John Haley

Untitled

Artist: Thelma Speed Houston – American (1914-2000) Title: Trafalgar Year: unknown Medium: Watercolor on heavy watercolor paper Sheet size: 18 x 24 inches Signature: Signed lower lef...

Artist: Evelyne Brigeois – French/American (1946-2016) Title: Guanajuato Year: ca. 1980 Medium: Watercolor Sight size: 20.5 x 14 inches. Matted size: 27.5 x 20 inches Signature: Signed lower right Condition: Very good Unframed This watercolor is by Evelyne Brigeois (1946-2016) a very well-known Boise, Idaho artist. It depicts a beautiful window with flowers in pots in Guanajuato, Mexico. As with many of her paintings, Brigeois pays particular attention to light and shadow. The painting is in very good condition with no flaws to note. The painting is signed in the lower right corner and dated underneath the mat, “80.”. It is custom matted with three hinges on the top edge of the art. Born in France in 1946, Evelyne Brigeois was an internationally acclaimed watercolor artist. Having grown up in a small town east of Paris, Brigeois was particularly drawn to places which seem to have preserved their timeless and peaceful aspect. Crisp precision, strong definition of light and shadow, and beautiful composition distinguish her images of the Greek Islands, Venice and France. Brigeois received many national awards, from the Louisiana Watercolor Society, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan Watercolor...

Signed lower right: H. GASSER

Lionel S. Reiss (1894 - 1988) New York City Skyline View from the East River Watercolor on paper 13 x 19 inches Signed lower left In describing his own style, Lionel Reiss wrote, “By nature, inclination, and training, I have long since recognized the fact that...I belong to the category of those who can only gladly affirm the reality of the world I live in.” Reiss’s subject matter was wide-ranging, including gritty New York scenes, landscapes of bucolic Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and seascapes around Gloucester, Massachusetts. However, it was as a painter of Jewish life—both in Israel and in Europe before World War II—that Reiss excelled. I.B. Singer, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, noted that Reiss was “essentially an artist of the nineteenth century, and because of this he had the power and the courage to tell visually the story of a people.” Although Reiss was born in Jaroslaw, Poland, his family immigrated to the United States in 1898 when he was four years old. Reiss's family settled on New York City’s Lower East Side and he lived in the city for most of his life. Reiss attended the Art Students League and then worked as a commercial artist for newspapers and publishers. As art director for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he supposedly created the studio’s famous lion logo. After World War I, Reiss became fascinated with Jewish life in the ‘Old World.’ In 1921 he left his advertising work and spent the next ten years traveling in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Like noted Jewish photographers Alter Kacyzne and Roman Vishniac, Reiss depicted Jewish life in Poland prior to World War II. He later wrote, “My trip encompassed three main objectives: to make ethnic studies of Jewish types wherever I traveled; to paint and draw Jewish life, as I saw it and felt it, in all aspects; and to round out my work in Israel.” In Europe, Reiss recorded quotidian scenes in a variety of media and different settings such as Paris, Amsterdam, the Venice ghetto, the Jewish cemetery in Prague, and an array of shops, synagogues, streets, and marketplaces in the Jewish quarters of Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lublin, Vilna, Ternopil, and Kovno. He paid great attention to details of dress, hair, and facial features, and his work became noted for its descriptive quality. A selection of Reiss’s portraits appeared in 1938 in his book My Models Were Jews. In this book, published on the eve of the Holocaust, Reiss argued that there was “no such thing as a ‘Jewish race’.” Instead, he claimed that the Jewish people were a cultural group with a great deal of diversity within and between Jewish communities around the world. Franz Boas...