1940s Art

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

Lawrence Kupferman, 'Fantasia Americana – 1880', drypoint etching with sandground, 1943. Signed, titled, and annotated 'Series A, 1971 2/6' in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, on heavy, cream wove paper, with full margins (2 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches); the paper slightly lightened within the original mat opening, otherwise in excellent condition. One of only 6 impressions printed in 1971, with the added sandground grey background tint. Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 11 13/16 x 14 3/4 inches; sheet size 18 x 20 1/4 inches. Collections: National Gallery of Art, Zimmerli Art Museum (Rutgers University). ABOUT THE ARTIST Lawrence Kupferman (1909 - 1982) was born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston and grew up in a working-class family. He attended the Boston Latin School and participated in the high school art program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In the late 1920s, he studied drawing under Philip Leslie Hale at the Museum School—an experience he called 'stultifying and repressive'. In 1932 he transferred to the Massachusetts College of Art, where he first met his wife, the artist Ruth Cobb. He returned briefly to the Museum School in 1946 to study with the influential expressionist German-American painter Karl Zerbe. Kupferman held various jobs while pursuing his artistic career, including two years as a security guard at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. During the 1930s he worked as a drypoint etcher for the Federal Art Project, creating architectural drawings in a formally realistic style—these works are held in the collections of the Fogg Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In the 1940s he began incorporating more expressionistic forms into his paintings as he became progressively more concerned with abstraction. In 1946 he began spending summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he met and was influenced by Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock, and other abstract painters. At about the same time he began exhibiting his work at the Boris Mirski Gallery in Boston. In 1948, Kupferman was at the center of a controversy involving hundreds of Boston-area artists. In February of that year, the Boston Institute of Modern Art issued a manifesto titled 'Modern Art and the American Public' decrying 'the excesses of modern art,' and announced that it was changing its name to the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). The poorly conceived statement, intended to distinguish Boston's art scene from that of New York, was widely perceived as an attack on modernism. In protest, Boston artists such as Karl Zerbe, Jack Levine, and David Aronson formed the 'Modern Artists Group' and organized a mass meeting. On March 21, 300 artists, students, and other supporters met at the Old South Meeting House and demanded that the ICA retract its statement. Kupferman chaired the meeting and read this statement to the press: “The recent manifesto of the Institute is a fatuous declaration which misinforms and misleads the public concerning the integrity and intention of the modern artist. By arrogating to itself the privilege of telling the artists what art should be, the Institute runs counter to the original purposes of this organization whose function was to encourage and to assimilate contemporary innovation.” The other speakers were Karl Knaths...

Vintage modernist abstract expressionist painting. Oil on canvas. Housed in a period frame. Image size, 24L x 36H. Signed.

Medium: lithograph with pochoir coloring (after the 1895 drawing in sanguine). Printed in 1948 on Johannot paper for the rare "Seize Aquarelles et Sanguines de Renoir" portfolio and ...

André Masson, French (1896 -1987) - Apparition pour les poèmes de Emily Brontë, Year: circa 1945, Medium: Lithograph on thin wove paper, signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: AP...

Lithograph and stencil on vélin Foreign Affairs paper mounted on Foreign Affairs museum board, as issued . Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good Condition. Notes: From the folio, Édouard Manet, Letters with Aquarelles, 1944. Published by Pantheon Books, New York; rendered and printed by Raymond and...

Nicely painted European impressionist cityscape oil painting. Framed. Oil on canvas. Signed.

Rare Hawaiian landscape of coastal Maui. Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed. Oil on canvas. Image size, 20"H x 24"L.

Arthur Dove: 1880-1946. One of the most important early American Modernists and Abstract Expressionists. He has had auction results over $8,000,000 and that record was 2 weeks ago. A...

An accomplished American Scene painter, Clyde Singer successfully captured everyday life during his long career. A unique aspect of American life is depicted in this painting, entitl...

Charming mid century still life of fruit, vase and black cat by Monterey artist Joseph Tanous (American, b. 1925), c. 1940-50. Signed lower left corner. Presented in rustic painted w...

after Henri MATISSE (1869-1954) Lithograph Signed in the plate Vélin Paper Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm (12 x 9") This lithograph is one of a rare edition made during the Second World War ...

Alexander Sharpe Ross - or Alex Ross. This work is a perfect artistic statement with every formal element in perfect harmony. It's a masterf...

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...

Rémy Duval, 'Tugboat, River Seine, Paris', photogravure, 1946. A fine, richly-inked impression in warm black ink, on cream wove B.F.K. Rives paper; the shee...

Work on canvas Gilded wooden frame 60 x 71 x 4,5 cm

Original artist proof engraving, aquatint, intaglio on archival paper by the Russian/American artist, Nahum Tschacbasov. Signed in pencil lower right and dated 1947. Condition: good...

Latvia-born William Sanderson became a contributor to the New Yorker and New Masses magazines during the 1930s. He was drafted into the Army during World Wa...

George Platt Lynes Photograph #10 of dancer Francisco Moncion 1949. George Platt Lynes rare original vintage 1949 gelatin silver photograph of dancer Francisco Moncion. Stamped on verso - GEORGE PLATT LYNES. Photo is 7 3/4 x 9 1/2 inches, glossy finish in excellent condition. This photograph is #10 from a collection of 12 different poses in this series taken in Platt Lynes's NYC studio in 1949 (as per the NY Public Library archives). The cloud backdrop is recognizable in other Platt Lynes photographs. Moncion was a personal friend of Platt Lynes and this photograph is from Moncion's personal photographic collection. George Platt Lynes (1907–1955), was a gregarious American portrait, dance, fashion, and male nude photographer whose career spanned the late 1920s through the early 1950s. From age eighteen, Lynes entered the cosmopolitan world of the American expatriate community in Paris when he became acquainted with the salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. He began photographing authors like Stein, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, and Colette and soon established himself as one of the premier fashion photographers in the Condé Nast stable, documenting the ballet companies of George Balanchine/Lincoln Kirstein, and pursuing a private obsession with seductive images of young male nudes rarely published in his lifetime. Platt Lynes photographs are in the collections of every major art museum and university archive including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Yale Art Museum, and the Smithsonian. Francisco Moncion (July 6, 1918 – April 1, 1995) was a charter member of the New York City Ballet. Over the course of his forty year career, choreographers George Balanchine, and Jerome Robbins in the New York City Ballet created 22 major roles for Moncion including the Dark Angel in Orpheus, Death in La Valse, Prince Ivan in Firebird, and the Boy in Afternoon of a Faun. He was also a choreographer and a talented painter who exhibited alongside Miro, Picasso and Carrado Cagli. Moncion was a popular model for many famed mid-century (late 1930s, 1940s - 1950s) figure photographers including Platt Lynes, Carl van Vechten, Maurice Seymour...

Anonymous Flames around St Paul's, Night Blitz in London - 1940 Lithograph 42 x 54 cm This striking lithograph depicts St Paul's Cathedral in London peaking through the swathes of...

Medium: Lithograph and stencil on vélin Polifilo paper Year: 1947 Paper Size: 13.78 x 10.24 inches Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued Notes: From the folio, I...

The 1949 original travel poster by Yves Brayer promoting Air France trips to Rome encapsulates the allure and elegance of mid-20th-century travel. Created by the renowned French arti...

Wonderful early American modernist sunset seascape painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. No signature found. Measuring 22 by 24 overall and image size, 20 by 18 inches.

This collection of drawings is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness. 1. Paradise Lost (But His Doom) Crayon on paper, 17 ½ x 12 ½ inches (image), 22 x 15 inc...

Lithograph on vélin pur fil paper. Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Henri Matisse, Dessins, Thèmes et Variations, 19...

Ferdinand Springer, 'Arbre-Homme', engraving, 1945, edition 23. Signed and numbered '23/20' in pencil. A fine, richly-inked impression, on heavy, b...

Charles Quest, 'Work Bench', 1949, wood engraving, edition 40. Signed, dated and numbered 9/40 in pencil. Titled and annotated 'wood engraving 1949' in pencil, in the artist’s hand, lower right margin. A fine, richly-inked impression, on off-white wove Japan, with full margins (1 3/4 to 2 inches), in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed. ABOUT THE ARTIST Charles Quest, a successful artist, and fine art instructor, worked in a variety of mediums including mosaic, stained glass, mural painting, and sculpture, but remains best known as a printmaker. Quest grew up in St. Louis, his talent evident as a teenager when he began copying the works of masters such as Michelangelo on his bedroom walls. He studied at the Washington University School of Fine Arts where he later taught from 1944 to 1971. He traveled to Europe after his graduation in 1929, and studied at La Grande Chaumière and Academie Colarossi, Paris, continuing to draw inspiration from the works of the Old Masters. After returning to St. Louis, Quest received several commissions to paint murals in public buildings, schools, and churches, including one from Joseph Cardinal Ritter to paint a replica of Velasquez's Crucifixion over the main altar of the Old Cathedral in St. Louis. Quest soon became interested in the woodcut medium which he apparently learned through his study of J. J. Lankes' A Woodcut Manual (1932) and Paul Landacre's articles in American Artist magazine ‘since no artists in St. Louis were working in wood’ at that time. Quest also revealed that for him, wood cutting and engraving were ‘more enjoyable than any other means of expression.’ In the late 1940s, his graphic works began attracting a lot of critical attention—several of his woodcuts won prizes and were acquired by major American and European museums. His wood engraving entitled ‘Lovers’ was included in the American Federation of Art's traveling print exhibition in 1947. Two years later Quest's two prize-winning prints, ‘Still Life with Grindstone’ and ‘Break Forth into Singing’ were exhibited in major American museums in a traveling show organized by the Philadelphia Print Club. His work was included in the Chicago Art Institute's exhibition, ‘Woodcut Through Six Centuries’ and the print ‘Still Life with Vise’, was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1951 he was invited by artist-Curator Jacob Kainen to exhibit thirty wood engravings and color woodcuts in the Graphic Arts Division of the Smithsonian's National Museum (now known as the American History Museum). This one-man exhibition was a remarkable achievement for Quest, who had been working in the medium for only about ten years. In the press release for the show, Kainen praised the ‘technical refinement’ of Quest's work: ‘He obtains a great variety of textural effects through the use of the graver, and these dense or transparent grays are set off against whites or blacks to achieve sparkling results. His work has the handsome qualities characteristic of the craftsman and designer.’ At the time of the Smithsonian exhibition, Quest's work was represented by three New York galleries in addition to one in his home town. He had also won 38 prizes, and his prints were in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Chicago Art Institute, the Metropolitan Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In cooperation with the Art in Embassies program, his color woodcuts were displayed at the American Embassy in Paris in 1951. Recognition at home came in 1955 with his first solo exhibition in St. Louis. Press coverage of the show heralded the ‘growth of graphic arts toward rivaling painting and sculpture as a major independent medium’. Charles Quest retired from teaching in 1971 and made relatively few prints in his later years, as the rigors of the medium were too demanding. He moved to Tryon, North Carolina, with his wife Dorothy, an artist and portrait painter, and remained active as a painter until his death in 1993. An exhibition of his prints at the Bethesda Art Gallery in 1983 attracted the interest of Curator Emeritus Joseph A. Haller, S.J., who began purchasing his work for the University's collection. In 1990 Georgetown University Library's Special Collections Division became the grateful recipient of a large body of Quest's work including prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, and stained glass, as well as his archive of correspondence and professional memorabilia. These extensive holdings, including some 260 of his fine prints, provide a rich opportunity for further study and appreciation of this versatile and not-to-be-forgotten mid-Western American artist...

Reclining Female Nude Charcoal and colored chalks with white highlights on tan laid paper, c. 1948 Signed and monogrammed by the artist lower right (see photo) A masterpiece dr...

M R Webb Abstract Form 21 x 26 cm Signed to lower right Provenance: Family of A. E. Halliwell Little is known about A Searle beyond the fact that he studied under A E Halliwell, th...

Original WWII poster: Food Is a Weapon Don't Waste It!. Professional acid-free archival linen backed and ready to frame. Fine condition. Food is a weapon. Don't waste it! Buy wi...

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...

Eve Nethercott, American (1925 - 2015) - Flowers (P6.49), Year: 1948, Medium: Watercolor on Paper, Size: 22 x 15 in. (55.88 x 38.1 cm), Description: Set against a washed back...

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...

The Walls of Jericho." This is an original 1948 half-sheet movie poster for the film " The poster features a striking image of Cornel Wilde and Linda Darnell...

Lithograph on vélin d’Arches paper, mounted on vélin d’Arches backing sheet, as issued. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the album, Corres...

Marcel Gromaire (1892-1971) - The Painter. 1943, paper, lithograph, 56x46 cm

Lithograph on papier vélin teinté, fait a la main paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Les Illuminations, 1949. Published by...

"Men in Barracks" WPA Mid 20th Century American Scene Realism Gay Modernism WWII. 18 x 24 inches Watercolor on paper. c. 1940s. Signed lower right. BIO ...

Antique American modernist abstract painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. Housed in a vintage frame. Image size, 18L x 24H.

Black and white portrait of pinup girl and actress Rita Hayworth dancing in a gown. Rita Hayworth was an American actress, dancer, and pin-up girl. She achieved fame in the 1940s as...

Medium: Lithograph and stencil on vélin Polifilo paper Year: 1947 Paper Size: 13.78 x 10.24 inches Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued Notes: From the folio, I...

Medium: Lithograph and stencil on vélin paper Year: 1946 Paper Size: 17 x 13 inches Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued Notes: From the folio, TLautrec, 1946. ...

Lithograph on vélin pur fil paper. Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Henri Matisse, Dessins, Thèmes et Variations, 19...

Mid Century Surrealist Nocturnal Tide Hawaiian Islands God Symbolism Landscape Symbolic nocturnal landscape with tide God in foam of wave, in a dream-like surreal landscape, by Margu...

Sweeping mid-century landscape of a lake and snow-capped mountains by Lillian Josephine Heath (American, 1864-1961). A gigantic, snow-covered mountain dominates the upper portion of the composition, rising above the rest of the landscape. In the shadow of the mountain is a valley lake, filled with snowmelt, with several smaller mountains in between. Signed "Lillian Heath" lower left. Displayed in a giltwood frame. Image, 20.5"H x 28"L. Lillian Heath was one of the Jolly Daubers at the turn of the 19th-century and as a young student, married the senior artist and instructor, Frank Heath in Santa Cruz, California. Artists Frank and Lillian [Heath] by Margaret Koch [transcribed from Santa Cruz Public Library website]….Frank L. Heath courted Lillian Dake Storey during painting trips around Santa Cruz County back in the 1890s. Those were the years when Lillian was riding a saddle horse daily from Santa Cruz to the Powdermill where she taught school. Today [1974] the Powdermill is Paradise Park. Frank's actual proposal of marriage was delivered at Rocky Falls, a beautiful scenic place on Carbonero Creek. There he had constructed a painting platform with a perfect view of the rushing waters, and it was there that he asked Lillian in that formal day and age, to be his bride. Frank was nearly 40 years old at the time, and Lillian was about 32. She had always been interested in art and had talent to a large degree. She took a year's leave of absence from teaching school to travel alone to New York where she visited relatives and stayed to study china painting and the painting of miniatures which is an art in itself. ‘When I returned from New York I enrolled in the art classes of a Santa Cruz artist who was making a name for himself,’ she once said with a smile. The artist was Frank L. Heath, and that was the start of their romance, she told me in 1959. She accepted Frank's proposal at Rocky Falls. At the Heath home on Third Street, Beach Hill, Frank added a wing with a large studio workroom downstairs and several bedrooms upstairs. That was his wedding gift to his bride. ‘The Studio’ had a fireplace and big bay windows that looked out over the town of Santa Cruz and back to the mountains they both loved and painted many times. Lillian painted a set of tiles for the fireplace; they showed darting swallows in the clouds above a stream where song birds perched on tulles and water lilies floated. In 1897 Lillian and Frank were married in the First Methodist Church and they moved into the home on Beach Hill, a house she continued to live in for 64 years. Frank's father, Lucien Heath, was the first Secretary of State of Oregon. He came to Santa Cruz from Oregon in 1866 with his wife, Jane, and sons, Frank and Henry. A daughter, Lina, had died in Michigan where the Heaths lived before crossing the plains to Oregon in 1852. [?] In Santa Cruz Lucien Heath opened one of the early hardware stores on Pacific Avenue in partnership with John Byrne...

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

Lithograph and stencil on vélin paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good Condition. Notes: From the folio, Picasso: Fifteen Drawings, 1946. Published by Pantheon Books, Inc., ...

Medium: Lithograph and stencil on vélin Polifilo paper Year: 1947 Paper Size: 13.78 x 10.24 inches Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued Notes: From the folio, I...

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

Medium: Engraving on vélin du Marais paper Year: 1948 Paper Size: 12.25 x 9.125 inches; image size: 6.5 x 4.75 inches Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued Notes: From the ...

Andre Masson, French (1896 - 1987) - Dragon vert, Medium: Etching and aquatint, signed and numbered in pecnil, Edition: 14/50, Image Size: 10.5 x 8 inches, Size: 16.25 x 13 in. (41....

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

Paul LUNAUD (Brantôme 1900 – 1949) The ironer Oil on wood H. 80 cm; W. 64 cm Signed and dated on the right in the center, formerly signed lower right. 1942 Provenance : Artist's stu...

Signed lower right dated 1944 Signed verso William Malherbe "The Thetford Hill Vermont" Provenance: Palm Beach Galleries Framed in a gold frame

The Pin-Up of ravishing young beauties in mid-century America was a widely popular art form. The assumption that Pin-Up art was the exclusive domain of men is a misnomer. Female illu...

Medium: Lithograph on vélin du Canson & Montgolfier Vidalon-Les-Annonay paper Year: 1948 Paper Size: 12.5 x 9.75 inches Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued Notes: From th...

Black and white candid capture of actress Katharine Hepburn walking her dogs in a pantsuit. Katharine Hepburn was an American actress whose career as a Hollywood leading lady spanne...

Mosaic on cement panel.  Bibliography: Domus 1948, p. 38; Wagner 2003, p. 88. Exhibitions:  - "Massimo Campigli - Mediterraneità e Modernità", Darmstadt 2003, ed. Mazzotta, Klaus ...

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...

Lithograph on vélin pur fil paper. Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Henri Matisse, Dessins, Thèmes et Variations, 19...