New York City - Drawings

Rare Yves Saint Laurent Original Pencil Croquis from the 1960's. Gifted to an American business partner who help to launch YSL Rive Gauche ...

This geometric abstract pencil drawing by Terry Downs is signed, dated, and titled. Featuring various geometric shapes of numerous colors intersecting, and set over a white backgroun...

Ash wood frame, glass, charcoal on paper. Charcoal study of sculpture.

An antique Megillah The Book of Esther, hand written on parchment by an expert Sephardi scribe and richly decorated with hand painted illustrations. The text panels are surrounded by...

An original Jansen pencil drawing depicting an architectural detail "Rosace de Plafond" page 137. Stamped: Jansen, 9 Rue Royale Paris 8e.

Italian Lake Palace Ink Drawing. Italian ink drawing of island palace La Casina Vanvitelliana sul Lago Fusaro. Eighteenth century ink on paper drawing in a...

This Mughal miniature was painted at one of the princely courts of India. It depicts a raven-haired princess in a gold-trimmed saffron-colored silk sari. Under a glowering evening sky she dawdles on a white marble terrace, with a pet fawn on a leash, before a landscape dotted with buildings nestled amongst trees beyond a river. Her hair, falling loosely about her shoulders, rather than carefully dressed on her head, indicates that she is a maiden. The overall mood is one of expectancy. Perhaps walking a pet and catching an evening breeze is a pretext to escape palace scrutiny for a lovers’ assignation. In Mughal India tender sentiments were a bridge to the erotic – and if this seems contradictory, so too is the balance of realism and caricature, and naturalism with the schematic. Both are hallmarks of miniatures painted in this place and time. The earliest Mughal Indian miniatures date to the 16th century. They were inspired by those painted at the refined Moslem courts of the neighboring Persian empire. They incorporated figures in spite of the Moslem faith’s proscription against depicting the human form. Such was the nature of sophisticated courtly life everywhere that beauty and pleasure trumped systems of morality. This was no less the case at the provincial Indian courts, where our miniature, marked by a charming pictorial naiveté, was most likely painted. Yet the artist was undeniably accomplished. His command of perspective, introduced by Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century, is seen in the landscape, which rolls back to a distant horizon, contrary to the flat two-dimensional ones following Indian-painting traditions. And if Mughal artists were influenced by Western art, the compliment was returned by Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds, among others, who collected Indian miniatures (as did, perhaps, Giovanni Bellini who painted in Mughal style the famous miniature of a Persian man...

Monica Perez "Yes" Original Charcoal on Canvas, 2023. W 80" x H 48" Monica Perez’s works are expressions of emotion—impulsive, spontaneous gestures of h...

This etching is signed and numbered by the artist. A female nude sits with her back to us, in varying shades of sepia orange. The etching is rather small, only measuring 3.5" by 4.5"...

gouache on paper Companions of Apollo, daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory), these nine classical Muses are associated with inspiration and learning. Each of these Muses holds...

Set of three architectural furniture drawings by the Sweedish arquitect Carl G. Bergsten. Circa 1930. Pencil on paper. Dimenssions: WITH FRAME Motto Gesundheit: W 31.5" x H 23.75" ...

Written in bottom right: "After Skrebneski - TWD 91" While Thierry Despont (1948 - 2023) was best-known for his architectural practice—for his integral role in the restoration of th...

Seventeen Lithographs for Frank O'Hara, New York, Limited Editions Club, 1988 the complete set of 17 signed and numbered lithographs in colors by Willem De Kooning, title page, and justification, on Chine appliqué, numbered 51 of 60 (there were also 12 with opposite facing text, and 550 bound copies with the lithographs appliquéd to the text pages), all with full margins and beautifully framed. Comes with original black cloth-covered portfolio with black leather label and gilt stamped title (very minor wear) and original purchase paperwork from Baby Jane...

Original fashion drawing by American artist Carl "Eric" Erickson (1891-1958). Eric spect the 1940s attending and documenting fashion shows under the supervision of Diana Vreeland. Er...

Joe Bradley Etching, Untitled. This piece is signed, dated, and numbered to verso '21/100 Joe Bradley 18'. This work is number 21 from the edition of 100 published by Paupers Press, ...

An original Maison Jansen pencil drawing depicting an architectural detail "Petit Panneau Directoire" page 70 Stamped: Jansen, 9 Rue Royale Paris 8e

This 17th-century French School drawing of a hand is a masterful work of art, presented in an elegant silver gilt frame. Measuring 20.75 inches by 20.75 inches, the drawing showcases...

This ink figurative abstract Expressionist piece on paper is signed by its creator, noted New York School artist Salvatore Grippi. Though undated, the piece is similar in form and st...

Abstract expressionist still life drawing on paper by Salvatore Grippi, 1960s. Gorgeous colored graphite still-life on paper. Signed and dated. From artist’s estate.

Stunning early master illustration by Bill Nelson in his preferred medium of colored pencil for the Cincinnati Magazine cover story (May 1980). Framed. Ta...

This acrylic on paper work by Israeli artist Bazooka Joe is an energetic and visually striking piece that blends elements of pop art, street art, and surrealism. The central figure, ...

This artwork by Bazooka Joe is an acrylic on paper composition that blends elements of surrealism, pop art, and underground comix aesthetics. The piece is filled with intricate, almo...

This acrylic painting on paper by the Israeli artist Bazooka Joe is a striking, surreal composition that merges pop culture, symbolism, and psychedelic aesthetics. The scene unfolds against a vivid green background, with figures and objects outlined in stark black, creating a bold contrast. The central figures appear to be a pair of fantastical, almost punk-inspired characters. The one on the left has exaggerated facial features, black star-like face paint reminiscent of KISS band members, and an elaborate black headdress with a polka-dotted bow. Their outfit combines patterns, spikes, and surreal bodily distortions, including tentacle-like appendages emerging from the arms. The figure on the right sports a yellow headpiece...

During her first years in New York Blaine's work, which had previously been tightly realist, turned abstract, inspired by Mondrian, Leger and Jean Helion. At one time she was the you...

Thierry Despont was best-known for his very successful architectural practice—but he was also an accomplished artist. Some of his most interesting works are a series of sculptures f...

While Thierry Despont (1948 - 2023) was best-known for his architectural practice—for his integral role in the restoration of the Statue of Liberty, his re-imagining of the Ritz in ...

Contemporary New York artist Patrick Carrara's Garden of Silence Drawings were created in 2009. G.O.S. (2009 - 2010) was the first series using a mechanical pencil with a hard 5H gra...

Contemporary abstract black and white etching by English artist Oliver Gaiger. Matted and framed in a charcoal grey wood frame. Part of a large collection of black and white etchings...

A dramatic anatomical drawing of the lower face by Beeldens, Belgium, 1935. Signed on upper right. Pencil on paper. The Neue Sachlichkeit (new matt...

An exceptional French oil on canvas, "Feeding the Doves", Signed and Dated by E. Munier, 1890. Émile Munier is one of the most sought after and most talented French artists of the 18...

Hercules Brabazon Brabazon watercolor of Venetian view. Signed with initials HBB inscribed in artist's hand. Dimension: Frame: 12.5" x 16" ...

Abstraction with India ink on paper by Nell Blaine.

Emilio Terry -- architect, interior, and furniture designer -- was the inventor and sole-practitioner of what was drolly referred to as his “Louis XVII style...

5125 Antique charcoal drawing of a landscape as viewed from the Charles river in Boston from 1927 Signed J.G.Berry

Contemporary original graphite drawing by American artist David Dew Bruner. Multi circle design graphite on paper. The artist was Inspired by the artist Graham Sutherland. This is...

Portrait drawing of Antoninus Pius German school black chalk on laid paper German school, late 18th century Measures: H 8 in Antoninus Pius was b...

A watercolor on board by Angelo Testa. Signed and dated (1962) Measures: 29½ H × 19½ W in. Angelo Testa was one of the foremost American textile designers of the mid-20th century. In 1945, he became the first graduate of the Institute of Design (formerly the New Bauhaus) in Chicago, where he studied under artist László Moholy-Nagy, architect George Fred Keck, and weaver Marli Ehrman...

ORIGINAL acrylic On Board Illustrator SIMON BISLEY ART Jesus Christ A first appearance of a rare subject in Mr.Bisley’s oeuvre. Jesus in agony… no ...

White Bunny Drawing by Oleg Cassini for Playboy October 1979, Signed. Illustration of a woman wearing a white body suit, choker, and hat. Signed by Oleg Cassini. Notice the body suit is in the shape of the head of a bunny with clever use of the 'whiskers'. Approximate Measurements: Length: 11" Width: 14" Property from the Collection of Steven Rosengard, Chicago, Illinois This original drawing was commissioned by Playboy and included in the October 1979 issue of Playboy Magazine (pages 225-227) in a feature that included works from designers such as Bill Blass, Oleg Cassini, Edith Head, Fernando Sanchez, and Monika Tilley, among others, who create their versions of the Playboy bunny costume. Candace Collins can be seen modeling some of the designs in the feature. Oleg Cassini is an icon of twentieth-century fashion. Though born to Russian aristocracy and raised in Italy, he built a fashion empire that was unmistakably American. Cassini is perhaps best known for the hundreds of designs he created for First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy (see images 4-8), but his achievements as a collector, connoisseur, and quintessential twentieth-century man go far beyond Camelot. In 1913, Oleg Cassini was born in Paris to the Russian diplomat Count Alexander Loiewski and Countess Marguerite Cassini, a Russian aristocrat of Italian ancestry who also had an interesting link to America. The daughter of Count Arthur Cassini, Russian Ambassador to the United States during the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations, Marguerite dazzled turn-of-the-century Washington as her father’s official hostess and left her mark on the capital city. Stationed in Denmark when the Russian Revolution toppled the czar, Ambassador Cassini and family were exiled to Switzerland before settling in Florence, Italy, where young Oleg was raised. A true Renaissance man, he spoke Russian, French, and Danish before adding Italian and English; he studied medieval and modern European military history and costume and learned to draw; he learned horseback riding, fencing, and the art of chivalry; and, most importantly, he came to understand the struggles of the Russian titled class and other European aristocrats in the wake of the Russian Revolution and World War I. Countess Cassini started a successful fashion business in Florence, and soon the talented young Oleg was sent to Paris to sketch the latest collections for recreation in Italy. In Rome in his early 20s, Cassini created fashions for high society women and designed for a few films, which planted the seed for his move to Hollywood. The drive to reinvent himself brought Cassini to America in the 1930s; in his autobiography he describes arriving nearly penniless in mid-Depression New York City where his title as an exiled Russian Count meant even less than in war-devastated Europe. Down and out, Cassini struggled for employment, having sketching skills but no knowledge of the wholesale trade required for survival in Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue fashion district. However, he excelled at making connections, and Cassini slowly entered New York society. He was soon joined by younger brother Igor (who had studied in America and travelled with the young Emilio Pucci) and his parents, the once-dazzling Countess and his father, the displaced diplomat still loyal to Russia. The family settled in Washington, D.C., and Igor worked his way up the Hearst newspaper chain to become the famous society columnist Cholly Knickerbocker. In New York, Oleg Cassini married the troubled socialite Merry Fahrney (who would go on to marry eight times), but the marriage ended in scandal for Oleg, and he decided to follow his original intention and head for Hollywood. Despite initial difficulties, Cassini gained access to Hollywood’s elite (partially through his skills on the tennis court), and was soon hired as a designer at Paramount Pictures alongside the redoubtable Edith Head. In her 1941 film debut I Wanted Wings, Veronica Lake wore a memorable Cassini design. That same year, Cassini met and married the newest young Hollywood star on the scene, the beautiful 20th Century Fox–talent Gene Tierney. With the outbreak of World War II, Cassini enlisted in the Coast Guard but was transferred to the U.S. Army Cavalry which allowed officers of foreign birth. He attended basic training at Fort Riley, Kansas, and the horsemanship he learned as a boy served him greatly. He attended Officer Candidate School and reached the rank of First Lieutenant (he also became an American citizen at this time, losing his title of Count). Cassini spent several years posted at Fort Riley, where Tierney joined him before he landed a convenient military post in Hollywood. As Tierney’s career thrived (she played the title role in Otto Preminger’s Laura in 1944), she was able to assert her influence over 20th Century Fox’s head Daryl Zanuck, who hired Cassini as designer for Tierney on her 1946 film The Razor’s Edge, which proved to be a brilliant showcase for his talents. The pair separated the same year and, again seeking reinvention, Cassini re-established himself in New York City as a fashion designer. By 1950, the Oleg Cassini label was born. Combining his knowledge of Old World and modern Europe, Hollywood, the tennis courts of Palm Beach and Newport, and of course, New York City, Oleg Cassini invented a new brand of fashion that was distinctly American and of its moment. For his first collection, Cassini took to the stage, narrating the looks and imbuing the scene with his personality, unusual in an industry where the designers typically remained backstage and the models were called by number over a PA. The first collection was a smash — the president of Lord & Taylor devoted all of their storefront windows to his designs — and by 1955 sales had reached $5,000,000. Oleg Cassini’s career had turned a very positive corner. Cassini spent the early 1950s traversing the country, personally selling his collections to department stores in the interior, something his predecessors had never done, and moving between the Hollywood and New York scenes. Cassini’s brother Igor coined the term “the Jet Set” for this generation that constantly flew from New York to Los Angeles (then a ten-hour flight), Las Vegas, Paris, Rome, and the Riviera. In 1954, Cassini set out to woo Grace Kelly and sent her roses every day. The two were briefly engaged before her marriage to Prince Rainier of Monaco. In December 1960, Cassini’s career-defining opportunity came when he was chosen by Jacqueline Kennedy to design her fashions for the White House. Cassini had long known Joe Kennedy and his war-hero son John, and had first met Jacqueline Bouvier before her marriage in the early 1950s. Invited by President-Elect Kennedy to meet Jacqueline at Georgetown Hospital (she had just given birth to son John Jr.) to present to her drawings of potential dresses and First Lady looks, Cassini worked furiously to prepare a new line for the First Lady. Mrs. Kennedy had always had her clothes made by the top French couturiers of the day, but for the White House she wanted an American designer. Cassini wrote in his autobiography that he told the First Lady: “‘You have an opportunity here,’ I said, ‘for an American Versailles.’ She understood completely what I was trying to communicate; she began to talk excitedly about the need to create an entirely new atmosphere at the White House. She wanted it to become the social and intellectual capital of the nation” (Oleg Cassini, In My Own Fashion, 1987, p. 327). Mrs. Kennedy loved Cassini’s design for a gown to wear to the Inaugural Gala (she had already ordered a dress from Bergdorf’s for the Inaugural Ball), and Cassini was selected as the First Lady’s designer and was soon dubbed the “Secretary of Style.” From 1960 to 1963, Oleg Cassini would design over 300 items for Mrs. Kennedy, creating the “Jackie Look” that contributed not only to a fashion revolution but also the dawn of a new age. Cassini wrote that “Jackie played a very active role in the selection of her clothes. She loved brilliant colors — pistachio, hot pink, yellow, and white among others. Her sense of style was very precise; she would make editorial comments on the sketches I sent her. She always knew exactly what she wanted; her taste was excellent” (Oleg Cassini, In My Own Fashion, 1987, p. 334). After the Camelot years, Cassini’s business flourished and grew into a major industry; his name appeared on everything from couture to tennis-, sport-, and swimwear, car interiors, housewares, and perfume. He collected beautiful and rare artwork, arms and armor, and antique furniture, and lived the lifestyle projected by his image. From this period onward, Cassini also came to live in important homes. Of his Gothic Gramercy Park townhouse on Manhattan’s 19th Street he would write imaginatively, “I walked into the foyer and immediately fell in love. It was a place unlike any other in New York, a sixteenth-century Dutch house transported brick by brick from Europe by the Wells Fargo family in the early twentieth century. There was a vaulted, twenty-foot ceiling in the living room, leaded windows, elegantly carved wood paneling...

French (late 19th century) pencil illustrations of equestrian performers on horseback in two panels titled "Double Equestrian" in a carved giltwood frame with white canvas matting. (...

Ivan Alexandrovich Gerassimoff, 1885-1954, was active in the 30s in Shanghai and Harbin, moving to Tashkent after WWII. His style was strongly influenced by Alexander Yakovlev, a not...

One of a series of drawings Bernard Boutet de Monvel made circa 1922 while participating in the Croisière Citroën, an expedition comprising scientists and artists who traversed the S...

An original Maison Jansen pencil drawing on velum, depicting an architectural detail "Rosace de Plafond" page 135 Stamped: Jansen, 9 Rue Royale Paris 8e

Peter Palvik is an Inuit artist from Ulukhaktok (Holman), Northwest Territories, Canada, born in 1960. He is known for his detailed lithographs depicting animals and traditional Inui...

This is a beautiful early 20th century artwork painting study after artist Henri Matisse (French b. Dec. 31 1869 d. Nov. 3 1954.) Female on lounge ch...

Bruno Pasquiier Desvignes (1930- ) In Cyclo Melodia, 1992. Ink on paper original Surreal style drawing in vintage cream and gold bead frame. France, 1992. Dimensions: 18" W x 14.25...

The title of this original illustration by the artist George Venson is "Jumping Ship: An Illustration of the Way I See Things Right Now". It is a...

An original Maison Jansen pencil drawing depicting an architectural detail "Rosace de Plafond Louis XIV" page 136 Stamped: Jansen, 9 Rue Royale Paris 8e.

Confident and masterful, this drawing of a male nude leaning back into a chair, fast asleep, with his arms thrown in every direction, was made by Allyn Cox, probably as a study for one of his murals. Cox spent 20 years painting and restoring murals at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. starting in 1952; among his accomplishments was painting the Frieze of American history and restoring the apotheosis of Washington in the Rotunda. He also designed murals for three first-floor corridors in the House wing, now called the Cox Corridors. Here he uses pencil on paper to demonstrate his mastery of the human figure. He was the son of Kenyon Cox...

Large mono-print by Harry Bertoia, initialed and numbered 1857 on rice paper set mounted in oiled walnut frame. From the Bertoia Family collection. A beautiful rendering of his sculp...

One of a series of drawings Bernard Boutet de Monvel made circa 1922 while participating in the Croisière Citroën, an expedition comprising scientists and artists who traversed the S...

Dated mid-20th century industrial hand drawing, highly collectible Italian modern Product Design for a lacquer yellow desk light project, realized without ruler in pastels and gouach...

An original Maison Jansen pencil drawing depicting an architectural detail "Rosace de Plafond Louis XIV" page 133 Stamped: Jansen, 39 Rue Royale Paris 8e

An original Maison Jansen pencil drawing depicting an architectural detail "Petit Panneau Empire" page 72 Stamped: Jansen, 9 Rue Royale Paris 8e

Niobe Greek mythology theme signed, 1938 framed (1 chip off on frame finish).

Charcoal abstract of geometric forms on paper (1959 signed: MICHAEL LOEW).      Though the painter Michael Loew is today best known for his colorful and gestural Abstract Expression...

A richly-hued abstract work on paper by the artist M.P. Landis. The artist's abstract paintings and works on paper are the type that take form through the artist's layering of materi...

During her first years in New York Blaine's work, which had previously been tightly realist, turned abstract, inspired by Mondrian, Leger and Jean Helion. At one time she was the you...