1940s Paintings

Rare early American modernist cubist abstract by Anita F. Plumb. Framed. Pastel and gouache on paper. Signed. Image size, 20H by 26L.

Work on cardboard Brown wooden frame 55 x 47.5 x 4.5 cm his bold, vibrant work of art captures the essence of a bouquet of flowers in a crystalline vase of soft hues. Expressive brus...

1940s nude study, watercolor, and ink on paper painting by Polish/Russian artist Rotislaw Racoff (1904 - 1982). This is a fine study of a young woman, probably Asian, sitting back. T...

Seymour Franks Paulson, 1949 Signed lower left Signed, titled, dated on verso Oil on canvas 46 x 30 inches American painter and designer, Seymour Franks, was born in New York City ...

An original modernist oil painting by American female artist Esther Rollick.

An oil on canvas by American artist Gordon Hope Grant featuring a schooner off of the coast. This painting is signed and dated i1945 n the lower left and measures 33.5" x 33.5" inclu...

Antique oil on board. Signed. Framed. Measuring 26 by 32 inches overall and 24 by 30 painting alone. In excellent original condition. Excellent condition, ready to hang and enjoy.

Streeter Blair Overholser Family, 1890, Sterling, Illinois, 1949 Signed, titled, and dated lower left Oil on canvas 8 x 10 inches Primitive painter St...

Significant landscape painting of Taos, New Mexico river and buttes by Walter Alexander Bailey (American, 1894-1989). Rendered in saturated colors, a lone tree stands at the edge of a river. The river flows back into the distance, guiding the viewer's eye to a lush green plain. At the edges of the plain, large mesas rise from all sides in purple and red. Signed lower right corner. Unframed. Image size: 24"H x 30"W. Bailey studied at the Kansas City Art Institute with Thomas Hart Benton and Charles Wilimovsky. In the 1940s he worked as a scenic and motion picture artist in Hollywood. In 1927 to 1929, he taught a Master Class in Taos, New Mexico, and in 1932-1934 he taught a Master Class in landscape painting at the Kansas City Art Institute. Born Wallula, Oct. 17, 1894, Walter Bailey was a painter, illustrator, muralist, etcher, block printer, lithographer and teacher. He studied at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1920 with Charles A. Wilmovsky, Randall Davey, & Anthony Angarola. He worked on the art staff of the Kansas City Star. SOURCES: Susan Craig, "Biographical Dictionary of Kansas Art...

This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness. Oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches, Signed lower right Exhibited: 1) [Solo E...

Petit Pont-Neuf - Pont Saint-Michel Paris Bridge at Night Original Oil on Linen Pont Saint-Michel Paris Bridge at Nigh by an unknown artist, signed illegibly and possibly H. Pierrot ...

Mid Century Hawaiian Symbolism -- Stairway to Destiny Symbolic figurative abstract with climbing stairway in bright spring colors by Marguerite Loui...

1940s Tromp L'oeil Still Life Rose and Amaranth in Alcove Wonderful rose and amaranth still life in an alcove by Riverda Kapunas (American/Greek, 20t...

Gorgeous European figurative of a simpler time. Horses being watered in the plains by Janos Viski (Hungarian/American 1891-1965), circa 1940. Signed lower ...

Antique American modernist signed abstract landscape oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. Framed.

Richard Andres (American, 1927-2013) Untitled, c. 1949 oil on canvas 18 x 32 inches Richard Andres was born in Buffalo, New York in 1927. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1950, he was immediately drafted and served for two years in the army as a mural painter. He received his Master of Arts from Kent State in 1961. A frequent exhibitor at galleries and museums and winner of multiple May Show prizes, Andres taught art in the Cleveland Public Schools for 28 years, as well as teaching the University of Buffalo, the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Western Reserve University. Very little in Richard Andres’ childhood would have predicted his love of classical music, mid-century-modern architecture and certainly not his lifelong passion for art and in particular abstract art. Richard’s father, Raymond, had no more than a third-grade education, and his mother, Clara, was one of thirteen children – only three of whom lived into adulthood and none of whom attended high school. They lived, when Richard was a boy, in a dingy area of Buffalo, NY in a walk-up apartment situated above a tavern. Raymond and Clara supplemented the income from their factory jobs in the bar downstairs with Raymond playing ragtime on the piano and Clara serving drinks. This often left Richard and his two older brothers at home alone to fend for themselves. The two older boys, Raymond and Russell, were - unlike Richard- rather rough and tumble and entertained themselves with stickball, boxing and the like. Richard, on the other hand, from a very young age liked to draw, or better yet even, to paint with the small set of watercolors he received for Christmas one year. Paper, however, at the height of the depression, was hard to come by. Luckily, Clara used paper doilies as decoration for the apartment and Richard would contentedly paint and then cut up doilies, gluing the pieces together to create collages. At eight-years-old, he discovered the Albright-Knox Museum (then known as the Albright Art Gallery) and spent several hours a week there studying the paintings. He was particularly fond of Charles Burchfield‘s landscapes, enamored with their ‘messiness’ and thinking that they somehow captured more ‘feeling’ than works he was previously familiar with. For his tenth Christmas, he asked for and received a ‘how-to’ paint book by Elliot O’Hare. Through this self-teaching, he assembled the portfolio needed for acceptance to Buffalo Technical High School where he studied Advertising Arts. In his Junior year, he was encouraged to enter a watercolor painting, “Two Barns,” in the national 1944-45 Ingersoll Art Award Contest and was one of twelve grand prize winners – each one winning one hundred dollars. More importantly the painting was exhibited at the Carnegie Institute Galleries, which resulted in his winning a national scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art (The Cleveland Art Institute). He flourished at the art school under the tutelage of faculty members such as Carl Gaertner, as well as that of visiting artists such as William Sommer and Henry George Keller. He would say in later years that Gaertner, in particular, influenced his attitude toward life as well as art. “Gaertner,” Andres said, “believed that there was no need to be a ‘tortured artist’, that an artist should rather enjoy beauty, family, and life in general.” Free to spend his days as he chose, he wandered the Cleveland Art Museum for most of the hours he was not attending classes or painting; the remaining time was spent drinking coffee at a local hangout with art school friends – which is where he met fellow Henry Keller scholarship winner, Avis Johnson. Richard was immediately smitten with Avis, but being rather shy, it took him the entire summer of 1948 to build up his courage to ask her out. Over that summer he ‘thought about Avis’ and worked in a diner to save money. He also used the hundred-dollar prize money won in High School to visit the first Max Beckmann retrospective in the United States at the City Art Museum in St. Louis. Over a half century later he spoke of that exhibit with a reverence usually reserved for spiritual matters, “I walked in and it was like nothing I had ever seen before... the color...It just glowed.” Returning to campus in the Fall, the first thing he did was go to the coffee shop in hopes of finding Avis. He did, and she, upon seeing him, realized that she was also smitten with him. They quickly became known as ‘the couple’ on campus, and a year later, with Richard being drafted for the Korean war, they were quickly married by a Justice of the Peace, celebrating after with family at Avis’s Cleveland home. As a gift, faculty member John Paul Miller designed and made the simple gold wedding ring Avis wore for their 65 years of marriage. During those 65 years neither wavered in their mutual love, nor in the respect they shared for one another’s art. The couple lived in a converted chicken coop in Missouri while Richard was in boot camp. At the camp, he would volunteer for any job offered and one of those jobs ended up being painting road signs. His commander noticed how quickly and neatly he worked and gave him more painting work to do - eventually recommending him for a position painting murals for Army offices in Panama. Until her dying day, Avis remained angry that “The army got to keep those fabulous murals and they probably didn’t even know how wonderful they were.” In Panama, their first son, Mark, was born. After Richard’s discharge in 1953, they moved back to the Cleveland area and used the GI bill to attend Kent State gaining his BA in education. The small family then moved briefly to Buffalo, where Richard taught at the Albright Art School and the University of Buffalo – and their second son, Peter, was born. Richard had exhibited work in the Cleveland May Show and the Butler Art Museum during his art school years, and during the years in Buffalo, his work was exhibited at the gallery he had so loved as a child, the Albright Art Gallery. In 1956, the family moved back to the Cleveland area and Richard began teaching art at Lincoln West High School during the day while working toward his MA in art at Kent State in the evenings. Avis and Richard, with the help of an architect, designed their first home - a saltbox style house in Hudson, Ohio, and in 1958, their third son, Max (after Max Beckmann) was born. Richard enjoyed the consistency of teaching high school as well as the time it gave him to paint on the weekends and during the summer months. In 1961, he received his MA and his daughter, Claire, was born. With a fourth child, the house was much too small, and Avis and Richard began designing their second home. An admirer of MCM architecture, Richard’s favorite example of the style was the Farnsworth house – he often spoke of how the concepts behind this architectural style, particularly that of Mies van der Rohe, influenced his painting. Andres described himself as a 1950’s...

Wonderful 1940's Swiss winter scene with snow covered chalet in valley, by an unknown artist, c.1940's. Signature illegible lower right. Presented in period rustic frame. Image size...

Beatrix Sherman Hialeah Park Race Track, Florida, 1947 Signed lower right Oil on canvasboard 16 x 20 inches Beatrix Sherman (1894-1975), who changed her first name from Beatrice by...

Cecil Chichester Woodstock in Winter, circa 1947 Signed lower left Oil on artist's board 12 x 16 inches Provenance Private Collection, Rhinebeck, New...

"Time Remembered" Mid 20th Century NYC Modern American Scene WPA El Railway 1940 A view of the Third Avenue El (elevated railway) at 28th Street, New York. Signed lower left. Titled verso. c. 1940. oil on board c. 1940, 27.875 h × 21.75 w inches. BIO Staats Cotsworth...

Beautiful oil on canvas painting with aerosol spray paint of two reclining figures by the well known Russian/American artist, Nahum Tschacbasov. Signed upper right and dated 1949. ...

Impressive early American modernist interior view still life painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. Image size, 34 by 40 inches.

Paris: Place du Tertre and Sacre Coeur, the Roman Catholic Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris by Henri Miloch (1898-1979) signed lower right watercolour and gouache painting on ar...

Six O-Clock, c. 1942, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, signed and titled several times verso of frame and stretcher (perhaps by another hand), marked “Rehn” several times on frame (for the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York City, who represented Craig at the time); Exhibited: 1) 18th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings from March 21 to May 2, 1943 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. #87, original price $450 (per catalog) (exhibition label verso), 2) Craig’s one-man show at the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, New York City, from October 26 to November 14, 1942, #10 (original price listed as $350); and 3) Exhibition of thirty paintings sponsored by the Harrisburg Art Association at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg in March, 1944 (concerning this exhibit, Penelope Redd of The Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) wrote: “Other paintings that have overtones of superrealism inherent in the subjects include Tom Craig’s California nocturne, ‘Six O’Clock,’ two figures moving through the twilight . . . .” March 6, 1944, p. 13); another label verso from The Museum of Art of Toledo (Ohio): original frame: Provenance includes George Stern Gallery, Los Angeles, CA About the Painting Long before Chris Burden’s iconic installation outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Urban Light, another artist, Tom Craig, made Southern California streetlights the subject of one of his early 1940s paintings. Consisting of dozens of recycled streetlights from the 1920s and 1930s forming a classical colonnade at the museum’s entrance, Burden’s Urban Light has become a symbol of Los Angeles. For Burden, the streetlights represent what constitutes an advanced society, something “safe after dark and beautiful to behold.” It seems that Craig is playing on the same theme in Six O-Clock. Although we see two hunched figures trudging along the sidewalk at the end of a long day, the real stars of this painting are the streetlights which brighten the twilight and silhouette another iconic symbol of Los Angeles, the palm trees in the distance. Mountains in the background and the distant view of a suburban neighborhood join the streetlights and palm trees as classic subject matter for a California Scene painting, but Craig gives us a twist by depicting the scene not as a sun-drenched natural expanse. Rather, Craig uses thin layers of oil paint, mimicking the watercolor technique for which he is most famous, to show us the twinkling beauty of manmade light and the safety it affords. Although Southern California is a land of natural wonders, the interventions of humanity are already everywhere in Los Angeles and as one critic noted, the resulting painting has an air of “superrealism.” About the Artist Thomas Theodore Craig was a well-known fixture in the Southern California art scene. He was born in Upland California. Craig graduated with a degree in botany from Pomona College and studied painting at Pamona and the Chouinard Art School with Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Barse Miller among others. He became close friends with fellow artist Milford Zornes...

Oil on artist board original painting by the well known American artist, Nicolai Cikovsky. Thick vibrant colors with a vase of flowers, a banjo and a notebook with photographs with a rough sea as the background. Circa 1940. Condition is very good. Overall framed in a circa 1960 frame, 23 by 27.25 inches. Landscape and figure painter Nicolai S. Cikovsky, 1894-1984, was born in Russia, where he studied at the Vilna Art School, 1910-1914; the Penza Royal Art School, 1914-1918; and Moscow High Tech Art...

Antique American modernist flower still life oil painting by Samuel Brecher (1897 - 1982). Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Measuring 28 by 30 inches overall and 22 by 24 inches painti...

Original oil on masonite painting of Fleet Week with sailors flirting with young women on the dock by the American artist, Sarah Pace Carothers Rhode. ...

This interesting British landscape oil painting is by noted artist Laurence Henry Irving. Painted circa 1940 it is a Kent harvest landscape of the Rother Valley from Prospect Hill, W...

A ca. 1949, Mid-Century, yellow-toned watercolor on paper of Rome -- Piazza Esedra by Guy de Neyrac. Artwork size: 24" x 18 1/2". Framed size: 32 1/2" x 27 1/2". Guy de Neyrac w...

Oil Painting of River Forest Landscape in Ireland by 20th Century Post War Irish Artist, Tobias Everet Spence Art measures 20 x 16 inches Frame measures in...

A delightful 1940 painting of two women lounging in the Vermont wilderness by artist Harold Haydon. Haydon had a summer compound in Calais, Vermont, where he often painted. Images ...

Oil on academy board by the Russian/American artist Nahum Tschacbasov. Signed and dated lower left, 1945. Condition: Excellent. Presently not framed. Biography : Russian-America...

Illustrated for the 1949 Four Seasons Calendar, published by Brown and Bigelow. A young girl holds a freshly-picked bouquet of flowers as she strolls alongside a boy who carries he...

An oil on board painting by Gustave Weigand (1870 - 1957), signed lower right. Painting measures 16 x 12 inches. Wiegand was born in Bremen, Germany in 1870. Wiegand studied at the R...

Appropriately called the "Mosaic" period for important historical artist Carl Holty, this is a super example! His color use during this time frame was lively as he always used sky b...

Untitled (Collapsed Shacks), c. 1940s, oil on canvas, signed lower left, 20 ½ x 26 ½ inches, presented in a period frame This work is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: ...

Work on canvas Beige wooden frame 80.5 x 93.5 x 6 cm

Antique American modernist still life painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1950. Housed in a period frame. Image size, 31L x 23H.

Industrial Railroad WPA Mid 20th Century American Scene Rural Modern Realism Large oil on canvas genre painting depicting laborers working on a railroad, with rural landscape in the...

Paris: City Winter Scene by Henri Miloch (1898-1979) watercolour and gouache painting with charcoal on artist's paper, unframed Sheet: 9.75 x 13.5 inches Intriguing painting by the...

Original oil painting on artist canvas board by the California artist, Fern F. Cunningham. Signed lower right. Titled in pencil on stretcher verso. Condition is very good. Recently professionally cleaned. Circa 1940. The painting is housed in its original period frame. Overall framed measurements are 14.5 by 17.5 inches. Provenance: A Sarasota Florida collector. Fern Cunningham Stone (1889-1975) She was born in Defiance, Ohio on August 4, 1889. A painter, she specialized in impressionist still life works, landscapes, and seascapes of California. Born Fern F. Smith, she married Napoleon Arthur...

Edward Zutrau Toucan, 7/29/1949 Dated on verso Oil on linen 30 x 23 inches Edward Zutrau (1922–1993) was an American painter whose career spanned from the 1940s through the early 1...

WWII Aircraft Factory Workers Industrial 20th Century American Scene WPA Modern Frederick Buchholz (1901-1983) WW2 Aircraft Factory 18 x 24 inches Oil ...

Antique American school signed seascape painting. Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Image size, 24L x 18H.

Beautiful mid century figurative landscape of a contemplative woman in Cotswold village, England by David L. Ghilchik (b. 1892 Romania; d. 1972 London), c.1945. Signed lower right "Ghilchik." Presented in rustic wood frame. Image measures: 14.5"H x 17.5"W. With frame, measures: 21"H x 25"W x 2"D. David Louis Ghilchik was a painter, and cartoonist for Punch Magazine and the Daily Sketch. He was the son of Abraham Josef Ghilchik, who traded in lace and linen, and his wife Sali. The family settled in Salford in 1920, where David enrolled at the Manchester School of Art and studied under Adolphe Valette...

This stunning Scottish Abstract Expressionist oil painting is by noted Scottish artist William Gear. Painted in 1949 it is an early and significant painting which dates to the early part of his career. Entitled Abstract Landscape with Red and Green it was painted during Gear's time in Paris and involvement with COBRA. Mostly red and green shapes are incased in black on a vivid yellow background. A really pleasing composition to the eye and perfectly housed in an ebonised frame, it is an excellent example of Gear's work. Signed and Dated '49 lower right. Inscribed, titled and dated verso. Provenance: Cornish collection. Condition. Acrylic on canvas 25 inches by 20 inches and in good condition. Frame. Housed in an ebonised frame, 30 inches by 25 inches and in good condition. Few British painters have played an active role in the modern abstract movement of post-war Europe. William Gear was the most passionate and committed exception. He continued the tradition of the Edinburgh-Paris axis established by J.D. Fergusson, Samuel Peploe and others, spending vital years between 1947 and 1950 living and working in Paris. Significantly, in recent years, he received the greatest acclaim in France, Germany and the Netherlands. He was born in 1915 in Methil, Fife, into a mining family; the particular landscape of "pitheads, the sea, rocks, castles, trees, storms and poverty" marked his earliest identity with a place and probably remained the most influential to his art. Years later he recalled as a schoolboy visiting the local art gallery in Kirkcaldy and seeing 12 colourful still-lifes by Peploe. Art-history lessons during student years at Edinburgh College of Art, in particular Byzantine classes under David Talbot Rice, also influenced his concern for structure. This had as much to do with the formal language of painting as sheer delight in the medium itself. Gear never missed an opportunity to show people the merits of a well-constructed painting. On a travelling scholarship in 1937, he chose to study with Fernand Leger, described by Gear as "a keystone for me, seldom abstract, rather a degree of abstraction". The Second World War interrupted these formative years and, by 1940, Gear had joined the Royal Corps of Signals. Dispatched to the Middle East, he still had the discipline to paint - mostly works on paper of damaged landscapes - with exhibitions in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Cairo as well as Siena and Florence. His naturally robust and tenacious temperament was profoundly affected by visiting Bergen-Belsen, and this certainly influenced the later experiments with the black armature. As the British officer in Celle, working for the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of the Control Commission, he focused on securing the safety of the Berlin Art Collection in Schloss Celle, and organised an important series of modern art exhibitions, including the rejected work of Karl Otto Gotz...

Incredible early American modernist interior scene by Anthony Toney (1913 - 2004) . Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed. Measuring 26 by 32 overall and 18 by 24 painting alone.

Jean BURKHALTER (1895-1982) Saint Clare of Assisi, 1944 Gouache and white chalk cardboard glued on panel ; mis au carreau Dated "1944" and located “Saint-Etienne” on an old label on ...

Oil on canvas. Signed in oil, lower right corner.

Coreen Mary Spellman (1905 - 1978) Dallas Artist Image Size: 20 x 14 Frame Size: 25 x 19 Medium: Oil Bio: Exhibited in the Ninth Annual Student Art show at the State University of Iowa Coreen Spellman Biography Coreen Mary Spellman (1905 - 1978) Coreen Mary Spellman was a fine-art teacher as well as a painter, designer, illustrator, lithographer and muralist. Many of her paintings depicted human-made structures and industrial landscapes in a style combining realism, precisionism and abstraction. Often the central subject such as in "Railroad Signal" was the only suggestion of humanity against a backdrop of stark Texas landscape. Of her painting these isolated subjects she said: "I enjoy taking some rather obscure or unimportant subject or theme and making something fine and important out of it . . . It always gives me great pleasure to discover something which has been passed over as being inadequate material". (Trenton 199) Spellman was born in Forney, Texas in 1905. At an early age she moved to Dallas, Texas and studied under Vivian Aunspaugh before attending the College of Industrial Arts (Texas Woman's University). She received a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University and a Masters Degree from the University of Iowa, Iowa City in 1942. In addition, Spellman received a Carnegie Scholarship for study at Harvard University, followed by studies with Kenneth Hayes Miller, Vaclav Vytlacil, and Charles Wheeler...

Work on wood

Antique Canadian modernist landscape oil painting. Oil on board. Framed. Measuring 15 by 17 inches overall and 10 by 12 painting alone.

Maurice Asselin (1882-1947) A Still life with a book Signed upper right Oil on canvas 54 x 65 cm no frame In good condition, a small superficial scratch on the lower right side, ...

Antique American modernist flower still life painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. In excellent original condition. Handsomely framed in a period silver leaf molding. Excellent condi...

Marguerite Stuber Pearson Nude, circa 1940 Signed lower right Oil on artist board 20 x 16 inches Marguerite Stuber Pearson was an American painter best known for her elegant portra...

Elegant, brightly-colored floral still life by Massachusetts artist Marion Huse. Oil on board measures 21 3/8 x 17 3/8; framed dimensions are 29 5/8 x 25 5/8 x 1 5/8. Painting is sig...

A dramatic mid-century western figurative action scene depicting a shootout in an old western town by Randy Steffen (American, 1917-1977), 1947. Several ...

Abel Warshawsky (American 1883-1962) Spring Fantasy, 1948 Oil on artist's board Signed lower right and verso 16 x 13 inches 20 x 17 inches, framed Impressionist painter A.G. Warshaw...

Artist: Pál Fried (Hungarian, 1893-1976) Title: "Hortense (Ballerina)" *Signed by Fried lower left Circa: 1940 Medium: Original Oil Painting on Canvas Framing: Framed in a light gold...

Beautiful. large oil on canvas, in excellent condition. Framed The Spätimpressionist Leopold Illenz was a student of Anton Azbe, and Simon Hollósy at Munich private schools...