Louis Aston Knight

Twilight along the River Bend

1920's

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...

Edward Francis Rook American, 1870-1960 Brittany Oil on Canvas 30 by 30 in. W/frame 38 by 38 in. Signed lower left Circa, 1898-1900 Rook, born in New York City on September 21, 1870, became one of the most original impressionists at Old Lyme. First he was a student of Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian.  Life started out to be rather promising for Rook, around the turn of the century.  He exhibited at the Cincinnati Art Museum and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, both in 1898, when his harbor scene, entitled Pearl Clouds — Moonlight was reproduced in International Studio, in April.  In addition, the PAFA presented him with the Temple Gold Medal for Deserted Street, Moonlight, which the Academy purchased.  Three years later, Rook was awarded a bronze medal at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, where he exhibited three landscapes.  Caffin (1902, p. xxxvi) praised the artist's "translucent quality of color," which suggests a study of color theory.  Also in 1901, Rook married Edith Sone.  For most of 1902, the Rooks were in Mexico. Rook came to Old Lyme in October of 1903.  The date is significant because Childe Hassam was also there that month.  Hassam would more or less re-orient the artists' colony from Tonalism to impressionism.  Rook would move there permanently two years later.  He took two medals at the St. Louis Universal Exposition (1904) where his landscapes from the Mexican trip were displayed.  More awards followed: a silver medal at the International Fine Arts Exposition in Buenos Aires, 1910, a gold medal at San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915,  a Corcoran Bronze Medal, and a William A. Clark Award in 1919 for Peonies.   By 1924, the artist was made a National Academician.  Despite all these awards and recognition, Rook did little in the way of selling his art and reportedly, his prices were too high.  His paintings were handled by Macbeth and Grand Central Art Galleries. Rook was active in Old Lyme's art community.  As stated above, he would have met Hassam that October in 1903 but Willard Metcalf had departed at the end of the summer.  As several writers have explained (Connecticut and American Impressionism, 1980, p. 123), Hassam "was the catalyst around whom [impressionism] coalesced."   Rook's niece, Virginia Rook Garver, who happened to be the grand-niece of Hassam, confirmed that Rook and Hassam knew each other in Europe — before they went to Old Lyme (Fischer, 1987, p. 19).  Rook was one of the relatively young painters to come to Old Lyme, along with Gifford Beal, William Chadwick, and Robert Nisbet, on the wave of impressionism, initiated there by Hassam and Metcalf.  Old Lyme became a center of American impressionism, and as Donelson F. Hoopes remarked, "under Hassam, the shoreline of Connecticut became a kind of Giverny of America."  Among Ranger's group, palettes started to become lighter, except those of the most determined tonalists.  Ranger himself, perhaps admitting defeat, moved to Noank in 1904.  Rook is best known for his views of Bradbury's Mill, which was soon called Rook's Mill, owing to the painter's many versions of the scene.  One, called Swirling Waters, dated ca. 1917, is in the Lyme Historical Society.  Even more famous is Rook's Laurel, dated between 1905 and 1910 (Florence Griswold Museum), in which a profuse laurel bush (the state flower), is set off by a spectacular Constable-like background.  But Swirling Waters could never be confused with Constable, with its violent brushwork, impasto-layered water, and bright, almost chalky, plein-air palette.  Gerdts (1984, p. 226) compares the paintings of Walter...

A beautiful oil on canvas painting by the French artist, Jean Salabet. Salabet was a Parisian painter known for his colorful cityscapes depicting the times of his generation. His wor...

Mid 20th Century oil on canvas view of a street in Grenada, Spain by J Georges. The painting is signed and titled bottom right. Presented in a deep patinated and gilt wood frame. A ...