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Portrait Paintings For Sale
Period: 1930s
Period: 1940s
Moments of Reflection Depicting a Woman Sitting by the Fire, Original Oil Paint
Located in Stockholm, SE
We are pleased to present a captivating painting by the artist Sam Uhrdin (1886-1964). This beautiful artwork depicts a woman from Dalarna, sitting in front of a warm, glowing fire. The entire painting is bathed in a soft, radiant light, particularly illuminating her face and traditional white/red attire. The woman appears contemplative, lost in thought, perhaps thinking of someone dear to her heart. She is depicted in a kitchen, taking a moment to relax after a day's chores in her home. Sam Uhrdin's artistic journey began in the early 1900s, he traveled to Stockholm in 1903 to further continue his studies in painting. He worked as a painter during the day and attended various evening schools in the evenings. In 1906, he journeyed to America to work as a sign painter, but he mainly ended up working as an upholsterer. Returning to Leksand in 1909 via London and Paris, his artistic talent gained recognition, and with the help of some patrons, he began studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1911, occasionally attending Althin's painting school in Stockholm. Financial circumstances cut his study time short, and his skill as a portrait painter earned him numerous portrait commissions, which further occupied his time. In 1921, Uhrdin received a scholarship from the Royal Academy, enabling him to embark on a study trip in 1922 to the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, which he had to cut short due to his wife's illness. He later visited places like Spain and Portugal. Uhrdin's breakthrough came with his portrait of the former Prime Minister Nils Edén, which he executed in 1919. In 1921, he portrayed the participants of the Swedish Academy. Among other representatives of official Sweden captured by Uhrdin were Gustav V, Manne Siegbahn, Ludvig Stavenow, and bishops Gottfrid and Einar Billing. In 1932, he held a solo exhibition at Konstnärshuset in Stockholm, and he participated in various exhibitions, including the Swedish Artists' Association in Stockholm in 1917, Swedish Art at Valand-Chalmers in Gothenburg in 1923, Dalarna Artists displayed at Liljevalchs Konsthall in 1936, and the National Museum's traveling exhibition "Barnet i konsten" (Children in Art...
Category

1940s Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

girl reading oil on canvas painting
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Rafael Llimona Benet (1896-1957) - Girl reading - Oil on canvas Oil measures 116x89 cm. Frameless. Rafael Llimona i Benet (1896-1957) was a Spanish pai...
Category

1940s Impressionist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Balinese Pottery Market
Located in London, GB
'Balinese Pottery Market', oil on canvas, by Régine van den Broek d'Obrenan (1931). The artist visited Bali in 1931 (among other islands) with her new husband, Charles. The naive pai...
Category

1930s Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

American Midwest Regional Portrait Oil Painting, Circle of Grant Wood, ca 1940’s
Located in Baltimore, MD
Create a statement or focal piece for a room. This is a very stylized portrait of a woman dating to the 1940’s. She fills the canvas with her wholesome countenance, hair and period c...
Category

1940s American Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Portrait of Jean Young
Located in East Grinstead, GB
Alfred Neville Lewis 1895-1972, was a South African born artist who painted in both England and South Africa. This painting, on panel, is of another artist Jean Young who Lewis knew...
Category

1930s Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Modernist Nude Portrait by Henri Burkhard
By Henri Burkhard
Located in Larchmont, NY
Henri Burkhard, Born in New York in 1892, began his studies at the Art Students league in New York and then pursued international studies at the Académie Julian, Acadêmie Colarissi, and Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Pariss. Once the artist returned to New York, he began to exhibit frequently frequently at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1926-36; the Corcoran Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in the 1930's. Works by the artist have been handled and sold over the last hundred years at major American auction houses and dealers, such as Heritage...
Category

1930s Fauvist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

Carlotta
Located in Palm Desert, CA
A painting by Georges Rouault. “Carlotta” is an oil on canvas portrait painting in a palette of blues, yellows, blacks, and pinks by expressionist artist Georges Rouault. The artwork...
Category

1930s Impressionist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Portrait of Molly Le Bas
Located in East Grinstead, GB
Portrait of Molly ( Le Bas ) Brocas Burrows, this picture was painted by her brother Edward. The significance of the mirror is of paramount importance to the paintings subject, the r...
Category

1940s Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Muchacha
Located in Barcelona, ES
Includes a Certificate of Authenticity
Category

1940s Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Expressionist 1940s Self Portrait Oil Painting in Blues, Greens, Gray, Interior
By Cornelis Ruhtenberg
Located in Denver, CO
Expressionist style self portrait of the artist, Cornelis Ruhtenberg (1923-2008), oil on board painted in 1949. Signed by the artist on verso. Interior scene of the artist painted in...
Category

1940s Expressionist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

"The Lamp Lighter" Texas Mid-Century Modern Everett Spruce (1908-2002) EXHIBITED
Located in San Antonio, TX
Everett Spruce (1908 - 2002) Austin Artist Image Size: 18 x 15 Frame Size: 28 x 25 Medium: Oil on paper / Mixed Exhibited at a University of Texas Faculty art show in 1947 Unsigned Biography Everett Spruce (1908 - 2002) The following, submitted by a researcher of the Ashworth Collection of Native American and Western Art, is from the artist's obituary in the Fort Smith, Arkansas "Times Record" newspaper, October 20, 2002. Everett F. Spruce, well-known artist, teacher, professor emeritus, died Friday, Oct. 18, 2002, at age 94. Everett Spruce was born on a farm in Conway to William E. and Fannie McCarty Spruce. He came to Dallas, at age 17, on a scholarship to study at the Dallas Art Institute, under Olin Travis and Thomas M. Stell Jr. In 1931, he became gallery assistant at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and in 1934 married Alice V. Kramer, a fellow art student. He was one of the "Dallas Nine" group of Southwest artists...
Category

1940s Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Mixed Media, Oil

Portrait oil on canvas painting Gines Parra Spain
By Ginés Parra
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Oil measures 41x33 cm. Frame measures 53x45 cm. Thanks to Mr. José Manuel Marín for confirming and dating the work (1930s). Ginés Parra (Zurgena, Almería, January 24, 1896 - Paris, April 19, 1960), whose real name was José Antonio Ramón Parra Menchón, was a Spanish painter. His family emigrated to Tlemcen, in Algeria, in 1901. There he spent his childhood and puberty and worked with his father as a miner. After several trips through Argentina and other South American countries, made between 1910 and 1916, he moved to the United States. He worked in some copper mines in Arizona to later settle in Los Angeles and soon moved to New York, where he began to receive classes at the Art Students League of New York. Later he began his art studies at the National Academy School of Fine Arts in the Big Apple, although he was forced to continue working on the subway and as a waiter to survive. Around 1920 he settled in Paris, in a studio in the Montparnasse neighborhood, to continue his training at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. In the early days he continued, as always, working outside of art, this time as a car wash and store boy. However, soon after, during the golden years of art in the city, he was already dealing with other painters such as Pablo Picasso, Julio González or Manuel Ángeles Ortiz...
Category

1930s Expressionist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Portrait of Helene Sardeau (The Artist’s Wife)
Located in Los Angeles, CA
(Note: This work is part of our exhibition Connected by Creativity: WPA Era Works from the Collection of Leata and Edward Beatty Rowan) Fresco, 20 x 16 inches unframed, 22 x 18 inch...
Category

1930s American Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Mixed Media, Plaster

Portrait of Chinese Couple. Pearl S. Buck Tiger Tiger Illustration Cosmopolitan
Located in Miami, FL
Among the many accolades I would grant Dean Cornwell, the one that rises to the top would be that he is one of America's greatest portrait painters. With a few strokes, he captures h...
Category

1930s American Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Gouache

Antique American School Signed Mediterranean Woman Dog Portrait Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique American signed modernist oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. Framed. Image size, 30L x 42H.
Category

1930s Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Blond Pin up with Perfect Smile Tennis Racket - Women Illustrators
Located in Miami, FL
Julia (Elsie Julia Miller) Schleicher (Canadian/American, 1916-1988) Woman Tennis Player Pastel and gouache on board 18 x 13-5/8 inches (45.7 x 34.6 cm) S...
Category

1940s Romantic Portrait Paintings

Materials

Gouache, Pastel

1939 Mexican Farm Worker WPA Artist Adolf Dehn American Modern Gouache Painting
Located in Surfside, FL
ADOLF ARTHUR DEHN (American, 1895-1969) Portrait of Mexican Man with Agave Cactus plant, 1939, Gouache Painting Hand signed and dated '39 lower left. Whitney Museum of American Art, N.Y. Label verso sight: 20.5 in. X 15 in. Frame is 32 X 24 inches This was subsequently made into a lithograph in 1941 titled Man From Orizaba Standing in the foreground of an agave field is man wearing a straw hat, a white button up collared shirt, white pants and sandals. The man has shaggy black hair, a beard and moustache and large eyes. His right hand is clenched as if holding something and his left hand is open holding some flower-like objects. He stands in the middle of a large agave plant that expands the width of the composition. In the middle ground are large agave plants in subsequent rows. Behind the agave plantation is a mountain range with snow covered peak on the right hand side. Above the mountain range is a partially cloudy sky. Adolf Dehn (November 22, 1895 – May 19, 1968) was an American artist known mainly as a lithographer. Throughout his artistic career, he participated in and helped define some important movements in American art, including regionalism, social realism, and caricature. A two-time recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, he was known for both his technical skills and his high-spirited, droll depictions of human foibles. Dehn was born in 1895 in Waterville, Minnesota. He began creating artwork at the age of six, and by the time of his death had created nearly 650 images. Dehn went to the Minneapolis School of Art (known today as the Minneapolis College of Art and Design), where he met and became a close friend of Wanda Gag. In 1917 he and Gág were two of only a dozen students in the country to earn a scholarship to the Art Students League of New York. He was drafted to serve in World War I in 1918, but declared himself a conscientious objector and spent four months in a guardhouse detention camp in Spartanburg, SC and then worked for eight months as a painting teacher at an arm rehabilitation hospital in Asheville, NC. Later, Dehn returned to the Art Students League for another year of study and created his first lithograph, The Harvest. In 1921 Dehn's lithographs were featured in his first exhibition at Weyhe Gallery in New York City. From 1920 to 1921 in Manhattan, he was connected to New York's politically left-leaning activists. In 1921, he went to Europe. In Paris and Vienna he belonged to a group of expatriate intellectuals and artists, including Andrée Ruellan, Gertrude Stein, and ee cummings...
Category

1930s American Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Gouache

Nude with Lace, Pastel Study Painting by Pio Santini
Located in Atlanta, GA
This charming pastel painting on paper was designed by Pio Santini (1908-1986) and named: nude with lace. The artist's signature, Santini, can be found in the bottom left corner of the artwork. Lovely romantic composition with a nude young lady kneeling and holding a piece of white lace. Flamboyant magenta red drape background. The painting remains in its original frame, which features delicately carved wood, a gesso finish, an off-white wood liner, and glass protection. The piece is in good condition but has a dark stain and some small chips on the edges of the original wood frame. Measurements: With frame: 22.75 in. wide (58 cm) x 26 in. high (66 cm) Opening view: 14.50 in. wide (36.5 cm) x 17.75 in. (45 cm). Artist Biography: Pio Santini (1908-1986) Pio Santini was born on April 17, 1908, close to Rome, in Tivoli, Italy. He showed a precocious and pronounced artistic taste and gifts, to begin with, drawing and painting. From his childhood drawings, as early as 5 or 6 years old, he was gifted and had a technique above the average. As early as 1933, Pio Santini moved to Paris, in the Montparnasse district, also known as The Artists Area, where he settled in his first Parisian studio. He is recognized as a member of the Academy of Paris, a significant art movement in the first half of the 20th century, alongside Amedeo Modigliani and other Italian artists. While attending the classes of the Estienne School for further training in plastic art, Pio Santini started to attract attention in various Parisian Salons (particularly the Winter Salon, the Independents Salon, and the French Artists Salon) and to find a place in the Parisian universe of painting, as is shown in the press of the time. The Second World War, which pitted his country of birth against his adopted nation, created conflicting emotions in him. During this time, the concept of a united and reconciled Europe took root in his mind. In a way, he played a part in the resuming cultural exchanges between France and Italy by founding the association The Romans in Paris after the war, and especially by creating and animating the Villa D’Este Prize for about ten years, rewarding each year a French artist or writer by offering, a one month stay at the Villa, in Tivoli. Later, the Montparnasse Prize would reward Italian artists in Paris, in the same way. While devoting himself to painting, he worked as an art illustrator for edition and press and left us a rich but unrecognized work from this period. In the early 1960s, Pio Santini decided, imperiously and bravely, to live on his painting. A member of the Society of Independent Artists since 1934, he then actively participated in numerous collective exhibitions in France and abroad. He regularly exhibited in Parisian Salons, most of which he was a member: the Independents Salon, the Autumn Salon, the Winter Salon, the National Salon of the Fine Arts, and the Comparison Salon. A regular participant in the prestigious Salon des Artistes Français, he was often rewarded: Great Price of the Salon in 1970, then in 1974, a gold medal in 1971, and Prize-winner of the Ernest Marché Prize in 1974. Pio Santini lived his last years in his house in Garches, near Paris. He worked there until the last moment and died of illness at the age of 78. Keeping himself a part of the avant-garde of contemporary art, Pio Santini developed a personal work of formal coherence very steadily. He is a two-time artist, one of the beginnings of his career, the Thirties, and the other one, his rebirth, the Sixties, when the artist can again devote himself to painting. Between these two periods, the Second World War badly hit the pictorial growth of Pio Santini. However, everything had started under the best auspices for the young painter whose desire to devote himself to painting is evident in his self-portrait of 1928 as a manifesto. In the 1930s, following the revolutions of cubism, abstraction, and surrealism, figurative and sensual...
Category

1940s Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Paper, Pastel, Board

The Russian Model
Located in Milford, NH
A wonderful large self portrait of the artist with a Russian model by American artist Pauline Lennards Palmer (1867-1938). Born in McHenry, Illinois, Palmer studied at the Art Institute of Chicago between 1893 and 1898, including a one-month session with William Merritt Chase in 1897, and further temporary instruction with Frank Duveneck. She became one of Chicago's early twentieth-century portrait and landscape painters and one of the Midwest's most active and energetic exponents of impressionism. After her career was well established, she moved to Provincetown and studied with Charles Hawthorne...
Category

1930s American Impressionist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Board

Les Masons
Located in New York, NY
This elegant and sophisticated oil painting was realized by an underrecognized (but extraordinary) Flemish painter named F.V. Sliches in 1946. Entitled Les Masons (or the masons), th...
Category

1940s Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

"Lady with White Linen Hat"
Located in Lambertville, NJ
Jim's of Lambertville Fine Art Gallery is proud to present this piece by Gershon Benjamin (1899 – 1985). An American Modernist of portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and urban scene...
Category

1940s Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Woman portrait by Ilse Voigt - Oil on canvas 96x76 cm
Located in Geneva, CH
Oil on canvas with wooden frame. Total size with frame is 88x109 cm Ilse VOIGT is an artist born in 1905 and died in 1997. His works have been sold at public auction 24 times, mostl...
Category

1940s Academic Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Cabaret Dancers girls Austrian watercolor painting in fraimed 1930s
Located in Stockholm, SE
Signed: by Richard Geiger (1870 – 1945), Austrian - Hungarian painter. Also pencils inscriptions on reverse with date 33 (1933). By the 1920s, he worked illustrating books, bookplates and posters. His paintings included portraits, nudes, genre paintings, and mythological scenes, but he was known for his illustrations, especially his carnival motifs. Spectacular masterwork. Size app.: 18 x 23.3 cm (roughly 7.1 x 9,2 in), framed 31.7 x 36.4 cm (roughly 12.5 x 14.3 in). Very Good condition, minimal age wear. In person actual painting may appear darker or brighter than in our pictures, strictly depending on sufficient light in your environment. Please study good resolution images for overall cosmetic condition. Glass will be removed prior to shipment for safe transit. Weight of app. 0,5 kg (without glass!) is going to measure some 2 kg volume weight packed for shipment. R. Geiger was born in Vienna. He first attended a drawing school and then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he studied under Christian Griepenkerl and August Eisenmenger. He studied sculpture with Fritz Klimsch at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. There he took part in the exhibitions of the Academy with his portrait busts and sculptures. In Paris he studied at the Julian Academy and worked in the studio of François Flameng...
Category

1930s Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Wood, Paper, Watercolor

Ernest Burnett Hood, British Artist (1932-1988) Oil on canvas painting, Portrait
Located in Framingham, MA
Up for sale is an interesting original vintage oil painting on canvas by Famous British Artist Ernest Burnett Hood, (1932 to 1988), depicting a portrait of a man in costume. Ernest...
Category

1940s Impressionist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Formal Portrait of a Chinese Man in Traditional Dress
Located in Miami, FL
Dressed in traditional clothing, a handsome Chinese man is depicted as he sits resolutely with one hand on his leg and the other holding a baton. Female Artist Joyce Ballantyne...
Category

1940s Academic Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Woman with headscarf original oil on canvas painting
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Albert Rafols Cullerés (1892-1986) - Woman with scarf - Oil on canvas Oil measures 46x38 cm. Frameless. Catalan painter formed the Llotja with ...
Category

1930s Impressionist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Vieillesse, French Portrait of an Elderly Jewish Man
Located in Surfside, FL
1949 French Portrait of an Elderly Jewish Man, Signed Stern
Category

1940s Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

The Cabaret Dancer
Located in London, GB
'The Cabaret Dancer', crayon on art paper, by Kolomon Moore (circa 1930s). The Crazy Years (les Années Folles) of Paris in the 1920s hit an abrupt end in...
Category

1930s Portrait Paintings

Materials

Paper, Crayon

Vintage Large Signed American Modernist Interior Scene Portrait Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique American modernist signed portrait oil painting by Sidney Gross (1921 - 1969). Oil on canvas. Signed.
Category

1930s Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

1940s Oil Painting Portrait of Two Figures, American Modernist Figurative
Located in Denver, CO
Oil on canvas signed by artist Angelo Di Benedetto (1913-1992) featuring two young figures reading a book together while sitting from 1947. Painted in shades of green, orange, red, gray, and green. Image measures 28 x 38 inches, framed dimensions are 33 ¾ x 39 ¾ inches. Painting is in good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. About the Artist: Born New Jersey 1913 Died Central City, CO 1992 The son of Italian immigrants from the Salerno province in southern Italy, as a teenager Di Benedetto worked to study at the Cooper Union Art School in New York City (1930-34) from which he graduated with a certificate in freehand drawing. He won a scholarship to the Boston Museum Art School where he studied for three years, beginning in 1934. In 1937, he entered his first juried exhibition at the Montclair Museum in New Jersey, winning first prize and first honorable mention. In December 1938, the Royal Netherlands Steamship Line sent him on a two-month ethnological study trip to Haiti, his first exposure to a different environment outside the United States. In 1940, his Haitian paintings were exhibited at the Montross Gallery in New York – his first solo show. Before World War II, Di Benedetto traveled extensively around the United States doing regional paintings. During the war in 1941, Di Benedetto volunteered for a secret mission based in Eritrea, Africa before the Allied invasion. Following Africa, he served as an orientation officer and aerial photographic officer in the District of Columbia. In 1945 he was assigned to a mapping unit at Buckley Airfield in Denver where he served until his discharge in 1946. Like many other servicemen stationed at the time in Colorado, Di Benedetto chose to remain in Colorado, impressed by the state’s physical grandeur and healthful climate. He settled in the old mining town of Central City in 1947. In 1949 Di Benedetto and his wife, ceramist Lee Porzio, opened the Benpro Art School in his studio where he conducted summer art classes. In 1950, Di Benedetto teamed up with Frank Vavra...
Category

1940s American Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

An Irish Rogue
Located in London, GB
Oil on board, signed and dated '44 lower right Image size: 15 x 19 inches (38 x 48.25 cm) Contemporary style hand made frame This portrait of an unknown man certainly captures the p...
Category

1940s Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Portrait of Artist's Wife with Fruit, 1945 American Modern Oil Painting
Located in Denver, CO
Untitled (Portrait of Bessy Lyon, Artist Wife) is an oil on canvas painting by Hayes Lyon (1901-1987) from 1945. Presented in a wood frame, outer dimensions measure 35 ¼ x 29 ¼ x 1 ¾ inches. Image size is 30 x 24 inches. About the Artist: A native of Athol, Kansas, Lyon is primarily associated with Colorado. After several summer vacations at the Boulder Chautauqua and at Manitou near Colorado Springs, his family relocated in 1920 to Boulder where his father had a lumber business. Nine years later they settled in Denver where his father owned the Acme Lumber Company. To comply with his desire for his son’s financial self-reliance, Lyon graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1931 with a B.A. degree in economics. But shortly thereafter he returned to his first love – art – that ultimately became his career. His interest in the arts was nurtured by his mother, herself a talented amateur artist, and by two of his aunts who served as role models. Beginning in 1932, he pursued a five-year course of study at the Chappell School of Art in Denver which by then had become part of the University of Denver. During his time at the school he studied with John E. Thompson and Santa Fe artist, Józef Bakoś. He also met two other Santa Fe-based artists, Willard Nash and B.J.O. Nordfeldt, when they exhibited at Chappell House, then the home of the Denver Art Museum. Lyon likewise attended the Cooke-Daniels Lecture Series there on the arts in the 1930s. Following graduation with a B.F.A. degree from the University of Denver in 1937, he studied privately for about a year with Andrew Dasburg in Taos, New Mexico, that redirected his attention to the rugged Rocky Mountain landscape, which he saw with directness and painted with an economy of means. His canvas, Winter Vista, done following his study with Dasburg, received the Edward J. Yetter Memorial Prize at the 45th Annual Exhibition of the Denver Art Museum in 1939. The painting was reproduced in the September 1939 issue of the Magazine of Art (Washington, DC). That same year his painting, Mount Evans, was included as one of Colorado’s entries in the American Art Today Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. The money he received from the Yetter Prize financed his trip to Mexico City and Guadalajara in 1939 to see firsthand the frescoes of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera and the easel paintings of David Alfaro Siqueiros. Their work was admired by many Americans who participated in the WPA-era mural projects in the United States in the 1930s and early 1940s. The economic fallout from the Great Depression affecting many American artists at the time likewise resulted in Lyon’s participation in the Colorado Art Project, part of the WPA’s national program. Under its auspices he produced three murals in 1940 about the pioneer era of Fort Lupton, Colorado, which were installed in the auditorium of the local high school. Covering 367 square feet of wall space, one of the murals – Behold the West (the largest one) – incorporates the old fort for which the town is named. Before Lyon painted the murals, the students at Fort Lupton High School researched the history of their community and contributed to their cost, facilitating the murals’ allocation to their school under the Colorado Art Project. In the early 1940s Lyon shifted his focus to two new subjects – bathers, and canyons with conifers – reflecting his ongoing search for personal artistic growth. However, his reliance on structure to create form in his paintings and works on paper alienated some of his longtime followers. Nonetheless, his painting Conifers and Canyons won recognition at the 47th Annual Exhibition at the Denver Art Museum. The watercolor version of the piece was among three hundred works in that medium selected by John Marin, Charles Burchfield and Eliot O’Hara from a national competition held by the Section of Fine Arts (Federal Works Agency) and shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in 1941. Later that year Lyon spent time in California where he saw Orozco’s Prometheus, influencing him to increase his range of originality and expression. In 1942 Lyon enlisted in the U.S. Army, spending almost three years in the Mediterranean Theater – Africa and Italy – preparing camouflage operations and scale models of proposed landing sites. He used his free time in Italy to expand his artistic vocabulary by seeing cultural masterpieces in Rome, Florence, Siena and Milan, and through his extensive contact with Giorgio de Chirico, founder of the scuola metafisica art movement, and Gino Severini, a leading member of the Futurist movement. Because of Lyon’s low army rank and pay, de Chirico did a small watercolor for him signing it, "For Mr. Lyon; G de Chirico, 1944." Lyon often visited de Chirico and his wife, Isa, at their apartment near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Following his Army discharge in 1945 fellow Kansas native, Ward Lockwood, invited him to join the Art Department at the University of Texas at Austin where he taught painting from 1946 to 1951. During this period some of Lyon’s work employed the palette of the School of Paris which he had seen while stationed in Europe, while other paintings had a certain flatness found in some of Lockwood’s work from the 1930s. From 1951 to 1953 he was affiliated with the Lower Colorado River Authority in Austin as an illustrator and editor of the employee magazine. In 1953, following time spent in Mexico, he returned to Denver, working as an illustrator at Lowry Air Force Base until retirement in 1961. During that time he did little of his own art because he also was designing and building a home in Arvada, Colorado, and re-establishing himself in the Denver art community after a decade-long absence. His painting, Autumn Aspens (1953-present location unknown) illustrates his experimentation with abstraction. In the early 1960s he began painting from memory that continued until the steadily degenerative effects of Alzheimer’s disease took their toll a decade later. He depicted scenes from his wartime European sojourn and from his early adulthood. The latter include Souvenir of Boulder (1962), a nostalgic return to his boyhood home in Boulder; and Holly Mayer and Friends, a painting of Glenn Miller and his musicians, inspired by Lyon’s first encounter with jazz in Boulder in the 1920s. His lifelong passion for vintage cars and automobile racing...
Category

1940s American Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Beautiful Blue Eyed Boy Vintage Portrait California Impressionist
Located in Soquel, CA
Beautiful Blue Eyed Boy Vintage Portrait California Impressionist Wonderful 1940s portrait of young boy on cusp of adulthood. His piercing blue eyes draw y...
Category

1940s American Impressionist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Linen, Oil

The cellist
Located in Genève, GE
Work on canvas
Category

1930s Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Oil Painting by Erwin Eichinger "The Cardinal"
Located in Mere, GB
For sale is this oil painting on board by Erwin Eichinger "The Cardinal" 1892-1950 Member of the popular Austrian family of figurative artists who painted Tyrolean...
Category

1930s Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Young Men in an Interior - English Post Impressionist Pointillist Oil Painting
Located in Sevenoaks, GB
A beautiful c.1930 English post-impressionist / pointillist oil on canvas depicting two young men at a table. The work is superbly executed with a wonderf...
Category

1930s Post-Impressionist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Portrait of Ursula Stauffacher at the Red Book
Located in Genève, GE
Work on canvas Molded frame in plaster and gilded wood 103.5 x 93 x 7 cm
Category

1940s Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Signed and dated Tuscan Ghiglia Female Portrait Painting Thirties oil board
Located in Florence, IT
This small portrait, oil on board 24 x 17 cm, is signed and dated "Valentino Ghiglia 1934" on the top right corner. It represents a lady holding some flower, in a background that reminds of a spring day in the countryside. Valentino Ghiglia is the son of the painter Oscar. Also his brother Paulo was a painter, while his other three brothers...
Category

1930s Other Art Style Portrait Paintings

Materials

Wood, Oil

Portrait de Femme ( Self Portrait ? )
Located in Miami, FL
This is a possible self portrait by the famed female surrealist artist. It is also strikingly similar in style with it's exaggerated eyes to her portrait of Jean Genet, ( Leonor F...
Category

1940s Surrealist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Pre-Raphaelite Style Painting of Mothers and Babies in WWII
Located in Miami, FL
Babies are falling from the sky and not bombs. British female artist and illustrator Noel Laura Nisbet makes a passionate twist to the reality of En...
Category

1940s Pre-Raphaelite Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Tempera, Mixed Media, Oil

The Crochet Lady
Located in Genève, GE
Work on canvas
Category

1940s Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Golden Age of Illustration Beautiful Smiling Woman, Female Illustrator
By Zoë Mozert
Located in Miami, FL
Stunning portrait with a killer smile by Golden Age of Illustration female Illustrator Zoë Mozert. Signed lower right. Framed under glass, silk matted and i...
Category

1930s Portrait Paintings

Materials

Pastel, Illustration Board

Pedro Gasto Vilanova - Modernist painting of a family, dated '44
Located in Larchmont, NY
Pedtro Gasto Vilanova (Spanish, 1908-1997) Untitled (Family), 1944 Oil on canavas 21 7/8 x 18 3/8 in. Framed: 24 3/4 x 21 1/3 in. Signed and dated on left side. Inscribed verso: PAG...
Category

1940s Abstract Geometric Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

The pupil
Located in Genève, GE
Work on canvas Golden wooden frame 82 x 65.5 x 3.5 cm
Category

1930s French School Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Abraham Lincoln
Located in San Francisco, CA
Charles E. Willette: 1899-1979. Listed American artist who studied at the Arts Student League in the 1930s with Raphael Soyer and Robert Brackman. This powerfully painted portrait of...
Category

1930s American Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

"Femme Rousse Sur Fond Vert", Albert Bertalan, Original Oil, Green, Figurative
Located in Dallas, TX
"Femme Rousse Sur Fond Vert" is an original oil on canvas impressionistic portrait of a woman by Albert Bertalan. A red-headed lady in a purple and white striped collared coat sits in front of a green background daydreaming about something personal. The painting is framed with an ornate gold frame. From the late 19th century until World War Two, Paris was the center of the art world. Artists and intellectuals from around the globe descended on Paris, drawn by the atmosphere of creative freedom established by the French Impressionists. Because of the Impressionists’ innovations the direction of art had changed forever, the times were ripe for another Renaissance. The School of Paris, as this broad-based group of artists are referred to embodied the spirit of modernism. Albert Bertalan was born on September 21, 1899 in Jaszbereny, Hungary. He is known for painting compositions of figures in unique environments, including women by the sea, among other similar subject matters. He studied at the Nagybanyai Art School under some of the most important Hungarian artists, including Ivànyi Grünwald...
Category

1940s Impressionist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Board, Paper, Oil

Robin Hood
Located in Fort Washington, PA
Date: 1934 Medium: Oil on Canvas Dimensions: 24.75" x 16" Signature: Initialed Lower Left Cover Illustration for American Boy Magazine, May 1934 Includes copy of magazine
Category

1930s Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Sitting girl with open book
Located in Wien, 9
As a pupil of William Straube, Dora Hitz, Max Pechstein and Willy Jaeckel, Edith Meyer von Kamptz achieved her own individual aesthetic designs with colourfu...
Category

1930s Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Antique American School Modernist Tropical Portrait Signed Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique American school modernist portrait oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. Framed. Image size, 20L x 18H.
Category

1940s Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Woman in Blue Hat
Located in Boston, MA
Signed lower right: "S. Simkhovitch". Estate stamp on backing board verso.
Category

1930s Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Female figure - Oil Paint by Antonio Feltrinelli - 1930s
Located in Roma, IT
Female figure is a modern artwork realized by Antonio Feltrinelli in 1930s. Includes frame: 93.5 x 73.5 cm Mixed colored oil painting on canvas Antonio Feltrinelli (Milan, 1887 – Gargnano, 1942) He was born in Milan on June 1, 1887 to Giovanni Feltrinelli, the nephew of Giacomo, who was the founder of the Feltrinelli partnership. Feltrinelli was not only a prominent figure in the Italian economic and financial field, but he was also a painter, who was characterized as a strong, impetuous hot colorist, and preferred still lifes, portraits and landscapes. He started his career in 1930 at La Permanente (Milan), where he exhibited a portrait and a still life that won him the Fornara award. That same year, Feltrinelli exhibited his work at the Venice Biennial and at the Pesaro Gallery in Milan. Together with other prominent avant-garde artists, he participated in various foreign exhibitions on modern Italian painting...
Category

1930s Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Woman on Sofa - Painting by Antonio Feltrinelli - 1930s
Located in Roma, IT
Woman on Sofa is a modern artwork realized by Antonio Feltrinelli in the 1930s. Another painting of human figure on rear. Includes frame. Mixed colore...
Category

1930s Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Feminine Figure - Oil Painting by R. Melli - 1930s
Located in Roma, IT
Feminine Figure is a modern artwork realized by Roberto Melli in 1930s. Mixed colored oil painting. Includes vintage frame (fair conditions) : 42 x 2 x...
Category

1930s Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Relaxing
Located in Los Angeles, CA
RICHARD GEIGER "RELAXING" OIL ON CANVAS, SIGNED HUNGARIAN, C.1930 28 X 39 INCHES FRAMED 36.5 X 46 INCHES Richard Geiger 1870-1945 Richard Geiger was born in Vienna and first studied at the Vienna Art Institute with the academic painter Christian Ludwig Von Griepenkerl and, subsequently, in Paris with Francois Flameng...
Category

1930s Art Deco Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Odalisques - Oil Paint by Antonio Feltrinelli - 1930s
Located in Roma, IT
Odalisques is a modern artwork realized by Antonio Feltrinelli in 1930s. Mixed colored oil painting on canvas, realized in 1930s. Antonio Feltrinelli (Milan, 1887 – Gargnano, 1942) He was born in Milan on June 1, 1887 to Giovanni Feltrinelli, the nephew of Giacomo, who was the founder of the Feltrinelli partnership. Feltrinelli was not only a prominent figure in the Italian economic and financial field, but he was also a painter, who was characterized as a strong, impetuous hot colorist, and preferred still lifes, portraits and landscapes. He started his career in 1930 at La Permanente (Milan), where he exhibited a portrait and a still life that won him the Fornara award. That same year, Feltrinelli exhibited his work at the Venice Biennial and at the Pesaro Gallery in Milan. Together with other prominent avant-garde artists, he participated in various foreign exhibitions on modern Italian painting...
Category

1930s Modern Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Ralph Pallen Coleman (American 1892-1968) A Monumental Painting of Jesus Christ
Located in New York, NY
Ralph Pallen Coleman (American 1892-1968) A Monumental Painting of "The Resurrection of Jesus Christ", circa 1940. Measuring 102" high x 77" wide (framed), this massive oil on canvas painting is truly one of a kind. The quality throughout the entire painting is masterful. The painting is very realistically painted with bright, vibrant, colors which shows the artists true passion and love for Jesus and Christianity. Ralph Pallen Coleman was an American painter and illustrator. His career spanned more than half a century during which he illustrated stories for many magazines, and later, religious illustrations and paintings which provided images of Christianity to millions of people during the 1950s-1960's. A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he grew up and lived there throughout his 75 years. He received his formal art education at the Philadelphia School...
Category

1940s Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

"The Artist's Portrait'
Located in West Hollywood, CA
Presenting a magnificent, early original pastel, "The Artist's Portrait", by American artist Robert McIntosh. "The Artist's Portrait", is an original pastel on artist's paper, signed, dated 1937, 13 x 9.75, currently unframed, the portrait was acquired directly from the personal collection of the artist. We have included the artist's biography below please contact the gallery for additional information, Robert McIntosh (1916-2010) Robert McIntosh was born on March 11, 1916 near San Francisco, in Vallejo, California, the second son of Harry and Jesusita Coronado McIntosh. He found his lifelong passion for painting by the time he was ten years old and never swayed from his calling. The family moved to Stockton when Robert was 12. Their home was just six blocks from the newly opened Haggin Museum, filled with a treasure trove of European and American paintings. He became particularly enamored with the fine examples of 19th century French pastoral landscapes. As teens, Robert and his brother Harrison befriended local painter Arthur Haddock who taught them the craft of art and brought them along on outdoor painting trips. Robert also became skilled at drawing portraits that captured the subject's personality. Soon, the sheer joy of expressing himself this way became a consuming interest. ​When not sketching, McIntosh would wander the stacks of books at the public library, discovering and studying the Masters - in particular, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Whistler. At a Gauguin exhibit at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, Robert discovered a "whole new world of color" and the importance of designing the space in the eternal rectangle. "I envision a frame around everything I see, "he admitted. "The artists' challenge is to put something meaningful, interesting or beautiful in that space." ​In 1934 McIntosh won a competition for a scholarship to the Art Center School of Design, the first award they ever bestowed. The entire family moved to Los Angeles and a new vista opened to the young artist, both visually and culturally. Robert began to take on portrait commissions and had exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Art, The Oakland Museum of Art and the Crocker Museum of Art in Sacramento. During the Great Depression, Robert began to work at Disney Studios painting backgrounds for such classics as "Fantasia". Ron Barbagallo, of Animation Art...
Category

1930s Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil Pastel

Nude Posing on the Sofa
Located in London, GB
'Nude Posing on the Sofa', oil on canvas, by Louis Latapie (circa 1940s). From a long line of renowned paintings whose subject is reclining nudes, this ext...
Category

1940s Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Shop Antique and Vintage Portrait Paintings

An elegant and sophisticated decorative touch in any living space, portrait paintings have remained popular throughout the years and are widely loved pieces of art for display in many homes today.

Portrait paintings are at least as old as ancient Egypt, where realistic, lifelike depictions of the recently deceased — commonly known as “mummy portraits” — were painted on wooden panels and affixed to mummies as part of the burial tradition.

For centuries, painters have used portraiture as a means of expressing a subject’s nobility, societal status and authority. Portraits were given as gifts in Renaissance Europe, and a portrait artist might have been commissioned to help mark a significant occasion such as a wedding or a promotion to high office. Prior to the advent of photography, which eventually replaced painted portraits as a quicker and more efficient way of capturing a person’s essence, the subject of a portrait had to sit for hours until the painter had finished. And during the 18th century in particular, if an artist commissioned for a portrait struggled with how to adequately memorialize and capture a subject’s likeness, sometimes a portrait painting wasn’t completed for up to a year.

Whether it’s part of the gallery-style approach to your living-room or dining-room walls or merely inspiration as you devise an eye-grabbing color scheme in your home, a portrait painting is a timeless decorative object for any interior. A landscape painting or sculpture might give you the kind of insight into a specific region of the world or a different culture that you can ascertain only through art. Similarly, when you take the time to learn about the subject of a portrait painting that you bring into your home — the sitter’s history, the relationship between the sitter and the artist should one exist, the story of how the portrait came to be — that work can become intensely personal in addition to its place as an object for an art-hungry corner of your apartment or house.

On 1stDibs, visit a vast collection of famous portrait paintings or works by emerging artists. Search by medium to find the right portrait paintings for your home in oil paint, synthetic resin paint and more. Find portrait paintings in a variety of styles, too, including contemporary, Impressionist and Pop art, or search by artist to find unique works created by painters such as Mark Beard, Steve Kaufman and Montse Valdés.

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