest
By Cillespi
Located in West Hollywood, CA
Just discovered within an exceptional private west coast collection, the signature and inscription on this incredible small oil on paper, is at the moment, undecypherable, we are res...
Category

1940s Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

'Europa and the Bull', Greek Mythology, NYMOMA, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, PAFA
By Giglio Raphael Dante
Located in Santa Cruz, CA
Signed lower right 'Dante' for Giglio Raphael Dante (American, born 1916), titled verso and painted circa 1940. Raphael Dante first studied at the Academy of Rome prior to moving to...
Category

1940s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Tempera, Paper

Portrait of a painter in a costume - Oil on wood 65x53 cm
Located in Geneva, CH
Work on canvas with frame The frame is new and the total size is 70x80 cm Signed " V. Marendaz ", Unknonwn artist from the gallery Dated 1920
Category

1920s Realist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

La Princesse Lointaine: Porteurs d' Eventails (original gouache on paper)
Located in Aventura, FL
Original on Gouache on paper. Hand signed on front; signed, titled, dated with dedication on verso by Erte. Stamped "Composition originale". Frame size 29 x 24.5 inches. Artwork s...
Category

1920s Art Deco Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache

Early 20th Century French Landscape -- Home On The Coast Brittany
Located in Soquel, CA
Beautiful Brittany, France coastal landscape depicting a cottage and a lone farmer by A. Henry (French, 20th Century),circa 1920. Signed "A. Henry" lower right. Unframed. Image, 16"H...
Category

1920s Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Still Life with Buddha and Pomegranates - Painting by Bruno Croatto - 1944
Located in Roma, IT
In this work we find the image of the Buddha and several pomegranates, symbolizing fertility. The choice of combining objects and materials of different nature becomes an unmistakable feature of his style. A taste for the intrinsic qualities of different materials, specifically chosen for their characteristics of gloss transparency and sphericity, not least, the optical precision with which the different surfaces are rendered. Croatto creates images where reality is transformed into a magical and suspended atmosphere. Bruno Croatto...
Category

1940s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Two Boys (Art Deco Knickers Suit Bicycle riding Attire Fashion Illustration).
Located in Wilton Manors, FL
Marc-Luc (French, active 1920s-30s). Boys Fashion Illustration, ca. 1920s. Watercolor and pencil on paper, image measures 8 x 11 inches on panel measuring 12.5 x 18 inches. Signed lo...
Category

1920s Art Deco Figurative Paintings

Materials

Watercolor, Illustration Board, Pencil

A Cloudy Day, English Impressionist River Landscape with figure and cottage
Located in Woodbury, CT
A Cloudy Day, English Impressionist River Landscape with figure and cottage, circa 1922. Alexander Fuller Maitland painted coastal subjects and marines. Exhibited thirteen works, in...
Category

1920s Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Woman with cigarette
Located in Genève, GE
Monogram A. Sch. Work on wood Golden wooden frame 36.5 x 30.5 x 2 cm
Category

1920s Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Ballet Mirage, 20th Century Magic Realism, Cleveland School Artist
Located in Beachwood, OH
Hazel Janicki (American, 1918-1976) Ballet Mirage, 1945 Oil and encaustic on panel Signed and dated lower left 18.25 x 16 inches 26.5 x 24.5 inches, framed Exhibited: Cleveland Muse...
Category

1940s Figurative Paintings

Materials

Encaustic, Oil

Jeune Fille à l'Accordéon by ISMAEL DE LA SERNA - Spanish artist, cubist art
Located in London, GB
*UK BUYERS WILL PAY AN ADDITIONAL 5% IMPORT DUTY ON TOP OF THE ABOVE PRICE Jeune Fille à l'Accordéon by ISMAEL DE LA SERNA (1898-1968) Oil on masonite 88.9 x 115.6 cm (35 x 45 ¹/₂ i...
Category

1940s Cubist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Portrait of a woman ironing
Located in BELEYMAS, FR
Paul LUNAUD (Brantôme 1900 – 1949) The ironer Oil on wood H. 80 cm; W. 64 cm Signed and dated on the right in the center, formerly signed lower right. 1942 Provenance : Artist's stu...
Category

1940s French School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

"China Town" Ernest Fiene, 1925 Modernist Watercolor on Paper Chinatown Scene
Located in New York, NY
Ernest Fiene China Town, 1925 Signed and dated to lower right ‘Ernest Fiene 1925’. Watercolor on paper 18 1/2 x 14 5/8 inches Ernest Fiene was born in Elberfeld, Germany in 1894. As a teenager, Fiene immigrated to the United States in 1912. He studied art at the National Academy of Design in New York City from 1914 to 1918, taking day classes with Thomas Maynard and evening classes with Leon Kroll. Fiene continued his studies at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York from 1916 to 1918, adding classes in printmaking at the Art Students League in 1923. Fiene began his career as an artist in 1919 with his first exhibition of watercolors at the MacDowell Club arranged by his mentor Robert Henri. In 1923 the Whitney Studio Club mounted a large exhibition of his works. The following year he had an exhibition at the New Gallery in New York, which completely sold out all fifty-two works, including paintings, watercolors, drawings, and etchings. With the proceeds of sales from the New Gallery exhibition, Ernest Fiene and his younger brother Paul, a sculptor, built studios in Woodstock, New York in 1925. In the early Twenties Ernest Fiene painted mostly landscapes of Woodstock and both the Ramapo and Hudson River Valleys. The first monograph from the Younger Artists Series was published on Fiene in 1922. Published in Woodstock, the series went on to include Alexander Brook, Peggy Bacon, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. The book reproduced 1 illustration in color and another 27 reproductions in black and white. Around 1925 Fiene became fascinated with the intensity, excitement, and opportunities for color harmonies New York City offered as a subject. His paintings shifted to urban and industrial themes with architecture, industry, and transportation becoming his subjects. By 1926 Fiene had attracted the dealer Frank K.M. Rehn, who gave him a one-man exhibition that year, which travelled to the Boston Arts Club. C.W. Kraushaar Galleries gave Fiene a one-man exhibition of urban, landscape, portrait, and still life paintings in 1927. Julianna Force, the director of the Whitney Studio Club and first director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, included two of Fiene’s paintings in a fall exhibition in 1928. The Whitney Studio Club showed Fiene’s paintings in a two-man exhibition with Glenn O. Coleman that year and acquired three of Fiene’s paintings. Also in 1928 Fiene became affiliated with Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery where he had an exhibition of 20 lithographs in the spring. Fiene sold his house in Woodstock in 1928 to spend more of his time in New York City. With so many successful exhibitions, Fiene returned to Paris in 1928-29 where he rented Jules Pascin's studio and studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In France, Fiene painted both landscape and urban subjects developed from ideas influenced by Cubist geometry and the use of flat areas of broad color. Upon returning to New York in 1930, Fiene used this new approach to continue to paint New York skyscraper and waterfront subjects, as well as to begin a series of paintings on changing old New York based on the excavations for Radio City Music Hall and the construction of the Empire State Building. Frank K.M. Rehn Galleries exhibited this series, titled “Changing Old New York,” in 1931. Fiene also has solo exhibitions at Rehn Galleries in 1930 and 1932. Fiene’s oil paintings are exhibited at the Chicago Arts Club in 1930 as well. Fiene was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans in December of 1931. Visiting New York, Henri Matisse saw the exhibition and called Fiene’s Razing Buildings, West 49th Street the finest painting he had seen in New York. Fiene had two mural studies from his Mechanical Progress series exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Murals by American Painters and Photographers in 1932. Fiene sent View from my Window which depicts Fiene working on a lithograph stone while looking out his window to the newly completed Empire State Building to the Carnegie International in 1931. In 1932 Fiene participated in the first Biennial of American Painting at the Whitney Museum and his prints were included in exhibitions at the Downtown Gallery and the Wehye Gallery. In the same year, Fiene was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to further study mural painting in Florence, Italy. On his return from Italy in 1933 Fiene re-engaged himself in New York City life and won several public and private mural projects. Fiene resumed his active exhibition schedule, participating in two group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum and a one-man exhibition of recent paintings at the Downtown Gallery in January 1934. In 1933 he purchased a farm in Southbury, Connecticut, which added Connecticut scenes to his landscape subjects. This was also the year Fiene began to spend summers on Monhegan Island, Maine, where he painted seascapes, harbor scenes, and still lifes. Fiene’s landscape paintings attracted numerous commissions as part of the American Scene movement. Through the fall and winter of 1935-36, Fiene took an extended sketching trip through the urban, industrial, and farming areas of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Most of the twenty-four Pennsylvania urban and rural paintings from this trip were featured in an exhibition held at the First National Bank in Pittsburgh in October of 1937 by the Pittsburgh Commission for Industrial Expansion. Fiene said of these works that he formed rhythm, opportunity for space and color, and integrity in the Pennsylvania mill and furnace paintings. Fiene received the silver medal for one of the Pittsburgh paintings...
Category

1920s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Kumulipo, Source of Life - Mid Century Modern Surrealist Hawaiian Visionary Art
Located in Soquel, CA
Symbolic and surreal landscape with figure eminating life force by Marguerite Louis Blasingame (American; 1906-1947), circa 1940-45. Marguerite and her husband Frank Blasingame...
Category

1940s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

"Woman Dressing"
Located in Lambertville, NJ
Jim’s of Lambertville Fine Art Gallery is proud to offer this work by Frederick Carl Frieseke (1874 – 1939). Frederick Carl Frieseke was a member of the third generation of American painters to inhabit and find inspiration from Giverny, France. His use of bright colors and light, to depict the female figure, defined the style of the Giverny group during his residence, synthesizing aspects of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Born in the United States, Frieseke studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York. In 1898, he moved to Paris to enroll in the Académie Julian, where he studied under Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. During this time, Frieseke also briefly studied with James A. Whistler, who would prove to be a great inspiration in Frieseke’s early works. From Whistler, Frieseke adopted a tonalist palette and a decorative approach to figurative painting. While in Paris, Frieseke’s works were featured at the American Art Association of Paris and in several annual salon exhibitions. His painting, “Before the Mirror...
Category

1920s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Still life with flowers
Located in Pasadena, CA
Constantin Font, born January 11, 1890 in Auch (Gers) and died in 1954 in Paris, is a French artist, painter of genre, nudes, landscapes, orientalist, sculptor and engraver. Outstand...
Category

1940s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

"Spring Ploughing" Georgina Klitgaard, Modernist American Farmed Landscape
Located in New York, NY
Georgina Klitgaard Spring Ploughing Signed lower right Oil on canvas 34 x 42 inches Georgina Klitgaard’s art has sometimes gotten lost in the critical propensity to assign artists ...
Category

1940s American Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Serrenade
By Sacha Zaliouk
Located in West Hollywood, CA
A monumental watercolor on paper, painted in Paris by Russian artist Sacha Zaliouk. Zaliouk moved to Paris in the early 1920's and became an artist and illustrator, becoming part ...
Category

1920s Art Deco Figurative Paintings

Materials

Watercolor

Original JAX Beer Advertisement, Illustration of an Autumnal Hunting Scene
Located in Fort Washington, PA
Original advertisement for JAX Beer (Jackson Brewing Company, New Orleans, LA), circa 1940s. In this autumnal scene, a hunting party is enjoying JAX beer at their campsite when a bu...
Category

1940s Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Hospitalities Long Past, 1940s Oil Painting of Store Front
Located in Beachwood, OH
Clarence Holbrook Carter (American, 1904-2000) Hospitalities Long Past, 1941 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower right 37 x 27 inches "Looking into store front windows has always i...
Category

1940s American Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

"Glasco Landscape" Albert Heckman, circa 1940 New York Modernist Landscape
Located in New York, NY
Albert Heckman Glasco Landscape, circa 1940 Signed lower right Oil on canvas 25 1/4 x 39 1/2 inches Albert Heckman was born in Meadville, Western Pennsylvania, 1893. He went to New York City to try his hand at the art world in 1915 after graduating from high school and landing a job at the Meadville Post Office. In 1917, at the age of 24, Heckman enrolled part-time in Teachers' College, Columbia University's Fine Arts Department to begin his formal art education. He worked as a freelance ceramic and textile designer and occasionally as a lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the early 1920s, at the age of almost 30, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia Teachers College. He was especially impacted by his instructor at Columbia, Arthur Wesley Dow. After graduating, he was hired by the Teachers' College as a Fine Arts instructor. He stayed with Columbia Teachers' College until 1929, when he left to attend the Leipzig Institute of Graphic Arts in Leipzig, Germany. Isami Doi (1903-1965), who was born in Hawaii, was arguably his most impressive student at Columbia. Doi is now regarded as one of the most prominent artists hailing from Hawaii. Heckman became an active member and officer of the Keramic Society and Design Guild of New York in the 1920s as part of his early commercial art career. The Society's mission was to share knowledge and showcase textile and ceramic design exhibits. In 1922, Heckman married Florence Hardman, a concert violinist. Mrs. Heckman's concert schedule during the 1920s kept Albert and Florence Heckman apart for a significant portion of the time, but they spent what little time they had together designing and building their Woodstock, New York, summer house and grounds. A small house and an acre of surrounding land on Overlook Mountain, just behind the village of Woodstock, were purchased by Albert and Florence Heckman at the time of their marriage. Their Woodstock home, with its connections, friendships, and memories, became a central part of their lives over the years, even though they had an apartment in New York City. Heckman's main artistic focus shifted to the house on Overlook Mountain and the nearby towns and villages, Kingston, Eddyville, and Glasco. After returning from the Leipzig Institute of Graphic Arts in 1930, Mr. Heckman joined Hunter College as an assistant professor of art. He worked there for almost thirty years, retiring in 1956. Throughout his tenure at Hunter, Mr. Heckman and his spouse spent the summers at their Woodstock residence and the winters in New York City. They were regular and well-known guests at the opera and art galleries in New York. Following his retirement in 1956, the Heckmans settled in Woodstock permanently, with occasional trips to Florida or Europe during the fall and winter. Mr. Heckman's close friends and artistic career were always connected to Woodstock or New York City. He joined the Woodstock art group early on and was greatly influenced by artists like Paul and Caroline Rohland, Emil Ganso, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Andre Ruellan, and her husband, Jack...
Category

1940s American Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

A Humorous 1945 Painting Titled "En Route to VT, Hotel Room" by Harold Haydon
Located in Chicago, IL
A diminutive & humorous 1945 Painting titled "En Route to VT, Hotel Room" by artist Harold Haydon. Haydon called these diminutive paintings "Thumb Box" paintings. Image size: 6" x...
Category

1940s American Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Paper

Derain Small Head in Pencil. original drawing painting
Located in CORAL GABLES - MIAMI, FL
Small head in pencil. original drawing painting André Derain (Chatou, June 10, 1880-Garches, September 8, 1954) was a French painter, illustrator and set designer, representative of...
Category

1920s Fauvist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Pencil

English Victorian Antique landscape, Figures gathering Primroses
Located in Woodbury, CT
English Victorian Antique landscape, Figures gathering Primroses. Cowleigh Woods, North Malvern, UK John Bates Noel was born John Noel Bates in Worcester in 1870. He was the son of ...
Category

1920s Victorian Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

The Magician oil and tempera painting by Julio de Diego
Located in Hudson, NY
Julio De Diego’s Atomic Series paintings made an extraordinary statement regarding the shock and fear that accompanied the dawn of the nuclear age. In the artist’s own words, “Scientists were working secretly to develop formidable powers taken from the mysterious depths of the earth - with the power to make the earth useless! Then, the EXPLOSION! . . . we entered the Atomic Age, and from there the neo-Atomic war begins. Explosions fell everywhere and man kept on fighting, discovering he could fight without flesh.” To execute these works, De Diego developed a technique of using tempera underpainting before applying layer upon layer of pigmented oil glazes. The result is paintings with surfaces which were described as “bonelike” in quality. The forms seem to float freely, creating a three-dimensional visual effect. In the 1954 book The Modern Renaissance in American Art, author Ralph Pearson summarizes the series as “a fantastic interpretation of a weighty theme. Perhaps it is well to let fantasy and irony appear to lighten the devastating impact. By inverse action, they may in fact increase its weight.” Exhibited 1964 Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas This work retains its original frame which measures 54" x 42" x 2" About this artist: Julio De Diego crafted a formidable persona within the artistic developments and political struggles of his time. The artist characterized his own work as “lyrical,” explaining, “through the years, the surrealists, the social-conscious painters and the others tried to adopt me, but I went my own way, good, bad or indifferent.” [1] His independence manifested early in life when de Diego left his parent’s home in Madrid, Spain, in adolescence following his father’s attempts to curtail his artistic aspirations. At the age of fifteen he held his first exhibition, set up within a gambling casino. He managed to acquire an apprenticeship in a studio producing scenery for Madrid’s operas, but moved from behind the curtains to the stage, trying his hand at acting and performing as an extra in the Ballet Russes’ Petrouchka with Nijinsky. He spent several years in the Spanish army, including a six-month stretch in the Rif War of 1920 in Northern Africa. His artistic career pushed ahead as he set off for Paris and became familiar with modernism’s forays into abstraction, surrealism, and cubism. The artist arrived in the U.S. in 1924 and settled in Chicago two years later. He established himself with a commission for the decoration of two chapels in St. Gregory’s Church. He also worked in fashion illustration, designed magazine covers and developed a popular laundry bag for the Hotel Sherman. De Diego began exhibiting through the Art Institute of Chicago in 1929, and participated in the annual Chicago Artists Exhibitions, Annual American Exhibitions, and International Water Color Exhibitions. He held a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in the summer of 1935. Though the artist’s career was advancing, his family life had deteriorated. In 1932 his first marriage dissolved, and the couple’s young daughter Kiriki was sent to live with friend Paul Hoffman. De Diego continued to develop his artistic vocabulary with a growing interest in Mexican art. He traveled throughout the country acquainting himself with the works of muralists such as Carlos Merida, and also began a collection of small native artifacts...
Category

1940s American Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Masonite, Oil, Tempera

Lady in creation
Located in Genève, GE
Work on canvas
Category

1940s Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Antique American Impressionist Ashcan School Nocturnal Cityscape Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique original nocturnal cityscape oil painting. Oil on board, circa 1920. Signed illegibly. Image size, 12L x 16H. Housed in a period frame.
Category

1920s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Spanish Tavern
Located in Miami, FL
There is no one alive that can paint and draw like Dean Cornwell. How can that be? They do not train artist the way they did. Dean Cornwell in his day was as famous as Normal Rockwell...
Category

1920s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Au Cafe
By Elizabeth Ronget
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Frame size 42 x 52.5 inches ELISABETH RONGET "AU CAFE” OIL ON CANVAS, SIGNED FRANCE, C.1940 Elisabeth Ronget 1886-1962 Elisabeth Boehm Ronget was born in 1896 in Conitz, Polan...
Category

1940s Cubist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Pool of my Imagination"
By Charles Frederick Naegele
Located in Southampton, NY
Beautiful oil on canvas painting of a young nude woman sitting on a large rock in a enchanted grotto with two swans. The painting was executed in the 1920's and is in fine original condition. Unlined and housed in its original Stanford White hand carved wood gilt frame. Signed lower left. Provenance: Szynanski Gallery, Beverly Hills; Temple Steel Company, Chicago, Illinois; acquired from the above in 1980. Condition report: Stretcher bar mark center with corresponding light cracks. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, as a child Naegele moved with his parents to Memphis, where by 1873 he was apprenticed to a tombstone carver at three dollars a week. He also earned money painting...
Category

1920s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Modernist Judaica Jewish Ink Drawing Painting "New Immigrant" Off the Boat WPA
Located in Surfside, FL
An ink drawing Judaic painting by modern artist Ben-Zion Weinman. It depicts a portrait of an old Jewish man. Coming over from Europe on a ship crossing. The work is signed "Ben-Zion". Born in 1897, Ben-Zion Weinman celebrated his European Jewish heritage in his visual works as a sculptor, painter, and printmaker. Influenced by Spinoza, Knut Hamsun, and Wladyslaw Reymont, as well as Hebrew literature, Ben-Zion wrote poetry and essays that, like his visual work, attempt to reveal the deep “connection between man and the divine, and between man and earth.” An emigrant from the Ukraine, he came to the US in 1920. He wrote fairy tales and poems in Hebrew under the name Benzion Weinman, but when he began painting he dropped his last name and hyphenated his first, saying an artist needed only one name. In 1920 he settled in America, where he found little interest in his writing. He began teaching Hebrew to support himself and then in the early 1930s returned to painting. He used his art to comment on the rise of fascism in Europe, events he felt could not be adequately explored with words. Largely self-taught, Ben-Zion visited the museums of New York City to learn his new trade. His first painting on a large scale, Friday Evening (1933, Jewish Museum, New York), depicts a Sabbath dinner table as recalled from his family home. Ben-Zion supported himself by working odd jobs until the establishment of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. Under the auspices of the wpa, Ben-Zion thrived and galleries began to show his work. In 1936, after his first one-man show at the Artists' Gallery in New York Ben-Zion was a founding member of “The Ten: An Independent Group” The Ten” a 1930’s...
Category

1940s American Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Watercolor, Gouache

'Portrait of the Artist, Victor Isbrand', Paris, Copenhagen, Morocco
Located in Santa Cruz, CA
Signed upper right, 'Oda Lauritsen' for Oda Lauritsen Isbrand (Danish, 1904-1987) and dated, upper left, '1928'. A powerful oil portrait of the artist's husband-to-be, the notable D...
Category

1920s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Ink, Oil

Mother and Child 1920s - with Newcomb Macklin Giltwood Frame
By H. Willard Ortlip
Located in Soquel, CA
Excellent figurative painting of a mother and child by H. Willard Ortlip (American, 20th Century), 1927. Signature and date lower left "H. Willard Ortlip 1927." Presented in a giltwo...
Category

1920s Old Masters Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Linen, Stretcher Bars

“Fleet Week”
Located in Southampton, NY
Original oil on masonite painting of Fleet Week with sailors flirting with young women on the dock by the American artist, Sarah Pace Carothers Rhode. ...
Category

1940s Ashcan School Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Masonite

Figurative Paintings for Sale

Figurative art, as opposed to abstract art, retains features from the observable world in its representational depictions of subject matter. Most commonly, figurative paintings reference and explore the human body, but they can also include landscapes, architecture, plants and animals — all portrayed with realism.

While the oldest figurative art dates back tens of thousands of years to cave wall paintings, figurative works made from observation became especially prominent in the early Renaissance. Artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance masters created naturalistic representations of their subjects.

Pablo Picasso is lauded for laying the foundation for modern figurative art in the 1920s. Although abstracted, this work held a strong connection to representing people and other subjects. Other famous figurative artists include Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Figurative art in the 20th century would span such diverse genres as Expressionism, Pop art and Surrealism.

Today, a number of figural artists — such as Sedrick Huckaby, Daisy Patton and Eileen Cooper — are making art that uses the human body as its subject.

Because figurative art represents subjects from the real world, natural colors are common in these paintings. A piece of figurative art can be an exciting starting point for setting a tone and creating a color palette in a room.

Browse an extensive collection of figurative paintings on 1stDibs.

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