Louis H. Ruyl

New York Skyline

1920

A beautiful turn-of-the-century lake view of Chicago by an American artist known for his Texas landscapes. Etching with drypoint on watermarked Umbria laid paper with deckle edges, 7 1/4 x 10 7/8 inches (182 x 275 mm), full margins. Signed and numbered 4/25 in pencil, lower margin. In good condition with adhesive residue at the sheet edges on the verso, does not show through to the recto. A lovely Lake Michigan landscape...

The Society of Iconophiles (New York, 1894–1936), 1898. Each a lithograph printed on grayish-green, or white wove paper each sheet 10 3/4 x 7 1/2 inches (274 x 190 mm), each with ful...

New York: The Society of Iconophiles, 1908. The complete portfolio containing 12 photogravures after monotypes printed on O.W. handmade paper. Each image measuring approximately 8 1/4 x 6 inches (208 x 151 mm), with full margins. Each with the Society of Iconophiles blind stamp in the lower left margin. In very good condition with no visible defects. Printed by John Andrew & Son, Boston. Presented in the original greenish-gray paper wrapper with the contents page. Edition of 100. Subjects are: 1. Van Cortland Manor House 2. Oyster Market on West Street 3. St. John's Chapel, Varick Street 4. Fraunces Tavern 5. Houses at Battery Park...

Vienna: Robert Kasimir, 1935. Color etching and aquatint on Robert Kasimir watermarked white wove paper, 11 3/8 x 13 3/4 inches (288 x 350 mm); sheet 19 x 21 inches (483 x 534 mm), f...

ANTON SCHUTZ MANHATTAN c 1940 Etching, signed in pencil, edition 100, no. 15/100. On thin simili-japan paper. Very slight toning around plate mark. Remnants of old tape on verso, s...

Lionel S. Reiss (1894 - 1988) New York City Skyline View from the East River Watercolor on paper 13 x 19 inches Signed lower left In describing his own style, Lionel Reiss wrote, “By nature, inclination, and training, I have long since recognized the fact that...I belong to the category of those who can only gladly affirm the reality of the world I live in.” Reiss’s subject matter was wide-ranging, including gritty New York scenes, landscapes of bucolic Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and seascapes around Gloucester, Massachusetts. However, it was as a painter of Jewish life—both in Israel and in Europe before World War II—that Reiss excelled. I.B. Singer, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, noted that Reiss was “essentially an artist of the nineteenth century, and because of this he had the power and the courage to tell visually the story of a people.” Although Reiss was born in Jaroslaw, Poland, his family immigrated to the United States in 1898 when he was four years old. Reiss's family settled on New York City’s Lower East Side and he lived in the city for most of his life. Reiss attended the Art Students League and then worked as a commercial artist for newspapers and publishers. As art director for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he supposedly created the studio’s famous lion logo. After World War I, Reiss became fascinated with Jewish life in the ‘Old World.’ In 1921 he left his advertising work and spent the next ten years traveling in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Like noted Jewish photographers Alter Kacyzne and Roman Vishniac, Reiss depicted Jewish life in Poland prior to World War II. He later wrote, “My trip encompassed three main objectives: to make ethnic studies of Jewish types wherever I traveled; to paint and draw Jewish life, as I saw it and felt it, in all aspects; and to round out my work in Israel.” In Europe, Reiss recorded quotidian scenes in a variety of media and different settings such as Paris, Amsterdam, the Venice ghetto, the Jewish cemetery in Prague, and an array of shops, synagogues, streets, and marketplaces in the Jewish quarters of Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lublin, Vilna, Ternopil, and Kovno. He paid great attention to details of dress, hair, and facial features, and his work became noted for its descriptive quality. A selection of Reiss’s portraits appeared in 1938 in his book My Models Were Jews. In this book, published on the eve of the Holocaust, Reiss argued that there was “no such thing as a ‘Jewish race’.” Instead, he claimed that the Jewish people were a cultural group with a great deal of diversity within and between Jewish communities around the world. Franz Boas...

Louis Orr, 'New York' (from the portfolio 'Ports of America', published by Yale University Press, 1928), etching, 1925, edition not stated. Signed and titled in pencil. Signed in the...

The Irish landscape artist, graphic designer and illustrator Nora McGuinness was born in County Derry, Northern Ireland. She studied drawing and fine art painting at the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin (now the National College of Art & Design), the Chelsea Polytechnic, London, and then (on the advice of Mainie Jellett...