Guy Rose

Sunshine & Firelight

1909

A painting by Nathan Oliveira. "Untitled" is a Bay Area Figurative Painting, oil on canvas in a brown and tan palette by American artist Nathan Oliveira. The artwork is signed in the lower right, "Oliveira 64". A Californian whose work is of preeminent importance during the post war period, Oliveira is most often associated with Park, Diebenkorn and the other artists with whom he sketched early in his career. Yet it was not an oversight when Oakland Museum director Paul Mills chose not to include Oliveira in the 1957 exhibition “Contemporary Bay Area Figurative Painting.” All came to figuration by initiating a sophisticated dialogue with abstraction, yet it is Oliveira, the often characterized ambivalent loner among Bay Area artists whose work is most often compared to Alberto Giacometti, Francis Bacon, or Willem de Kooning with whom he shared walls and space at The Images of Man exhibition held in New York at the Museum of Modern Art in 1959. During the early years, Oliveira’s lone figures often suggested an existential angst similar to that of Giacometti, but there was also a weightlessness and a transcendent aura that envelopes these figures; they appear as elemental, universal and eternal projections of selfless consciousness better understood within the bodiless realm of metaphysics. These qualities would remain in his work throughout his long career, yet he would find other themes to explore — the natural world where the essential nature of birds and animals exist in equal profundity with their human counterparts, the transient world of evanescent perception when memory must reconstruct momentary experience, and later, the ‘site’ paintings and monoprints that suggest the abandoned remnants of a long-lost civilization or tribe uncovered at an archeological dig. Through and through, flesh to bones, and bones to dust Nathan Oliveira has left us with a legacy of art that will surely remain untarnished by time or changing trends. His work exists within a realm rarely achieved by artists striving in a similar mode of expression. Unclouded by ego or wayward sentiment, it is also in the warmth and humble nature...

A painting by Ralph Waterhouse. "Spring Sunset" is a landscape painting, oil on canvas laid on board in a palette of oranges and greens by American artist Ralph Waterhouse. The artwo...

Exquisite oil on canvas painting by artist Arthur Bowen Davies (American 1862-1928). The work depicts a young nude man walking through a lush green, ethereal landscape. Thick earth-t...

Artist: James Roy Hopkins (American, 1877-1969) Title: "Cynthia (with Cat)" *Monogram signed and dated by Hopkins lower right Year: 1937 Medium: Original Oil Painting on Canvas Framing: Recently framed in an Art Nouveau gold gesso moulding Framed size: 39.25" x 50.25" Canvas size: 34" x 45" Condition: In excellent condition. A large beautiful and well executed work. Notes: Provenance: private collection - Chicago, IL. Biography: James Roy Hopkins (1877-1969) was born in the rural farming community of Irwin, Ohio in 1877. His mother, Nettie Hopkins, painted with watercolors recreationally and encouraged her son’s artistic interests. Though he shared his mother's love of art, Hopkins initially entered Ohio State University in 1896 to study electrical engineering. However, he soon left and briefly enrolled in the Columbus School of Art before going to the Art Academy of Cincinnati where he studied with Frank Duveneck. In 1900, Hopkins moved to New York City and worked as a medical textbook illustrator. Two years later he made the pilgrimage to the art center of the western world at the time, Paris, France. While in Paris he improved his craft at the Académie Colarossi. Hopkins embraced Parisian life and socialized with and visited the studios of such great artists as Pierre...