American Realist Landscape Paintings

A walk through any major museum will reveal paintings that depict or legitimate only certain kinds of experience. Despite the good intentions of critical theorists questioning the va...

James E. Buttersworth's most sought-after artworks emerge from his depictions of American racing yachts going head to head in the major regattas...

This evocative fine art painting captures the quiet allure of a backyard swimming pool at night, its glowing blue-green water illuminating the surrounding darkness. The carefully pla...

Born in San Pedro, California in 1969, Francis DiFronzo has been painting and exhibiting his artwork in the United States for more than thirty years. "I discovered at a young age that art had the ability to transport me out of my world and into the lives of artists I admired. When I looked at paintings by Andrew Wyeth or Edward Hopper, I felt as though I was momentarily living in the worlds they created. I wanted to do the same thing. I wanted my work to have that power." After receiving his B.F.A in 1994 from California State University, Fullerton, DiFronzo moved to Philadelphia, PA where he continued his studies in drawing and painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. There he worked and learned under the guidance of artists Murray Dessner, Jan Baltzell, Sidney Goodman, Vincent Desiderio and Irving Petlin. Di Fronzo...

keywords; brown, earth tones, surrealism, car portrait, car accident, oil painting, representation painting, strangeness, contemporary surrealistic, unsettling, contemporary realist painting, dreams, symbolic composition, tonalist, grey, monochrome, nostalgic, vintage, early century, illustration, car, automobile, old car wreck...

American, b. 1964 Michael Harrell focuses on capturing natural light in both landscapes and cityscapes while working with nautical themes, especially ...

Kevin Weckbach's (US based) "Light Pattern Dance" is an original, hand made oil painting that depicts a busy city sidewalk where passerby walk along the city avenue lined with towering buildings of a bustling neon metropolis. Artist Statement: "Subject matter to me is a vehicle for me to explore how I observe life. My urban influences are an assembly of varied fabrics stitched together to form a tapestry. It is not to resemble a literal story of what it is; moreover, it is a quilt that explains my visual expression. What I find particularly interesting in human intervention in nature is how we are still intertwined with it. Roads, buildings, and farmlands bend with the natural curves of mountains, hills, and streams. City nights are lit up like lightning bugs...

Marla Korr attended Brooklyn College, earning both a B.A. and a M.F.A. There she studied with Philip Pearlstein, Lennart Anderson and Jimmy Ernst. She has also studied at Stevenson...

Dina Brodsky has begun another chapter in her visual journal, documenting her newfound home on the New England coast. Her pinhole representations of the Massachusetts Cape pack virtu...

Mark Harrison's (UK based) "Ham Rock" is an oil painting that depicts an arid landscape with clouds and towering rock formations. Sometimes they are silent epic landscapes of the D...

Painted from life, from a beach, looking across a little harbor full of brightly colored boats towards a little whitewashed town. Along the shoreline are the remnants of a child’s sandcastle. Signed "Personett" lower left corner. Framed in a traditional black frame w gold trim. Framed dimensions: 13 x 12 inches Rachel Personett was born in Hawaii, but raised in Colorado. Being the daughter of a pilot she has always traveled extensively. She has studied part time at the Savannah College of Art and Design, The Angel Academy of Art, and finally settled on the Florence Academy of Art, graduating in 2015. In January 2016 she apprenticed the painter Odd Nerdrum in Norway for eight months. Rachel Personett works strictly from life, and enjoys the challenged of painting the ephemeral. Working from life provides the opportunity to travel around the world painting the ever changing people and landscapes. Artist Statement My mother had studied advertising in college, so she knew a lot about arts and good craftsmanship. She did talks at my elementary school each week and on a different artist. I remember being very moved by the images of Van Gogh and Andrew Wyeth. At the Florence Academy I really liked Sargent, Sorolla, Willard Metcalf, Henri Fantin-Latour and Velazquez. At Odd Nerdrums I gained new respect for Rembrandt and was introduced to other Scandinavian painters...

"White Peonies with Ribbon" is a contemporary classical realist still life painting. Framed dimensions: 31.25 x inches 35.25 inches Signed lower-right corner Steven J. Levin - (b....

"Farm Near Brandywine" by Diego Glazer is an original oil painting depicting a quaint farm scene. Artist Statement: Painted en plein air on the drive back to the Brandywine Museum ...

Oil on canvas Dr. Rowland S. Russell PhD. writes about his experience directly witnessing Greg's practice as a “plein air” artist: Whether he’s portraying quiet scenes from Brooklyn...

A walk through any major museum will reveal paintings that depict or legitimate only certain kinds of experience. Despite the good intentions of critical theorists questioning the validity of the canon, paintings of the old masters on the walls of museums like the Met, the Louvre, Rijks museum still have a certain cache. They're revered not just for their technique but because they enshrine our collective past experience. Of course, it's a selected past that gets validated. Conspicuously absent to me as a gay man...

​Represented by George Billis Gallery, NYC & LA -- Gary Faigin says of Kurt Solmssen’s work, “Though a realist, Kurt Solmssen does not so much record what ...

Monumental, important WPA painting by Percy Albee. The painting is oil canvas measuring 36" x 48". Titled verso "New Americans", this WPA painting was exhibited at the Carnegie Insti...

"Coral Cove Rock" is an oil painting by contemporary artist, Carl Bretzke. Coral Cove is located in Jupiter Florida, known for it's large rocks along the b...

Acrylic latex

Street Scene WPA American Scene Mid-20th Century Modern Coin Tower California SF Victor Arnautofff (1896 – 1979) City Street 12 x 14 inches Oil on board, c. 1930s Signed lower left BIO Born in the Ukraine of Russia, Victor Arnautoff became one of the most influential muralists in San Francisco in the 1930s and worked for the Federal Arts Project, WPA, in the expressive, social protest...

Signed (at lower left): W.R. Miller/ 1851

North Carolina native Jack Saylor received his degree in Art from Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina. Upon graduating he moved to Spain, then Italy w...

Mansard Window, Oil on canvas, cityscape Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn Dr. Rowland S. Russell PhD. writes about his experience directly witnessing Greg's practice as a “plein a...

Two Stories, realistic, historic urban architecture, cityscape, orange and red brick Oil on canvas Dr. Rowland S. Russell PhD. writes about his experience d...

Karl Hartman’s Homesteaders (2024) captures a vivid moment in the forest where two Pileated Woodpeckers industriously carve a home into an old pine. Painted in oil on aluminum, the w...

An Oil painting of boats in a marina. Above, the suns rays pierce through the clouds. American realist painter Carl Bretzke is particularly adept at nocturne scenes which ooze in d...

Gary Faigin says of Kurt Solmssen’s work, “Though a realist, Kurt Solmssen does not so much record what he sees, as use his surroundings as a point of departure for poetic homages to...

American, b. 1939 Prominent 21th Century American landscape artist Peter Poskas has been painting New England for more than three decades. While his earliest pieces were reminiscent of Edward Hopper...

Represented by George Billis Gallery, NYC & LA -- Humanity is archival, like the strata that compose the earth. Our structures and art, superfund sites to cathedrals, exist because o...

Artist: Miguel Dominguez – American (1941-) Title: Rural Relics Year: ca. 1990 Medium: Watercolor Sight size: 12 x 16 inches. Framed size: 20.5 x 24...

Marla Korr attended Brooklyn College, earning both a B.A. and a M.F.A. There she studied with Philip Pearlstein, Lennart Anderson and Jimmy Ernst. She has also studied at Stevenson...

This luminous New Hampshire White Mountain oil painting of Mount Chocorua at twilight was painted by contemporary American artist William R. Davis (195...

Michael Coleman (b 1946), is known for his landscapes of rich colors in a combination of realism and atmospheric styles, often with animals depicted and the suggestion of natural har...

"Aftermath Hurricane Laura" is a plein air landscape painting featuring hues of blue, green and brown. This work is oil on canvas paper, framed in a silver frame with mat measuring 23 by 25 inches. Kathryn Keller is inspired by the works of George Inness, Edward Hopper, Giorgio Morandi & Alexander Drysdale. Kathryn Keller is a painter based in New Orleans and Alexandria, Louisiana. She received a BA in Fine Art and English from the University of the South...

"Villa After Dark" is a realist nocturne painting of Italian farmhouse & dinner party under the lights. Framed. Signed at bottom left. Carl Bretzke is a representational painter who specializes in urban scenes, nocturnes, and plein-air landscapes. He is a member of the Plein Air Painters of America since 2021. Carl's work has been exhibited extensively in Minnesota and California, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Carl's work has been described in the Washington Post as "simultaneously intimate and detached…The artist's unadorned style recalls Edward Hopper and The Ashcan school." Carl holds an MD degree from the University of Minnesota Medical School. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Colorado...

Frederick Waugh was a prolific seascape artist who generated 2,500 paintings of the sea and shore. Although it was never published, he penned a ten chapter book on marine painting. S...

This is an original oil on velvet painting created c. 1942. Syd Cockell was an accomplished American illustrator during World War II.

An oil painting by American Realist painter, Steven Levin. Here, Levin depicts a still life that transports viewers to a tropical island with his realist image of gin and...

Industrial Mural Study, Veterans Memorial Building, Santa Barbara WPA American Joseph Edward Knowles (1907-1980) "Study for Industry Mural, Veterans Memorial Building, Santa Barbara, CA" 19 1/2 x 50 1/2 inches Oil on board, c. 1930s. Estate stamp verso Framed: 27 x 60 inches The completed mural is currently hanging on the wall, part of the building actually, at the Veterans Memorial Building in Santa Barbara. A photo of the work insitu is included in the attached photos. BIO Joseph Edward Knowles was born in Kendall, Montana, on June 15, 1907. He grew up in San Diego, California. At age twenty, two years before the beginning of the Great Depression, he moved north to another town on the coast of California---Santa Barbara. There he began studying fine art at the Santa Barbara School of the Arts* (1927-1930), under the supervision of Frank Morley Fletcher, previously director of the Edinburgh College of Art. Fletcher, who was trained in portraiture, landscape painting, and woodblock* printing, was a great influence on young Knowles. It was there that Knowles learned the art of color woodblock printmaking, a medium in which he showed great skill. Not long after completing his studies with Fletcher, Knowles began teaching art. For a period of thirty years, from 1930 to1960, he taught at the Cate School in Carpinteria, California. In 1934-1935, Knowles traveled throughout Europe, further developing his artistic skills in England, France, and Italy. Upon his return, he continued to teach art at various schools and institutions: Cate School, Crane Country School, extension classes at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), and at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA). Knowles also served as an art education consultant for the County of Santa Barbara. In addition, he was founding co-director and president of the Santa Barbara Fine Arts Institute (1969-1972), which later developed a specialization in photography and became the Brooks Institute of Photography. Knowles died at his home in Santa Barbara on September 8, 1980. Much of Knowles' watercolor work is associated with what has been termed the "California School*," a loose grouping of artists throughout the state that included such figures as Millard Sheets, Phil Dike, Dong Kingman, George Post, and the Santa Barbara painters Dan Lutz and Standish Backus, Jr. The California School artists, including Knowles, were known for their fresh, direct, spontaneous style of watercolor painting. Knowles and other members of the school found inspiration in nature and the built environment alike, emphasizing elements of design in their exuberant, boldly stated, colorful scenes from everyday life. While painting in a representational* manner, Knowles generally avoided photographic realism, preferring subjective interpretation of his subjects. In this, as well as in his experimental approach and vigorous brushwork, he displayed a strongly modern sensibility. Knowles often used the wet-on-wet watercolor technique as he painted seascapes and landscapes, mostly along the California coast. He also employed dry-brush* techniques in many of his paintings, often leaving some of the white of the watercolor paper exposed. Some of the latter depict trees and other forms in a broken and airy manner that recalls Cezanne. Knowles' colored woodblock prints are more reserved and exact in their draftsmanship than his paintings. Spare, clean, lyrical lines are drawn to illustrate floral motifs and boat scenes with a touch of asymmetry conjuring Japanese woodblock prints. His murals from the post-World War II period are considerably more modern in their approach and show an emphasis on design and color. PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS California Watercolor Society (1940 - 1955) Santa Barbara Art Association (Vice President - 1952) ONE-MAN EXHIBITIONS Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) - San Francisco, California San Diego Fine Arts Gallery (SDMA) - San Diego, California Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) - Santa Barbara, California Cowie Galleries - Los Angeles, California Gallery de Silva - Santa Barbara, California Bradley Galleries - Santa Barbara, California MURALS Westmont College - Ellen Porter Hall Mural - Santa Barbara, California Safeway Grocery (now Vons Grocery on West Victoria Street) - Exterior Tile Mosaic - Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara Bank & Trust - Interior Mosaic Panels, Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara Girls Club - Interior Mosaic Mural - Santa Barbara, California Ernest Righetti High School - Mosaic Mural - Santa Maria, California Shell Oil Company - Mosaic Panel - California Beckman Instruments, Corporate Headquarters - Mosaic - Fullerton, California STAINED GLASS WINDOWS, WALLS and PANELS Katherine Thayer Cate Memorial Chapel - Cate School, Carpinteria, California William S. Porter Memorial Chapel - Cottage Hospital, Santa Barbara, California La Rinconada Building - Santa Barbara, California ILLUSTRATIONS "California's Wonderful Corner: True Stories for Children from the History of the Santa Barbara Region," by Walter A. Tompkins (1962 & 1975) China Designs: Two sets of dinnerware for Winfield China...

This large scale painting by Linda Griggs features the community pool of Lower Manhattan's Hamilton Fish park. oil, wold wax and selective varnish on canvas) 48” x 48” (2025) signe...

"Portofino Memories," with rippling water reflections below the iconic Portofino harbor is a quintessential example of Tom Swimm's enhanced realism. This colorful oil painting is on ...

Doug Reina is a two time Pollock-Krasner grant recipient whose studio is in Setauket, New York. Reina is a full-time artist who creates paintings both on location, as well as in his...

This striking fine art painting captures the stillness of an empty public pool at twilight, its vibrant blue water contrasting with the muted tones of the surrounding concrete deck a...

This watercolor is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s Circus Wagons, 1927, watercolor on paper, signed and dated lower left, 10 x19 ¾ inches (sight), provenance includes Stary-Sheets Art Gallery (Gualala, CA); J. Ralph & Louis Stone Foundation; presented in a newer metal frame behind glazing About the Painting Millard Sheets was only twenty years old and in his third year of studies at the Chouinard Art Institute when he painted Circus Wagons. Despite his youth, Sheets was already an accomplished artist who had publicly exhibited his work and won prestigious prizes. Within several years, he would have his first solo exhibition at one of Los Angeles’ premiere galleries and become a painting instructor at his alma mater. In Circus Wagons we already see Sheets deft handling of the watercolor medium and his interest in the California Scene. In this case, Sheets captures a back lot view of a traveling circus, a subject he sometimes returned to, including in a color screen print in the collection of the National Gallery. Sheets made a career by painting what he knew and observed firsthand. This approach allowed Sheets to capture with authenticity the details of each narrative. Even with a narrowly limited palette and an economy of brushstrokes, Sheets effectively depicts the southern California scene with its strong and mysterious shadows, as well as the workers and circus animals. Seen through the hindsight of his six-decade long career, Circus Wagons offers a fascinating insight into the early development of California Scene painting which would by the mid-1930s become the best recognized style on the West Coast. About the Artist Millard Sheets was the dean of California watercolorists. His list of accomplishments is so extensive that his entry in Who was Who in American Art is over forty lines. Born in Pomona, California, Sheets became a painter at an early age, winning a prize at the Los Angeles County Fair in 1918. By the mid to late-1920s, Sheets became a regular at art exhibitions in the western part of the United States, winning several additional prizes before he reached the age of twenty-five. Sheets studied at the prestigious Chouinard Art Institute from 1925 through 1929 with Frank Tolles Chamberlin and Clarence Hinkle and had his first solo show with Los Angeles’ Dalzell Hatfield Gallery in 1929. During the 1930s, Sheets was invited to exhibit at almost every major American Museum and in many ways, his work came to represent the California watercolor school...

UNION SQUARE Depression Era Oil Painting WPA Realism American Scene Realism NYC Jo Cain (1904 – 2003) "Union Square" 24 x 36 inches Oil on canvas, c.1940s S...

'Rousseau's Garden', 2018 is 30 x 30 inches. By focusing on a single subject, the artist immerses herself in the nuanced lines, shapes, and tones that the oil paint offers. Contempor...

Oil on Board painting for American Weekly Magazine November 15, 1953. The decisive moment of a Cowboy and Horse is captured. As a determined team, t...

"When asked what kind of paintings I make, I usually call my work "Urban Landscapes" to distinguish them as paintings about areas of human habitation rather than landscapes that re...

Out for a breath of fresh air late on a wintery day, this adult and child are walking in a world of wonder in this painting. Crunching on the ice covering the shoveled pathway, the p...

Represented by George Billis Gallery, NYC & LA -- "When asked what kind of paintings I make, I usually call my work "Urban Landscapes" to distinguish them as paintings about areas o...

'Sentinel (Midcentury Modern)' - oil on canvas is 36 x 48 inches, meticulously painted by American Realist Brooks Anderson. Canvas edges are painted dark in artist's signature style....

Boats at sunset depicted in this calm and peaceful oil painting — Tamales Bay Evening — from American Realist Willard Dixon. The canvas is 17 x 50 inches...

Sunset, San Antonio, 20x16, oil on panel Texas This painting by Garrett Middaugh shows the beauty of a Texas Sunset outside of San Antonio. A group of low hills are in the background which surround San Antonio. San Antonio is a major city in south-central Texas with a rich colonial heritage. The Alamo, an 18th-century Spanish mission preserved as a museum, marks an infamous 1836 battle for Texan independence from Mexico. Following the San Antonio River, the miles-long River Walk is a landmark pedestrian promenade lined with cafes and shops. HemisFair Park’s 750-ft. Tower of the Americas overlooks the city. The artist is a regional landscape painter working in oils and pastels whose subject matter varies from the mountains and desert of west Texas to the wetlands along the Texas coast, with a strong focus on Texas forests and trees. and to the Rocky Mountains The artist is in corporate and private collections around the world. Garrett Middaugh is a regional landscape painter working in oils and pastels whose subject matter varies from the mountains and desert of west Texas to the wetlands along the Texas coast, with a strong focus on Texas forests and trees. His palette is muted, stark, embracing the neutral colors of everyday experience. Avoiding the romantic, his landscapes are often painted at high noon or in the dead of winter. He paints in a fluid hyper realist style and feels most influenced by other landscape artists such as Neil Welliver and Rackstraw Downes. He sees landscape painting as a form of meditation, projecting outward, while solving equations and mapping the scene, realizing accuracy of objects and relationships, of light, color, textures, distances. "Landscape painting is for me a means of projecting outward, of meditating, examining the here and now of place. The process often feels similar to the satisfaction of solving math equations, intuitively realizing accuracy of objects and relationships, of light, color, textures, distances. For the most part I paint Texas. For several years I devoted a significant amount of time to painting its forests -- the complexity of forest alleviated my sense and the nearness and density of growth was comforting. I have also ventured into west Texas and Big Bend, and occasionally have attempted to capture the mesmerizing serenity of central Texas farm and ranchland." Garrett Middaugh Also shown is a new Texas tractor painting...

World War II Invades Central Park, 1943, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 30 x 36 inches, literature: Barton, Phyllis, Cecil C. Bell, McGrew Color Graphics (Kansas City, MO, 1976),...

The career of William Stanley Haseltine spans the entire second half of the nineteenth century. During these years he witnessed the growth and decline of American landscape painting, the new concept of plein-air painting practiced by the Barbizon artists, and the revolutionary techniques of the French Impressionists, all of which had profound effects on the development of painting in the western world. Haseltine remained open to these new developments, selecting aspects of each and assimilating them into his work. What remained constant was his love of nature and his skill at rendering exactly what he saw. His views, at once precise and poetic, are, in effect, portraits of the many places he visited and the landscapes he loved. Haseltine was born in Philadelphia, the son of a prosperous businessman. In 1850, at the age of fifteen, he began his art studies with Paul Weber, a German artist who had settled in Philadelphia two years earlier. From Weber, Haseltine learned about Romanticism and the meticulous draftsmanship that characterized the German School. At the same time, Haseltine enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, and took sketching trips around the Pennsylvania countryside, exploring areas along the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers. Following his sophomore year, Haseltine transferred to Harvard University. After graduating from Harvard in 1854, Haseltine returned to Philadelphia and resumed his studies with Weber. Although Weber encouraged Haseltine to continue his training in Europe, the elder Haseltine was reluctant to encourage his son to pursue a career as an artist. During the next year, Haseltine took various sketching trips along the Hudson River and produced a number of pictures, some of which were exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the spring of 1855. Ultimately, having convinced his father that he should be allowed to study in Europe, Haseltine accompanied Weber to Düsseldorf. The Düsseldorf Academy was, during the 1850s, at the peak of its popularity among American artists. The Academy’s strict course of study emphasized the importance of accurate draftsmanship and a strong sense of professionalism. Landscape painting was the dominant department at the Düsseldorf Academy during this period, and the most famous landscape painter there was Andreas Achenbach, under whom Haseltine studied. Achenbach’s realistic style stressed close observation of form and detail, and reinforced much of what Haseltine had already learned. His Düsseldorf training remained an important influence on him for the rest of his life. At Düsseldorf, Haseltine became friendly with other American artists studying there, especially Emanuel Leutze, Worthington Whittredge, and Albert Bierstadt. They were constant companions, and in the spring and summer months took sketching trips together. In the summer of 1856 the group took a tour of the Rhine, Ahr, and Nahe valleys, continuing through the Swiss alps and over the Saint Gotthard Pass into northern Italy. The following summer Haseltine, Whittredge, and the painter John Irving returned to Switzerland and Italy, and this time continued on to Rome. Rome was a fertile ground for artists at mid-century. When Haseltine arrived in the fall of 1857, the American sculptors Harriet Hosmer, Chauncey B. Ives, Joseph Mozier, William Henry Rinehart...

Water does not have a form; it adapts to forms created by energy. There is something kind of futile yet exciting about capturing the effect of water in a painting. There is no start...

This piece is an original oil painting on panel. It was painted en plein air, on a hot day in August, behind the artist's studio. A riot of various shades of green, overlaid with the...

Represented by George Billis Gallery, NYC & LA --A walk through any major museum will reveal paintings that depict or legitimate only certain kinds of experience. Despite the good in...