Academic Figurative Paintings

John Singer Sargent was considered the leading portraitist of his generation, having painted the likes of Lady Evelyn Cavendish, Claude Monet, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Theodore Roos...

E. Simms Campbel was the first major African American Illustrator. He did covers for Esquire Magazine starting in the 1930s. He created the famou...

Geneva school around 1850 Circle of Firmin MASSOT (1766 - 1849) Portrait of Céphise Césarine Marie PILET (1825 - 1844) Oil on panel from Maison TACHET ...

Spain. Seville, 1991 Sergio Romero Linares is Graduated in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Seville in 2015. Previou...

Artist: Shimshon Holzman (1907-1986) Title: Three Figures Year: 1962 Medium: Watercolor and graphite on wove paper Size: 13.75 x 19.75 inches Conditio...

View of the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute from the Grand Canal by Arthur Trevor Haddon. Oil paint on wooden panel. Signed lower left, “Trevor Haddon RBA”. The Royal Society o...

An interesting and beautifully painted oil on canvas by French academic painter Pierre Bonnaud. The piece depicts a flute of champagne beside an open bottle. There's a lit cigar rest...

Signed, dated and inscribed lower right: "To Erika my collaborator with sincere admiration Howard Chandler Christy 1911" Provenance: Morris Weiss collection

Academic style figurative nude oil painting of handsome male athletes in wrestling togs (singlet) Painted by Mark Beard as "Bruce Sargeant" Oil on canvas, signed upper left 23 x 11.5 inches unframed, 30 x 18 x 1 inches in silver frame This vertical, figurative portrait painting of two male athletes was painted by Mark Beard under his fictitious artistic persona, Bruce Sargeant. This painting is a perfect example of the style Mark Beard is perhaps most well known for, which include portraits depicting men engaging in sports or leisure activities, scantily clad in vintage attire. Beard's paintings offer an engaging story line that he leaves up to the viewer to imagine. He expertly captures each personality of his models, which he paints from life, often times in his Parisian studio. The figurative painting on canvas is framed in a silver frame measuring 30 x 18 inches and is signed in the upper left corner. Painted in a style that evokes the portraits of John Singer Sargent, Mark Beard is a living artist who paints under the pseudonym "Bruce Sargeant". Assuming the artist persona of Bruce Sargeant, an early twentieth century painter (who never actually existed), contemporary painter and sculptor Mark Beard teases the queerness out of an era in art history that often refused to acknowledge the homosexuality of its leading luminaries. Beard’s creative rewriting of history is outright convincing as he seizes the opportunity to insert bold visuals of homoeroticism into traditional academic painting style. Beard’s coquettish audacity coupled with a good dose of naughty humor results in delightful scenes of sexy men engaging in socially accepted environments such as on the field, on the hunt, or even in the locker rooms. Beard simultaneously paints the anatomy and sexuality of men with an ease and freedom that doesn’t exist in the historical texts. About the artist: Mark Beard is perhaps the most literal example of an artist pulled in so many different directions that he chose to “invent” six different personae in which to channel his overflowing energy and need for expression. Each painting style is radically different from the next, so it remains entirely believable that the work could stem from six completely different people of different time periods and different schools of thought. With a background in set design, Beard has always been one who could conjure total magic with anything available. For this exhibit, he returns as the beloved 20th century painter from England, Bruce Sargeant, featuring a parade of Arcadian scenes suggesting afternoons of young men sporting in the countryside, rowing, bicycling, hunting or wrestling. Clean shaven, well manicured youths pose casually, indulging every opportunity to display a titillating flex of stone-like musculature. Like modern Greek statues, Beard paints these prestigious figures oftentimes in pairs of twos and threes in a lazy state of beautiful passivity. Mark Beard keeps himself fresh with challenge, undertaking ambitious commissions and committing to weekly sketch sessions with live models in his Manhattan studio. The result of this dedicated practice is a stunning array of graphite and conte crayon drawings on Arches paper. A visit to Mark Beard’s studio is like discovering Michelangelo’s lair: oil paintings layer the walls, lifedrawings litter the table at the feet of heroic bronzes; ceramics, architectural maquettes are everywhere; virtuosity, in every medium. And then it gets even more interesting. Mark’s talent is so overflowing that, years ago, he needed to channel himself into alter egos. Mark invented the persona of “Bruce Sargeant,” an imagined English artist, contemporary of E. M. Forster, Rupert Brooke, and John Sloan. Mark also created Bruce Sargeant’s teacher, Hippolyte-Alexandre Michallon, a 19th-century French Academist. Michallon also taught Edith Thayer Cromwell...

Rare Burmese temple scenic painting stamped Jennens & Bettridge, London, Birma (Burma) verso. Titled lower left “Pole Temple, Jai House”. Village temple scene circa 1845 with the B...

A finely painted mid-late 19th century signed Dutch oil painting, depicting a windmill by a canal. Painted by Louise Van Staaten (1836-1909), also know as Hermanus Koekkoek the Young...