Charles Ragland Bunnell

Untitled (Study of a Mountain Town, Colorado)

circa 1935

This captivating Modernist watercolor painting of a serene forest scene by Richard Sorby (1911-2001) beautifully captures the essence of nature through a minimalist and expressive lens. Painted in the 1940s, the piece features stylized trees in bold, dark hues of green, blue, and black, complemented by earthy tones of brown, orange, and white. The watercolor on paper is signed by the artist in the lower right corner and beautifully framed with archival materials. The outer dimensions of the piece measure 26 ½ x 18 ½ x 1 inches, with the image size itself being 22 ¾ x 14 ¾ inches. About the Artist: Richard Sorby, a Colorado-based artist, was renowned for his distinctive modernist style, blending abstraction with representational themes. Sorby earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Colorado State College of Education (now the University of Northern Colorado) in 1937 and went on to study under influential mentors, including Vance Kirkland and William Joseph Eastman...

A captivating early 20th-century Western mountain landscape by Colorado artist Elsie Haddon Haynes (1884–1963), this original oil pastel drawing captures the charming town of Silver Plume...

A Large, 1950s Mid-Century Modern Ink Drawing of Quebec City by Rudolph Pen. Artwork is formatted in a trapezoid shape, an innovative composition device for which the artist's work ...

Yvonne Jacquette (American, b. 1935) Tokyo Diptych, 1985 Pastel on paper Overall 17 1/4 x 28 1/2 inches Signed lower center Provenance: Carey Ellis Company, Houston, Texas Brooke Alexander, New York Collection of an American Corporation Exhibited: New York, Brooke Alexander, Yvonne Jacquette: Tokyo Nightviews, April 5 - May 3, 1986, n.p., illustrated; this exhibition later traveled to Brunswick, Maine, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Yvonne Jacquette: Tokyo Nightviews, June 27 - August 24, 1986. Yvonne Jacquette has a preference for high places, a circling plane, a penthouse window, an aerie from which to watch the world. Her work has often depicted the city and man-made landscape from the vantage of angels. It is a privileged perspective, long loved by photographers, who were perhaps the first to recognize the geometric grandeur of the city below. That grandeur structures Jacquette's images but is not its full content. Her work attempts to resolve the visual and emotional pardoxes of the modern metropolis. Only from the tower is there the possibility of order and context. And unlaced beauty. Jacquette first visited Japan in 1982. Nighttime Tokyo, its cars and crowds and canyons of loud Vegas neon, made a vivid and bewildering impression on her. The neon signs, pulsing, scaling the walls of high rises, fascinated the artist, "like Times Square spread over miles." Her fascination was equal parts marvel, confusion, and curiosity—the sparks of art. She returned to Tokyo in May of 1985, choosing hotel rooms with expansive vistas. From these views Jacquette excerpted images for a series of pastel night scenes. The basic forms and colors of each drawing were blocked in during night sessions by the window. She worked in the dark, selecting colors by flashlight. In daylight, she sharpened the geometry and corrected ambiguous passages. She refined the drawings further in the studio until the images read clearly. Photographic correctness was not important. The finished drawings are complete statements, not simply preparatory sketches for paintings. They have the authority of expert witness. In clear, discreet jots of pastel they record the performance of seeing, each touch of color attesting to a moment's close scrutiny. Yvonne Jacquette was born on December 15, 1934 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and grew up in Stamford, Connecticut. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence from 1952 to 1955, when she moved to New York City. Her late husband was photographer Rudy Burckhardt, and the couple were part of a circle of artist friends that included Fairfield Porter, Alex Katz, Red Grooms, and Mimi Gross. She continues to live and work in New York City, as well as in Searsmont, Maine. A flight to San Diego in 1969 sparked Jacquette’s interest in aerial views, after which she began flying in commercial airliners to study cloud formations and weather patterns. She soon started sketching and painting the landscape as seen from above, beginning a process that has developed into a defining element of her art. Her first nocturnal painting...