Knud Hilkier

'Italian Piazza with the Alps Beyond', Paris, Danish Royal Academy, Oslo Museum

Circa 1950

Attributed to Hortense Mattice Gordon (Canadian, 1886-1961) and painted circa 1925. Attribution based on similar style, composition and subject matter of McGill University's 'Old Country Store, Ontario' (1925) by the artist (see last image). An exceptionally fine, early twentieth-century, Post-Impressionist oil showing a view of a rustic village with cottages dramatically dappled by the shade of large trees. Hamilton artist Hortense Crompton Mattice Gordon was one of Canada’s earliest non-representational painters, embracing abstraction in the 1930s. She was also an active member of Canada's first English-speaking abstract group, Painters Eleven. A scholarship recipient, Hortense Mattice first attended the Hamilton Art School and, subsequently, moved to Chatham, Ontario. Initially focusing on porcelain painting, Mattice quickly began building a portfolio of oils and, from 1908, was exhibiting both her porcelain and landscapes at what is now the Chatham Cultural Centre (1908) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (1909). During this time, Mattice frequently traveled to the United States and, in 1915, visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, where she would have seen early works by important modernists including Picasso and Matisse. She started her teaching career in Chatham but, having received a job offer from the artist John Sloan Gordon, returned to Hamilton to teach at the Hamilton Art School in 1918. The two artists married in 1920. In 1922, Gordon and her husband took a study trip to France and, inspired by the fervent of Modernist ideas in Paris, expanded her own approaches to art, developing an increasingly soft, loose paint handling style. It was not until the 1930’s, after a few more trips to France and her discovery of Piet Mondrian’s work, that elements of abstraction began to appear in Gordon’s work. After the death of her husband in 1940, Gordon attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art and studied with Hans Hoffmann (1941-1945) whose influence and friendship pushed her to explore non-objective painting. After her training with Hofmann and in Cranbrook, Gordon began to exhibit regularly and with success in both Canada and the United States including at the Riverside Museum (New York, 1947), Creative Gallery (New York, 1952), in Ann Arbor (Michigan, 1952), Phillips Gallery (Detroit, 1952), the Flint Institute of Arts (Michigan, 1952), Mount Allison University (New Brunswick, 1952), the Galerie Agnes Lefort in Montréal and Art Gallery of Hamilton (retrospective, 1960). She was a member of the Contemporary Artists of Hamilton (honorary president in 1948), the Ontario Society of Artists, the Hamilton Women...

Signed lower right, "Valeur" for Mogens Valeur (Danish, 1927-1999) and dated 1963. A vibrant, Post-Impressionist seascape showing green breakers rolling in towards a sandy shore beneath an evening sky tinged with lilac and mauve. A prominent member of the Bornholm School, Mogens Valeur was, at heart, a colorist and focused on representing his chosen subject with line and forms. A student of Peter Rostrup...

Signed, lower right, 'Shinbo' for Shinbo Minami (Japanese, born 1947) and titled, verso, 'Paris' and dated July 4, 1984. A Parisian cityscape showing the Île de la Cité with the cat...

Signed lower right, "Mogens Valeur" (Danish, 1927-1999) and dated 1956. Mogens Valeur first studied with Peter Rostrup Boyesen and, later, attended the Copenhagen Art Academy. He su...

Capturing the lively essence of a coastal scene, my brushstrokes dance with vivacity, embodying the rich textures of life under a dynamic sky. Thick oils articulate the whispers of w...

EDOUARD LÉON CORTÈS French, 1882 - 1969 PLACE DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE signed "EDOUARD CORTÈS." (lower right) oil on canvas 25-3/4 x 36-1/4 inches (65 x 91.5 cm.) framed: 33-1/2 x 44-1/4 inc...

'Evening Glow' by Eugene Galien-Laloue is a Post-impressionist Parisian Street Scene - a painting filled with beautiful warm light and depicting the streets of Paris. Figures meander...

Farmhands working in a field on a hot summer's day. Building on iconic depictions of farmworkers by Millet, Huys sought to imbue his figures with a sensitivity and reverence that ...