James Houston McConnell

Sister Kate — Mid-century, Jazz-inspired Modernism

1947

James Houston McConnell, 'Equus Uirumpu' (The Man's Horse), color serigraph, c. 1945, edition not stated but small. Signed and titled in pencil. Initialed in the image, lower right. ...

Robert Vale Faro, 'Kaf With', color lithograph, 1945, edition 15. Signed, dated, titled and numbered '84' and '6/15' in pen, recto. Titled, numbered '#84' and '6/15' and dated '7/22/...

Edward Landon, 'Salient in February', color serigraph, 1945, edition 25, Ryan 166. Signed in pencil. Titled, dated, and annotated 'ED. 40' in pencil. A fine impression, with fresh colors, on cream, wove paper; with full margins (1 3/4 to 2 5/8 inches, top sheet edge deckle); in excellent condition. Image size 9 x 11 inches; sheet size 12 3/4 x 16 inches. Matted to museum standards, unframed. ABOUT THE ARTIST Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Edward Landon dropped out of high school to study art at the Hartford Art School. In 1930 and 1931, he was a student of Jean Charlot at the Art Students League in New York, after which he traveled to Mexico to study privately for a year with Carlos Merida. In 1933 he settled near Springfield, Massachusetts, painted murals in the local trade school, and exhibited with the Springfield Art League. His painting 'Memorial Day' won first prize at the fifteenth annual exhibition of the League at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts. Landon became an active member of the Artists Union of Western Massachusetts, serving as president from 1934-1938. Landon acquired Anthony Velonis’s instructional pamphlet on the technique of serigraphy in the late 1930s. With colleagues Phillip Hicken, Donald Reichert, and Pauline Stiriss, he began experimenting with screen printing techniques. The artists' groundbreaking work in screen printing as a fine art medium was the subject of the group’s landmark exhibition at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts in 1940. Landon became one of the founding members of the National Serigraph Society and served as editor of its publication, 'Serigraph Quarterly,' in the late 1940s and as its president in 1952 and 1953. The Norlyst Gallery in Manhattan held a one-person show of his prints in 1945. Awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1950, Landon traveled to Norway, where he researched the history of local artistic traditions and produced the book 'Scandinavian Design: Picture and Rune Stones...

Stephen Harty, Untitled (Bird Abstraction), gouache, 1953. Signed and dated lower left. A fine, meticulously rendered, mid-century, modernist gouache painting, with fresh colors on 1...

Angel, 1952 Ferol K. Sibley Warthen (American, 1890-1986) Color Woodblock Print 6.5 x 5 inches 16 x 13.75 inches with frame Signed Lower Right Titled Lower Left Born 1890, Died 1986...

Charles Houghton Howard was born in Montclair, New Jersey, the third of five children in a cultured and educated family with roots going back to the Massachusetts Bay colony. His father, John Galen Howard, was an architect who had trained at M.I.T. and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and apprenticed in Boston with Henry Hobson Richardson. In New York, the elder Howard worked for McKim, Mead and White before establishing a successful private practice. Mary Robertson Bradbury Howard, Charles’s mother, had studied art before her marriage. John Galen Howard moved his household to California in 1902 to assume the position of supervising architect of the new University of California campus at Berkeley and to serve as Professor of Architecture and the first Dean of the School of Architecture (established in 1903). The four Howard boys grew up to be artists and all married artists, leaving a combined family legacy of art making in the San Francisco Bay area that endures to this day, most notably in design, murals, and reliefs at the Coit Tower and in buildings on the Berkeley campus. Charles Howard graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1921 as a journalism major and pursued graduate studies in English at Harvard and Columbia Universities before embarking on a two-year trip to Europe. Howard went to Europe as a would-be writer. But a near-religious experience, seeing a picture by Giorgione in a remote town outside of Venice, proved a life-altering epiphany. In his own words, “I cut the tour at once and hurried immediately back to Paris, to begin painting. I have been painting whenever I could ever since” (Charles Howard, “What Concerns Me,” Magazine of Art 39 [February 1946], p. 63). Giorgione’s achievement, in utilizing a structured and rational visual language of art to convey high emotion on canvas, instantly convinced Howard that painting, and not literature, offered the best vehicle to express what he wanted to say. Howard returned to the United States in 1925, confirmed in his intent to become an artist. Howard settled in New York and supported himself as a painter in the decorating workshop of Louis Bouché and Rudolph Guertler, where he specialized in mural painting. Devoting spare time to his own work, he lived in Greenwich Village and immersed himself in the downtown avant-garde cultural milieu. The late 1920s and early 1930s were the years of Howard’s art apprenticeship. He never pursued formal art instruction, but his keen eye, depth of feeling, and intense commitment to the process of art making, allowed him to assimilate elements of painting intuitively from the wide variety of art that interested him. He found inspiration in the modernist movements of the day, both for their adherence to abstract formal qualities and for the cosmopolitan, international nature of the movements themselves. Influenced deeply by Surrealism, Howard was part of a group of American and European Surrealists clustered around Julien Levy. Levy opened his eponymously-named gallery in 1931, and rose to fame in January 1932, when he organized and hosted Surrealisme, the first ever exhibition of Surrealism in America, which included one work by Howard. Levy remained the preeminent force in advocating for Surrealism in America until he closed his gallery in 1949. Howard’s association with Levy in the early 1930s confirms the artist’s place among the avant-garde community in New York at that time. In 1933, Howard left New York for London. It is likely that among the factors that led to the move were Howard’s desire to be a part of an international art community, as well as his marriage to English artist, Madge Knight...

The New Cable British Modern Mid 20th Century Vorticist European Vorticism Woman Sybil Andrews CPE (British/Canadian, 1898-1992) "The New Cable," 1931 12 x 16 1/2 inches Color linocut Signed, titled, inscribed 'Second State', and numbered 13/60 in pencil Framed: 19 x 24 inches Literature: Coppel Sa17 Illustrated on page 10 of the catalog The proposed edition of the first state of the Giant Cable was 50, but only 30 impressions were pulled. Andrews removed the blue background for the second state, which was published under the title The New Cable in an edition of 60. BIO Sybil Andrews was a printmaker, painter, graphic artist and educator who was born in Bury St. Edmonds, Suffolk, England. She moved to London (England) in 1922. In 1947, she emigrated to Campbell River (Vancouver Island) British Columbia, Canada, where she worked, taught and lived for the rest of her life. She died at a hospital in Victoria (B.C.) Her mediums were the colour linocut (1) (most famous), etching, posters, pastels, ink, watercolour, monoprint and oil. Her subjects were human activity (at work, sports, travel, etc.), figures, animals, genre, allegory, architecture and landscape. Her style was Art Deco (see AskART styles), Futurism, Cubism and Vorticism (2). Her work is identified by a simple format, clean lines, distortion, vivid colours, drama and rhythm. Quote: "The colour linocut was just the medium for me, being interested in dynamics and ideas and patterns... It is impossible to be fussy with lines, you have to simplify, you are forced to simplify your idea to its fundamentals." Andrews produced 76 linocuts in her life, of which 43 were made from 1929 to 1939, which is considered to be her best period. John Hassall's art correspondence course (1918) was the beginning of her formal art education. She went from there to Heatherley's School of Fine Art (London/1922) where she studied under Henry Massey (see AskART) and met artistic partner Cyril Power (see AskART). At the same time, she studied independently with sculptor Henri Glicenstein (see AskART) who taught her drypoint etching and to draw from life. She also attended the Grosvenor School of Modern Art (1925). Iain McNab (1890-1967) was Principal and Claude Flight (3) (see AskART) an instructor who had a great influence on her choice of linocut as a primary medium. Some of his other students and her associates were Edith Lawrence (1890-1973), Lill Tschudi (1911-2001), Eileen Mayo (see AskART) and William Greengrass (1896-1970). After emigrating to Canada she taught art continuously until a month before her death. She was elected a member of the Canadian Painters - Etchers Society (after 1976 the Print and Drawing Council of Canada) in 1951. She began exhibiting her work in 1921.In 1929 she was included in "The First Exhibition of British Linocuts...

Ken Scott (American, 1918 – 1991) Fantasia Gouache on paper Signed ‘Ken Scott’ (on the reverse) 15 x 10.3/4 in. (38 x 28 cm.) Ken Scott was a fashion designer known for his fabric d...