1930s Figurative Paintings
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Period: 1930s
Cafe Porto Fino Italy - British Post Impressionist oil painting Italian Riviera
By Forrest Hewit
Located in London, GB
A superb oil on canvas Post Impressionist work by British artist Forrest Hewit. This vibrant work depicts an external café scene under trees, with a dozen figures seated or standing at tables. It dates to circa 1930. One can feel the summer heat in this colourful piece. One of the most popular resort towns on the Italian Riviera, little Portofino has just over 500 permanent residents. But that all changes on summer days when the sun is shining, and the yachting set drops anchor in the harbour to wander about. Boutiques, art galleries, cafes and restaurants line the tiny streets.
Signed lower right.
Provenance. New English Art Club exhibition label verso. RBA label verso.
Condition. Oil on canvas, 30 inches by 20 inches unframed and in excellent gallery condition.
Housed in a fine frame, 35 inches by 25 inches framed. Good condition.
Forrest Hewit (1870-1956) was a very unusual character amongst his fellow artists. Whereas many of his contemporaries turned away from commerce or the professions to become painters, he was very successful in following both paths. Towards the end of the 19th century Manchester was one of the foremost centres of the cotton trade in which Hewit established a career in which he rose to the top and became a prominent member of important institutions and various committees. Alongside this illustrious career ran an equally successful life as an artist. Considering the above, it is no surprise to find that in this field he also became a prominent figure as an Honorary Vice-President of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts. His paintings are extremely rare as the majority of his output was purchased for permanent collections worldwide. He exhibited widely at the Royal Academy from the outset of his career; the Paris Salon; the New English Art Club; the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1940 and extensively at leading venues throughout England. When he retired from commercial life he had the opportunity to increase his output, which allowed him to stage a series of one-man exhibitions at the New Burlington Gallery in 1936; the Grosvenor Gallery in 1937; the Manchester Academy in 1938; the Goupil Gallery in 1939; Salford, his birthplace, in 1943 and Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1948. He first studied under Thomas Cantrell Dugdale who was probably responsible for his interest in French painting. He also studied under Walter Richard Sickert...
Category
Post-Impressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil
"Unemployed" WPA American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern
Located in New York, NY
"Unemployed" WPA American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern
William Gropper (1898 - 1977)
Unemployed
20 x 16 inches
Oil on canvas, 1937
Signed lower right
Provenance: E...
Category
American Realist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Factory Worker
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s
Factory Worker, c. 1936, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 18 ¼ x 36 inches; exhibited in City ...
Category
American Realist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil
Art Deco Figurative Gouache of A Woman with a Tulip
Located in Douglas Manor, NY
3770 Art Deco gouache figurative figurative painting of a woman and a tulip
Set in a hand made wood frame
Image size 8.5x11.5"
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Gouache
"Nude Musicians" WPA Mid 20th Century American Modernism LGBT Social Realism Gay
Located in New York, NY
Carl Gustaf Simon Nelson, American (1898-1988) "Nude Musicians," 30 x 35 inches, oil on canvas
Signed and dated 1938 signature lower right. Provenance: Collection of Seymour Stein
Bio
Carl Gustaf Simon Nelson (1898 - 1988)
A painter, graphic artist and teacher whose paintingfocus was color and content landscapes, Nelson at age five immigrated with his family to Sioux City, Iowa from Sweden in 1903. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts* from 1920 to 1921, then at the Art Students League* in New York from 1923 to 1927 with Kimon Nicolaides and Kenneth Hayes Miller. He taught at the American Peoples School of New York, an adult education project; at the Cambridge School of Design from 1948 to 1952; and finally at the Boston YMCA until 1968.
His work was exhibited at the Carnegie...
Category
American Modern 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Quarry Workers
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s
Quarry Workers, c. 1930s, mixed media on board, unsigned, 24 x 24 inches, possibly exhibited at...
Category
American Modern 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Mixed Media
Street Scene WPA American Scene Mid-20th Century Modern Coin Tower California SF
Located in New York, NY
Street Scene WPA American Scene Mid-20th Century Modern Coin Tower California SF
Victor Arnautofff (1896 – 1979)
City Street
12 x 14 inches
Oil on board, c. 1930s
Signed lower left
BIO
Born in the Ukraine of Russia, Victor Arnautoff became one of the most influential muralists in San Francisco in the 1930s and worked for the Federal Arts Project, WPA, in the expressive, social protest...
Category
American Realist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board
NYC 1939 World's Fair Mural Study American Scene WPA Modern Mid 20th Century
Located in New York, NY
NYC 1939 World's Fair Mural Study American Scene WPA Modern Mid 20th Century
Eugene Savage (1883 – 1978)
1939 World’s Fair Mural Study
45 x 30 inches
Oil on Canvas
Signed lower right
The painting is part of a 1,000 piece collection of art and objects from the 1939 World’s Fair. The collection as a whole is available.
Savage created the mural for the facade of the Communications Building. An image of the completed mural, along with a published postcard, is part of the listing. Note the center top female figure, she resembles the figure in the offered painting.
BIO
Eugene Francis Savage was born in Covington, Indiana 1883. He underwent various forms of art training in the early years. He was a pupil of The Corcoran Gallery and The Art Institute of Chicago, and was later awarded a fellowship to study in Rome at The American Academy.
While under the spell of that ancient city the young artist began to render historic figures that were suitable for the classic style needed for mural painting in the traditional manor. During this period he was able to study and observe Roman and Greek sculpture, although much of the academic training was accomplished by using plaster casts along with the incorporation of live models. This method survived and was used efficiently throughout Europe and the United States.
After leaving the Academy, Savage was commissioned to paint numerous murals throughout the United States and Europe. This artist received acclaim for the works he produced while under commissions from various sources. This young master was a contemporary of Mexican muralists David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), Jose Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) and Diego Rivera (1886-1957). In this period he was to show the influence of his contemporaries in formulating a modern style. Savage also played a vital role in the WPA Federal Art program, and he was a member of The Mural Art Guild..
Savage was elected an associate member of The National Academy of Design in 1924 and a full member in 1926. From 1947, he held a professorship at Yale University where he taught mural painting, and some of his students went on to significant positions.
By this time the artist had painted large-scale murals at Columbia, Yale University, Buffalo N.Y., Dallas, Texas, Chicago, Indiana, along with other commissioned works. He also achieved recognition for a series of murals commissioned by the Matson Shipping Line and completed around 1940. For this commission, Savage made many exacting studies of customs and folkways of the Hawaiian natives. However, the award-winning murals were not installed as planned but were put in storage during the war years when the ships were used for troop transportation and were in danger of attack.
However the mural images were reproduced and distributed by the shipping company including nine of the mural scenes that were made into lithographed menu covers in 1948. The American Institute of Graphic Arts awarded certificates of excellence for their graphic production, and the Smithsonian Institute exhibited the works in 1949. Today Savages' Hawaiian Art production is held in high regard by collectors of Hawaiian nostalgia.
In later years the artist focused his attention on a theme that dealt with the customs and tribal traditions of the Seminole Indians of Florida. He produced many variations of this theme throughout his lifetime, and the pictures were usually modest scale easel paintings, precise and carefully delineated. Many of these pictures incorporate Surrealistic elements and show some minor stylistic influences of the painters Kay Sage...
Category
American Modern 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Tony's Fruit Market Antique Folk Art Figurative Oil Painting 1930
Located in Douglas Manor, NY
3787 Antique folk art oil painting
Image size 17x23.5"
Folk art wood frame
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil
"Nude, " Arnold Blanch, Woodstock School, WPA, Figurative
Located in New York, NY
Arnold Blanch
Nude
Signed lower right
Oil on board
20 x 16 inches
Provenance:
G. David Thompson Collection, Pittsburgh
Private Collection, New York
Bo...
Category
Realist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Board, Oil
Bathing Nudes, 20th Century Signed French Painting, Cubist Inspired
Located in London, GB
Oil on canvas, signed lower left
Circa 1930
Image size: 41 x 34 inches (104 x 86 cm)
Framed
Category
Cubist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Poultry Seller - Jewish School of Paris
Located in London, GB
This oil painting is hand signed by the artist "I. Ryback" in the lower left corner.
This painting was created in the early 1930's
Provenance: The authenticity of this work has been...
Category
Expressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil
Lady In Blue Art Deco Female Painting
Located in Douglas Manor, NY
4066 Art Deco Lady in blue pastel painting
Set in a white frame
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil Pastel
Painters and Model, 1934
Located in Franklin, MI
A fine early work by the artist done while he was a student at the ART STUDENTS LEAGUE in the class of the noted teacher and artist Kenneth Hays Miller----Provenance: purchased direc...
Category
American Realist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board
Large Tel Aviv Orchestra Israeli Bezalel School Modernist Painting Moshe Matus
By Moshe Matus (Matusovsky)
Located in Surfside, FL
Moshe (Matusovski) Matus (Polish Israeli , 1908-1958),
Depicting an orchestral concert.
Hand signed lower right.
Dimensions: (Frame) H 31" x W 37", (Sight) H 21" x W 28"
Moshe ...
Category
Modern 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Paper, Gouache
Bread Bakers oil painting by John Barber
By John Barber
Located in Hudson, NY
Measures 22" x 18" and framed 27" x 24" x 3".
About this artist:
Born in Galatz, Romania, John Barber became a modernist painter of figures and scenes of...
Category
Cubist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Canvas
"Port de Honfleur", 20th Century Oil on Wood Panel by Spanish Artist Celso Lagar
By Celso Lagar
Located in Madrid, ES
CELSO LAGAR
Spanish, 1891 - 1966
PORT DE HONFLEUR
signed "Lagar" (lower right)
oil on wood panel
21-3/8 x 16-1/8 inches (31.5 x 41 cm.)
framed: 18-1/2 x 22-1/2 inches (47 x 57 cm.)
...
Category
Fauvist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Wood Panel, Oil
Gouache on Board Painting Titled "Barbecue Stand", by Aaron Bohrod, circa 1935
By Aaron Bohrod
Located in New York, NY
Aaron Bohrod, 1907-1992
Barbecue Stand, circa 1935
Gouache on board
Signed Lower left: “Aaron Bohrod”
Inscribed and signed on verso
Bohrod-1
Provenance:
Private estate, Rhode Island...
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Gouache
Les arbres by Paulémile Pissarro, 1930 - Oil on Canvas Painting
Located in London, GB
*UK BUYERS WILL PAY AN ADDITIONAL 20% VAT ON TOP OF THE ABOVE PRICE
Les arbres by Paulémile Pissarro (1884 - 1972)
Oil on canvas
60 x 72 cm (23 ⁵/₈ x 28 ³/₈ inches)
Signed and dated...
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Balinese Pottery Market
Located in London, GB
'Balinese Pottery Market', oil on canvas, by Régine van den Broek d'Obrenan (1931). The artist visited Bali in 1931 (among other islands) with her new husband, Charles. The naive pai...
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Portrait of a Young Man
Located in Lawrence, NY
Gouache
Estate of Samuel Esses
Beautifully framed
Never afraid of trying new styles, curious and opinionated, constantly engaged with the world around him, Rolph Scarlett more tha...
Category
Expressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Gouache
"Les Fumeurs", 20th Century Oil on Cardboard by Spanish Artists Francisco Bores
Located in Madrid, ES
FRANCISCO BORES
Spanish, 1898 - 1972
LES FUMEURS
signed & dated "Borès 35" (lower right)
titled in pencil "Les Fumeurs", unfinished sketch (head), signed & dated "Bores 36" (on the reverse)
oil on cardboard
10-5/8 x 13-3/4 inches (27 x 35 cm.)
framed: 15-1/2 x 18-1/2 inches (39.5 x 47 cm.)
NOTE:
THIS WORK IS ACCOMPANIED BY A CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY ISSUED BY “ARCHIVO FRANCISCO BORES”.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Francisco Bores, Reasoned Catalogue, Volume I - Painting 1917-1944, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2003, n° 1935 / 49, reproduced in color p. 281
PROVENANCE
Carmen Bores Collection, Francisco Bores daughter
Francisco Bores López (Madrid, May 5, 1898 - Paris, May 10, 1972) was a Spanish painter of the so-called New School of Paris.
His artistic training originated both in the Cecilio Pla painting academy, where he met Pancho Cossío, Manuel Ángeles Ortiz...
Category
Cubist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Cardboard, Oil
"Tailor" WPA American Scene Social Realism Modernism Mid Century Modern Fashion
By Mervin Jules
Located in New York, NY
"Tailor" WPA American Scene Social Realism Modernism Mid Century Modern Fashion
The board measures 9 1/2 x 15 1/2.
Provenance: Mervin Jules Estate.
Bio
A painter, illustrator, pri...
Category
American Modern 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board
Haymaking time 1930, pastel on paper, 30x39 cm
Located in Riga, LV
Haymaking time
1930, pastel on paper, 30x39 cm
"Haymaking Time" is a serene and evocative artwork that transports viewers to a simpler time, celebrating the beauty of the countryside and the age-old agricultural activities that have shaped the lives of people for generations. The use of pastels and the light figurative style imbue the artwork with a sense of warmth and nostalgia, inviting viewers to appreciate the natural rhythms of rural life.
Aleksandra Belcova...
Category
Impressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Paper, Pastel
Oil on Masonite Painting Titled "Lobster Shack", by Aaron Bohrod, 1938
By Aaron Bohrod
Located in New York, NY
Aaron Bohrod, 1907-1992
Lobster Shack, 1938
Oil on masonite
16 x 20 inches
Signed and dated ower left: Aaron Bohrod 1938
Bohrod-3
Provenance:
Private estate, Rhode Island, 2004
Am...
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Masonite, Oil
Tavern on the Green (New Yorker Magazine cover proposal)
Located in Wilton Manors, FL
Barbara Shermund (1899-1978). Tavern on the Green. Watercolor and ink on paper, 9 3/8 x 12 inches. Unsigned. Excellent condition.
Provenance: Ethel ...
Category
Realist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Ink, Watercolor
A Kaleidoscope of life
Located in East Grinstead, GB
Edward Le Bas R.A. was an English artist and collector of art, his father's wealth gave him a sizeable private income which enabled him to travel and pai...
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Standing Figure
Located in Long Island City, NY
A shy and dirty man stands alone in a muted landscape, his hand timidly resting on his collarbone. His clothes are disheveled, a dark pair of overalls slouching across his too-narrow...
Category
Cubist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Gouache
Study for the Mural "Westward Movement"
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Study for the Mural "Westward Movement"
Graphite, watercolor, gouache and paint on paper, 1936
Signed in pencil lower center (see photo)
A study leading up to his mural Justice of th...
Category
American Realist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Gouache
Life Magazine Art Deco Showgirls Cartoon
Located in Wilton Manors, FL
Barbara Shermund (1899-1978). Showgirls Cartoon for Life Magazine, 1934. Ink, watercolor and gouache on heavy illustration paper, matting window measures 16.5 x 13 inches; sheet measures 19 x 15 inches; Matting panel measures 20 x 23 inches. Signed lower right. Very good condition with discoloration and toning in margins. Unframed.
Provenance: Ethel Maud Mott Herman, artist (1883-1984), West Orange NJ.
For two decades, she drew almost 600 cartoons for The New Yorker with female characters that commented on life with wit, intelligence and irony.
In the mid-1920s, Harold Ross, the founder of a new magazine called The New Yorker, was looking for cartoonists who could create sardonic, highbrow illustrations accompanied by witty captions that would function as social critiques.
He found that talent in Barbara Shermund.
For about two decades, until the 1940s, Shermund helped Ross and his first art editor, Rea Irvin, realize their vision by contributing almost 600 cartoons and sassy captions with a fresh, feminist voice.
Her cartoons commented on life with wit, intelligence and irony, using female characters who critiqued the patriarchy and celebrated speakeasies, cafes, spunky women and leisure. They spoke directly to flapper women of the era who defied convention with a new sense of political, social and economic independence.
“Shermund’s women spoke their minds about sex, marriage and society; smoked cigarettes and drank; and poked fun at everything in an era when it was not common to see young women doing so,” Caitlin A. McGurk wrote in 2020 for the Art Students League.
In one Shermund cartoon, published in The New Yorker in 1928, two forlorn women sit and chat on couches. “Yeah,” one says, “I guess the best thing to do is to just get married and forget about love.”
“While for many, the idea of a New Yorker cartoon conjures a highbrow, dry non sequitur — often more alienating than familiar — Shermund’s cartoons are the antithesis,” wrote McGurk, who is an associate curator and assistant professor at Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. “They are about human nature, relationships, youth and age.” (McGurk is writing a book about Shermund.
And yet by the 1940s and ’50s, as America’s postwar focus shifted to domestic life, Shermund’s feminist voice and cool critique of society fell out of vogue. Her last cartoon appeared in The New Yorker in 1944, and much of her life and career after that remains unclear. No major newspaper wrote about her death in 1978 — The New York Times was on strike then, along with The Daily News and The New York Post — and her ashes sat in a New Jersey funeral home...
Category
Art Deco 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Ink, Gouache
Mountain View from Hålland, Åre by Swedish Artist Ante Karlsson-Stig, From 1932
Located in Stockholm, SE
The painting we are selling is a breathtaking mountain view from Hålland in Jämtland, Sweden, created by Ante Karlsson-Stig in 1932. Ante Karlsson-Stig (1885-1967) was a Swedish pain...
Category
Naturalistic 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
French Mid century Impressionist, City view with Cathedral in Paris, France
Located in Woodbury, CT
Excellent French Mid century Impressionist, City view with Cathedral in Paris, Franch
The painter was active around the middle of the 20th century, painting landscapes, portraits, a...
Category
Impressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board
French Mid century Impressionist, on the banks for the River Seine, Paris
Located in Woodbury, CT
Excellent French Mid century Impressionist, on the banks for the River Seine, Paris
The painter was active around the middle of the 20th century, painting landscapes, portraits, and...
Category
Impressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board
Mid 20th century Impressionist, French City scene, Paris France
Located in Woodbury, CT
Wonderful Mid-20th century Impressionist scene, Ciry scene, PAris France
The painter was active around the middle of the 20th century, painting landscapes, portraits, and city scene...
Category
Impressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board
At the theatre
Located in Genève, GE
Work on paper
Golden wooden frame with glass pane
47.7 x 35.5 x 1.5 cm
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Crayon, Watercolor, Gouache
French Mid century Impressionist, Along the banks of the River Seine in Paris
Located in Woodbury, CT
Excellent Mid-20th-century, School of Paris oil on board depicting a scene on the banks of the River Seine in Paris, France.
The painter was active around the middle of the 20th cen...
Category
Impressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board
Portrait of Chinese Couple. Pearl S. Buck Tiger Tiger Illustration Cosmopolitan
Located in Miami, FL
Among the many accolades I would grant Dean Cornwell, the one that rises to the top would be that he is one of America's greatest portrait painters. With a few strokes, he captures h...
Category
American Realist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Gouache
1930s French Post-Impressionist Oil Painting Old Gnarled Tree in Brown Landscape
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
The Old Tree
French Post-Impressionist artist, circa 1930's
oil painting on board, unframed
painting: 13.75 x 10.5 inches
provenance: private collection, France
condition: basic good...
Category
Post-Impressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil
Mid 20th century Impressionist, A Bridge on the Seine in Paris, Le Pony Neuf
Located in Woodbury, CT
Mid 20th century Impressionist, A Bridge on the Seine in Paris, Possibly Le Pony Neuf a well knoen bridge over the Seine.
The painter was active around the middle of the 20th centur...
Category
Impressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board
Mid 20th century Impressionist, French landscape with cottage
Located in Woodbury, CT
Mid-20th century Impressionist scene, French landscape with cottage
The painter was active around the middle of the 20th century, painting landscapes, portraits, and city scenes.
...
Category
Impressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board
Léon Frédéric (1856-1940) Vallée de Nafraiture, Oil on panel
Located in Paris, FR
Léon Frédéric (1856-1940)
Vallée de Nafraiture
signed with the estate stamp at the lower left
Oil on canvas transfered on panel
29.5 x 44.55 cm
Certific...
Category
Post-Impressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil
1939 Mexican Farm Worker WPA Artist Adolf Dehn American Modern Gouache Painting
By Adolf Dehn
Located in Surfside, FL
ADOLF ARTHUR DEHN (American, 1895-1969)
Portrait of Mexican Man with Agave Cactus plant, 1939, Gouache Painting
Hand signed and dated '39 lower left.
Whitney Museum of American Art, N.Y. Label verso
sight: 20.5 in. X 15 in. Frame is 32 X 24 inches
This was subsequently made into a lithograph in 1941 titled Man From Orizaba
Standing in the foreground of an agave field is man wearing a straw hat, a white button up collared shirt, white pants and sandals. The man has shaggy black hair, a beard and moustache and large eyes. His right hand is clenched as if holding something and his left hand is open holding some flower-like objects. He stands in the middle of a large agave plant that expands the width of the composition. In the middle ground are large agave plants in subsequent rows. Behind the agave plantation is a mountain range with snow covered peak on the right hand side. Above the mountain range is a partially cloudy sky.
Adolf Dehn (November 22, 1895 – May 19, 1968) was an American artist known mainly as a lithographer. Throughout his artistic career, he participated in and helped define some important movements in American art, including regionalism, social realism, and caricature. A two-time recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, he was known for both his technical skills and his high-spirited, droll depictions of human foibles.
Dehn was born in 1895 in Waterville, Minnesota. He began creating artwork at the age of six, and by the time of his death had created nearly 650 images.
Dehn went to the Minneapolis School of Art (known today as the Minneapolis College of Art and Design), where he met and became a close friend of Wanda Gag. In 1917 he and Gág were two of only a dozen students in the country to earn a scholarship to the Art Students League of New York. He was drafted to serve in World War I in 1918, but declared himself a conscientious objector and spent four months in a guardhouse detention camp in Spartanburg, SC and then worked for eight months as a painting teacher at an arm rehabilitation hospital in Asheville, NC. Later, Dehn returned to the Art Students League for another year of study and created his first lithograph, The Harvest.
In 1921 Dehn's lithographs were featured in his first exhibition at Weyhe Gallery in New York City. From 1920 to 1921 in Manhattan, he was connected to New York's politically left-leaning activists. In 1921, he went to Europe. In Paris and Vienna he belonged to a group of expatriate intellectuals and artists, including Andrée Ruellan, Gertrude Stein, and ee cummings...
Category
American Modern 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Gouache
San Francisco Cable Car WPA Artist Adolf Dehn Modernist Art Gouache Oil Painting
By Adolf Dehn
Located in Surfside, FL
ADOLF ARTHUR DEHN (American, 1895-1969)
San Francisco Bay Area street scene, with Trolley, Streetcar, Cable Car with bay and Alcatraz Island in background.
Hand signed LRC.
Sight 19" x 15", overall 23" x 19".
Adolf Dehn (November 22, 1895 – May 19, 1968) was an American artist known mainly as a lithographer. Throughout his artistic career, he participated in and helped define some important movements in American art, including regionalism, social realism, and caricature. A two-time recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, he was known for both his technical skills and his high-spirited, droll depictions of human foibles.
Adolph Dehn was born in 1895 in Waterville, Minnesota. He began creating artwork at the age of six, and by the time of his death had created nearly 650 images.
Dehn went to the Minneapolis School of Art (known today as the Minneapolis College of Art and Design), where he met and became a close friend of Wanda Gag. In 1917 he and Gág were two of only a dozen students in the country to earn a scholarship to the Art Students League of New York. He was drafted to serve in World War I in 1918, but declared himself a conscientious objector and spent four months in a guardhouse detention camp in Spartanburg, SC and then worked for eight months as a painting teacher at an arm rehabilitation hospital in Asheville, NC. Later, Dehn returned to the Art Students League for another year of study and created his first lithograph, The Harvest.
In 1921 Dehn's lithographs were featured in his first exhibition at Weyhe Gallery in New York City. From 1920 to 1921 in Manhattan, he was connected to New York's politically left-leaning activists. In 1921, he went to Europe. In Paris and Vienna he belonged to a group of expatriate intellectuals and artists, including Andrée Ruellan, Gertrude Stein, and ee cummings...
Category
American Modern 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Gouache
"Playground, Carl Schurz Park" George Picken, New York City, East River, UES WPA
Located in New York, NY
George Picken
Playground, Carl Schurz Park, 1938
Signed and dated lower left
Oil on canvas
28 x 36 inches
Provenance:
Estate of the artist
A native New Yorker, George Picken was born in 1898. His father, an artist and photographer, emigrated from Scotland; his mother came from Wales. They joined other European immigrants settling in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. Picken enlisted in the army during World War I and saw action at Verdun. After the war, he stayed in France and like many Americans returning from the vibrant Paris art scene, was inspired by the radical movement known as Impressionism. Upon his return Picken decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an artist.
George began his studies in 1919 at the Art Students League during Robert Henri, Max Weber, and John Sloan’s tenure. There he took classes in studio art, illustration, and etching through 1923 studying extensively with George Bridgman. The writings of French philosopher Henri Bergson were widely circulated among the artistic community and looking at Picken’s early paintings one cannot help but wonder if as a young artist he was influenced by Bergson’s ideas. Bergson said, "[There are] two profoundly different ways of knowing a thing. The first implies that we move round the object; the second that we enter into it. The first depends on the point of view at which we are placed and on the symbols by which we express ourselves. The second neither depends on a point of view nor relies on any symbol. The first kind of knowledge may be said to stop at the relative; the second, in those cases where it is possible, to attain the absolute.”
Picken’s recognition came early with showings of his work while he was a student. His drawings were published in the New Masses, a significant left-wing publication. The New York Public Library honored him with one-man shows in 1924 and 1928 and his work was included in group exhibitions at the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Whitney Studio Club, Montross Gallery, and the Art Students League. During this time Picken married Viola Carton, one of Reginald Marsh’s models, and they lived in Westchester. Later they moved to Yorkville in Manhattan between 82nd street and East End Avenue where they began their family. Picken’s grandson Niles Jaeger recalled that, “Grandpa’s home and studio were in a five-story walk-up apartment, heated only by a coal stove. But there were wonderful views of the East River and the Queensborough Bridge...
Category
American Realist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Original Painting. Colliers Magazine Cover Published 1933 Wedding Illustration
Located in New York, NY
Original Painting. Colliers Magazine Cover Published 1933 Wedding Illustration
Antonio Petruccelli (1907 - 1994)
The Wedding
Colliers published, June 17, 1933
17 1/4 X 11 1/2 inches (sight)
Framed 23 1/4 X 17 1/2 inches
Gouache on board
Signed lower right
BIOGRAPHY:
Antonio Petruccelli (1907-1994) began his career as a textile designer. He became a freelance illustrator in 1932 after winning several House Beautiful cover illustration contests.
In addition to 24 Fortune magazine covers, four New Yorker covers, several for House Beautiful, Collier’s, and other magazines he did numerous illustrations for Life magazine from the 1930s – 60s.
‘Tony was Mr. Versatility for Fortune. He could do anything, from charts and diagrams to maps, illustrations, covers, and caricatures,’ said Francis Brennan, the former art director for Fortune.
Over the course of his career, Antonio won several important design awards, designing a U.S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Steel Industry and designing the Bicentennial Medal...
Category
American Realist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Board, Gouache
Fancy Department Store Satirical Cartoon
Located in Wilton Manors, FL
Barbara Shermund (1899-1978). Fancy Department Store Satirical Cartoon, ca. 1930's. Ink, watercolor and gouache on heavy illustration paper, panel measures 19 x 15 inches. Signed lower right. Very good condition. Unframed.
Provenance: Ethel Maud Mott Herman, artist (1883-1984), West Orange NJ.
For two decades, she drew almost 600 cartoons for The New Yorker with female characters that commented on life with wit, intelligence and irony.
In the mid-1920s, Harold Ross, the founder of a new magazine called The New Yorker, was looking for cartoonists who could create sardonic, highbrow illustrations accompanied by witty captions that would function as social critiques.
He found that talent in Barbara Shermund.
For about two decades, until the 1940s, Shermund helped Ross and his first art editor, Rea Irvin, realize their vision by contributing almost 600 cartoons and sassy captions with a fresh, feminist voice.
Her cartoons commented on life with wit, intelligence and irony, using female characters who critiqued the patriarchy and celebrated speakeasies, cafes, spunky women and leisure. They spoke directly to flapper women of the era who defied convention with a new sense of political, social and economic independence.
“Shermund’s women spoke their minds about sex, marriage and society; smoked cigarettes and drank; and poked fun at everything in an era when it was not common to see young women doing so,” Caitlin A. McGurk wrote in 2020 for the Art Students League.
In one Shermund cartoon, published in The New Yorker in 1928, two forlorn women sit and chat on couches. “Yeah,” one says, “I guess the best thing to do is to just get married and forget about love.”
“While for many, the idea of a New Yorker cartoon conjures a highbrow, dry non sequitur — often more alienating than familiar — Shermund’s cartoons are the antithesis,” wrote McGurk, who is an associate curator and assistant professor at Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. “They are about human nature, relationships, youth and age.” (McGurk is writing a book about Shermund.
And yet by the 1940s and ’50s, as America’s postwar focus shifted to domestic life, Shermund’s feminist voice and cool critique of society fell out of vogue. Her last cartoon appeared in The New Yorker in 1944, and much of her life and career after that remains unclear. No major newspaper wrote about her death in 1978 — The New York Times was on strike then, along with The Daily News and The New York Post — and her ashes sat in a New Jersey funeral home...
Category
Realist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Ink, Gouache
It’s Never Too Late to Mend
Located in Fort Washington, PA
Signed by Artist Lower Right
Commissioned from the artist by Coats & Clark circa 1939
Exhibited at the Mint Museum, January 2022
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil
The Russian Model
Located in Milford, NH
A wonderful large self portrait of the artist with a Russian model by American artist Pauline Lennards Palmer (1867-1938). Born in McHenry, Illinois, Palmer studied at the Art Institute of Chicago between 1893 and 1898, including a one-month session with William Merritt Chase in 1897, and further temporary instruction with Frank Duveneck. She became one of Chicago's early twentieth-century portrait and landscape painters and one of the Midwest's most active and energetic exponents of impressionism. After her career was well established, she moved to Provincetown and studied with Charles Hawthorne...
Category
American Impressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil, Board
First Long Suit, Post Cover
Located in Fort Washington, PA
Signed by Artist Lower Right
The Saturday Evening Post cover, September 18, 1937
One of the most prolific and sought-after artists of the Golden Age of Illustration, J.C. Leyendecker captivates the public with his striking, fashionable depictions of handsome men, glamorous women, and adorable children. Painted in 1937 First Long Suit not only encapsulates the high-fashion, glamorous fantasy world that Leyendecker strove to achieve over the course of his vastly successful career, it also poignantly captures a bittersweet moment that every parent experiences--watching our children grow up right before our eyes.
Born in Montabaur, Germany, Leyendecker came to Chicago with his Catholic family at age eight. He apprenticed to a printer, J. Manz and Co., and then studied with John Vanderpoel at the Chicago Art Institute. In 1896, he won the Century magazine...
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil
The Jester, Post Cover
Located in Fort Washington, PA
Signed by Artist Lower Right
The Saturday Evening Post, February 11, 1939, cover illustration
Literature
The Saturday Evening Post, February 11, 1939, cover illustration
Thomas S....
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil
Cadets Football New Yorker Mag Cover Proposal American Scene Modern Illustration
Located in New York, NY
Cadets Football New Yorker Mag Cover Proposal American Scene Modern Illustration
Antonio Petruccelli (1907 – 1994)
Cadets Football Game
New Yorker cover proposal, c. 1939
14 1/4 X 1...
Category
American Modern 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Board, Gouache
Original Painting. New Yorker Cover Proposal Baseball c. 1939 Modern Cubist Deco
Located in New York, NY
Original Painting. New Yorker Cover Proposal Baseball c. 1939 Modern Cubist Deco
Antonio Petruccelli (1907 - 1994)
Play Ball
New Yorker cover proposal, c. 1939
12 x 8 inches (sight)
Framed 18 1/2 X 14 3/4 inches
Gouache on board
Estate sticker verso
BIOGRAPHY:
Antonio Petruccelli (1907-1994) began his career as a textile designer. He became a freelance illustrator in 1932 after winning several House Beautiful cover illustration contests.
In addition to 24 Fortune magazine covers, four New Yorker covers, several for House Beautiful, Collier’s, and other magazines he did numerous illustrations for Life magazine from the 1930s – 60s.
‘Tony was Mr. Versatility for Fortune. He could do anything, from charts and diagrams to maps, illustrations, covers, and caricatures,’ said Francis Brennan, the former art director for Fortune.
Over the course of his career, Antonio won several important design awards, designing a U.S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Steel Industry and designing the Bicentennial Medal...
Category
American Modern 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Board, Gouache
Original Painting. New Yorker Mag Cover Proposal WPA Mid Century American Scene
Located in New York, NY
Original Painting. New Yorker Mag Cover Proposal WPA Mid Century American Scene
Antonio Petruccelli (1907 – 1994)
Perplexed Gentleman
New Yorker cover proposal, c. 1939
13 1/4 X 8 ...
Category
American Modern 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Board, Gouache
Edouard Léon Cortès, Oil on Wood Panel, "Notre-Dame View from The Quays, 1936"
Located in Madrid, ES
EDOUARD LÉON CORTÈS
French, 1882 - 1969
NOTRE-DAME VIEW FROM THE QUAYS
signed "EDOUARD CORTÈS." (lower right); inscribed "6728" au crayon bleu et cachet "...
Category
Post-Impressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Wood Panel
Landscape from Nordingrå, 1935 by Ultramarine Johansson
Located in Stockholm, SE
Carl Johansson, also known as "Ultramarin Johansson," was a Swedish artist born in 1863 and known for his distinctive blue-toned paintings. His work often depicted landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes, capturing the beauty and essence of Sweden's natural landscapes.
We are proud to offer one of his late works from 1935 for sale. This painting depicts a beautiful landscape from Nordingrå, a small village situated on the High coast of Sweden. The beauty of Nordingrå has captured many artists in the 19th-century, inspiring many famous painters, including Helmer Osslund...
Category
Post-Impressionist 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
House Beautiful Cover Proposal. American Scene Social Realism Industrial WPA
Located in New York, NY
House Beautiful Cover Proposal. American Scene Social Realism Industrial WPA
Antonio Petruccelli (1907 – 1994)
Mixing Mortar
12 1/2 X 14 3/4 inche...
Category
American Modern 1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Board, Gouache
Study for 'King of the Beach' Post Cover
Located in Fort Washington, PA
This is a preparatory study for King of the Beach, the cover illustration for the September 3, 1932 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil
Summer Vacation, The Saturday Evening Post cover study
Located in Fort Washington, PA
Study for the Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, June 30th, 1934
LITERATURE:
C.D.B. Bryan, Mort Walker and the Art of Illustration, Architectural Digest, July 1988, ...
Category
1930s Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil