American Realist Paintings

A portrait of two young girls by the Royal Portraitist Chen Yanning. Both the artist as well as the sitters of this magnificent portrait are from racial...

Original Mid Century Pen and Ink on Paper "Cowboy and Bronco" Western Genre Compelling pen and ink western picture of Cowboy wrangling the bro...

A fine 1938 watercolor done of Tugboats in the Harbor by Reginald Marsh. The painting depicts the crush of boats at the shoreline during the later part of the American Great Depress...

Realist painting of a pair of cowboys attempting to rope a group of running horses set against an open landscape of rocky mountains. Signed by the artist in the front lower right cor...

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 va...

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...

A cheerful and luminous still life painting of a bouquet of yellow roses, a blue pot, and red drapery, masterfully executed by A. D. Greer (American, (1904 - 1998), in oil on canva...

This is a beautiful original oil on linen panel painting by master painter, Donald Jurney. Donald Jurney (b. 1945) was educated at Columbia University, the Pratt Institute, and the...

Original Painting. Colliers Magazine Cover Published 1933 Wedding Illustration Antonio Petruccelli (1907 - 1994) The Wedding Colliers published, June 17, 1933 17 1/4 X 11 1/2 inches (sight) Framed 23 1/4 X 17 1/2 inches Gouache on board Signed lower right BIOGRAPHY: Antonio Petruccelli (1907-1994) began his career as a textile designer. He became a freelance illustrator in 1932 after winning several House Beautiful cover illustration contests. In addition to 24 Fortune magazine covers, four New Yorker covers, several for House Beautiful, Collier’s, and other magazines he did numerous illustrations for Life magazine from the 1930s – 60s. ‘Tony was Mr. Versatility for Fortune. He could do anything, from charts and diagrams to maps, illustrations, covers, and caricatures,’ said Francis Brennan, the former art director for Fortune. Over the course of his career, Antonio won several important design awards, designing a U.S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Steel Industry and designing the Bicentennial Medal...

Incredible early American realist still life featuring pineapple and strawberries on a table. Oil on canvas. Incredible detail and masterfully painted. Signed illegibly, last n...

"Great Lakes South Shore" is an oil painting of a sunset over a harbor in Minnesota. Painted en plein air by Midwest realist painter Carl Bretzke. Framed. Signed "C.Bretzke" lower left Carl Bretzke is a representational painter who specializes in urban scenes, nocturnes, and plein-air landscapes. He is a member of the Plein Air Painters of America since 2021. Carl's work has been exhibited extensively in Minnesota and California, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Carl's work has been described in the Washington Post as "simultaneously intimate and detached…The artist's unadorned style recalls Edward Hopper and The Ashcan school." Carl holds an MD degree from the University of...

The impressionist land and water scene from Brooks Anderson. This estuary scene of Marin captures you and takes you on a journey from stream to ocean. Artist signed, titled and dated...

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 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...

"The Coward" (Woman Kissing Soldier). Original cover illustration for Life Magazine, published April 1919. Norman Rockwell’s The Coward (or, Woman Kissing Soldier) was published on...

John Aldrich Ruthven American Painter Bison in a Snow Blizzard Watercolor and Gouache on Paper signed lower left

A beautiful and rare antique American portrait of a young woman in a stunning period frame, likely original to the piece. Unsigned but beaut...

This painting was created by American artist Lumen Martin Winter. Winter's figurative paintings sometimes play with the edge of abstraction, resulting in an expressionistic feel. Thi...

American life is captured in this Clyde Singer painting, Mailing the letter, where he depicts a woman posting her mail in 1986. An accomplished American Scene painter, Singer success...

James Robinson (1944-2015) Austin, Dallas, Houston Artist Image Size: 24 x 36 Frame Size: 32 x 44 Medium: Acrylic on Canvas Clearly signed lower left quadrant about an inch above the...

Artist: Johnson Title: Secretariat Year: 1975 Medium: Oil on Canvas, signed Size: 66.5 x 50 in. (168.91 x 127 cm) Frame Size: 71.5 x 55.5 inches

This modern still life diptych by Gio Bellagio is inspired by ancient Greek ceramic vessels. The pots are adorned with minimalist patterns reminiscent of Greek geometry, emphasising the timeless quality of the forms while infusing a modern aesthetic. Details: Title: Tribal Pots...

Unframed Dimensions: 36 x 48 inches Framed Dimensions: 41 1/4 x 53 1/4 inches Nicholas Berger Biography American, b. 1949 In his more than three decades as an artist, Nicholas Berg...

Charming, delicious still life with ripe fruits of strawberries. I just want to reach out and take a red fragrant berry. I specially applied the technique of painting, putting a deli...

What is the basis for the exclusivity of this landscape? Firstly, the patterns!They can be used in textiles, ceramics, jewelry. Secondly, the color! A very interesting combination. V...

John Steuart Curry "Sketching Wisconsin," 1946 oil on canvas 31.13 x 28 inches, canvas 39.75 x 36.75 x 2.5 inches, frame Signed and dated lower right Overall excellent condition Presented in a 24-karat gold leaf hand-carved wood frame John Steuart Curry (1897-1946) was an American regionalist painter active during the Great Depression and into World War II. He was born in Kansas on his family’s farm but went on to study art in Chicago, Paris and New York as young man. In Paris, he was exposed to the work of masters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Eugène Delacroix and Jacques-Louis David. As he matured, his work showed the influence of these masters, especially in his compositional decisions. Like the two other Midwestern regionalist artists that are most often grouped with him, Grant Wood (American, 1891-1942) and Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975), Curry was interested in representational works containing distinctly American subject matter. This was contrary to the popular art at the time, which was moving closer and closer to abstraction and individual expression. Sketching Wisconsin is an oil painting completed in 1946, the last year of John Steuart Curry’s life, during which time he was the artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The painting is significant in Curry’s body of work both as a very revealing self-portrait, and as a landscape that clearly and sensitively depicts the scenery of southern Wisconsin near Madison. It is also a portrait of the artist’s second wife, Kathleen Gould Curry, and is unique in that it contains a ‘picture within a picture,’ a compositional element that many early painting masters used to draw the eye of the viewer. This particular artwork adds a new twist to this theme: Curry’s wife is creating essentially the same painting the viewer is looking at when viewing Sketching Wisconsin. The triangular composition of the figures in the foreground immediately brings focus to a younger Curry, whose head penetrates the horizon line and whose gaze looks out towards the viewer. The eye then moves down to Mrs. Curry, who, seated on a folding stool and with her hand raised to paint the canvas on the easel before her, anchors the triangular composition. The shape is repeated in the legs of the stool and the easel. Behind the two figures, stripes of furrowed fields fall away gently down the hillside to a farmstead and small lake below. Beyond the lake, patches of field and forest rise and fall into the distance, and eventually give way to blue hills. Here, Curry has subverted the traditional artist’s self-portrait by portraying himself as a farmer first and an artist second. He rejects what he sees as an elitist art world of the East Coast and Europe. In this self-portrait he depicts himself without any pretense or the instruments of his profession and with a red tractor standing in the field behind him as if he was taking a break from the field work. Here, Curry’s wife symbolizes John Steuart Curry’s identity as an artist. Compared with a self-portrait of the artist completed a decade earlier, this work shows a marked departure from how the artist previously presented and viewed himself. In the earlier portrait, Curry depicted himself in the studio with brushes in hand, and with some of his more recognizable and successful canvases behind him. But in Sketching Wisconsin, Curry has taken himself out of the studio and into the field, indicating a shift in the artist’s self-conception. Sketching Wisconsin’s rural subject also expresses Curry’s populist ideals, that art could be relevant to anyone. This followed the broad educational objectives of UW’s artist-in-residence program. Curry was appointed to his position at the University of Wisconsin in 1937 and was the first person to hold any such position in the country, the purpose of which was to serve as an educational resource to the people of the state. He embraced his role at the University with zeal and not only opened the doors of his campus studio in the School of Agriculture to the community, but also spent a great deal of time traveling around the state of Wisconsin to visit rural artists who could benefit from his expertise. It was during his ten years in the program that Curry was able to put into practice his belief that art should be meaningful to the rural populace. However, during this time he also struggled with public criticism, as the dominant forces of the art market were moving away from representation. Perhaps it was Curry’s desire for public acceptance during the latter part of his career that caused him to portray himself as an Everyman in Sketching Wisconsin. Beyond its importance as a portrait of the artist, Sketching Wisconsin is also a detailed and sensitive landscape that shows us Curry’s deep personal connection to his environment. The landscape here can be compared to Wisconsin Landscape of 1938-39 (the Metropolitan Museum of Art), which presents a similar tableau of rolling hills with a patchwork of fields. Like Wisconsin Landscape, this is an incredibly detailed and expressive depiction of a place close to the artist’s heart. This expressive landscape is certainly the result of many hours spent sketching people, animals, weather conditions and topography of Wisconsin as Curry traveled around the state. The backdrop of undulating hills and the sweeping horizon, and the emotions evoked by it, are emphatically recognizable as the ‘driftless’ area of south-central Wisconsin. But while the Metropolitan’s Wisconsin Landscape conveys a sense of uncertainty or foreboding with its dramatic spring cloudscape and alternating bands of light and dark, Sketching Wisconsin has a warm and reflective mood. The colors of the foliage indicate that it is late summer and Curry seems to look out at the viewer approvingly, as if satisfied with the fertile ground surrounding him. The landscape in Sketching Wisconsin is also revealing of what became one of Curry’s passions while artist-in-residence at UW’s School of Agriculture – soil conservation. When Curry was a child in Kansas, he saw his father almost lose his farm and its soil to the erosion of The Dust Bowl. Therefore, he was very enthusiastic about ideas from UW’s School of Agriculture on soil conservation methods being used on Wisconsin farms. In Sketching Wisconsin, we see evidence of crop rotation methods in the terraced stripes of fields leading down the hillside away from the Curry’s and in how they alternate between cultivated and fallow fields. Overall, Sketching Wisconsin has a warm, reflective, and comfortably pastoral atmosphere, and the perceived shift in Curry’s self-image that is evident in the portrait is a positive one. After his rise to favor in the art world in the 1930’s, and then rejection from it due to the strong beliefs presented in his art, Curry is satisfied and proud to be farmer in this self-portrait. Curry suffered from high blood...

Lee Jaffe, American (1950 - ) - Portrait of John Brown and Nat Turner, Year: 1983, Medium: Oil on Canvas, Size: 125 in. x 170 in. (317.5 cm x 431.8 cm)

For Norman Rockwell's Four Seasons calendar series for Brown & Bigelow By the end of World War II, Norman Rockwell was a household name throughout the United States and considered...

Le Pot de Confiture is an original oil painting on panel. It is framed in a handmade, black frame with gold lip. The overall dimensions of the framed piece are approximately, 14x16 inches. Master Still Life painter Dale Zinkowski was born in New York and his earliest memories of painting and drawing were from his Grandfather's own work, which hung throughout the home. Fascinated by the world around him, and the ability to capture fleeting moments on paper, he began to draw and paint from nature almost exclusively. ​From 1993-97, he attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City where he studied the Reilly method with both Marvin Mattelson and John F. Murray. Inspired by the techniques, and hungry for more information, he began copying from the old masters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  ​When Murray moved his studio to Tucson, Arizona, Dale followed and focused his studies on the palettes, methods, and materials of artists such as Velazquez and Rembrandt.  ​In 2012, Dale attended the Florence Academy of Art in Italy, where he pushed his understanding of traditional techniques and materials even further while drawing and painting master copies in museums and painting landscapes in the countryside.  ​In 2013, Dale returned to New York City, where he immersed himself in the full-time program at Grand Central Atelier studying under Jacob Collins, Ted Minoff, Will St. John and Colleen Barry...

Nora Othic is considered one of the top regionalist painters in the Midwest. She builds on a legacy from her artistic predecessors such as Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton and the WPA ...

This highly stylized portrait depicts a well dressed man in front of a mining property likely in West Virginia. It is very much in the manner of earlier American artists such as Gra...

Christopher Clark's (US based) "Looking for Breakfast" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a bird perched in a flooded grassy field. Bio/artist statement: Christopher has been an artist since early childhood, when he would watch Bob Ross on PBS and mimic the famed oil painter’s art with crayons. He considers himself a self-educated artist, with his studies ranging from personal training with contemporary masters, to classical academic art technique, with much inspiration from 19th Century art and the Impressionist Movement. Christopher lived in Italy for a time, immersing himself in Italian culture and art, which continues to influence his painting. His fan base has grown considerably since his return to the US, gaining the attention of Lucasfilm and Marvel Fine Art, which both signed him as an officially licensed artist in 2016. Other clients include George Lucas, Major League Baseball, Louisville Slugger...

An original oil painting by GC Williams. Williams has a degree in art history which gave her an understanding of, and appreciation for, not only the art of the past, but the histori...

This mural study is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s Industry and Commerce, 1936, tempera on panel, 16 ½ x 39 ½ inches, signed verso “John Ballator, Portland Ore.” provenance includes: J.C. Penney Company, represented by Russell Tether Fine Arts Assoc.; presented in a newer wood frame About the Painting Industry and Commerce is a prime example of WPA Era muralism. Like a Mediaeval alter, this mural study is filled with icons, but the images of saints and martyrs are replaced with symbols of America's gospel of prosperity through capitalism. Industry and Commerce has a strong narrative quality with vignettes filling the entire surface. Extraction, logistics, design, power generation, and manufacturing for printing, chemicals, automobiles and metal products are all represented. To eliminate any doubt about the mural's themes, Ballator letters a description into the bottom of the study. Ballator also presents an idealized version of industrial cooperation, as his workers, lab-coated technicians and tie-wearing managers work harmoniously toward a common goal in the tidy and neatly designed environments. Although far from the reality of most industrial spaces, Ballator's study reflects the idealized and morale boosting tone that many mural projects adopted during the Great Depression. About the Artist John R Ballator achieved success as a muralist, lithographer, and teacher during the Great Depression. Born in Oregon, he studied at the Portland Museum Art School, the University of Oregon and at Yale University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Art. In 1936, Ballator was commissioned to paint a mural panel for the new Department of Justice Building in Washington DC, an important project that spanned five years with several dozen artists contributing a total of sixty-eight designs. Ballator completed murals for the St. Johns Post Office and Franklin High School, both in Portland, Oregon. He also contributed to the 1938 murals at Nathan Hale School in New Haven, Connecticut. During the late 1930s, Ballator taught art for several years at Washburn College in Topeka, Kanas, where he completed a mural for the Menninger Arts & Craft Shop before accepting a professorship at Hollins College...

Antique American watercolor painting, Bucolic Farm scene by Frank F. English (1854 - 1922), Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Circa 1910. A very attractive painting by the celebrated Pennsylvania artist Frank F. English, the location is in Point Pleasant, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The painting depicts a scene of blue skies with two farmers tossing hay with pitchforks & two horses harnessed to a hay wagon, with barns to the background. The painting signed lower right " Frank F. English", condition is excellent and is ready to hang on your wall. Frank F. English was born in Louisville Kentucky in 1854. In the early 1880s, he studied for five years in the evening classes of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His instructors included Thomas Eakins, James P. Kelly and Thomas Anshutz. However, English's reputation primarily rests with his outstanding facility as a watercolorist; most of his known paintings are executed in this medium. English's propensity for its use coincides, appropriately enough, with the watercolor's growing popularity among other American painters. The American Water Color Society brought the medium special prominence by the late 1860s, and acceptance on the level of oil painting in 1876. That same year, the society was invited to display its works at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Its members exhibited 116 watercolors, and their public exposure was enormous. It is safe to assume that during the 159-day Centennial, Frank English was among the nearly 10 million exposition attendees, surpassing attendance records at all preceding world's fairs. At age twenty-two, English, traveled to Philadelphia to see works by the Society's notables such as Samuel Colman, R. Swain Gifford, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Albert Fitch...

Mickey Finn Youth Club, 1951, oil on Masonite, signed and dated lower right, signed, titled and dated verso, 20 x 24 inches, presented in an older frame Edgar Kiechle was a Los Ange...

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...

Street Scene WPA American Scene Mid-20th Century Modern Coin Tower California SF Victor Arnautofff (1896 – 1979) City Street 12 x 14 inches Oil on board, c. 1930s Signed lower left BIO Born in the Ukraine of Russia, Victor Arnautoff became one of the most influential muralists in San Francisco in the 1930s and worked for the Federal Arts Project, WPA, in the expressive, social protest...

Four Sheep in the Field, Realist, Light/ Shadow Oil Painting 36" x 24" Farm The third and fourth photos show thow this painting will look after being professionally taken by 2/23...

In First Light (2024), Alan Bray captures the quiet majesty of dawn over Spencer Pond, Maine. This luminous casein tempera on panel painting (15 x 24 inches) depicts a breathtaking s...

Two Small pink roses grace the white background of this canvas. Lucas' studio is surrounded by nature and often paints what grows in her backyard, finding and magnifying beauty all a...

Riot, Revolution, Police figures on Horseback in City Streets. Hand signed lower right. Painting measures 6 x 12, framed 9 x 15 inches. Arthur Smith is a listed American painter mos...

American, b. 1952 Frank Corso was born in Syracuse New York. Taking a keen interest in art at a very early age, he was inspired to draw and paint the landscape of the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. He had the opportunity to have very fine art teachers in high school who also happened to be fine painters, artists George Benedict...

William Sharp (1900 - 1961) Factory on the River Oil on canvas 17 1/2 x 23 1/4 inches Initialed lower right: WS Provenance: Estate of the artist Private Collection, New York Swann Auction Galleries, American Art, June 13, 2019, Lot 178 William Sharp was born on June 13, 1900, in Lemberg, Austria, where he attended college and the Academy for Arts and Industry. He later studied in Kraków, Poland, and in Berlin and Munich, Germany. Sharp began his career as a designer of stained-glass windows and as a painter of murals. He served in the German army during World War I. After the war he became a newspaper artist in Berlin and a well-known etcher. Sharp drew political cartoons that were bitterly critical of the growing Nazi movement. As the influence of National Socialism intensified, he began to contribute drawings, under a pseudonym, to publications that were hostile to Hitler. After Hitler assumed power, Sharp was confronted with these drawings and told that he would be sent to a concentration camp. However, in 1934, he escaped to the United States. His first newspaper assignment in America was making courtroom sketches for The New York Mirror...

"Quart and a Half" is an American Realist abstract landscape watercolor on paper painting by Andrew Wyeth in 1961. The artwork is 21 x 29 1/4 inches and is 33 3/4 x 42 1/4 x 1 inches...

"Apaches" is an oil on canvas painting by Olaf Wieghorst. The painting is signed on the lower left, "O-Wieghorst". The framed piece measures 25 1/2 x 29 3/4 x 2 in. “When the time comes for me to put away my palette and unsaddle my pony for the last time, I hope that my canvases will in some small measure add to the historical recording of an era, the cowboy, and the great American West.” ~ Olaf Wieghorst Wieghorst worked with the mounted patrol of the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Cavalry (1920-1922) with occasional interludes as a wrangler on ranches in the western states. Wherever he went, he sketched and painted the Western culture he loved, often selling his work as calendar and magazine illustrations. His work appeared in Zane Grey...

"Collegeville Farm" is a 23 x 41 inches, regional landscape, painted in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The oil on canvas is framed in a stunning, 22k gold, handcrafted frame. The a...

An oil painting of a cloud filled sky at sunset. The foreground is set along a sandy beach, white sand meeting dunes, tire tracks in the sand lead our eye to a pair of figures, seate...

Kathleen Keifer is a California-based internationally collected artist. She is a leading force of the New California Realism. With a high level of technical virtuosity Keifer creates...

Brooklyn Bridge NYC American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern WPA Cecil C. Bell (American, 1906-1970) Brookyn Bridge amid the NYC Waterfront 35 ½ x 23 ½ inches Oil on Bo...

American, b. 1952 Frank Corso was born in Syracuse New York. Taking a keen interest in art at a very early age, he was inspired to draw and paint the landscape of the Finger Lakes r...

Gail Chase Bien paints thinly layered oil on linen over extended periods (from months to years) to complete a single work of art. Taking cues from nature’s extraordinary visual offer...

This powerful and graphically composed image of a black man with white angel wings was painted in a realist style by African American artist ...

Wayman Adams Fox Trot, circa 1915 Signed upper left; titled on the reverse Oil on board 15 1/2 x 12 inches Adams was born on a farm in rural Indiana near Muncie. His father, a hors...

Self Portrait at 43

Stock Pond in the Summer depicts the Texas Hill Country which is Garrett Middaugh's favorite painting locations. This is painted in the style of Reali...

"Peachy Pumpkin" is an interior realist still life painted from life, orange and black colors. Framed. Signed on bottom. Sarah Lamb is a talented and dynamic realist painter. With ...