Terry Elkins

Terry Elkins, "Strong's Barn" landscape with barn watercolor on paper

2018

American realist landscape by Cleveland artist Carl Gaertner. This snowy scene, painted in 1943, was typical of the traditional American realist landscapes of the time. Carl Ga...

Rural scene of a hillside farm, depicted in watercolor on rag paper by Northern California watercolor and acrylic artist W. H. Myers (American, 20th century). Signed "W. H. Myers." P...

Beautiful drawing of double Hibiscus and Butterflies dancing around a log by Ben Black (American, 1922-2003). Signed and dated "Ben Black '95" lower right. Unframed. Image 20"H x 28"L, Mat 30"L x 22"H. Ben Black was born in Boston, he graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art 1947. He served in World War 2. He was an art director at one of Boston's leading advertising firms, later opened his own studio where his works were included in The New Yorker Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest, establishing himself as a leading American Illustrator. He had many solo and group exhibitions throughout New England and his work is collected throughout the world. Originally known for his clowns, he created a limited edition series of plates for Royal Daulton as well as clown figurines...

Lionel S. Reiss (1894 - 1988) Lobstermen in Gloucester, Massachusetts, circa 1943 Watercolor on paper Sight 17 1/2 x 23 inches Signed lower left Provenance: Private Collection, Las Vegas, Nevada In describing his own style, Lionel Reiss wrote, “By nature, inclination, and training, I have long since recognized the fact that...I belong to the category of those who can only gladly affirm the reality of the world I live in.” Reiss’s subject matter was wide-ranging, including gritty New York scenes, landscapes of bucolic Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and seascapes around Gloucester, Massachusetts. However, it was as a painter of Jewish life—both in Israel and in Europe before World War II—that Reiss excelled. I.B. Singer, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, noted that Reiss was “essentially an artist of the nineteenth century, and because of this he had the power and the courage to tell visually the story of a people.” Although Reiss was born in Jaroslaw, Poland, his family immigrated to the United States in 1898 when he was four years old. Reiss's family settled on New York City’s Lower East Side and he lived in the city for most of his life. Reiss attended the Art Students League and then worked as a commercial artist for newspapers and publishers. As art director for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he supposedly created the studio’s famous lion logo. After World War I, Reiss became fascinated with Jewish life in the ‘Old World.’ In 1921 he left his advertising work and spent the next ten years traveling in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Like noted Jewish photographers Alter Kacyzne and Roman Vishniac, Reiss depicted Jewish life in Poland prior to World War II. He later wrote, “My trip encompassed three main objectives: to make ethnic studies of Jewish types wherever I traveled; to paint and draw Jewish life, as I saw it and felt it, in all aspects; and to round out my work in Israel.” In Europe, Reiss recorded quotidian scenes in a variety of media and different settings such as Paris, Amsterdam, the Venice ghetto, the Jewish cemetery in Prague, and an array of shops, synagogues, streets, and marketplaces in the Jewish quarters of Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lublin, Vilna, Ternopil, and Kovno. He paid great attention to details of dress, hair, and facial features, and his work became noted for its descriptive quality. A selection of Reiss’s portraits appeared in 1938 in his book My Models Were Jews. In this book, published on the eve of the Holocaust, Reiss argued that there was “no such thing as a ‘Jewish race’.” Instead, he claimed that the Jewish people were a cultural group with a great deal of diversity within and between Jewish communities around the world. Franz Boas...