Herbert Gustave Schmalz

"Anyone for Croquet" Herbert Gustave Schmalz, Portrait by Pre-Raphaelite Artist

cica 1898

John Frederick Kensett (1816 - 1872) Portrait of an Italian Fencer, circa 1845-47 Watercolor on wove paper 13 1/8 x 8 1/8 inches Signed with initials and inscribed lower right "J.F.K. Rome" From October 1845 through the spring of 1847, Kensett lived in Rome. He attended classes where he sketched from live models, and he sketched in the countryside outside Rome and around Florence, Perugia, and Venice, places he visited with his artist friends. He fulfilled commissions for paintings from Americans in Italy, and by 1847 his career was well established. Son of an English immigrant engraver, John Kensett lacked enthusiasm for that medium and became one of the most accomplished painters of the second generation of Hudson River School painters. His reputation is for Luminism, careful depiction of light, weather, and atmosphere as they affect color and texture of natural forms. He was particularly influenced by the painting of Asher Durand in that he focused on realism and detail rather than the highly dramatic views associated with Thomas Cole. Going to the western United States in the mid 1850s and the 1860s, he was the first of the Hudson River School painters to explore and paint the West. Kensett was born and raised in Cheshire, Connecticut, and learned his engraving from his father, Thomas Kensett with whom he worked in New Haven, Connecticut until 1829. He continued working until 1840 as an engraver of labels, banknotes and maps and was employed part of that time by the American Bank Note Company in New York City. There he met Thomas Rossiter, John Casilear, and other artists who urged him to pursue painting. In 1840, he and Rossiter, Asher Durand, and Casilear went to Europe where Kensett stayed for seven years and supported himself by doing engraving but became accomplished in landscape painting. Having sent canvases of Italian landscapes back to New York, he had a reputation for skillful painting that preceded him. When he returned to New York City in 1847, he was an "instant success" and very sought after by collectors. Two of his Italian landscapes had already been purchased by the American Art Union. By 1849, he was a full member of the National Academy of Design and was generally popular among his peers. His studio was a gathering place with travelers stopping by to see his canvases and to identify "precise locations in the Catskills or Newport or New England in the oil sketches and drawings that covered his walls." (Zellman 170). For the women, he was a popular bachelor, "romantic looking with high forehead and sensitive expression." (Samuels 262) He was also sought after by many organizations. Among his activities were serving on the committee to oversee the decoration of the United States Capitol in Washington DC, and becoming one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. An inveterate traveler, Kensett spent summers on painting excursions away from New York City. One of these trips was a special painting excursion with fifteen other artists sponsored by the B & O Railroad from Baltimore, Maryland to Wheeling, West Virginia. Unlike many of the Hudson River painters...

Charles Sprague Pearce Girl with Doll, circa 1895 Signed lower left Oil on canvas 10 x 14 inches Provenance: Estate of William S. Barrett Pierce Galleries, East Bridgewater, Massach...

Frederick William Macmonnies Marion Jones Farquhar, 1905-11 Oil on canvas 24 x 20 inches Provenance: William Clerk Private Collection, New York Literature: Mary Smart, A Flight with Fame: The Life and Art of Frederick MacMonnies, with a Catalogue Raisonne of Sculpture and a Checklist of Paintings by E. Adina Gordon, Madison, Connecticut, 1996, no. 90. The work depicts Marion Jones Farquhar who, was an American tennis player who competed during the late 19th century and early 20th century. She won the singles titles at the 1899 and 1902 U.S championships and was the first American woman to medal at the Olympics placing Bronze in singles. Additionally, she was the artist's sister-in-law who often played and competed with MacMonnies in golf and tennis. MacMonnies would often study the movements of her form referenced in his sculpture. When MacMonnies won a doubles golf tournament he said "Marion dragged my dead weight thro' and won us the tournament, showing what great Generalship can do." A sculptor of classical figures, American-born Frederick MacMonnies had fame in the United States and Europe in the later half of the 19th century and early 20th century. He occasionally returned to America but lived most of his life as in expatriate in France. He was especially known for his lithe bronze figures, especially ones titled Diana. The classical names of these figures allowed him the appearance of propriety but gave him the opportunity to model svelte nudes. Frederick MacMonnies was one of the first American sculptors to recognize the potential market of the middle class. He copyrighted his works and then contracted with foundries to mass produce some of his figures such as Diana in smaller sizes. MacMonnies was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was a child prodigy at carving stone. At age 18, he worked in the studio of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and then persuaded him to become his assistant, keeping models damp and covered, running errands, and cleaning the studio. Evenings he studied at the Art Students League, Cooper Union, and the National Academy of Design. In Saint-Gaudens' studio, he met many of the wealthy people who shared Saint-Gaudens Beaux-Arts based ideas that art and architecture should be unified in order to create public art in America equal to that of classical antiquity or Renaissance Europe. Among the men that MacMonnies met through Saint-Gaudens who later furthered his career were architects Stanford White and Charles McKim...

Émile-Pierre Metzmacher (French, 1815 - 1890) A Young Beauty Crossing a Brook, A Hunter Beyond Oil on panel 24 x 19 1/2 inches Signed lower left Provenance: Christie's New York, Oct...

‘Guinevere’ by Norman Prescott-Davies R.B.A, R.C.A. (1861-1915). The painting – which depicts an English medieval portrait of Queen Guinevere at Amesbury Priory contemplating her lov...

This absolutely charming Edwardian portrait oil painting is by noted artist Edward Francis Wells. Painted in 1908, the sitter is Brian de Lolme Bullock as a six year old boy. (See hi...

This charming Edwardian Scottish full length portrait oil painting is by noted Scottish portrait artist George Fiddes Watt. Painted circa 1910, the sitter is Muriel Sutherland, daugh...

Leonard Braund was a bowler for Somerset and England. Tayler was an English artist who was a member of the Royal Academy of Painters. He was a cricketer himself, and in 1905 he made...