James Ormsbee Chapin

"Boy With Book Looking Out Window, " Original Lithograph print classic gift

circa 1940

"Untitled (Girl Reading)" is an original wood engraving by the artist Stella Emma Harlos. A young girl rests on a large armchair, head resting on one hand as she reads a book. Image: 4" x 5" Frame: 12.12" x 13.18" Stella Harlos...

"Arab Children" is an original lithograph by Fletcher Martin. The artist signed the piece lower right. This piece features two young children--a boy and a girl--with downcast eyes in draped fabric clothes in an interior. 12" x 8" art 22" x 18" frame Fletcher Martin was an American painter, illustrator, muralist and educator. He is best known for his images of soldier life during World War II and his sometimes brutal images of boxing and other sports. His artistic skills were largely self-taught. He worked as a printer in Los Angeles in the late 1920s, and as an assistant to Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros in the early 1930s. He taught at local art schools such as Otis Art Institute. He won commissions to paint murals for the New Deal's Section of Painting and Sculpture, including Mail Transportation (1938), painted for the San Pedro Federal Building and Post Office in Los Angeles. Under the WPA he painted a mural study for the Kellogg, Idaho post office titled Mine Rescue (1939). Local industrialists objected that it depicted the dangers of mining, while officials of the Mine & Smelt Workers Union praised it. The industrialists prevailed and Martin painted an uncontroversial mural, Discovery (1941), depicting the prospector who founded the town. The rejected mural study is now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Perhaps his most ambitious mural, also done under the WPA, was painted for North Hollywood High School in Los Angeles. Legends of Fernandino and Gabrileno Indians (1937) depicts overlapping scenes of Native American life and ritual, and the world being carried on the backs of giants. As an artist-correspondent for Life Magazine during World War II, he made hundreds of sketches of U.S. soldier life. Fourteen of his paintings from the North African campaign were published in the December 27, 1943 issue of Life, and brought him national recognition. Among these was Boy Picking Flowers...

"The New Year" is a pen and ink on paper portrait signed by Hannah de Rothschild. A girl sits quietly in a corner with a cap. Her focus is on a book in her lap, she is about to rip a...

"Portrait of a Girl" is an original wood engraving by Barbara K. Warren Weisman. It features an an overhead view of a girl, with her arms crossed and eyes clothes. A plant sits on a ...

Mid-century portrait of a young girl by a window by acclaimed California artist Ben Messick (American, 1891-1981). Signed "Ben Messick" in plate, and in pencil in the lower right corner, by the estate. Presented in an off-white mat. Unframed. Paper size: 12"H x 12"W The following is submitted by Jim Lafferty whose sources include the autobiography of the artist: William Washington Messick married Sarah A. Bristow January 2,1889 and from this marriage a son, Benjamin Newton Messick was born on January 9, 1891 on a farm near Strafford, Missouri. His art talent was apparent from the time he was a child and later recognized by his commanding officer in World War I. He completed his training in Los Angeles at Chouinard in the late-1920s and is well-known for his Regionalist scenes and Modernist paintings. He was an instructor at Chouinard through the 1950s & influenced a generation of LA Modernists. Little is recorded in his autobiography about Messick's life from his teen years and service during the War. He enrolled at Chouinard Institute in the Fall of 1925, and was given a three-year scholarship by Mrs. Chouinard. In 1925 he won a cash award at the Los Angeles County Fair for a group of pen and charcoal drawings done in the parks and streets of Los Angeles. These works give the appearance of being spontaneous and fluid. In 1930 Messick left Chouinard as a full-time student and rented an apartment on West Eighth Street to use as a studio and living quarters. He had his own ideas on what he was trying to accomplish in art. "If you should ask what is the message of my drawings, I should say that they may explain themselves or may be just a technical exercise." By the mid 1940s, Messick's position in the art world had been well established as a teacher, painter, printmaker, writer and critic. Over his life time he had over 400 shows and exhibitions. Starting in 1939 he produced a number of stone lithographs that appear to the untrained eye as original drawings. To Messick the image was the most important aspect of his lithographs, and his signature in the plate was sufficient. Hand signing each lithograph did not seem necessary to him. He exhibited prints widely including the Albany Print Club and the Metropolitian Museum. To further substantiate the authenticity of Messick's prints the Eclectic Gallery under the authority of the Messick family posthumously pencil signed each estate-acquired stone lithograph. Messick had a childhood fascination with the circus and started drawing and painting the circus in 1935. His circus work, especially his clown studies, and his lithographs became his trademark work for in the 1940s and 1950s. A critic for ART REVIEW described his Big Top work this way: "His circus canvases...

"Little girl reading" is an original drawing in pencil on paper, realized by an Anonymous Artist of the XX Century . The state of preservation of ...

Man at the Window is an Original Etching realized by Robert Carrol in 1976. The artwork is in good condition on a yellowed cardboard. Hand-signed by the artist on the lower right c...

Many of my paintings are about Chicago - the Chicago I lived in when I began painting, a Chicago that now exists only in my memory. And memory is always a reconstruction. As my lif...