Sally Michel-Avery

"Bucolic Landscape" Sally Michel Avery, Female American Modernist Bright Pastel

1963

Walter Shirlaw (1838 - 1909) The Coming Storm Oil on canvas 18 x 26 inches Signed lower right Exhibited: The Boston Art Club. Walter Shirlaw, born on August 6, 1838, was only three (fourteen according to one obituary) when he came to Hoboken, New Jersey from his place of birth, Paisley, Scotland. As a young man, he found work as a bank note engraver, a profession that he continued in Chicago, where he lived between 1865 and 1870. But already in 1861 he was exhibiting genre paintings at the National Academy of Design. In 1868, Shirlaw was a member of the Chicago Academy of Design, which would become the Art Institute of Chicago, after changing its name from the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Shirlaw spent the years 1870-77 in Munich, at the height of the movement led by Wilhelm Leibl in which a low-keyed, dark palette, combined with bold, virtuoso brushwork, were applied to realist subject matter. Michael Quick (in Quick, Ruhmer, and West, 1978, p. 28) defined the time of Shirlaw's arrival (1870-73) as an especially experimental period in progressive German painting. Shirlaw's teachers, however, sided with tradition. The genre painter Arthur Ramberg (1819-1895) and Wilhelm von Lindenschmidt (1829-1895), his successor at the Munich Academy, taught Shirlaw composition. The painter of genre scenes and landscapes, Alexander von Wagner (1838-1919) was Shirlaw's teacher in painting. T. H. Bartlett (in American Artists and Their Works, 1889, vol. 1, p. 23) mentioned that Shirlaw regarded Leibl as too realistic. Shirlaw won a scholarship at the Academy in 1874, the year in which he executed Toning the Bell (Art Institute of Chicago). Meanwhile, he was active as one of the "Duveneck Boys" in Polling. Sheep Shearing in the Bavarian Highlands (Private collection), painted under Lindenschmidt's direction in 1876, is regarded as one of Shirlaw's most important pictures. He exhibited it upon his return to America at the National Academy in the following year; in 1878, it won an Honorable Mention in Paris. In 1877, the second school year of the Art Students League, Lemuel E. Wilmarth announced that he would be returning to teach at the NAD. Frank Waller (1842-1923) took over as president of the ASL, and Shirlaw was hired to teach painting and drawing. The appointment was endorsed by Waller: "In Munich . . . he was regarded as one of the strongest of the American students and had the strong personality which would attract and influence others to have confidence in him, was so genuine in his artistic impulses and in his interest in the development of art in this country. . . ." (quoted by Landgren, 1940, p. 32). The hiring of Shirlaw and William Merritt Chase seemed to signify a preference of Munich over Paris among the members of the Art Students League, however, while Chase was under Leibl's spell, Shirlaw was strictly academic. During the fourth season at the ASL, Shirlaw taught composition. Thomas Wilmer Dewing...

Jean-Charles Cazin Ploughing on the Hillside Signed lower left Oil on board 6 1/2 x 6 inches The son of a well-known doctor, FJ Cazin, he was born at Samer, Pas-de-Calais. After st...

Georgina Klitgaard (1893 - 1976) Buttermilk Bay, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 1933 Oil on canvas 18 x 30 inches Signed lower right Provenance: Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, New York Harold Ordway Rugg Private Collection, Western New York Georgina Berrian was born in Spuyten Duyvil, New York in 1893. She was educated at Barnard College...

Georgina Klitgaard Pueblo Indians, Taos, New Mexico Signed lower right Oil on canvas 18 x 24 inches Georgina Klitgaard’s art has sometimes gotten lost in the critical propensity to...

A Wonderful, Mid-Century Modern Painting of a Jockey & Horse Race by Noted Chicago Artist, Rudolph Pen. Painted circa 1955, the painting exemplifies the artist's love of horse racin...

Circus Elephants American Modernism WPA Regionalism Mid-Century Modern Oil. Signed lower left. Not much is known about Marco de Marco, but just look at...

Seagulls (Birds in Flight), 1982 By. Jim Palmer (American, b. 1941) Signed and Dated Lower Right Unframed: 32" x 36" Framed: 37" x 42.5" Born in 1941 in Columbia, South Carolina, Jim Palmer attended the University of South Carolina in 1960 before going on to study at the Atlanta School of Art in 1964. In 1966 he and his wife moved to Hilton Head Island, the second artist to do so during the Island's early years. Since living here, he designed the cover of the Chamber of Commerce' Islander Magazine, has been a contributing artist to the Island Events Magazine, and has painted many Low Country scenes that grace homes and businesses throughout the country. Palmer was the illustrator for two books written by local authors: A Corner of South Carolina and Moonshadows. His work has been included in exhibits at the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga, TN; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Southeastern Artists Exhibition, Atlanta, GA; Greenville County Art Museum, Greenville, SC; Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, GA; and Bay Hills Club, Orlando, FL. His paintings are part of the private collections of C&S National Banks in Columbia and Hilton Head Island; Banker's Trust Tower, Columbia, SC; Palmetto State Bank, Bluffton, SC, among others. Several paintings are also included in the collections of former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Dwight Eisenhower, former South Carolina Governor Robert McNair and singer John Denver.

Jungle with creative license of tangled growth and bright flowers and peaking out from the foliage is a strange hybrid of jungle cat. Playful and somewhat surreal. Jungle Creature -...