Charles Sprague Pearce

"Girl with Doll" Charles Sprague Pearce, American Impressionism, Figurative

circa 1895

Frederick James Boston (1855 - 1932) The Letter Oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches Signed lower left The first instructor of art at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, Frederick ...

Kathleen E. Figgis (British, 1904-1939) Lady at the Piano Oil on canvas 30 x 25 inches Signed and dated lower right Kathleen E. Figgis was born in 1875 and died in 1960. She exhibi...

Carl Nordell (1885 - 1957) The Pensive Beauty Oil on canvas 40 x 32 inches Signed lower left Nordell was born in Copenhagen on 23 September 1885. In 1892 the Nordell family settled in Westerly, New Jersey, where Carl Johan, one of several children, received his education. Reportedly, a local gambler and art collector, Richard Canfield was so impressed with young Nordell's talent that he assisted him to gain admittance to the Rhode Island School of Design. Carl was a tireless student and serious in his studies of art, literature, and philosophy. Friends nicknamed him "The American Frans Hals," as a result of his study of that Dutch master. After graduating from the school in 1905, Nordell continued his training at the Art Students League in New York City for the following two years. There he received criticism and instruction from George Bridgman (1864-1943), a noted teacher of anatomy, and Frank Vincent DuMond (1865-1951), a landscapist associated with Old Lyme. The popularity of Impressionism in America at this time had reached its peak, and the style was of paramount influence in Nordell's advanced studies. Around 1906, Nordell visited an exhibition of paintings by the Ten, most of whom were American Impressionists. Moved by the work of Tarbell and Joseph R. De Camp, he sought instruction from them at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Nordell worked diligently under Tarbell and experimented with the genre of women in interiors, or Intimism. In 1909, Nordell received the Paige Traveling Scholarship, which provided for two years of continued study in Europe. He became one of the hundreds of Americans to receive criticism from Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian in Paris. From this base, he made study trips to visit major museums and galleries in Italy, Holland, Spain and Germany and during this period Nordell's style reached a level of uniqueness, though he definitely remained under the general influence of French Impressionism. By the time of his return to Boston in 1911, Nordell had successfully incorporated the use of broken color, a high-keyed palette, and the practice of working en plein air to achieve an accurate representation of light and atmosphere. In October of that year, the Boston Art Club presented eighty-seven of Nordell's watercolors and oils to the viewing public. Some of the watercolors seem revolutionary in their spontaneity. Nordell continued his career in Boston at Fenway Studios and exhibited in national competitions, including the annuals of the National Academy of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago; at the 1912 biennial of the Corcoran Gallery he won the fourth Clarke Prize. Nordell's finances were augmented by portrait commissions of some of Boston's affluent citizens. The artist was so intent on recording the sitter's likeness that in this genre, he deviated from his usual impressionist technique. In the women-in-interior genre, he frequently depicted a fully draped woman seated in profile or at an oblique angle to the picture plane. These pensive and attractive young ladies usually gaze into space and become an integral part of the pleasant ambiance of the scene. In this way, Nordell remained within the Genteel Tradition as it was manifest in Boston. The artist exhibited several such works in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915, and won a silver medal for his efforts. In 1918, a one-man exhibition of fifty works was presented at the Boston Art Club. Nordell remained active in the Boston area art clubs and societies through the early 1920s. In the winter of 1921 Babcock Art Galleries presented him with yet another one-man show. During this period, Nordell increased the production of prints and won the Salmagundi Club's Shaw Prize for etching in 1923. Sometime after 1927 he began taking summer sketching trips to Chautauqua Lake...

Jules Herve (French, 1887 - 1981) Game of Checkers, circa 1960 Oil on canvas 10 5/8 x 8 5/8 inches Signed lower right; signed on the reverse Jules Rene Herve, an impressionist of ou...

Johann Berthelsen Plaza in Winter Signed lower right Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches He was born in Copenhagen in 1883, the 7th of seven sons, to Conrad and Dorothea Karen Berthelsen. ...

Ruth Anderson Municipal Building, Manhattan, circa 1918 Oil on canvas 25 x 19 inches Ruth A. Anderson was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1891 and die...

Lovely painting by the artist. Several small areas of inpainting mostly around the top and edges, visible under black light only. Several small areas of paint loss in upper center (s...

The Opium Smoker; The Opium Eater by N.C. Wyeth was created in 1913. The painting is signed upper right. Dedication lower left that reads "To Swayne / Fro...

Armando Spadini (Florence 1883 – Rome 1925), The Basket of ribbons (1911 – 1912) Oil painting on canvas of 76 x 96 cm, on the back there is the label of the I Quadriennale Romana o...

"Ballerinas" impressionist painting by Andre Gisson (1921-2003). Soft colors and bright light are hallmarks of Gisson's work. This is rare subject manor for the artist. Although Am...

Wonderful impressionist painting. Full of light, color, and movement. "The Flamenco Dancer by J. Charles Arter ( American 1860-1923). Oil on canvas. Signed upper left. Circa 1900. Unframed. Born in Hanoverton, Ohio, Charles Arter studied in Cincinnati and Paris at the Academie Julian. He had studios in Venice, London and New York and painted portraits of many famous personages including Pope Pius X...

Bohemian woman Budapest, Hungary 1925 by Bertha De Hellebranth. Fabulous period painting brings to life the bohemian intelligentsia of Europe in the 1920's. I believe the painting is of the artists sister Elena Maria De Hellebranth. Both sisters were accomplished artist and worked and exhibited together. See the photo of the sisters Elena on the left and Bertha on the right. Oil on canvas. In a period frame. Signed lower right. Inscribed on reverse. Provenance: label from Newman Galleries Philadelphia. BIOGRAPHY ; Bertha de Hellebranth and her sister Elena were born into a cultured upper-class family in Budapest, Bertha in 1899, Elena in 1897. Their father was a lawyer and their mother a student of Franz Liszt's last living pupil. Both sisters showed artistic potential early, beginning to paint at four or five years of age. Their parents encouraged them, and had the means to send them to the best art schools of the time. They studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Budapest, at the Académie Julian and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, and painted portraits of European nobility. As Patricia Fazekas points out, "Growing up in a family of privilege, they seemed to have unusual access to many illustrious people." So we should not be surprised to find among their subjects members of high society, such as Count Andrássy Gyula, the Russian-born Princess Baby Galitzine, and Admiral Horthy Miklós, the Regent. Later on, their subjects included American heiress Gladys Vanderbilt (Countess László Széchenyi), President Theodore Roosevelt's granddaughter Paulina Longworth and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.Often, the sisters would paint the same subject at the same time, offering the sitter a choice of portraits. Most often, the sitter wanted both renditions.While Elena concentrated on working in oil and watercolor, Bertha used gouache and oil to achieve her effects. Elena gave lectures and workshops, was a writer and also wrote popular and ecclesiastical music, while Bertha also went in for sculpture and handicrafts.From the mid-thirties until World War II, Bertha and Elena divided their time between their home in Budapest and a home on the ocean at Ventnor, NJ. In 1925, they showed their work at the Nemzeti Szalon in Budapest, and in 1926, they had a joint exhibition of their portraits in the US. Both exhibited their work at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and most major museums and galleries in the US. Bertha also had exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Both Bertha and Elena were Fellows of the Royal Society of Art (London), and garnered numerous prizes. Bertha was awarded First Prize by the National Academy of the American Water Color Society one year, and the Grand Prize of the Audubon Society. She was one of the founders of the now defunct World League of Hungarian Artists Abroad (Külföldi Magyar Képz?m?vészek Világszövetsége), and received a Gold Medal from the Cleveland Árpád Akadémia in 1963. (Elena also received the Akadémia's gold medal in 1965.) Their work is found in museums and galleries too numerous to mention.The de Hellebranth sisters were devout Catholics, and this is evident in their many portraits of clerics...