Three-sided Hand Carved Stone Sculpture, Early 20th Century

Oil on board, signed verso Image size: 40 1/4 x 29 inches (102.25 x 73.5 cm) Hand made contemporary style frame Here we see a smartly dressed woman sat on a park bench, feeding a group of pigeons that surround her. Lena Gurr had a prolific career in which she painted landscape scenes and still lifes but her most noted works are ones such as these, showing everyday city scenes that were laced with social commentary. Indeed, Gurr noted that her artwork always aimed to show "the joys and sorrows of everyday life." During the course of her career Gurr's compositions retained emotional content as they evolved from a naturalistic to a semi-abstract cubist style. Discussing this trend, she once told an interviewer that as her work tended toward increasing abstraction she believed it nonetheless "must have some kind of human depth to it." Lena Gurr  Lena Gurr, born in Brooklyn in 1897, studied at the Brooklyn Training School for Teachers, the Educational Alliance Art School, the Arts Students League with John Sloan, and with Maurice Sterne in Paris as well as in Mentone and Nice, France. Gurr was a member of the Artists League of America, the National Association of Women Artists, the New York Society of Women Artists, the Brooklyn Society of Artists, Audubon Artists and the American Artists Congress. She exhibited in numerous exhibitions held by these organizations as well as the Whitney Studio Club, National Academy of Design, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Brooklyn Museum, and the 1939 World's Fair. Her work is included in the collections of the Biro-Bidjan Museum, Russia and the Library of Congress, where she has been selected as a "Curator's Choice" in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. In addition to her career as a painter, lithographer and serigrapher, she also taught art in the New York City public school system. She had three solo exhibitions at the ACA Gallery in 1935, 1939 and 1945, and a retrospective in 1963. Notable among Gurr's colleagues - many of them WPA artists - were Mary Cecil Allen...

Maurice Lambert Head of Dame Edith Sitwell 1901-1964 Patinated bronze on marble base Dimensions: 7 x 16 inches (18 x 41 cm) Provenance Private collection Originally commissioned by Edith's brother Osbert Sitwell circa 1926/27. Our version is of the same period and must have been commissioned at the same time. A version of this piece made in 1984 in aluminium is held in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery (NPG 5801). Maurice Lambert Maurice Lambert, born in Paris, was son of the Russian-born Australian painter George Washington Lambert...