Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings

Antique American modernist abstract landscape oil painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. No signature found.

Artist/ School: French School, indistinctly signed and also inscribed verso Title: Trees in the South of France. Beautiful green and blue colors. Medium: oil painting, on canvas, f...

Provencal Landscape by Louis Bellon (French 1908-1998) Signed and dated 1947 From a batch of similar work where most were dated 1942-1947 watercolour painting on paper, unframed mea...

**Technical Details** - Author: Josep Puigdengolas Barella (1906-1987) - Title: *Landscapes of the Pyrenees and Mallorca* - Technique: Oil on panel (painted on both sides) - ...

An original oil on board painting measuring 11 x 14 inches by Polish/American artist Leonard Rodowicz, signed lower left.

Beautifully detailed mid-century coastal landscape of Pillar Point Fishing Dock near Half Moon Bay, California by William Winthrop Ward (American, 1901-1985). Signed lower left: "W. ...

Nicely painted mid century abstract cubist oil painting. Great color and composition. Framed. Signed.

Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 30 x 40 Frame Size: 39 x 49 Medium: Oil on Canvas Dated 1957 "Bluebonnet Creek" Texas Hill Country Biography Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) Porfirio Salinas was a self-taught artist who painted landscapes of Central Texas with an emphasis on the vast bluebonnet fields that grow there in the springtime. Born in 1910 in Bastrop, Texas, he attended public schools in San Antonio. He also observed works in progress by the director of the San Antonio Art School, Jose Arpa, as well as landscape painter, Robert Wood. Wood is said to have paid Salinas five dollars a picture to paint bluebonnets because "he hated to paint bluebonnets". Salinas served in the military from 1943 to 1945. Although he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, he was allowed to live at home. At the fort, Colonel Telesphor Gottchalk assigned him to paint murals for the officer's lounge and various other projects, and Salinas continued to be able to paint during his entire conscripted period. Even before he achieved notoriety among galleries, dealers, and museums, Salinas was widely followed and appreciated by many Texans, including former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who may be considered responsible for launching Salinas popularity beyond the boundaries of Texas. In 1973, Texas capital, Austin, honored Salinas for having "done much to bring the culture of Mexico and Texas closer together with his paintings". Salinas died in April 1973 in San Antonio, Texas. From the years of the Great Depression through President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society of the 1960s, Texan Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) remained one of the Lone Star State's most popular artists. Today, his works remain popular with Texas collectors and those who love landscapes of the beautiful "Hill Country" that lies in the center of the state. One of the first Mexican American painters to become widely recognized for his art, Salinas was a favorite of President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, as well as of Sam Rayburn, the longest-serving Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Texas Governor John Connelly. In fact, President Johnson was so enamored with his Salinas paintings that the artist will forever be associated with America's first Texas-born President. Works by Porfirio Salinas are in a number of museum collections, grace the halls of the Texas State Capitol and the Governor's Mansion in Austin, and are included in virtually every major private collection of Early Texas Art. Porfirio Salinas was born on November 6, 1910, near the small town of Bastrop, Texas, about thirty miles from Austin. His father, Porfirio G. Salinas (1881-1967), and his mother, Clara G. Chavez, struggled to make a hardscrabble living as tenant farmers, but eventually were forced to give up farming. The family moved to San Antonio, where Salinas' father was able to get a job working as a laborer for the railroad, but the scenic area around Bastrop, with its pine trees and the wide expanse of the Rio Grande River, would forever remain a touchstone for the artist. For the rest of his life, Salinas and his brothers went back frequently to visit their grandmother in her little farmhouse. When in Bastrop, Porfirio painted on the banks of the Rio Grande or in the groves of pine trees. The Salinas family was close-knit and Porfirio was the middle child of five children, so he had an older brother and sister as well as a younger brother and sister. His mother was a native of Mexico, so throughout his childhood the family made the long drive to Mexico to visit Clara Salinas' family. As a child growing up in the bi-lingual section of San Antonio, Salinas drew and painted incessantly and by the time he was ten, he was already producing work that was mature enough to sell to his schoolteachers. Many years later in an article in the New York Times he was described as a "boy whose textbooks were seldom opened and whose sketchbook was never closed." Instead of studying, the young artist spent his spare time watching artists paint in and around San Antonio. As an aspiring painter, Salinas was fortunate to grow up in the historic city, which had the most active art scene in Texas. It was his exposure to older, professional painters that encouraged the precocious young painter to leave school early in order to help his family and pursue a career as a professional artist, despite his father's inability to see art as a career with any future for his son. When Salinas was about fifteen he came to know the artist Robert W. Wood (1889-1979). He met Wood while he was employed in an art supply store and he soon began to work as an assistant to the English-born painter, who had moved from Portland to San Antonio in 1924. Although the diminutive Englishman was already an established professional artist, he did not have a great deal of formal art training and so he was then studying with the academically trained Spanish painter Jose Arpa (1858-1952) in order to augment his knowledge and give his work a more polished look. Salinas was an eager young man, and while working in Wood's downtown San Antonio studio he learned to stretch canvases, frame paintings and to sketch in larger compositions from small plein-air studies for the English artist. He began to accompany Wood and Arpa to the hills outside San Antonio, where they painted small Plein-air studies of fields of blue lupin - the state flower, the famous "Bluebonnets" of Texas - in the springtime and scenes of the gnarled Red Oaks as they changed color in the fall. He was soon assisting Wood in the tedious work of painting the tiny blue flowers that collectors wanted to see in the landscapes they purchased of central Texas. According to a 1972 newspaper story, "Legend has it that one day in the 1920s artist Robert Wood decided he could not bear to paint another bluebonnet in one of his landscapes. He hired young Porfirio Salinas to paint them in for him at five dollars a painting." Whether this story is accurate or apocryphal isn't clear, but the ambitious and independent young Salinas wasn't destined to be anyone's assistant for very long. The formative event of Porfirio Salinas' teenage years was the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibitions, a Roaring-Twenties dream of the eccentric oilman Edgar B. Davis (1873-1951). These competitive shows of paintings of wildflowers and Texas life were mounted in San Antonio from 1927 to 1929. Held at the newly opened Witte Museum each spring, the exhibition featured large cash prizes donated by the philanthropic Davis, which were an inducement for artists to travel from all over the United States to paint in the Hill Country of Texas. The "Davis Competitions," as they were known, helped to cement San Antonio's reputation as an art center, a legacy that remains with the "River City" today. The shows generated a great deal of excitement in the area, helping to make celebrities of the some of the artists who had already settled there and encouraging others to make San Antonio their home. Over the three years that the wildflower competitions were held, more than 300 paintings were exhibited, and many thousands of viewers saw the paintings at the Witte Museum and on tours throughout the state and in New York. Each year Davis would generously purchase the winning paintings and then donate them to the San Antonio Art League. Young Porfirio Salinas would have been able to not only watch his two mentors - Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa - paint the works that they entered in the Davis Competitions, he would have been able to see Arpa take several of the major prizes, receiving the judge's accolades for "Verbena," "Cactus Flower" and "Picking Cotton," works that are still on view at the San Antonio Art League Museum today. Unfortunately, Davis eventually put his donations to work in other charitable endeavors, bringing to an end the wildflower events, but only after they inspired Salinas and other young painters and had helped to make wildflower paintings the most sought-after subject for traditionalist Texas collectors. In 1930, when he was only twenty, Salinas hung out a shingle and began to paint professionally, augmenting the sales of his easel paintings with what little business he could garner by painting signs for local concerns. It was a struggle for the young artist to make a living, as the effects of the Great Depression were settling in. His early works are very similar to those of Robert Wood's, both in subject matter and treatment. Salinas did small paintings of Bluebonnets for the tourists who visited San Antonio to see the famous Alamo as well as paintings of the Texas missions...

A wonderful depiction of a wooded Landscape by the lake and autumn leaves falling by the country side. For this beautiful depiction, we find distinct elements that are unique to the ...

View of a Port "59" French Modernist School Oil on canvas Illegibly signed. l.r., dated "59" 28 3/4 x 23 3/4 (30 x 25 frame) inches A positively brilliant, Modernist view of a French port...

Jean Porcher, French, 1927, La vieille 'Fiat abandonnée', Oil on canvas modernist painting Provenance: verso gallery label "Galerie Drouant-David St Honore Paris" Hand signed and dated verso and along top to upper left 19 3/4 x 29, framed 22 x 31 1/2 It depicts an antique abandoned Italian Fiat car...

3875 Japanese gouache landscape painting on silk set in a brass metal frame See matching painting #3874

Vintage American modernist landscape oil painting by Frank Barry. Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Measuring 27 by 31 inches overall and 18 by 22 painting alone. Nicely framed in a wood...

Peaceful winter landscape of a calm stream winding through a snowy forest by Lorenz Griffith (American, 1889-1968). Signed "Lorenz Griffith" lower left. Titled "A Winter Stream - Virginia" and dated 1960 on verso. Presented in a giltwood frame. Image size: 23.25"H x 29"W. Lorenz E. Griffith was born in Indiana; he was active/lived in North Carolina, Florida, Indiana and many places across the United States. Lorenz Griffith is known for luminist landscapes and portraits. He was painted in the style of the Florida Highwaymen...

Medium: Watercolour on paper, unframed Size: 10 inches (height) x 14 inches (width) Signed: No Condition: Sound condition Provenance: Private collection Description: This watercolor...

Sunlit Village in Provence mid 20th century signed oil on board, unframed Board : 7.5 x 10.75 inches Provenance: private collection, France Condition: very good condition Descripti...

Vintage American school modernist painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. Unsigned. Image size, 30L x 24H. Housed in a period frame.

Guy C. Wiggins Silvery Days, Madison Square Park, 1962 Signed lower left; signed, titled "Silvery Days" and dated on the reverse Oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches Guy Carleton Wiggins is...

Artist: Jacques Gaston, French XXth Title: Champs Elysses at Dusk Year: circa 1950 Medium: Oil on Canvas mounted to Wood, signed l.r. Image: 24 x 36 in. (60.96 x 91.44 cm) Frame: 33 ...

Transport yourself to the heart of Paris during the enchanting 1940s with this exquisite original painting by the renowned artist Moura Chabor (1905 - 199...

Title: Mid-Century French Watercolour Beach Scene With Green Umbrella and Seated Figure by Anne Marie Migette Perard (French 1902-1977) Medium: Watercolor on unframed paper Size: 13....

Oil on board. Framed.

In this piece, the artist depicts his subject in an abstract and impressionistic way, capturing the busy Cafés in the streets of Paris portrayed in the dista...

Nicely executed early 1900s American impressionist coastal seacape painting. Oil on canvas. In excellent original condition. Handsomely framed in a period giltwood molding. Excel...

ROLLING GREENS Size: 60 x 66 cm (including frame) Oil on board A mid-century modernist landscape painting that features a serene rural scene characterised by geometric simplicity an...

Mid Century Autumn Landscape, Showers Beneath San Gabriel Hills by Aletha Martin Vibrant autumn landscape of a crystal clear stream under the San Gabriel Mountains by California art...

Work on canvas cardboard Golden wooden frame 24.5 x 30.5 x 2 cm This work of art depicts a bustling market scene, brimming with life and movement. The dynamic composition immediat...

This artwork titled "Red Forest" c.1960 is an oil painting on canvas by noted California artist Clifford Holmes 1876-1963. It is signed at the lower left co...

This beautiful large impressionist oil on canvas by French artist Charles Cermak was painted in the 1930's. The work depicts colourful sailing boats in a harbor on the Côte d'Azur, m...

A serene, ca. 1940s, Western landscape painting with horses by artist Francis Chapin. In a brown, wooden frame. Image size: 22" x 28". Framed size: 25" x 31". Provenance: Estate of the artist. Francis Chapin, affectionately called the “Dean of Chicago Painters” by his colleagues, was one of the city’s most popular and celebrated painters in his day. Born at the dawn of the 20th Century in Bristolville, Ohio, Chapin graduated from Washington & Jefferson College near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before enrolling at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922. He would set down deep roots at the Art Institute of Chicago, exhibiting there over 31 times between 1926 and 1951. In 1927 Chapin won the prestigious Bryan Lathrop Fellowship from the Art Institute – a prize that funded the artist’s yearlong study trip to Europe. Upon his return to the United States, Chapin decided to remain in Chicago, noting the freedom Chicago artists have in developing independently of the pressure to conform to pre-existing molds (as was experienced by artists in New York, for example). Chapin became a popular instructor at the Art Institute, teaching there from 1929 to 1947 and at the Art Institute’s summer art school in Saugatuck, Michigan (now called Oxbow) between 1934 – 1938 (he was the director of the school from 1941-1945). Chapin’s contemporaries among Chicago’s artists included such luminaries as Ivan Le Lorraine Albright...

The Beach French Impressionist artist, mid 20th century oil on canvas laid over board, framed painting: 7 x 9.5 inches framed: 9.5 x 11 inches condition: overall very good, a few min...

Finely painted American impressionist coastal landscape painting. Oil on board. Framed. Signed verso. Image size, 13 by 16 inches.

Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 25 x 30 Frame Size: 34 x 39 Medium: Oil on Canvas Circa 1950 "Lazy Day Blues" Texas Bluebonnet Biography Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) Porfirio Salinas was a self-taught artist who painted landscapes of Central Texas with an emphasis on the vast bluebonnet fields that grow there in the springtime. Born in 1910 in Bastrop, Texas, he attended public schools in San Antonio. He also observed works in progress by the director of the San Antonio Art School, Jose Arpa, as well as landscape painter, Robert Wood. Wood is said to have paid Salinas five dollars a picture to paint bluebonnets because "he hated to paint bluebonnets". Salinas served in the military from 1943 to 1945. Although he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, he was allowed to live at home. At the fort, Colonel Telesphor Gottchalk assigned him to paint murals for the officer's lounge and various other projects, and Salinas continued to be able to paint during his entire conscripted period. Even before he achieved notoriety among galleries, dealers, and museums, Salinas was widely followed and appreciated by many Texans, including former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who may be considered responsible for launching Salinas popularity beyond the boundaries of Texas. In 1973, Texas capital, Austin, honored Salinas for having "done much to bring the culture of Mexico and Texas closer together with his paintings". Salinas died in April 1973 in San Antonio, Texas. From the years of the Great Depression through President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society of the 1960s, Texan Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) remained one of the Lone Star State's most popular artists. Today, his works remain popular with Texas collectors and those who love landscapes of the beautiful "Hill Country" that lies in the center of the state. One of the first Mexican American painters to become widely recognized for his art, Salinas was a favorite of President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, as well as of Sam Rayburn, the longest-serving Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Texas Governor John Connelly. In fact, President Johnson was so enamored with his Salinas paintings that the artist will forever be associated with America's first Texas-born President. Works by Porfirio Salinas is in a number of museum collections, grace the halls of the Texas State Capitol and the Governor's Mansion in Austin, and are included in virtually every major private collection of Early Texas Art. Porfirio Salinas was born on November 6, 1910, near the small town of Bastrop, Texas, about thirty miles from Austin. His father, Porfirio G. Salinas (1881-1967), and his mother, Clara G. Chavez, struggled to make a hardscrabble living as tenant farmers, but eventually were forced to give up farming. The family moved to San Antonio, where Salinas' father was able to get a job working as a laborer for the railroad, but the scenic area around Bastrop, with its pine trees and the wide expanse of the Rio Grande River, would forever remain a touchstone for the artist. For the rest of his life, Salinas and his brothers went back frequently to visit their grandmother in her little farmhouse. When in Bastrop, Porfirio painted on the banks of the Rio Grande or in the groves of pine trees. The Salinas family was close-knit, and Porfirio was the middle child of five children, so he had an older brother and sister as well as a younger brother and sister. His mother was a native of Mexico, so throughout his childhood the family made the long drive to Mexico to visit Clara Salinas' family. As a child growing up in the bi-lingual section of San Antonio, Salinas drew and painted incessantly and by the time he was ten, he was already producing work that was mature enough to sell to his schoolteachers. Many years later in an article in the New York Times he was described as a "boy whose textbooks were seldom opened and whose sketchbook was never closed." Instead of studying, the young artist spent his spare time watching artists paint in and around San Antonio. As an aspiring painter, Salinas was fortunate to grow up in the historic city, which had the most active art scene in Texas. It was his exposure to older, professional painters that encouraged the precocious young painter to leave school early in order to help his family and pursue a career as a professional artist, despite his father's inability to see art as a career with any future for his son. When Salinas was about fifteen he came to know the artist Robert W. Wood (1889-1979). He met Wood while he was employed in an art supply store and he soon began to work as an assistant to the English-born painter, who had moved from Portland to San Antonio in 1924. Although the diminutive Englishman was already an established professional artist, he did not have a great deal of formal art training and so he was then studying with the academically trained Spanish painter Jose Arpa (1858-1952) in order to augment his knowledge and give his work a more polished look. Salinas was an eager young man, and while working in Wood's downtown San Antonio studio he learned to stretch canvases, frame paintings and to sketch in larger compositions from small plein-air studies for the English artist. He began to accompany Wood and Arpa to the hills outside San Antonio, where they painted small Plein-air studies of fields of blue lupin - the state flower, the famous "Bluebonnets" of Texas - in the springtime and scenes of the gnarled Red Oaks as they changed color in the fall. He was soon assisting Wood in the tedious work of painting the tiny blue flowers that collectors wanted to see in the landscapes they purchased of central Texas. According to a 1972 newspaper story, "Legend has it that one day in the 1920s artist Robert Wood decided he could not bear to paint another bluebonnet in one of his landscapes. He hired young Porfirio Salinas to paint them in for him at five dollars a painting." Whether this story is accurate or apocryphal isn't clear, but the ambitious and independent young Salinas wasn't destined to be anyone's assistant for very long. The formative event of Porfirio Salinas' teenage years was the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibitions, a Roaring-Twenties dream of the eccentric oilman Edgar B. Davis (1873-1951). These competitive shows of paintings of wildflowers and Texas life were mounted in San Antonio from 1927 to 1929. Held at the newly opened Witte Museum each spring, the exhibition featured large cash prizes donated by the philanthropic Davis, which were an inducement for artists to travel from all over the United States to paint in the Hill Country of Texas. The "Davis Competitions," as they were known, helped to cement San Antonio's reputation as an art center, a legacy that remains with the "River City" today. The shows generated a great deal of excitement in the area, helping to make celebrities of the some of the artists who had already settled there and encouraging others to make San Antonio their home. Over the three years that the wildflower competitions were held, more than 300 paintings were exhibited, and many thousands of viewers saw the paintings at the Witte Museum and on tours throughout the state and in New York. Each year Davis would generously purchase the winning paintings and then donate them to the San Antonio Art League. Young Porfirio Salinas would have been able to not only watch his two mentors - Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa - paint the works that they entered in the Davis Competitions, he would have been able to see Arpa take several of the major prizes, receiving the judge's accolades for "Verbena," "Cactus Flower" and "Picking Cotton," works that are still on view at the San Antonio Art League Museum today. Unfortunately, Davis eventually put his donations to work in other charitable endeavors, bringing to an end the wildflower events, but only after they inspired Salinas and other young painters and had helped to make wildflower paintings the most sought-after subject for traditionalist Texas collectors. In 1930, when he was only twenty, Salinas hung out a shingle and began to paint professionally, augmenting the sales of his easel paintings with what little business he could garner by painting signs for local concerns. It was a struggle for the young artist to make a living, as the effects of the Great Depression were settling in. His early works are very similar to those of Robert Wood's, both in subject matter and treatment. Salinas did small paintings of Bluebonnets for the tourists who visited San Antonio to see the famous Alamo as well as paintings of the Texas missions...

Woman in the Woods walking through trees towards Cottage in English Countryside, by 20th Century British Artist, David Mead (1906-1986) Art measures 24 x 20 inches Frame measures 30 x 25 inches Oil on Board, Presented in the original ornate frame David Mead was born in London in 1906. A self-taught painter, he started painting landscapes at the age of 9, greatly influenced by F W Hayes...

Antique American impressionist coastal seascape oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. Framed. Measuring 30 by 36 inches overall and 24 by 30 painting alone.

Antique American impressionist winter cityscape oil painting. Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Measuring 20 by 24 inches overall and 16 by 20 painting alone. In excellent original cond...

A country scene in Dachau, a town in Upper Bavaria, in the southern part of Germany. The painting is signed lower right. Canvas measures 23 1/2 x 19 1/2; housed in an elegant frame m...

6006 A mother and child,figurative impressionistic style palette oil on canvas applied on board.Displayed in a wood frame.Artist unknown.Image size 10.5 H x 13.5 W

Charming Village by the Water signed by Regine David (French mid 20th century, female) dated 1967 oil on canvas, framed framed: 21 x 25 inches canvas: 19.5 x 24.5 inches Provenance: ...

Antique American modernist farm landscape oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. Framed. Measuring 19 by 25 overall and 18 by 24 painting alone.

An exceptional impressionistic depiction of an afternoon at the Waterfront Cafe in Paris by Jules René Hervé. This piece takes place on a summer day with busy activities of figures l...

Vintage American modernist oil painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. No signature found.

Small Farm in the South of France by French Artist, Ely Laumonier (1895-1960) Art measures 24 x 18 inches Frame measures 28 x 22 inches (approx.) Antique Original Signed, Oil on ...

Wonderful Spanish landscape of a humble farm in Rota, Cadiz, Spain with horses, a cow with two herons, one of which is on cow's back by San Francisco artist John Sackas (American, 1910-2004), circa 1950s. Signed lower Left "Sackas" and verso Rota Farm House Cadiz" "John Sackas" . Verso has location, attribution and full artist's biography. Presented in gilt-toned carved wood frame. Image size: 14"H x 18"W. Born in New Jersey on May 22, 1910. John Sackas studied at the San Francisco Art Institute (1934), Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and California School of Fine Arts, Jerry...

Vintage signed large abstract oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed.

The Rolling Hills of Connemara Irish artist, mid 20th century signed oil on board, unframed board: 14 x 20 inches Provenance: private collection, UK Condition: very good condition D...

Antique American modernist landscape pastel painting. Pastel on board. Framed in plexi box.

Hubert Glansdorff Belgian 1877 – 1963 Signed bottom right Picture Size: 19 x 28" (47 x 70cm) Outside Frame Size: 27 x 36" (67 x 90cm) A rare chance ...

Beautiful oil painting of a California lake by Margaret Ward (American, 20th century). Mountains of browns and reds shadow over a bright blue lake, with dark brown and green trees su...

Artist: Rene Portocarrero, Cuban (1912 - 1985) Title: Ciudad de la Habana, 1961 Medium: Oil on Canvas Size: 34 x 24 inches Provenance: Private Cuban Collection in South Florida....

This watercolor painting features the majestic Mount Ararat, viewed from the valley where the artist resided. It exemplifies the distinctive style of Martiros Saryan, showcasing his ...

This stunning Scottish oil painting is by noted landscape artist Douglas Falconer. Painted circa 1960 the composition is of a seated golden eagle in a mountainous highland landscape....

Artist: Unsigned Mid 20th Century (circa 1950/60) English School Title: "Expansive Birds Eye View Of Exeter Devon High Street" Medium: oil on board Size: 130cm x 70cm inc frame Com...

LARGE OIL PAINTING MARITIME SHIP MASTERPIECE 20th CENTURY GGF OIL PAINTING LARGE JEAN LAURENT (NAVY ADMIRALTY 20th CENTURY Very good condition for age , (see pictures) FINE RARE ...

Oil on canvas. Framed. Image size, 18H x 24L.

The legendary French commune of Gordes, a romantic, ancient town in Provence, charms you with its narrow cobblestone streets which in turn entice you venture up to it's 10th century ...

Robert Wood (G. Day) (1889 -1979) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 25 x 30 Frame Size: 33 x 38 Medium: Oil "April" Texas Hill Country Bluebonnets Biography Robert Wood (G. Day) (1889 -1979) A painter of realistic landscapes reflecting a vanishing wilderness in America, Robert Wood (not to be confused with Robert E. Wood) is reportedly one of the most mass-produced artists in the United States. His painting became so popular he was unable to meet all of the demands, and many of his works were reproduced in lithographs and mass distributed as prints, place mats, and wall murals by companies including Sears, Roebuck. He was born in Sandgate, Kent on the south coast of England near Dover, the son of W.L. Wood, a famous home and church painter who recognized and supported his son's talent. In fact, he forced his son to paint by keeping him inside to paint rather than playing with his friends. At age 12, Wood entered the South Kensington School of Art. As a youth, he came to the United States in 1910, having served in the Royal Army, and he never returned to England. He traveled extensively all over the United States, especially in the West, often in freight cars, and also painted in Mexico and Canada. His itinerant existence took him to Illinois where he worked as a farmhand, to Pensacola, Florida where he married, briefly in Ohio, Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. In 1912, he was in Los Angeles, and in the late 1920s and early 1930s, in San Antonio, Texas, where he lived and in 1928 exhibited in the "Texas Wildflower Competition." From San Antonio, he gained a national reputation for his strong colored, dramatic paintings. Some of that prestige has been credited to his association with Jose Arpa, prominent Texas artist. Wood also gave art lessons, and one of his students was Porfirio Salinas. During this period, Wood sometimes signed his paintings G. Day or Trebor, which is Robert spelled backwards. In 1941 he went to California and painted numerous desert and mountain landscapes and coastal scenes. He lived in Carmel for seven years, and then moved to Woodstock, New York, but he soon returned to California, settling first in Laguna Beach, then San Diego, and finally in the High Sierras, where he and his wife built a home and studio near Bishop and lived until his death in 1979. Robert Wood was born March 4, 1889, in Sandgate, England, a small town on the Kentish coast not far from the white cliffs of Dover. His father, W. J. Wood, was a successful painter who recognized Robert's unusual talent. At the age of twelve, his father enrolled Wood in art school in the small town of Folkstone. He then attended the South Kensington School of Art. While attending art school, Wood won four first awards and three second awards, one each year, a record. In 1910 after service in the Royal Army, nineteen-year-old Wood and his friend, Claude Waters, immigrated to America. Initially, he settled in Illinois and worked as a hired hand on a farm belonging to Water's uncle. He would then strike out on his own, living the life of an itinerant painter. Wood traveled as a hobo, hopping freight trains and selling or bartering small paintings to support him along the way. When times were hard, he worked at whatever job was available. In this manner, he saw most of the United States and fell in love with rural America. By 1912, Wood visited Los Angeles for the first time, arriving on the day of the Titanic tragedy. Later that year, he had met, courted and married young Eyssel Del Wagoner in Florida. The couple moved to Ohio where a daughter, Florence, was born. During World War I, the family moved to Seattle where a son, John Robert Wood, was born in 1919. In the early 1920's, the young Wood family was almost constantly on the move. They stayed for short periods in Kansas, Missouri, California and for a longer time in Portland, Oregon, where Wood's friend Claude Waters had settled. Wood's seemingly endless wanderings disrupted his family life and delayed his development as a painter. However, through his travels he developed an appreciation for the American landscape that would inspire him for the rest of his career. Although aware of the current movement away from traditional realism in American art, he elected to travel that solitary path and remain true to his own vision of American’s grandeur and beauty poetically translated through his landscape and seascape paintings. In 1923, the Wood family discovered the beautiful city of San Antonio, Texas and it was there that he and his family would finally settle. He studied briefly at the San Antonio Art School with Spanish colorist Jose Arpa y Perea (1860-1952), who had arrived in San Antonio that same year. In the latter part of the 1920’s, Jose Arpa’s influence quickly became evident. Wood after several years of experimentation was becoming fine easel painter, capable of great subtlety with a new mature original style. Like Texas painters Robert Onderdonk (1853-1917) and his son Julian Onderdonk (1882-1922), Robert Wood concentrated on the distinctive Texas landscape with its Red Oak trees and wildflowers that covered the hill country landscape. He developed a reputation for his scenes of Blue Bluebonnets, the state flower. In the spring, the Texas prairie is covered with wildflowers, especially in the hill country surrounding San Antonio and Austin. Wood incorporated native stone barns and rough wood farmhouses that added authenticity and romance to his compositions. In 1925, Wood was divorced from his wife. In 1932, he moved to the famous scenic loop on San Antonio's outskirts. While still living in Texas, he took extensive western sketching...

Impressive American impressionist winter landscape oil painting. Framed. Oil on board. Signed. Image size, 9H by 11L.