Wes Hempel

Unexpected Blessing II

2020

This painting is a collaboration with artist Jack Balas. Jack is Wes Hempel's partner. Represented by George Billis Gallery, NYC & LA -- A walk through an...

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...

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 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 --A walk through any major museum will reveal paintings that depict or legitimate only certain kinds of experience. Despite the good in...

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 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 -- A walk through any major museum will reveal paintings that depict or legitimate only certain kinds of experience. Despite the good i...

Antique American impressionist painting of two nude bathers in a landscape. Oil on canvas, circa 1900. Signed lower right. ...

Modernist nude women in a fauvist landscape painting by Abraham Pariente. Oil on canvas, circa 1980. Signed lower right. Displayed in a modernist frame. Image size, 30"L x 22"H.

Antique American impressionist landscape with a nude bather by Henrik Hillblom (1863 - 1948).

Painting: Oil on Canvas Dimensions: 26 in x 36 in Unique Signed on Verso, includes a certificate of authenticity. Elena Chestnykh was born in Novosibirsk, Russia, and currently live...

Childe Hassam 1859-1935 American The Bather Signed and dated “Childe Hassam” (lower right) Oil on canvas Considered by many to be America’s foremost Impressionist painter, Childe Hassam composed his tranquil and intimate oil on canvas The Bather in the early years of the 20th century. The creation of the artwork aligns with a period of Hassam’s career where the artist’s palette was transforming, matching ever closer with the pale and pastel hues of French Impressionists like Claude Monet. Even the subject — a nude woman — represents a greater alignment with the Impressionist project, as artists of the movement and their non-mythological and non-biblical nudes still generated cries of indecency. With Hassam’s signature brushwork and attention to color, The Bather serves as a dream-like vision, serene and sensuous, of a young woman bathing in a lush forest. While the artist's skill for landscape painting is on display, it is Hassam's command of form, light and color that brings this canvas to life. He creates a captivating composition, placing the nude subject in the bottom left of the canvas. The soft, undulating curves of the woman's body in contrapposto and the glow of her fair skin are balanced by the strong verticals and deep earth tones of the tall trees to her right. Hassam delicately frames the nude in the vivid blues of the distant water, building luminous color that further draws the viewer’s eye and results in a somewhat voyeuristic appeal — endowing his nude with both a natural innocence and an intentional sensuality. Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Childe Hassam began his artistic career as a freelance illustrator, working for national publications such as Harper’s Weekly, Scribner’s Monthly, and The Century. His first solo exhibition of watercolors took place in Boston in 1883, and he quickly catapulted onto the international scene, winning a bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889. The year before the present work was created, he received the Webb Prize from the Society of American Artists for another landscape painted at Gloucester. Hassam would receive numerous other awards throughout his career, most notably the Gold Medal for Distinguished Services to Fine Art from the American Dealers Association. A true master, Hassam depicted a way of life characteristic of both American and French society, and his work elucidates a critical chapter in American art history. Today, his work resides in the Oval Office of the White House and in numerous important museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others. This painting will be included in Stuart P. Feld's and Kathleen M. Burnside's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work. Circa 1905 Canvas: 24 1/2“ high x 20 18” wide Frame: 35 7/8“ high x 31 1/4” wide x 3 1/4“ deep Provenance: Private Collection of William Young...

Wilson Irvine A Summer Afternoon, circa 1915 Signed lower left Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches Provenance: Gift of the artist, c. 1930 Private Collection, Iowa, c. 1930 By Descent, Private Collection Iowa Private Collection, West Virginia, 2017 Exhibited: Art Institute of Chicago, Special Exhibitions: Paintings by John W. Alexander, Wilson Irvine, Edward Redfield, Maurice Sterne, Sculpture by Chester Beach...