Jacob Houston

New York City 1950's

Singed lower right. William R. Davis is noted as a marine painter. He grew up in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He is a self-taught artist whose oil paintings typically capture the serene light of sunrise or sunset on the water. He employs many of the techniques traditionally used by American luminist painters to realize his personal vision, showing a marked preference for 19th century subjects. In 1987, Davis had the first one artist show ever mounted at the Mystic Maritime Gallery in Mystic, Connecticut. All twenty of the works featured in that show were sold at the opening reception. In 1990, he received the Mystic Maritime Gallery Award of Excellence, and his painting entitled Calm Day Off Latimer's Reef appeared on the cover of Mystic's The Art of the Sea Calendar in 1993. Three of his paintings were also used in the book Shipwrecks Around Boston by Cape Cod author, William P. Quinn. Rockport Publishers has included Boston Harbor at Sunset in a new book entitled, A Gallery of Marine Art. Much of Davis' early works pays homage to 19th century artists such as James Bard, Martin Johnson Heade, Antonio Jacobsen and Fitz Hugh Lane...

Monogram lower right. But for sheer numbers, as well as degree of fame, the activity which is most closely linked with this Adirondack town is painting. Mrs. Peggy O'Brien, who has long studied Adirondack artists, finds over 400 have painted in these mountains and Keene Valley was the summer capital for many of them. The earliest in the valley are Asher B. Durand (1796-1800), considered a co-founder of the Hudson River School, John Casilear (1811 -1893) and John F. Kensett (1816 - 1871) coming in 1848. Frederick Perkins came in 1857, boarded at the Bruce home, and with Orson Phelps sat on Mt. Marcy and named Skylight, Basin and Saddelback Mountains. Roswell Shurtleff came first to Keene Valley in 1868 and returned each year for the rest of his life, being, with A.H. Wyant, the first artists to have summer places here. Wyant built on the hillside east of the AuSable, Shurtleff on the west. Winslow Homer joined John Fitch and Shurtleff in Keene Valley for hunting, fishing, and painting. John Adams Parker was here by 1866, subsequently building. Robert Monior came in 1875 and by 1882 had a house that became a center for art students. Samuel Coleman arrived in the 1860's. Homer Martin (1836-1897), Sanford Gifford (1823-1880), and Arthur Parton (1842-1914) are but a few more of the recognized American artists who painted the AuSable lakes and mountain of Keene in the nineteenth century. In fact, the Heidelberg Museum of the Paletinate's salute to the American Bicentennial was a 1976 exhibit of work by the first German to the American scenes, a man named Kappel, and featured scenes around Beede's. John Marin brought Keene Valley art into the twentieth century. Harold Weston, son of S. Burns Weston, wintered alone at his AuSable Club studio 1920-21 to start his painting career, and gave us later life a good local history as well as art sampling in his autobiography Freedom in the Wilds (1971). Present day artists living or working in the town include Bruce Mitchell...

Signed lower right. Following his graduation, he toured the United States and Canada as lead baritone for the Grand Opera Company, after which he taught voice - first as his alma matter...

Thaddeus Welch (American 1844-1919) The Columbian Exhibition, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair 70 x 35”, oil on board signed Request Price The C...

Signed lower right. Nick Eggenhofer was one of the most popular illustrators of western story magazines and books in America from the 1920s to 1940s. ...

Signed lower left and dated 1863. Known as a Hudson River School painter, especially of mountain landscapes, Arthur Parton was well established in the New York art world where he exhibited at the National Academy of Design for more than half a century. He was born in Hudson, New York to a religious family supported by a cabinetmaker father. He enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts as a student of William Trost Richards, who remained a strong influence, and in 1862, his first exhibitions were in Philadelphia. In 1864, he moved to New York City where he exhibited regularly with the National Academy of Design excepting 1869 when he spent a year in Europe and was influenced by the Barbizon style of painting. In 1874, he and his wife moved into the Tenth Street Building in New York City, and he kept his studio there until 1893. In 1876, he gained much national notoriety at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition for his paintings November, Loch Lomond and Solitude. He spent summers painting in the...

This painting is a 20th century realist landscape depiction of a shipyard by Robert Lavin. The piece is executed in oil on board and measures 10" x 24". Robert Lavin was born in New York City. His education included Townsend Harris, a prep school in New York followed by college at City College of New York. He also attended the National Academy of Art, where he studied as a painter. Studying the social realists of the 1930’s, Lavin, a former Marine pilot, portrayed steelworkers, roughnecks and trainmen. Lavin often painted his “proletarian ballets”- as one critic called them – to illustrate magazine advertisements. The Smithsonian Institution and other museums collected Lavin’s original paintings, which portrayed the laboring subjects with dignity and integrity. Lavin also illustrated stock certificates and books. Paper Money magazine praised him as “one of the greatest vignette artists of the 20th century.” In addition to this, Lavin was for a number of years an Associate Professor of Art at City College of New York, a position he left in the mid ‘60’s in order to devote himself full time to his painting. His commissions took him around the world, from the North Sea to the coast of Africa, from the slopes of Alaska to the Sea of Japan. As part of a series for Gulf Oil, he painted the royal family of England for the opening of a new refinery in Wales. Another portrait of one of the early Americanastronauts, appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. Other major commissions during these years included Readers Digest books...

Signed lower right: W Bradford

Signed lower right: G.W. Sotter; on verso: MINER HILLARD / MILLING Co.

Oil on canvas on cardboard

MAGDALENA SPASOWICZ Studied painting under prof. Jan Cybis and graphic arts with prof. Tadeusz Kulisiewicz at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. She received her diploma in 1953. He...

Janusz Szpyt was born in 1960, he is a Polish painter. He graduated from the Graphic design faculty and painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. 1983 onward, he became the m...