James Meese

"The Dangerous Year (The Sunken Garden), " Cover Illustration, 1956

1956

Approximate Date: 1957 Medium: Oil on Board Signature: Signed Lower Left Size: 18.70" x 27.00" Story illustration for The Master Move by George Loveridge, published in Good Housekeeping, November 1957. An excerpt from the story reads: “In the evening Mowbray dined at a mahogany table designed to seat ten persons. To his left, in an intricate, gilded frame, hung an oil portrait of his father — a man with a majestic, full gray beard and the same beaked nose that his son had, but with milder eyes (p. 237)…Every Sunday, Mowbray and the boy had dinner together, the two of them at the long, broad, polished table under the eyes of Peter Mowbray. Mowbray often had to fly hundreds of miles to be on time for Sunday dinner with his son, but he did not once fail to be there.” (p. 239-240) A Native American finding a Raggedy Ann doll...

Medium: Oil on Canvas Dimensions: 24.00" x 31.00" Signature: Signed Lower Right This painting of a baby taking it's first steps was done as a calendar for the Osbourne Calendar Company and has the Osbourne tag affixed to the back. Harold Matthews Brett grew up in Brookline, MA and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston under Philip Hall and Frank Benson. Later he moved to New York to study at the Arts Students League with Walter Appleton Clark...

"Squares and Things" painted by the eminent artist, Charles McGee, literally breaths his African American heritage and his extraordinary vibrant use of colors. Provenance is The Arwin Galleries on Grand River in Detroit, Michigan - label on verso. This early painting of McGee's shows his mastery in creating a painting in the style of the French Impressionist Edouard Manet, "Still Life with Melon and Peaches" located in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and in the style of Fauvist/Expressionist painter Henry Matisse, "Still Life with Blue Tablecloth", located in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia. McGee makes the well-known genre of still life his own creating an exciting marvelous work incorporating the homely quilt - the powerful symbol of the African American road to safety from slavery - as his main focus. Quilts symbolize warmth, comfort, and as shown by the collection of quilts gathered by the artists in Gee's Bend the designs on the quilts hung outdoors at locations along the Underground Railroad showed fugitives the road north and to safety. "Squares and Things" was first shown at The Arwin Galleries, Inc., Detroit, Michigan, one of the stops along the Underground Railroad. This piece is signed by the artist, Charles McGee, and is an extraordinary example of his early work before he moved into Abstract Expressionism and his many sculptural works now located throughout Michigan. Several of these works are: "Noah's Ark: Genesis, 1984," on display at the Detroit Institute of Arts, his brilliant 2005 "Progression" a 45-foot wide aluminum sculpture at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, Michigan, and his stunning 2016 "United We Stand" sculpture at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History . His genius can be seen in sculpture installments throughout the city of Detroit. . He was born into a family of sharecroppers. While helping his grandfather tend the land, "he observed firsthand the order and harmony that exists within nature." He had no formal schooling until moving to Detroit at age 10, where he found that "everything was on the move and it hasn’t slowed down yet." in 2017 he observed, "I learned something not being in school — because life is school . . .I learn something every time I move. Every time I go around a corner, something new is revealed to me.” McGee took advantage of the GI Bill to attend classes at the Society of Arts and Crafts, now the College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI. Other College for Creative Studies (formerly Center for Creative Studies) faculty and graduates include Richard Jerzy, Harry Bertoia, Doug Chaing (currently director of Lucas Film), Stephen Dinehart (game maker, writer, designer connected with The David Lynch Foundation), Tyree Guyton (international artist), Herb Babcock, Jerome Feretti, Kevin Siembieda (writer, designer and publisher of role-playing games), Renee Radell, and Philip Pearlstein. After retiring from the Corps of Engineers, McGee spent 1968 studying art in Barcelona. Despite not knowing the language at the outset, he immersed himself in the culture and opened himself to a whole new range of experience that would play out in his artwork. "If you free yourself, you have this kind of opportunity to have those experiences, horizons, and new vistas." (per interview with Nick Sousanis author of a book on Charles McGee.) He returned to Detroit and curated "Seven Black Artists" at the Detroit Artists Market in 1969, which along with McGee himself, included Lester Johnson, Henri Umbaji King, Robert Murray, James Lee, Allie McGhee...

American Outsider Folk Art Painting "The Wall-Flower" by Gussie Smith Roth C.1965 Original oil on masonite Masonite dimensions 28" wide x...