David Alvarado

Restive Slumber

2018

Oil Painting of a women with a sleeping Minotaur. Light neutral white painting by Cuban Artist Jesus Nordarse. 18 x 18 inches.

French Academic painter Louis-Joseph Courtat displays his mastery of composition and the female form in this entrancing oil on canvas. Entitled Baigneuses, the work was painted for and exhibited at the 1885 Paris Salon, the foremost exhibition of painters in the Western world. Large in size, it captures two nude bathers within a tranquil beach scene. While the artist's skill for landscape painting is on display, it is his command of form, light and color that bring this canvas to life. The artist specialized in paintings that glorified the nude, and his skill is clear in the luminosity of his models' skin and the classical beauty of their form and proportions. With their soft, undulating curves and flowing hair, Courtat's models reflect the two key influences on the young painter, that of the great Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres as well as his teacher Alexandre Cabanel. Like these two greats who came before him, Courtat similarly follows in the artistic tradition of the female nude that is traceable to classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. Born in Paris in 1847, Courtat studied at the famed École des Beaux-Arts under Cabanel. He was one of the Academic master's first students at the school, where he began to teach in 1864. Displaying considerable skill at an early age, Courtat won the Prix de Rome around 1870, and subsequently studied in Rome for a number of years. He returned to Paris in 1873 to make his debut at the Salon, where he was met with immediate success, receiving a third class medal. He received medals again in 1874 and 1875, a remarkable achievement for a painter of his age. In addition to the monumental nudes...

Conrad Kiesel (1846-1921), The gift of flowers. Oil on wood, 43 x 35 cm, 69 x 61 cm (frame), signed at lower left "Conrad Kiesel pxt [pinxit]", about 1900. In a magnificent gilt stuc...

Adolphe LA LYRE 1850-1935 French "La danse des Sirènes" Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower left Painted in 1909 Canvas: 59" high x 78 3/4" wide Frame: 64"high x 84 5/8" wide ...

This beautiful painting was created in 1877 by the well-known French painter, Gustave Clarence Rodolphe Boulanger. Boulanger often produced work which combined the classical and Orie...

Rafael Maria de Soto y Hernandez was born February 18, 1904 in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. It's high drama in the swamp. Woman in the Swamp is a masterfully executed example of Pulp Art and showcases Rafael DeSoto's full command of academic painting. DeSoto did pulp covers up until the industry's demise in the 1950s for such magazines as Adventure, Argosy, Black Mask, Captain Zero, Crack Detective, Fantastic Novels, 15-Story Detective, Fifteen Western Tales, New Detective, Smashing Detective, and Walt Coburn's Western Magazine. He also painted many covers and interior story illustrations for men's adventure magazines, such as Action For Men, Adventure, Battle Cry, For Men Only...