Philip Reisman

Sheltered Harbor oil painting by Philip Reisman

Circa 1949

Signed lower right: "Atherton", inscribed "John Atherton Original Tempera 7/28/50" on verso. Artwork measures 16" x 20" and framed 20" x 24" x 2 ½" About this artists: John Atherton (1900-1952) did not show an early aptitude for art; rather, his first love was nature and the activities he relished there, mainly fishing and hunting. Born in Brainerd, Minnesota in 1900, he learned to fish with his father from the age of four. Later the family moved to Spokane, Washington, and when he was old enough, Atherton worked at a variety of jobs to help support his family. One such job, in the sorting plant of a lead and silver mine, paid $4.25 a day—a good wage, though he never had time to spend his money, since he worked seven days a week. After serving in the Navy for a year during World War I, Atherton was determined to get an education. He worked as a sign painter and played the banjo in a dance band, finally accumulating enough money to enroll in the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Once there, he worked like a fiend, attending classes both during the day and at night, getting the best training available. Though he had always intended to be a fine artist, Atherton’s first jobs were for commercial art firms. In 1929, using the prize money won for a painting he entered in an art competition, Atherton and his wife moved to New York City. Though the economic situation was difficult in those years, he managed to keep going by taking commissions for magazine illustrations, and over the years he would paint more than forty covers for The Saturday Evening Post. In 1938, an artist friend suggested that he use the same flat, decorative style as his commercial work for his gallery paintings. This was a breakthrough for Atherton; soon afterwards he held a one-man show at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, and his paintings began to be collected by museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Atherton’s reputation increased to a national scale when he designed the art deco stone lithograph poster for the 1939 World’s Fair that strikingly depicted Earth and its atmospheric layers in the lap of Liberty. Atherton was highly influenced by the magic realist...

Emily Sartor’s paintings are both precise and lush, often hinting at a romantic disaster. Using exaggerated color and dramatic paint handling, Sartor creates a world where experience...

This work epitomizes Prestopino's interest in social realism which captures a quiet interlude in the everyday life of an "everyman." It also provides a contrast for our expectations as we view a tough, blue collar worker, with no one watching, as he sings a melody to the birds. In an original frame measuring 49" x 39" x 3.25" Provenance: Edith Halpert's Downtown Gallery (label verso from 13 w. 113th street, where the gallery was located from 1926 until 1939) Private collection, NYC, c. 1935 By descent About this artist: Born in Little Italy in 1907, Gregorio Prestopino first set out to become a sign painter as the son of New York City immigrants. Instead, his talent provided a life-changing scholarship to the National Academy of Design, and for five years he studied drawing under C. W. Hawthorne. He spent the summer of 1934 at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. His deep involvement with the colony led him to later serve as its director in 1954. Much of Prestopino’s work was in the vein of social realism. During the 1940s and 1950s he became deeply invested in portraying everyday Manhattan and Harlem scenes. He first became interested in the Ashcan school at the National Academy of Design, and remained committed to an interest in working with urban scenes. His lively treatment of people and events revealed his affinity for sixteenth-century artist Pieter Breughel...

Canvas measures 24" x 30" and framed 30" x 36" x 3" About this artist: Anni Baldaugh was the daughter of Anthonius Hendricus Schade van Westrum. With a father who was a naval officer, the van Westrum family spent significant amounts of time in the Dutch East Indies. After returning to Europe, Baldaugh studied art with various teachers in Vienna, Munich and Paris. She and her husband ended up living in Los Angeles, though they suffered financial losses during World War I. While in Los Angeles, Baldaugh joined the California Watercolor Club, the California Society of Miniature Painters, the Bookplate Association International, the Laguna Beach Art Association, and the San Diego Fine Arts Society. She also became a member of the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts. During the Great Depression...

Provenance: The Artist. Menikoff collection (friends of the artist) About this artist: Born in Little Italy in 1907, Gregorio Prestopino first set out to become a sign painter as th...

Byron Browne On the Beach (1959) Oil on canvas, 20" x 26" 26" x 32" x 1" frame size - likely original Inscribed verso "On the Beach / 1959 / Byron Browne" Provenance: Private collection, Berkley, California About this artist: Through an oeuvre displaying the re-envisioning of figural subjects and the formation of an abstract expressionist style, Byron Browne stands out among the American abstractionists of his generation. Born in Yonkers, New York, in 1907, the artist was a bright talent at the National Academy of Design in his teens. From 1924 to 1928 Browne studied at the Academy under notable artists Robert Aitkin, Charles Courtney Curran, Charles Hawthorne, Alice Murphy...

This work is part of our exhibition - American Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s A Valley Streetscape at Night, 1948, oil on masonite, signed and dated lower right, 18 x 24 inch...

Original oil on masonite painting by the Russian/ American artist, Nahum Tschacbasov. Signed lower right. Circa 1950. Unframed. Condition: Good. Provenance: Estate of the artist. Nahum Tschacbasov’s paintings are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Jewish Museum, the Philadelphia Museum, the Pennsylvania Museum of Fine Art, as well as numerous college and private collections. His work was shown at ACA Gallery in New York, as well as Perl’s Gallery and John Heller...

Oil on masonite painting by the Russian/American artist Nahum Tschacbasov. Signed middle right and dated 1955. It depicts a white stallion riding on a wooden raft in rough seas with...

Emilio Trad (Argentinian, b. 1953) Untitled, 1978 Oil on Masonite 18 x 14 inches Signed and dated on the reverse Emilio Trad was born in 1953, in Buenos A...

A colorful view of Martha's Vineyard by Francis Chapin, from the 1930s. 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). A prolific painter, Chapin produced numerous works while traveling in Mexico, France, Spain, Saugatuck and Martha’s Vineyard, where he frequently spent summers and taught at the Old Sculpin Gallery there. Chapin was best recognized for his dynamic and vibrant images of Chicago during the 1930s and 40s. Chapin was a resident of the Old Town neighborhood where he lived and kept his studio on Menomonee Street for many years. Described as a “colorful figure, nearly 6 feet 6 inches tall, and thin, and usually wearing tweeds”, it is easy to imagine Chapin at work observing the busy street life of the city. In addition to his many exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, Chapin’s work was shown during his lifetime at such institutions as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the National Academy of Design, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, among others. Francis Chapin’s paintings are represented in the collections the Art Institute of Chicago; the Friedman Collection, Chicago; the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown; the Denver Art Museum; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse; the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach...

A colorful view of Martha's Vineyard (Depicting Edgartown's main street) by Francis Chapin, from around 1950. Francis Chapin, affectionately called the “Dean of Chicago Painters” by...