Rudolph Pen

A Dynamic Mid-Century Modern Landscape Painting w. Female Figures by Rudolph Pen

circa 1960s

A Vibrant, Captivating Mid-Century Modern Summer Landscape Painting by Noted Chicago Artist, Rudolph T. Pen (Am. 1918 - 1989). Painted during the 1960s while the artist taught at th...

A large, dynamic Mid-Century summer landscape painting with female bathers by noted Chicago artist, Rudolph Pen. A wonderful example of the artist's uniquely expressive figurative w...

A charming 1950s Mid-Century Modern painting of two children seated together in a soda shop by the noted Chicago artist, Francis Chapin. Artwork size: 15 1/2” x 21"; Framed size: 17...

A beautiful 1940s painting of a seated female nude in a summer landscape by renowned Chicago artist, Francis Chapin (Am. 1899-1965). Painted at the Oxbow School in Saugatuck, Michig...

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...

Mid Century California Oak Tree Original Oil Painting by Louise Cunningham Iconic California Oak tree during summer with golden tones and olive green foliage by Santa Cruz, California artist Louise H. Grosset Cunningham (American, 1881-1983) circa 1960. Displayed in a new carved giltwood frame. A gem of a California landscape painting by one of the six Monterey Bay area distinguished women artists. Medium: Oil paint on canvas Signed lower right "Louise Cunningham" Condition: Excellent Presented in new, gold gilt-toned wood frame Image, 16"H x 20"L. Framed size: 22"H x 26"W x 2.50"D A painter / architect/ pasteli, Louise Cunningham was born in Berkeley, California on May 4, 1881 of French parents. (Her uncle, Jules Jacques, was a distinguished Paris artist and a member of the French Royal Academy.) Louise Grossett began her art studies at age eleven at the Mark Hopkins Institute in San Francisco a program run by UC Berkley. She then spent most of her life as a resident of California, Berkley, San Francisco, Mt Lassen, Yosemite and then retired to Felton CA in 1955, She ran art classes from her studio on Lazy Woods Rd. She was the wife of Robert Cunningham...

Summer Resort in Michigan is an exceptional work painted by the Chicago Modernist, William Schwartz. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago shortly ...

This painting is illustrated in the Catalogue of the 1945 Encyclopedia Britannica Collection of Contemporary American Painting, p.84. Written and edited by Grace Pagano. "Painting ...