Robert Noel Blair

Country Home and Windmill

1950'S

An original modernist oil painting by American female artist Esther Rollick.

An original oil on canvas by listed New York female artist Enid Smiley.

An original modern 1930's oil painting by WPA era American artist Henry Ensol. This work comes in a period frame likely original to the piece.

A modernist oil painting by New York modernist Karl Fortress (1907-1993). The painting has provenance from the Cornell Art Museum. In excellent original condition. Signed lower le...

Wonderful modernist landscape painting. Francis Kelly was born in 1927 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He received his early education in Chicago and California. He served in the United States Navy from 1944 to 1948 when he entered the Art Center School, Los Angeles. During 1951 in 1952 he lived in Paris, attending the Academie de la Grande, Chaumiere. In 1953 he went to the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, and then to the University of California at Los Angeles, where he was graphic laboratory assistant to John Paul Jones. Awarded a Fulbright Grant in 1955 he came to the Graphic Department of the Central School, London. The St. George's Gallery first introduced his etchings in Britain. In 1958 Kelly was awarded the Stacy Grant for painting. His work has been shown at Royal Academy Exhibitions and he has traveled extensively. In 1966 he was appointed Art organizer for the U.S. Embassy "Festival of Arts in Humanities". His paintings were shown in the exhibition "Five American Artists in Britain". During 1976 he acted in a similar capacity on behalf of Windsor & Newton Ltd., who sponsored an exhibition of American artists commemorating the U.S. Bicentennial. He appeared in the film Science in Art. Kelly has studied painting conservation at the Courtald Institute. In 1967 he was sent to the Italian Art and Archives Rescue Fund to Florence to restore flood damaged paintings. In 1971 his book, Art Restoration, was published by David and Charles and in the U.S. by McGraw-Hill. His second book, The Studio and The Artist was published in 1975. Kelly's work has been shown at 24 museums in Great Britain and numerous galleries. Acquisitions have been made by many public and private collections, universities and educational services. During more than 40 years in Britain he has found a growing affinity with the countryside, observing less the well-known landmarks but rather more the timeless rural lanes and by-ways as yet still unspoiled by building and industry. A member of the group in Brighton preserving Brighton's West Pier, he has produced a series of works recording the ravages of time on this finest of Victorian structures.

Vintage modernist landscape signed Nannette Rhodes Hayes. Titled on the reverse Berkshire Hills and dated 1961.

An elegant oil on canvas landscape painting featuring a lake view in a paradisiac environment. The painting is finely framed in custom giltwood frame. A wonderful addition to any liv...

Six O-Clock, c. 1942, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, signed and titled several times verso of frame and stretcher (perhaps by another hand), marked “Rehn” several times on frame (for the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York City, who represented Craig at the time); Exhibited: 1) 18th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings from March 21 to May 2, 1943 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. #87, original price $450 (per catalog) (exhibition label verso), 2) Craig’s one-man show at the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, New York City, from October 26 to November 14, 1942, #10 (original price listed as $350); and 3) Exhibition of thirty paintings sponsored by the Harrisburg Art Association at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg in March, 1944 (concerning this exhibit, Penelope Redd of The Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) wrote: “Other paintings that have overtones of superrealism inherent in the subjects include Tom Craig’s California nocturne, ‘Six O’Clock,’ two figures moving through the twilight . . . .” March 6, 1944, p. 13); another label verso from The Museum of Art of Toledo (Ohio): original frame: Provenance includes George Stern Gallery, Los Angeles, CA About the Painting Long before Chris Burden’s iconic installation outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Urban Light, another artist, Tom Craig, made Southern California streetlights the subject of one of his early 1940s paintings. Consisting of dozens of recycled streetlights from the 1920s and 1930s forming a classical colonnade at the museum’s entrance, Burden’s Urban Light has become a symbol of Los Angeles. For Burden, the streetlights represent what constitutes an advanced society, something “safe after dark and beautiful to behold.” It seems that Craig is playing on the same theme in Six O-Clock. Although we see two hunched figures trudging along the sidewalk at the end of a long day, the real stars of this painting are the streetlights which brighten the twilight and silhouette another iconic symbol of Los Angeles, the palm trees in the distance. Mountains in the background and the distant view of a suburban neighborhood join the streetlights and palm trees as classic subject matter for a California Scene painting, but Craig gives us a twist by depicting the scene not as a sun-drenched natural expanse. Rather, Craig uses thin layers of oil paint, mimicking the watercolor technique for which he is most famous, to show us the twinkling beauty of manmade light and the safety it affords. Although Southern California is a land of natural wonders, the interventions of humanity are already everywhere in Los Angeles and as one critic noted, the resulting painting has an air of “superrealism.” About the Artist Thomas Theodore Craig was a well-known fixture in the Southern California art scene. He was born in Upland California. Craig graduated with a degree in botany from Pomona College and studied painting at Pamona and the Chouinard Art School with Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Barse Miller among others. He became close friends with fellow artist Milford Zornes...

This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s. Gracie Mansion, c. 1944, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 25 x 30 inches, presented in a ne...

This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s Goldmine, Central City, Colorado, oil on canvas, 36 x 28 inches, c. 1936, signed lower right, ex collection of Platt Fine Art, Chicago, Illinois (label verso). About the Painting Joseph Meert’s painting, Goldmine, Central City, Colorado, depicts the short-lived resurrection of a once prominent city just outside Denver. Central City was founded in 1859 soon after John Gregory struck gold in the area. As word spread, thousands of miners converged into “Gregory’s Gulch” and its surroundings became known as the “richest square mile on earth.” Mining production quickly increased resulting in Central City to becoming Colorado’s largest city in the early 1860s. Despite some technical difficulties transitioning to lode mining and the rise of competition from Leadville, Central City remained an economic boom town through the turn of the century. But, with every boom, there is a bust. World War I marked the end of Central City’s prominence as ore production ground to a halt and by 1925, the town’s population shrank to only 400 people. The desperation of the Great Depression and a nearly 100% increase in the price of gold lured labor and capital back to Central City. Meert painted in Colorado during the mid-1930s, a time when he created his most desirable works. It is during this period of renaissance that Meert captures one of Central City's outlying dirt streets bordered by 19th century wooden houses from the town's heyday and the more recently installed electric lines leading to a distant gold mine. A lone figure trudges up the hill, a mother with a baby in her arms, putting us in mind of the rebirth of the town itself. Meert had solo exhibitions at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in 1936 and the Denver Art Museum. Although it is not known whether Goldmine, Central City was included in either of these exhibitions, it seems likely. Moreover, the painting is closely related to Meert’s painting, The Old Road, which was painted in 1936 and exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and at the Dallas Museum of Art. About the Artist Joseph Meert was a well-regarded painter and muralist, who initially made a name for himself in the American Scene and later as an abstract expressionist. Although initially successful, Meert struggled financially and with mental illness later in life. He was born in Brussels, Belgium, but moved with his family to Kansas City, Missouri. As a child, a chance encounter at the Union Pacific Railyard changed his life. Meert happened upon a worker repainting and stenciling a design on a railroad car. Meert later recalled that this experience introduced him to the idea of being a painter. Without support from his father, Meert obtained a working scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute. After four years at the Kansas City Art Institute, Meert studied seven years at the Art Students League and in Europe and Los Angeles. At the Art Students League, Meert fell under the spell of Thomas Hart Benton and Stanton MacDonald-Wright. In 1931, he befriended Jackson Pollock. By 1934, Meert was part of the Public Works of Art Project when he met his wife, Margaret Mullin...

This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness. Oil on canvas, 13 x 9 inches, Signed lower left

This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness. Oil on canvas, 15 ¾ x 24 inches, Signed and titled verso on stretcher Exhibited: [Solo Exhibition] Cha...