Fletcher Martin

"Lunch Break” Fletcher Martin, Men Working, Bricklayers, WPA, American Scene

circa 1940

Ernest Fiene (1894 - 1965) Low Tide at Noon, Wellfleet, Massachusetts Oil on canvas 26 x 36 inches Signed lower right Ernest Fiene was born in Elberfeld, Germany in 1894. As a teenager, Fiene immigrated to the United States in 1912. He studied art at the National Academy of Design in New York City from 1914 to 1918, taking day classes with Thomas Maynard and evening classes with Leon Kroll. Fiene continued his studies at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in Paris from 1916 to 1918, adding classes in printmaking at the Art Students League in 1923. Fiene began his career as an artist in 1919 with his first exhibition of watercolors at the MacDowell Club arranged by his mentor Robert Henri. In 1923 the Whitney Studio Club mounted a large exhibition of his works. The following year he had an exhibition at the New Gallery in New York, which completely sold out all fifty-two works, including paintings, watercolors, drawings, and etchings. With the proceeds of sales from the New Gallery exhibition, Ernest Fiene and his younger brother Paul, a sculptor, built studios in Woodstock, New York in 1925. In the early Twenties Ernest Fiene painted mostly landscapes of Woodstock and both the Ramapo and Hudson River Valleys. He was the subject of the first monograph for the Younger Artists Series in 1922. Published in Woodstock, the series went on to include Alexander Brook, Peggy Bacon, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. The book reproduced 1 illustration in color and another 27 reproductions in black and white. Around 1925 Fiene became fascinated with the intensity, excitement, and opportunities for color harmonies New York City offered as a subject. His paintings shifted to urban and industrial themes with architecture, industry, and transportation becoming his subjects. By 1926 Fiene had attracted the dealer Frank K.M. Rehn, who gave him a one-man exhibition that year, which travelled to the Boston Arts Club. C.W. Kraushaar Galleries gave Fiene a one-man exhibition of urban, landscape, portrait, and still life paintings in 1927. Julianna Force, the director of the Whitney Studio Club and first director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, included two of Fiene's paintings in a fall exhibition in 1928. The Whitney Studio Club showed Fiene's paintings in a two-man exhibition with Glenn O. Coleman that year and acquired three of Fiene's paintings. Also in 1928 Fiene became affiliated with Edith Halpert's Downtown Gallery where he had an exhibition of 20 lithographs in the spring. Fiene sold his house in Woodstock in 1928 to spend more of his time in New York City. With so many successful exhibitions, Fiene returned to Paris in 1928-29 where he rented Jules Pascin's studio and studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In France, Fiene painted both landscape and urban subjects developed from ideas influenced by Cubist geometry and the use of flat areas of broad color. Upon returning to New York in 1930, Fiene used this new approach to continue to paint New York skyscraper and waterfront subjects, as well as to begin a series of paintings on changing old New York based on the excavations for Radio City Music Hall and the construction of the Empire State Building. Frank K.M. Rehn Galleries exhibited this series, titled "Changing Old New York," in 1931. Fiene also has solo exhibitions at Rehn Galleries in 1930 and 1932. Fiene's oil paintings are exhibited at the Chicago Arts Club in 1930 as well. Fiene was included in the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans in December of 1931. Visiting New York, Henri Matisse saw the exhibition and called Fiene's Razing Buildings, West 49th Street the finest painting he had seen in New York. Fiene had two mural studies from his Mechanical Progress series exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition Murals by American Painters and Photographers in 1932. Fiene sent View from my Window which depicts Fiene working on a lithograph stone while looking out his window to the newly completed Empire State Building to the Carnegie International in 1931. In 1932 Fiene participated in the first Biennial of American Painting at the Whitney Museum and his prints were included in exhibitions at the Downtown Gallery and the Wehye Gallery. In the same year, Fiene was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to further study mural painting in Florence, Italy. On his return from Italy in 1933 Fiene re-engaged himself in New York City life and won several public and private mural projects. Fiene resumed his active exhibition schedule, participating in two group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum and a one-man exhibition of recent paintings at the Downtown Gallery in January 1934. In 1933 he purchased a farm in Southbury, Connecticut, which added Connecticut scenes to his landscape subjects. This was also the year Fiene began to spend summers on Monhegan Island, Maine, where he painted seascapes, harbor scenes, and still lifes. Fiene's landscape paintings attracted numerous commissions as part of the American Scene movement. From 1935-36 Fiene took an extended sketching trip through the urban, industrial, and farming areas of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Most of the twenty-four Pennsylvania urban and rural paintings from this trip were featured in an exhibition held at the First National Bank in Pittsburgh in October of 1937 by the Pittsburgh Commission for Industrial Expansion. Fiene said of these works that he formed rhythm, opportunity for space and color, and integrity in the Pennsylvania mill and furnace paintings. Fiene received the silver medal for one of the Pittsburgh paintings...

Frida Gugler Building the Westside Highway (Near the George Washington Bridge), circa 1935-37 Signed lower right Oil on canvas 20 x 28 inches Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the pain...

Ernest Fiene Along the Kanahawa River, West Virginia, 1936 Signed lower right Oil on canvas 26 x 36 inches Fiene made a series of paintings, drawings and lithographs which are based on his travels through Pennsylvania and West Virginia during the winter of 1935-36. The industrial areas of Pennsylvania and West Virginia are represented in numerous oils, among which are some of his most well-known. Fiene wrote of the trip, "The increasing snow and atmospheric conditions [in the Kanawha River valley} enhanced this mountainous coal mining country with a majestic beauty." Winter on the River is Fiene's only American Artists Group print and there were only two lithographs produced from the West Virginia trip. The American Artists Group (AAG), under the direction of Carl Zigrosser, who was then working at New York's famed Weyhe Gallery, published ninety-three prints by over fifty artists in 1936 and 1937. Zigrosser's goal was to popularize contemporary American art through original prints offered at the low price of $2.75. The project was also a means to provide income for impoverished artists during the Depression. The prints were featured in many of the leading print exhibitions and publications of the period. The lithograph produced from this image is now in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pensacola Museum of Art, San Francisco Fine Arts Museum, Syracuse Museum, Yale University Art Museum. Ernest Fiene was born in Elberfeld, Germany in 1894. As a teenager, Fiene immigrated to the United States in 1912. He studied art at the National Academy of Design in New York City from 1914 to 1918, taking day classes with Thomas Maynard and evening classes with Leon Kroll. Fiene continued his studies at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York from 1916 to 1918, adding classes in printmaking at the Art Students League in 1923. Fiene began his career as an artist in 1919 with his first exhibition of watercolors at the MacDowell Club arranged by his mentor Robert Henri. In 1923 the Whitney Studio Club mounted a large exhibition of his works. The following year he had an exhibition at the New Gallery in New York, which completely sold out all fifty-two works, including paintings, watercolors, drawings, and etchings. With the proceeds of sales from the New Gallery exhibition, Ernest Fiene and his younger brother Paul, a sculptor, built studios in Woodstock, New York in 1925. In the early Twenties Ernest Fiene painted mostly landscapes of Woodstock and both the Ramapo and Hudson River Valleys. The first monograph from the Younger Artists Series was published on Fiene in 1922. Published in Woodstock, the series went on to include Alexander Brook, Peggy Bacon, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. The book reproduced 1 illustration in color and another 27 reproductions in black and white. Around 1925 Fiene became fascinated with the intensity, excitement, and opportunities for color harmonies New York City offered as a subject. His paintings shifted to urban and industrial themes with architecture, industry, and transportation becoming his subjects. By 1926 Fiene had attracted the dealer Frank K.M. Rehn, who gave him a one-man exhibition that year, which travelled to the Boston Arts Club. C.W. Kraushaar Galleries gave Fiene a one-man exhibition of urban, landscape, portrait, and still life paintings in 1927. Julianna Force, the director of the Whitney Studio Club and first director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, included two of Fiene’s paintings in a fall exhibition in 1928. The Whitney Studio Club showed Fiene’s paintings in a two-man exhibition with Glenn O. Coleman that year and acquired three of Fiene’s paintings. Also in 1928 Fiene became affiliated with Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery where he had an exhibition of 20 lithographs in the spring. Fiene sold his house in Woodstock in 1928 to spend more of his time in New York City. With so many successful exhibitions, Fiene returned to Paris in 1928-29 where he rented Jules Pascin's studio and studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In France, Fiene painted both landscape and urban subjects developed from ideas influenced by Cubist geometry and the use of flat areas of broad color. Upon returning to New York in 1930, Fiene used this new approach to continue to paint New York skyscraper and waterfront subjects, as well as to begin a series of paintings on changing old New York based on the excavations for Radio City Music Hall and the construction of the Empire State Building. Frank K.M. Rehn Galleries exhibited this series, titled “Changing Old New York,” in 1931. Fiene also has solo exhibitions at Rehn Galleries in 1930 and 1932. Fiene’s oil paintings are exhibited at the Chicago Arts Club in 1930 as well. Fiene was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans in December of 1931. Visiting New York, Henri Matisse saw the exhibition and called Fiene’s Razing Buildings, West 49th Street the finest painting he had seen in New York. Fiene had two mural studies from his Mechanical Progress series exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Murals by American Painters and Photographers in 1932. Fiene sent View from my Window which depicts Fiene working on a lithograph stone while looking out his window to the newly completed Empire State Building to the Carnegie International in 1931. In 1932 Fiene participated in the first Biennial of American Painting at the Whitney Museum and his prints were included in exhibitions at the Downtown Gallery and the Wehye Gallery. In the same year, Fiene was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to further study mural painting in Florence, Italy. On his return from Italy in 1933 Fiene re-engaged himself in New York City life and won several public and private mural projects. Fiene resumed his active exhibition schedule, participating in two group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum and a one-man exhibition of recent paintings at the Downtown Gallery in January 1934. In 1933 he purchased a farm in Southbury, Connecticut, which added Connecticut scenes to his landscape subjects. This was also the year Fiene began to spend summers on Monhegan Island, Maine, where he painted seascapes, harbor scenes, and still lifes. Fiene’s landscape paintings attracted numerous commissions as part of the American Scene movement. Through the fall and winter of 1935-36, Fiene took an extended sketching trip through the urban, industrial, and farming areas of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Most of the twenty-four Pennsylvania urban and rural paintings from this trip were featured in an exhibition held at the First National Bank in Pittsburgh in October of 1937 by the Pittsburgh Commission for Industrial Expansion. Fiene said of these works that he formed rhythm, opportunity for space and color, and integrity in the Pennsylvania mill and furnace paintings. Fiene received the silver medal for one of the Pittsburgh paintings...

Beatrix Sherman Hialeah Park Race Track, Florida, 1947 Signed lower right Oil on canvasboard 16 x 20 inches Beatrix Sherman (1894-1975), who changed her first name from Beatrice by...

Oil painting by Willard Dixon featuring a waterscape with coastal clouds. Willard Dixon, who is one of the finest American contemporary realist painters today, has painted coastal landscapes for 35 years, capturing the undeniable beauty of the West with its grand and humble spirit. The painting, with its atmospheric light and calm palette is contemporary and serene. Dixon’s work can be found in numerous distinctive private and public collections, as well as the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and his work is collected Internationally. Artist signed and dated. A classic Dixon that will sure to bring those who view it a life time of pleasure. Kauai, painted in 2023. the canvas is 60 X 62 inches. Oil on canvas, and traditionally framed in contemporary, minimal hardwood floater frame.Condition is new and excellent. Artist signed and dated. Ready to ship. Proudly presented by Andra Norris Gallery in California. Selected Collections The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Oakland Museum The Utah Museum of Fine Art San Francisco Art Commission Shaklee Corporation Pacific Gas and Electric Company, San Francisco, CA Kemper Insurance Company, Long Grove, Il Morrison and Foerester, San Francisco, CA SSI Container Corporation, San Francisco, CA San Francisco International Airport Oxford Petroleum Company, Houston,TX California First Bank, San Francisco, CA United Pipeline, Houston, TX Security Pacific National Bank, S.F., CA Crocker Bank, Los Angeles, CA Visa Corporation, San Francisco, CA Atlantic Richfield Corporation Shell Oil, Houston, TX First National Bank of Seattle RREEF Corporation, San Francisco, CA Texas Heritage Society Genstar Corporation, San Francisco, CA Sohio Corporation Skidmore Owings and Merrill, N.Y.C., NY Chemical Bank...

Oil painting by Willard Dixon featuring a couple walking through a cove in Maui. Willard Dixon, who is one of the finest American contemporary realist painters today, has painted coastal landscapes for 35 years, capturing the undeniable beauty of the West with its grand and humble spirit. The painting, with its atmospheric light and calm palette is contemporary and serene. Dixon’s work can be found in numerous distinctive private and public collections, as well as the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and his work is collected Internationally. Artist signed and dated. A classic Dixon that will sure to bring those who view it a life time of pleasure. Paradisial (Maui), painted in 2023. the canvas is 48.25 X 59 inches. Oil on canvas, and framed in a 22 kt hand gilt gold floater frame.Condition is new and excellent. Artist signed and dated. Ready to ship. Proudly presented by Andra Norris Gallery in California. Selected Collections The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Oakland Museum The Utah Museum of Fine Art San Francisco Art Commission Shaklee Corporation Pacific Gas and Electric Company, San Francisco, CA Kemper Insurance Company, Long Grove, Il Morrison and Foerester, San Francisco, CA SSI Container Corporation, San Francisco, CA San Francisco International Airport Oxford Petroleum Company, Houston,TX California First Bank, San Francisco, CA United Pipeline, Houston, TX Security Pacific National Bank, S.F., CA Crocker Bank, Los Angeles, CA Visa Corporation, San Francisco, CA Atlantic Richfield Corporation Shell Oil, Houston, TX First National Bank of Seattle RREEF Corporation, San Francisco, CA Texas Heritage Society Genstar Corporation, San Francisco, CA Sohio Corporation Skidmore Owings and Merrill, N.Y.C., NY Chemical Bank...

Oil painting by Willard Dixon featuring a massive sculptural rock. Willard Dixon, who is one of the finest American contemporary realist painters today, has painted coastal landscape...

Oil painting by Willard Dixon featuring flying above the scattered clouds. Willard Dixon, who is one of the finest American contemporary realist painters today, has painted coastal landscapes for 35 years, capturing the undeniable beauty of the West with its grand and humble spirit. The painting, with its atmospheric light and calm palette is contemporary and serene. Dixon’s work can be found in numerous distinctive private and public collections, as well as the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and his work is collected Internationally. Artist signed and dated. A classic Dixon that will sure to bring those who view it a life time of pleasure. At Thirty Thousand Feet no. I, painted in 2023. the canvas is 54 X 43 inches. Oil on canvas. Condition is new and excellent. Artist signed and dated. Ready to ship. Proudly presented by Andra Norris Gallery in California. Selected Collections The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Oakland Museum The Utah Museum of Fine Art San Francisco Art Commission Shaklee Corporation Pacific Gas and Electric Company, San Francisco, CA Kemper Insurance Company, Long Grove, Il Morrison and Foerester, San Francisco, CA SSI Container Corporation, San Francisco, CA San Francisco International Airport Oxford Petroleum Company, Houston,TX California First Bank, San Francisco, CA United Pipeline, Houston, TX Security Pacific National Bank, S.F., CA Crocker Bank, Los Angeles, CA Visa Corporation, San Francisco, CA Atlantic Richfield Corporation Shell Oil, Houston, TX First National Bank of Seattle RREEF Corporation, San Francisco, CA Texas Heritage Society Genstar Corporation, San Francisco, CA Sohio Corporation Skidmore Owings and Merrill, N.Y.C., NY Chemical Bank...