1940s Figurative Paintings

➡️ Luminous Landscape with Water mill⬅️ ⏩It is signed J Weakaes⏪ ⭐Medium:⭐ Oil on canvas ⭐Technique: ⭐Impasto painting with expressive brushwork. ⭐Size:⭐48x36cm / 18.9x 14.2inc...

A stylish, vintage, 1940s fashion study featuring elegant designs for women's winter hat and coat, Likely an illustration study for a print advertisement for the famed Chicago depa...

A stylish, vintage, 1940s fashion study featuring an elegant design for a woman's red gown, evening wear. Artwork size: 11 x 8 1/2 inches. Archivally matted to 16 x 12 inches. P...

➡️ Alpine landscape with church⬅️ ⏩It is signed Pierre Dubreuil⏪ 1891-1970 ⭐Medium:⭐ Oil on wood / isorel ⭐Technique: ⭐Impasto painting with expressive brushwork. ⭐Size:⭐29.7x4...

A stylish, vintage, 1940s fashion study featuring elegant designs for women's evening wear by Lilly Daché, Likely an illustration study for a print advertisement for the famed Chic...

Erik Tryggelin (1878–1962) Sweden View over Lake Vättern from Vadstena, 29–30 August 1943 signed and dated lower right oil on canvas laid on masonite unframed 15 × 20 cm (5.9 ...

5-3475 Oil on canvas applied to board Set in a vintage gilt wood frame

A wonderful example of Peterson’s views of the Florida Coast during her winter trips down south. Painted during Peterson’s mature period, this lively work underscores the energy of ...

This atmospheric painting depicts Kornhamnstorg in Gamla stan during the quiet hours of evening. The scene unfolds along the waterfront where the historic square meets the water, wit...

With a studied hand, Sloan captures the human theater of a snow-covered Central Park filled with bundled-up New Yorkers, sledding, walking, chatting, and caring for children. The exp...

A stylish, vintage, 1940s fashion study featuring elegant designs for women's active wear by Hattie Carnegie. Inscription reads: Left - White jersey slack suit Red gaberdine jacke...

This is no ordinary winter scene. It is the story of prosecution and survival; of resolve and resilience during World War 2, as it was experienced by German Expressionist Heinz Lohma...

6069 Oil on canvas of Parisians strolling in the park set in a period frame Image size 22.5x27.5"

A stylish, vintage, 1940s fashion study featuring an elegant design for a woman's coat, hat and muff, inscribed "Marshall Field & Co". Likely an advertisement illustration study for...

A stylish, vintage, 1940s fashion study featuring an elegant design for a woman's autumn suit. Inscription reads: "Brown and grey suit and cape affair from Town and Country, Blum's ...

A striking, vintage early 1940s fashion study featuring an elegant young woman wearing a stylish hat, suit and clutch. Image size: 11 x 8 1/4 inches. Archivally matted to 16 x 1...

A Brooding, Compelling 1940s American Scene, Social Realist Oil Painting, "Tenement Ruins" by Notable Canadian / American artist Emil Weddige (1907-2001). Oil on canvas, dating from...

A stylish, vintage, 1940s fashion study featuring an elegant design for a woman's evening gown. Artwork size: 11 x 8 1/2 inches. Colored pencil and pencil on paper. Archivally ma...

August Frederick Biehle American, 1885-1979 Creek in the Forest, c. 1949 Gouache, watercolor and litho crayon on board Signed lower right, dated lower left 18 x 24 inches 23.25 x 29....

Artist: Raphael Soyer (1899-1987) Title: Girl with Braided Hair Year: Circa 1947 Medium: Oil on canvas Size: 12 x 9 inches; framed size, 19 x 16 inches Condition: Excellent Inscripti...

Impressionist Oil Painting of Paris with Figures & Shops by American Artist, Caroline C Burnett (1877-1950) Art measures 16 x 12 inches Frame m...

A charming, vibrant, early Mexican city street scene by famed Chicago Modern artist Francis Chapin (Am. 1899-1965). Depicting a quiet, picturesque view of the rooftops and cathedral...

A quiet, sunlit, vintage 1940s Mexican city street scene (Archway) by famed Chicago Modern artist Francis Chapin (Am. 1899-1965). Depicting a picturesque view of a colorful plaza ar...

5-3086 oil on canvas set in a vintage gilt wood frame

“Early Spring” is a rare and evocative 1944 original oil painting by celebrated Colorado artist Ethel Magafan, a key figure in American Regionalism and one of the renowned Magafan si...

Grotesque Expressionist Figural Scene Paris 1946 Symbolist Spanish Oil Painting Artist: Daniel Sabater Salabert Medium: Oil on panel Dimensions: 27 × 35 cm (10.6 × 13.8 in) Signature: Signed lower right Inscription: Paris 1946 (verso) Frame: Unframed Condition: Very good condition. Stable panel and original paint surface with age-appropriate craquelure Origin: Spain / Paris Period: 1946 Striking grotesque expressionist figural composition depicting a group of caricatured characters gathered around an open book filled with coins, executed by Spanish painter Daniel Sabater Salabert and inscribed Paris 1946. The theatrical arrangement suggests a symbolic or moralizing narrative scene, a recurring theme within Sabater’s most personal production associated with psychological satire and fantastical figuration. The exaggerated physiognomies, distorted facial structures and compressed spatial composition reinforce the expressive tension typical of European grotesque painting...

Stowe Vermont Village Sleigh Ride - Mid Century Winter Figurative Landscape A bright, crisp morning and a sleigh ride through new snow in Stowe, Vermont...

Signed lower left: FANTUZZI. Archived in the General Catalogue of Eliano Fantuzzi, No. A-6, order number 15/76741. Very good conditions. This artwork is shipped from Italy. Under ex...

Impressionist Oil Painting of Eiffel Tower Paris with Figures & Shops by American Artist, Caroline C Burnett (1877-1950) Art measures 16 x 12 i...

Frederick Serger Genre: Post Impressionist Subject: Flowers, Poppies Medium: Oil Surface: Panel Hand signed lower left Frederick Serger (given name Frederick Bedrick Sinaberger) w...

Mexican Modernist Oil Painting - Double Sided Abstract Figures and Buildings Dynamic abstract pieces by Ernesto Butterlin, aka Linares, (Mexican, German b. 1917 d. 1964.) The front ...

“The Big City, 1948” by Anna Elkan Meltzer (American, 1896-1974) One of Meltzer’s finest works, this painting encapsulates the organized chaos of Grand Central Terminal in NYC in th...

Signed impressionist oil on canvas board figures in cityscape circa 1940 by sought after French painter Edouard Cortes. The work depicts a bustling evening street scene at the quay b...

Bungalow (fauvist painting of New York scene) 1940's. image is 10X 11.5 inches. Hand signed lower right Watercolor painting on paper board Country Scene Samuel Grunvald was a Hunga...

A stylish, vintage, 1940s fashion study featuring an elegant design for a woman's formal dress, evening wear. Inscription reads: "Gold rayon and wool Bengaline dress suit for movie ...

A stylish, vintage, 1940s fashion study featuring an elegant design for a woman's jacket dress; Lucien Lelong ”Indiscrete”. Artwork size: 11 x 8 1/2 inches. Archivally matted t...

Get Change Here - American Modernism Scene WPA Mid-Century Realism NYC Cityscape Max Arthur Cohn (1903-1988) "Get Change Here" 20 x 25 inches Oil on canvas, c. 1930s Signed lower le...

Rabbit Hunters, egg tempera on Masonite, 12 x 9 inches, 1947, signed and dated lower left, signed, titled and dated verso “Rabbit Hunters Egg Tempera Roger Medearis 1947,” exhibited at Medearis' solo show at Kende Galleries, New York, in 1949 (Medearis’ record book, a copy of which is held by Vose Galleries in Boston, MA, indicates this is painting “No. 23” and that is was completed in 1947 and sold via Kende Galleries (at Gimbel Brothers...

In an article published in Le Figaro (Paris, March 19, 1964), Raymond Cogniat comments on Czóbel’s unique artistic style. He writes: “...Czóbel, who arrived Paris in the first years...

John F. Carlson Hyannis Pond, 1940 Signed lower left Oil on board 16 x 20 inches Provenance Vose Galleries Private Collection, New Jersey The native Swede John Fabian Carlson beca...

Artist: Pál Fried (Hungarian, 1893-1976) Title: "Hortense (Ballerina)" *Signed by Fried lower left Circa: 1940 Medium: Original Oil Painting on Canvas Framing: Framed in a light gold...

5-3494 Oil on canvas figurative traveling to the orient. Set in a silvered wood frame

Deer Dance, painting by Tonita Pena, Santa Fe, Cochiti, Pueblo, male, female Tonita Peña (born 1893 in San Ildefonso, died 1949 in Kewa Pueblo, New Mexico) was born as Quah Ah (meaning white coral beads) but also used the name Tonita Vigil Peña and María Antonia Tonita Peña. Peña was a renowned Pueblo artist, specializing in pen and ink on paper embellished with watercolor. She was a well-known and influential Native American artist and art teacher of the early 1920s and 1930s. Tonita Peña was born on May 10, 1893, at San Ildefonso Pueblo, to Ascensión Vigil Peña and Natividad Peña of San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico. When she was 12, her mother and younger sister died, as a result of complications due to the flu. Her father was unable to care for her and she was taken to Cochití Pueblo and was brought up by her aunt Martina Vigil Montoya, a prominent Cochití Pueblo potter. Peña attended St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe. Edgar Lee Hewett, an anthropologist involved in supervising the nearby Frijoles Canyon excavations (now Bandelier National Monument) was instrumental in developing the careers of several San Ildefonso “self-taught” artists including Tonita Peña. Hewett purchased Peña's paintings for the Museum of New Mexico and supplied her with quality paint and paper. Peña began gaining more notoriety by the end of the 1910s selling an increasing amount of her work to collectors and the La Fonda Hotel. Much of this early work was done of Pueblo cultural subject matter, in a style inspired by historic Native American works, however, her use of an artist's easel and Western painting mediums gained her acceptance among her European-American contemporaries in the art world. At the age of 25, she exhibited her work at museums and galleries in the Santa Fe and Albuquerque area. In the early 1920s, Tonita did not know how much her painting sold for at the Museum of New Mexico, so she wrote letters to the administrators because a local farmer was worried that she got paid too little. In the 1930s Peña was an instructor at the Santa Fe Indian School and at the Albuquerque Indian School and the only woman painter of the San Ildefonso Self-Taught Group, which included such noted artists as Alfonso Roybal, Julian Martinez, Abel Sánchez (Oqwa Pi), Crecencio Martinez, and Encarnación Peña. As children, these artists attended San Ildefonso day school which was part of the institution of the Dawes Act of 1887, designed to indoctrinate and assimilate Native American children into mainstream American society. In 1931, Tonita Peña exhibited at the Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts which was presented at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York City. Works from this exhibition were shown at the 1932 Venice Biennial. That year is the only time Native American artists have shown in the official United States pavilion at that biennial, and Tonita Peña's paintings were part of that exhibition.[1 Her painting Basket Dance, that had shown in the Venice Biennial was acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York for $225. This was the highest price paid up to this time for a Pueblo painting...

Andalusian River Landscape, Seville Guadalquivir Scene with Figures, Spanish Oil Painting c.1940 Creator: Carlota Rosales Martínez de Pedrosa (1872–19...

“Crossroads, c. 1940” by Sol Wilson (Polish-American, 1896-1974). This expressive painting by Wilson depicts a moody village crossroads rendered with his signature textured brushwor...

Rafael de Soto - Village street - Oil on canvas Oil measurements 41x33 cm. Without frame.

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. Signed lower left “N. Barerra”. Circa 1945. Condition is very good. Recently professionally cleaned and varnished. The painting is housed in a new custom gold leaf frame. Overall framed measurements are 16.5 by 19.5 inches. Provenance: A Bellport, Long Island collector. Nicolas Barerra is a painter born in Russia, now Ukraine in 1919. He studied at the Leningrad Academy of Fine Arts. He was a war correspondent and published drawings for American newspapers. After the war, he settled in Marseille where he worked as an illustrator and made a living from the sale of his paintings. He was a friend of Albert Camus and Patricia...

Rolf Stoll (American, 1892-1978) Kae Dorn Cass, 1940 Oil on canvas Signed upper right 32 x 25 inches 38 x 31 inches, framed Exhibited: The 27th Annual May Show, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, 1940 This work won first prize for oil painting- Portrait category Provenance: Collection of Kae Dorn Cass's niece Kae Dorn Cass Rolf Stoll Rolf Stoll, a painter of figure subjects, landscapes and floral still lifes, was an important member of the Cleveland art scene during the second quarter of the century. He was also an influential teacher, as well as one of Ohio’s foremost portrait painters. Rolf Stoll was born in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1892. As a boy, he attended a military academy, during which time he developed an interest in art. He received his early formal training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. He emigrated to the United States in 1912, settling in New York City. A decade later, after studying at the school of the National Academy of Design and supporting himself by working as a commercial artist, Stoll decided to leave New York. Upon the recommendation of Warren Pryor, one of his teachers, he decided to move to Cleveland, Ohio. After arriving in Cleveland, Rolf Stoll continued to work as a commercial artist. However, in 1926, he joined the faculty of the Cleveland School of Art, where he taught drawing. Two years later Stoll was appointed head of the school’s portrait painting department. A talented portraitist, Stoll’s sitters included industrialists, community leaders and many prominent members of Cleveland and Ohio society, as well as over twenty faculty members from Case Western Reserve University. Stoll also gave portrait classes at the John Huntington Polytechnic Institute from 1926 to 1953. In his male portraits especially, he was admired for his ability to convey the dignity of his sitter’s professional position without sacrificing individuality. As noted by one contemporary reviewer, Stoll was a “master of rich color, a searching student of human types, a forceful portrayer of all that the face reveals of the mind and the soul.” In addition to his activity as a portraitist, Rolf Stoll painted figure subjects and floral still lifes. He was also known for his views of the Ohio countryside...

John Steuart Curry "Sketching Wisconsin," 1946 oil on canvas 31.13 x 28 inches, canvas 39.75 x 36.75 x 2.5 inches, frame Signed and dated lower right Overall excellent condition Presented in a 24-karat gold leaf hand-carved wood frame John Steuart Curry (1897-1946) was an American regionalist painter active during the Great Depression and into World War II. He was born in Kansas on his family’s farm but went on to study art in Chicago, Paris and New York as young man. In Paris, he was exposed to the work of masters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Eugène Delacroix and Jacques-Louis David. As he matured, his work showed the influence of these masters, especially in his compositional decisions. Like the two other Midwestern regionalist artists that are most often grouped with him, Grant Wood (American, 1891-1942) and Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975), Curry was interested in representational works containing distinctly American subject matter. This was contrary to the popular art at the time, which was moving closer and closer to abstraction and individual expression. Sketching Wisconsin is an oil painting completed in 1946, the last year of John Steuart Curry’s life, during which time he was the artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The painting is significant in Curry’s body of work both as a very revealing self-portrait, and as a landscape that clearly and sensitively depicts the scenery of southern Wisconsin near Madison. It is also a portrait of the artist’s second wife, Kathleen Gould Curry, and is unique in that it contains a ‘picture within a picture,’ a compositional element that many early painting masters used to draw the eye of the viewer. This particular artwork adds a new twist to this theme: Curry’s wife is creating essentially the same painting the viewer is looking at when viewing Sketching Wisconsin. The triangular composition of the figures in the foreground immediately brings focus to a younger Curry, whose head penetrates the horizon line and whose gaze looks out towards the viewer. The eye then moves down to Mrs. Curry, who, seated on a folding stool and with her hand raised to paint the canvas on the easel before her, anchors the triangular composition. The shape is repeated in the legs of the stool and the easel. Behind the two figures, stripes of furrowed fields fall away gently down the hillside to a farmstead and small lake below. Beyond the lake, patches of field and forest rise and fall into the distance, and eventually give way to blue hills. Here, Curry has subverted the traditional artist’s self-portrait by portraying himself as a farmer first and an artist second. He rejects what he sees as an elitist art world of the East Coast and Europe. In this self-portrait he depicts himself without any pretense or the instruments of his profession and with a red tractor standing in the field behind him as if he was taking a break from the field work. Here, Curry’s wife symbolizes John Steuart Curry’s identity as an artist. Compared with a self-portrait of the artist completed a decade earlier, this work shows a marked departure from how the artist previously presented and viewed himself. In the earlier portrait, Curry depicted himself in the studio with brushes in hand, and with some of his more recognizable and successful canvases behind him. But in Sketching Wisconsin, Curry has taken himself out of the studio and into the field, indicating a shift in the artist’s self-conception. Sketching Wisconsin’s rural subject also expresses Curry’s populist ideals, that art could be relevant to anyone. This followed the broad educational objectives of UW’s artist-in-residence program. Curry was appointed to his position at the University of Wisconsin in 1937 and was the first person to hold any such position in the country, the purpose of which was to serve as an educational resource to the people of the state. He embraced his role at the University with zeal and not only opened the doors of his campus studio in the School of Agriculture to the community, but also spent a great deal of time traveling around the state of Wisconsin to visit rural artists who could benefit from his expertise. It was during his ten years in the program that Curry was able to put into practice his belief that art should be meaningful to the rural populace. However, during this time he also struggled with public criticism, as the dominant forces of the art market were moving away from representation. Perhaps it was Curry’s desire for public acceptance during the latter part of his career that caused him to portray himself as an Everyman in Sketching Wisconsin. Beyond its importance as a portrait of the artist, Sketching Wisconsin is also a detailed and sensitive landscape that shows us Curry’s deep personal connection to his environment. The landscape here can be compared to Wisconsin Landscape of 1938-39 (the Metropolitan Museum of Art), which presents a similar tableau of rolling hills with a patchwork of fields. Like Wisconsin Landscape, this is an incredibly detailed and expressive depiction of a place close to the artist’s heart. This expressive landscape is certainly the result of many hours spent sketching people, animals, weather conditions and topography of Wisconsin as Curry traveled around the state. The backdrop of undulating hills and the sweeping horizon, and the emotions evoked by it, are emphatically recognizable as the ‘driftless’ area of south-central Wisconsin. But while the Metropolitan’s Wisconsin Landscape conveys a sense of uncertainty or foreboding with its dramatic spring cloudscape and alternating bands of light and dark, Sketching Wisconsin has a warm and reflective mood. The colors of the foliage indicate that it is late summer and Curry seems to look out at the viewer approvingly, as if satisfied with the fertile ground surrounding him. The landscape in Sketching Wisconsin is also revealing of what became one of Curry’s passions while artist-in-residence at UW’s School of Agriculture – soil conservation. When Curry was a child in Kansas, he saw his father almost lose his farm and its soil to the erosion of The Dust Bowl. Therefore, he was very enthusiastic about ideas from UW’s School of Agriculture on soil conservation methods being used on Wisconsin farms. In Sketching Wisconsin, we see evidence of crop rotation methods in the terraced stripes of fields leading down the hillside away from the Curry’s and in how they alternate between cultivated and fallow fields. Overall, Sketching Wisconsin has a warm, reflective, and comfortably pastoral atmosphere, and the perceived shift in Curry’s self-image that is evident in the portrait is a positive one. After his rise to favor in the art world in the 1930’s, and then rejection from it due to the strong beliefs presented in his art, Curry is satisfied and proud to be farmer in this self-portrait. Curry suffered from high blood...

Everett Shinn (1873-1953). Portrait of a Clown in Circus, 1947. Pencil. color pencil, gouache on paper. Sheet measures 8 x 10 inches. Framed measurement: 13 x 15 inches. Signed...

A scenic, colorful Modern 1930s summer harbor scene of Saugatuck, Michigan by notable Chicago Modern artist, Francis Chapin. Depicting a lively summer harbor view of the historic S...

Signed oil on board portrait circa 1940 by French post impressionist painter Jean Gabriel Domergue. The work depicts a blonde lady - Audrey - in a mint green dress...

A stylish, vintage, 1940s fashion study featuring an elegant design for women's suit. Most likely a design study for a print advertisement for the famed Chicago department store, Ma...

A stylish, vintage, 1940s woman's fashion study featuring an elegant, colorful design titled "Personal Choice of Gertrude Lawrence, Star of Lady in the Dark". Gertrude Lawrence, fam...

Mid Century Still Life Painting of Black Cat and Vase, Signed, 1940s Charming mid century still life of fruit, vase and black cat by Monterey ...

Title: Catalan Farmhouse with Haystacks Artist: Joaquín Asensio Mariné (Barcelona, 1890 – 1961) Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 54 × 65 cm (21.3 × 25.6 in) Support: Canvas laid on ...

Vibrant mid century California landscape of the beautiful San Ynez Valley Indian Trail with Native American children walking towards the sunset by H. Hansen (American, 20th Century), 1944. The small figures walk through a majestic, sprawling landscape full of plants, rocks, and tall trees flanking this gorgeous trail that leads towards an epic mountain range in the distance. Signed and dated "H. Hansen 1944" lower left corner. Label on verso with title and "Rubicon Lodge" (an old California...

René Mels (1909-1977) Portrait of a young man, signed lower right oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm Framed : 77.5 x 64.5 This impressive portrait is obviously tou...

Albert Heckman Cubist Landscape Signed lower right Oil on canvas 21 3/4 x 30 inches Albert Heckman was born in Meadville, Western Pennsylvania, 1893. He went to New York City to tr...

“The Champ, 1942” by Theodore Fried (1902-1980) This important portrait by Hungarian-American artist Theodore Fried depicts the legendary boxer Joe Louis aka “The Brown Bomber” and ...