Carl Carlsen

Figures in the Forest

1900

Gaston Sebire French, 1920-2001 Landscape with Figures Oil on canvas 31 by 41 ½ in, w/ frame 38 by 48 ½ in Signed lower right Gaston Sebire was born August 18, 1920, in Saint-Samso...

Charles Charlay-Pompon French, 1854-1914 French Countryside Oil on canvas Signed lower right 11 by 21 in. w/frame 16 ½ by 26 ½ in. Charles Charl...

William Wells Goodrich American, 1846-1906 Stream in the Woods Oil on canvas 11 by 16 in, w/ frame 17 ½ by 22 ¾ in Signed lower left

John Edward Costigan, N.A. American, 1888-1972 Woman and Child Oil on canvas Signed ‘J.E. Costigan N.A.’ lower left 24 by 30 in. W/frame 32 by 38 in. John Costigan was born of Irish-American parents in Providence, Rhode Island, February 29, 1888. He was a cousin of the noted American showman, George M. Cohan, whose parents brought the young Costigan to New York City and was instrumental in starting him on a career in the visual arts. They were less successful in encouraging him to pursue formal studies at the Art Students League (where, however, he later taught) than in exposing him to the commercial art world through the job they had gotten him with the New York lithographing firm that made their theatrical posters. At the H. C. Miner Lithographing Company, Costigan worked his way up from his entry job as a pressroom helper, through various apprenticeships, to the position of sketch artist. In the latter capacity he was an uncredited designer of posters for the Ziegfeld Follies and for numerous silent films. Meanwhile, he had supplemented his very meager formal studies in the fine arts with a self-teaching discipline that led to his first professional recognition in 1920 with the receipt of prizes for an oil painting and watercolor in separate New York exhibitions. A year earlier, Costigan had wed professional model Ida Blessin, with whom he established residence and began raising a family in the sleepy little rural New York hamlet of Orangeburg, the setting for the many idyllic farm landscapes and wood interiors with which he was to become identified in a career that would span half a century. John Costigan’s first national recognition came in 1922 with his winning of the coveted Peterson Purchase prize of the Art Institute of Chicago for an oil on canvas, “Sheep at the Brook.” It marked the start of an unbroken winning streak that would gain him at least one important prize per year for the remainder of the decade. The nation’s art journalists and critics began to take notice, making him the recurring subject of newspaper features and magazine articles. The eminent author and critic Edgar Holger Cahill was just a fledgling reporter when he wrote his first feature, “John Costigan Carries the Flame,” for Shadowland Magazine in 1922. Costigan had his first one-man show of paintings at the Rehn Gallery on New York’s 5th Avenue in November, 1924, to be followed less than three years later by another at the Art Institute of Chicago. In addition, Costigan’s work has been—and continues to be included, side-by-side with that of some of America’s most high-profile artists, in museum and gallery exhibitions throughout the country. His renown had peaked in the early 1930s, by which time his work had been honored with nearly every major award then being bestowed in the fine arts and had been acquired for the permanent collections of several prestigious American museums, including New York’s Metropolitan (which only recently, in 1997, deaccessioned his “Wood Interior,” acquired in 1934). Although Costigan’s celebrity had ebbed by the late 1930s, the Smithsonian Institution saw fit in 1937 to host an exhibition exclusively of his etchings. And, in 1941, the Corcoran Gallery (also Washington, D.C.) similarly honored him for his watercolors. (Another Washington institution, the Library of Congress, today includes 22 Costigan etchings and lithographs in its permanent print collection.) During World War II, Costigan returned briefly to illustrating, mainly for Bluebook, a men’s pulp adventure magazine. A gradual revival of interest in his more serious work began at the end of the war, culminating in 1968 with the mounting of a 50-year Costigan retrospective at the Paine Art Center and Arboretum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Oils, watercolors and prints were borrowed from museums and private collections throughout the country, and the exhibition was subsequently toured nationally by the Smithsonian Institution. John Costigan died of pneumonia in Nyack, NY, August 5, 1972, just months after receiving his final prestigious award —the Benjamin West Clinedinst Medal of the Artist’s Fellowship, Inc., presented in general recognition of his “...achievement of exceptional artistic merit...” in the various media he had mastered in the course of his career. This painting depicts one of the artist's favorite themes --the farm family bathing...

Victor Gilbert 1847 - 1933, French Oil on Panel A magnificent work by Victor Gilbert and one for all collectors. This is a rare and important example on a grand scale that is scarcely seen. Artist's very rarely painted on beautiful mahogany panels as large as this as they were too expensive and very hard to buy. The fact that Gilbert did this highlights the significance of this work. Panel Size: 45 x 26" (114 x 66cm) Outside Frame Size: 52 x 33" (132 x 84cm) Free Shipping Victor Gilbert’s natural ability as an artist was recognized early, but his family lacked the financial resources to send the young man to the École des Beaux-Arts. Rather than enrolling in the École, Gilbert was apprenticed to Eugene Adam as an artisan painter and decorator. His only formal education was evening classes with Pierre Levasseur at the École de la Ville de Paris. Perhaps it was his early immersion into la vie quotidienne that formed the basis for his later choices of subject matter for his art, that of the markets and streets of Paris. Despite his lack of formal training, Gilbert’s admissions to the Paris Salons of 1873 and 1874 were very well received by audiences and critics alike; at this time he was supported by the dealer Paul Martin, who was an important proponent of the Impressionist movement. Gilbert emerged in the early 1880s as the primary Realist painter to record the French marketplace...

Signed and dated oil on board figures in landscape by French post impressionist painter Gustave Cariot. The piece is set in Wiesbaden, Germany depicts a breathtaking view of the Rive...

Stunning naturalist landscape by Karl Bock (German, 1873-1940) in the style of and "after" (Paul Franz Flickel German, 1852-1903) . Signed ("K. Bock n. P. F...

An original oil painting by Frederick Shaw (1848-1922), depicting a young women fetching water from a woodland pool. Autumn colour fills the landscape, carefully picked up again in t...