Impressionist Portrait Paintings

Clown with Bouquet - Acrylic and Ink on Cardstock Colorful portrait of a clown holding a bouquet of flowers by Jassen Marek (20th Century). A sad clown in a suit with a straw hat ho...

Pair of two vintage portraits of Native American figures, one older and one younger, in profile with braids and headdresses by Victor S. ...

Signed figurative oil on board circa 1890 by French Nabis school painter Edouard Vuillard. The work depicts two seated ladies dressed in black with grey pinafores enjoying coffee together. Illustrated in the Catalogue Raisonne of Edouard Vuillard by Antoine Salomon and Guy Cogeval - Volume I, Page 229 - Reference IV-7 This striking work dates to between 1890 and 1891 which was without doubt Vuillard’s greatest decade as an artist. At this time the painter was working with the group of artist known as "Les Nabis" which included Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Paul Ranson, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Félix Vallotton, Paul Sérusier and Auguste Cazalis. The group played a large part in the transition from impressionism and academic art to abstract art, symbolism and the other early movements of modernism. They believed that a work of art was not a depiction of nature, but a synthesis of metaphors and symbols created by the artist. Signature: Signed lower right Dimensions: Framed: 19.25"x20.25" Unframed: 9.25"x10.25" Provenance: Renou et Poyet - Paris Roland, Browse & Delbanco - London (labels verso) c. 1955 The collection of Sir Alec Guinness Galerie Jan Krugier, Geneva - 1972 Nichido Gallery - Tokyo 1972 Private collection - Japan Christie's London - Impressionist & Modern Art - June 2016 Édouard Vuillard attended the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, where he made friends with Maurice Denis, Lugné-Poe, and Ker-Xavier Roussel, later his brother-in-law. He studied in Maillart’s studio; for six weeks came under the tutelage of Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris; and later under William Bouguereau and Robert at the Académie Julian, where he became closely linked with the Nabis group (from the Hebrew word for ‘prophet’). He met Marcel Proust in 1902. From 1908, he taught at the Académie Ranson. In 1937, he was elected member of the Institute. At first, Vuillard painted small subjects, disciplined and proficient, qualities for which the prestigious École Française was famous. His earliest still-lifes (1888) are astonishing in their decisiveness and subtlety. His empathy for the object had already compelled him to soften its appearance; the object, which, by virtue of its bright or glossy presence, remained the nonego and the ‘thing represented’ for so many others. ‘Intimacy’ developed immediately between the painter and this modest environment; inhabiting it every day enabled him to celebrate its splendour, and it was to remain his favourite environment. But he was already alternating between small portraits and still-lifes, which gained recognition because of their natural qualities and dignity of tone: a rare combination in a beginner. About 1890, influenced indirectly by Paul Gauguin, all the certainties which the self-styled Nabis painters had contented themselves with suddenly collapsed. Everything was called into question again: both the linear layout of the picture and its colour scheme; the choice of subject and its material aspect; its manufacture and its purpose. Vuillard’s paintings at that time show surprising, bold innovations and an arbitrary power, which one would expect 15 or 20 years later at the height of the Fauvist period. The preoccupation with an internal geometry set them apart from earlier studies. From then on, the paintings were based on forms, lines, and colours. Vuillard made concessions. He produced a portrait or interior with its furniture and its wallpapers, in which the family inhabiting it, evolves. Treated with flat areas of colour and solid shades of ochres, reds, blues, and saffron yellow, without modulation, they seem to prefigure certain paintings by Henri Matisse and Roger de La Fresnaye. In 1891, Vuillard painted an Elegant Lady, a silhouette seen from the back; a long vertical shape starting from the hair decorated with brown feathers; there is a kind of pink cloak, the tight and never-ending black skirt, erect in front of a half-open, bright orange door in a green wall, from where the light of another vertical shape emerges, which is bright yellow, and is reflected in red on the parquet at the feet of the elegant lady. This painting meets his concerns about the actual moment of creating ‘harmonies corresponding to our feeling’, and by virtue of its almost geometric structure, its drawing entirely free of detail, its light effects and colour harmonies, very much prefigures aspects of the future Abstraction movement and is oddly reminiscent of the final period of Nicolas de Staël. All too often, Vuillard is only admired in his role as the harmonist, the serene contemplator who combines an exquisite sense of nuance, rhythms, and values with the most acute observation. These singular investigations, these three-dimensional meditations including a table, a folding metal cot...

Oil painting of a study of "Blue Boy" standing with his hat in his left hand by Mary Welch (American, 1875-1967). Circa 1918. Signed "M. Welch" lower left and gifted circa "1955" on verso. Image: 6"L x 9"H. Mary Welch, born 10 years after the end of the Civil War, was a woman ahead of her time. She signed her paintings M. Welch, hoping that potential buyers wouldn't discover she was a woman. More often than not, when they learned her sex, art dealers lost interest. The Hutchinson artist never married, never had children. But when she died in 1967, she left an impressive body of paintings, many of them familiar Kansas landscapes...

Enrique Montserrat Foj (1935-2022) - Girl playing the flute - Oil Oil on canvas glued to cardboard. Oil measures 46x38 cm. Frameless. Romantic cartoonist, especially for the foreign market, and also a gymnast. Cartoonist linked to Editorial Bruguera and its agency Creaciones Editoriales. She got her start drawing girls' or adventure comics in Stories and the Sissi Graphic Novel Supplement. Much of her work from the 1960s was aimed at the European market for young women's magazines through the Selecciones Ilustradas agency. Anecdotally, he collaborated with Marvel Comics, drawing a romantic comic based on a script by Stan Lee for the title My Love (later republished in Our Love Story), credited there as Enrique Monserratt. He retired from comics in the 1980s to focus on painting. He was also an Olympic gymnast, a member of the Barcelona Gymnastics Center and the Barcino Tennis Club. He was champion of Spain in the third category (1955) and third in the Spanish Artistic Gymnastics Championships (1961). He participated in the Mediterranean Games (1959) and in the Rome Olympic...

Ron Hick's (US based) "Axiomatic Appeal" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts an impasto rendering of a male figure with dark hair and an abstracted background. Ron Hi...

Mid-Century Modern portrait of a man by California artist Genevieve Rogers (American, 1904-1984). The abstracted background has texture created with d...

This delightful turn of the century (early 20th century) oil on canvas painting represents an Italian landscape with one of the most famous squares in the world: Piazza San Marco in ...

A beautiful watercolor painting of a brown Carmel house with a white picket fence in front by Lillie Esther (Hillman) Heebner, a Watsonville, Monterey Bay area, California watercolor artist. Unsigned, but acquired with a collection of her work. Lillie (Lil) E. Heebner was guided through life by her creativity. Even at 92, she never felt old, and often said so. She met every situation in life—including death—with ingenuity. Although born in Richmond, Lillie lived in Watsonville all her life. Her father, Frederick H. Hillman, grew up on a strawberry ranch in Pajaro, graduated from Watsonville High School in 1916, and served in France during World War I. He later worked for Martinelli's Apple Cider plant and became foreman. Lillie's mother, Esther C. Hobson, moved as an infant from Bakersfield to Santa Cruz with her family in 1901, when they founded Hobson's Bath House at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk...

Vintage impressionist oil painting by Pierre Eugène Duteurtre (1911 - 1989). Oil on canvas, circa 1970. Signed. Displayed in a period frame. ...

Antique French impressionist portrait oil painting of two young girls. Oil on board. No signature found. Framed. Image size, 10L x 18H.

Suchitra Bhosle's "Rhythmic Silk" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a dark-haired woman on a red chair with a red silk top and flowing white skirt. About the Artis...