Edmund Ernest Kosmowski

“School Girls”

1967

Original acrylic on canvas painting by the well known Russian/American artist Nahum Tschacbasov. Unsigned. Circa 1975. Artist inventory label verso top right. Estate stamp verso. P...

Original oil on wooden panel painting of a lively interior scene composed of two colorfully dressed can can girls preforming in front of a packed house of interested spectators. Si...

"Two Girls in School" is a painting by Philadelphia born Expressionist painter Bernard Harmon. The 36" x 40.25" oil on board portrait of two figures is painted in a vibrant color palette. The painting is framed in a new, black wood frame and signed "Harmon" on verso. There is a second portrait the artist painted on the back of the painting. Figurative expressionism in the style of Alice Neel. Bernard Harmon was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1935. Harmon was primarily a portrait painter and a well loved teacher in the Philadelphia area. A graduate of the Philadelphia Museum School and Temples Tyler School of Art, Harmon traveled extensively in Europe and South America. Beloved by many, Harmon taught in the Philadelphia School District for 32 of his 54 years of life. Beginning his career as an art teacher at West Philadelphia High School, in the early 1960s he became one of the district's artists in residence, traveling from school to school to demonstrate for students how an artist works. Returning to the classroom, Harmon joined the art department at Central High School where he taught for 14 years and became an innovator in art curriculum, developing a program offering advanced placement art classes to gifted students. In his final years Harmon became a supervisor, mentoring teachers and overseeing programs in the Philadelphia school systems District #1. During his short life Harmon taught collage preparatory art classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, summer classes at the University of the Arts, and a Saturday program for gifted children at Drexel University. Among Harmon's portraits were commissioned by Philadelphia Jazz organist Jimmy Smith and Mayor Richardson Dilworth. Bernard Harmon was active in promoting African American Artist throughout his life time. He organized many early shows such as the "Afro American Artists...

Valley House Gallery is honored to present a selection of paintings from the estate of American artist, John Hartell (1902-1995). John Hartell taught two disciplines at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York: freshman architecture and graduate painting. He was a much-loved professor there from 1930 until his retirement in 1967; one of his most illustrious students is the architect Richard Meier. As an artist, Hartell's first solo exhibition was in 1937 at Kleeman Gallery in New York. He exhibited at Kraushaar Galleries in New York for four decades, beginning in 1943. The Hartell Gallery at Cornell University, under the Sibley Dome, is named for him. In describing John Hartell, the artist Michael Boyd...