Josef Berges

A rustic chapel, natural earth tones, devotional objects and saint figures

ca 1930

It is always wonderful to be able to do original research on a mysterious painting by a mysterious artist. Born in Paris in 1867, Marthe Alers-Abran died tragically young in the same...

A large and elegant still life with grapes and pears on a table which also features a pristine white bowl and a candle stick. Painted with simplicity, clarity of structure, and restrained emotion, this is a superb modernist work by Jean Chauffrey (1911-) dating from circa 1950. At the time, Chauffrey had a contract with mythical Paris art dealers...

The best of Europe. If you love the classically stylish opulence of French palaces and their marble fireplaces, their elegant panelling, their Versailles parquets - if you have wondered around Versailles or Fontainebleau palace, wondering what it might be like to live there - then this one is for you! Our painting brings a light flooded, serene palace interior to you: a large room with a sculpture on the mantlepiece, and three large paintings...

A wonderful and idyllic, mid 19th Century summery village scene, where a pretty young girl stands, knitting (perhaps she is secretly waiting for someone?), village women eat and work...

Naturalistic still life painting by Dutch artist Leonardus Nardus. The work features three jugs or vases set against a patterned carpet. Currently hung in a carved gold frame. Retains the original gallery tag on the reverse. Dimensions Without Frame: H 27 in. x W 24 in. Artist Biography: Leonardus Nardus, born in Utrecht into the Dutch upper middle class, the son of an antiquarian, was a colorful character. After training at the Amsterdam Academy, he embarked on a brief and unsuccessful gold-hunting expedition to Argentina in 1889. He then settled in America, where he became an art dealer, eventually returning to Paris a few years later. As well as being an art collector, Nardus developed his own talents as a painter. Caught up by a taste for nomadism, Léo Nardus eventually settled in Tunisia, where he built a small palace in the seaside resort of...

Framed 21.2 X 25.5 Unframed 17 X 21 Signed and dated 1920. Nina Karasek (Joële) born 1883 Kuttenberg, Czech Lands, Austro-Hungarian Empire, died in 1952 (I have also seen the date recorded as 1933) Vienna, Austria. Nina Karasek was an Austrian Impressionist & Modern artist who was born in 1883. Her work was featured in exhibitions at the Es Baluard, Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art and the Bildraum Bodensee. Little is known of Nina Karasek's life. She was born in 1883 in Kuttenberg (Kutná Hora) in Bohemia, studied art at the Kunstschule für Frauen und Mädchen (Art School for Women and Girls) in Vienna, Austria, under Adalbert Seligmann and Tina Blau. She studied at the Frauenakademie in Vienna and Munich. In the 1920's she worked first as a landscape painter and an illustrator, later turning toward symbolism, painting mystical subjects after her interest in spiritualism. Her conventional works were shown at various exhibitions. At the age of 44, while she was copying a work by Rembrandt in an Italian museum, she fell into an altered state of consciousness. Rembrandt appeared to her, took possession of her arm, and immediately her hand started to draw something quite different from what she had intended. From then on, for the rest of her life Nina Karasek was in “supernatural” contact with a series of great masters like Rembrandt, Albrecht Dürer, Goya, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Gustav Klimt and others. Under their guidance and inspiration, she drew and painted works "in the style" of the masters. But very soon her works became stylistically more and more unrestricted and Symbolist, showing an enormous range of creative expression, ranging from symbolic and allegorical motifs to bewildering images with a fantastic arsenal of figures and private characters, signs, and symbols, and to frantic, gestural sketches and abstract compositions. From then on, she often signed her works with her esoteric “primordial name” Joële. (Nina Karasik-Joel) Almost everything we know about her life was from what she noted on the reverse of her drawings: sometimes diary-like notes of her horrible living conditions during World War II, but often strangely impenetrable explanations of the depicted motifs – often as fascinating and mysterious as the drawings themselves. In her works and notes, an exciting private cosmology and mythology unfolds, a drama of hidden powers and principles that flow through macrocosm as well as microcosm. Shortly after their discovery, Nina Karasek's Spiritualist, mediumistic works have found their way into galleries and major international collections. SELECT EXHIBITIONS 2019 The Medium’s Medium: Spiritualist Art Practices From the Turn of the Century and Beyond. The Gallery of Everything, London, (she showed with Madge Gill, Augustin Lesage, Fleury-Joseph Crépin...

Lawrence Rothbort 1920-1963 Lawrence Rothbort, son of American Impressionist - Samuel Rothbort, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1920, and achieved fame for his expressionist style painting, earning comparison to Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh. At age 16 he dropped out of High School and became an avid reader of philosophy, religion and mysticism which, eventually, led him to become a moral vegetarian. As a pacifist during World War II - he refused to serve in the military. A requirement therefore, was to work on farms due to the manpower shortage. For one year at the age of 24, he left home for the Pocono's where he would live as a hermit , living off the land and closely observing nature. Rothbort returned home in 1945 determined to become an artist. As a self-trained artist, he worked non-stop, seven days a week, grinding his own paints, experimenting in oils, watercolors, pen & ink. He developed several new techniques such as the patient application of paint with sharpened twigs to the canvas, and the combination of oil painting with glass. He created enormous mosaics and it was not unusual for a piece to take several months to complete. Rothbort's first showing was in 1947 at the Barzansky Gallery in Manhattan. The reviews were excellent, comparing his pen & ink to those of the Elder Bruegal. His oils "outstanding", where he was praised by critics as a descendent of Gauguin. In 1956, he married a young piano teacher with whom he had three children. In 1956 they moved to Florida where he completed three major works, one of which was an enormous mosaic of his wife nursing their first born surrounded by everything they owned. The work is reminiscent of Medieval Madonna's. Rothbort returned to Brooklyn in 1960 and established a small gallery behind his family's apartment. He would often travel with his supplies in a carriage to various locations throughout Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn painting...

Wonderful early 20th century still life of a Japanese Shisa (lion/dog), a floral design vase and a brass coffee pot by Wilfred A. Readio (American, 1895-1961), 1920. Signed "Wilfred ...