Lester J. Ambrose

Lester Ambrose, Bar Au Lapin Agile 1934, Genre Illustration and Bar Scene

1934

"God Bless Our Home" is an interior and figurative scene of a woman sitting on her couch in serious and proper expression. The Americana style paint...

Parrot and Chrysanthemum, by New Jersey artist James Crawford Thom, is an interior still life. The oil on canvas is 42 x 23.5 inches, it is signed "Thom" lower right, and it is framed. Provenance: Private collection, Lambertville, New Jersey. Contact us for additional shipping options. Hudson River School style landscapist and genre painter James Crawford Thom was born in New York City in 1835, though he grew up on a farm just north of the City in Ramapo, New York. He studied at the National Academy of Design in New York City as an eighteen-year-old before going to Paris, where he studied with Camille Corot, Thomas Couture and Henri Picou...

In the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the first decade of the twentieth, New York City art aficionados could count on finding recent work of Seymour Joseph Guy hanging on the walls of the city’s major galleries. Primarily a genre artist, but also a portraitist, between 1859 and 1908 Guy showed more than seventy works at the National Academy of Design. From 1871 to 1903 he contributed over seventy times to exhibitions at the Century Club. From 1864 to 1887, he sent about forty pictures to the Brooklyn Art Association. A good number of these works were already privately owned; they served as advertisements for other pictures that were available for sale. Some pictures were shown multiple times in the same or different venues. Guy was as easy to find as his canvases were omnipresent. Though he lived at first in Brooklyn with his family and then in New Jersey, from 1863 to his death in 1910 he maintained a studio at the Artist’s Studio Building at 55 West 10th Street, a location that was, for much of that period, the center of the New York City art world. Guy’s path to a successful career as an artist was by no means smooth or even likely. Born in Greenwich, England, he was orphaned at the age of nine. His early interest in art was discouraged by his legal guardian, who wanted a more settled trade for the young man. Only after the guardian also died was Guy free to pursue his intention of becoming an artist. The details of Guy’s early training in art are unclear. His first teacher is believed to have been Thomas Buttersworth...

A realist painting of people in a pool hall. The red pool table is the centerpiece of the painting, seemingly illuminating the space, and particularly t...