Alan Bray Art

Beautiful winter landscape by American artist, J. Philip Richards (1906-1991). Maine Morning, 1974. Casein on paper, 16 x 26 inches; 26 x 36 inches framed. Signed lower right. Signed, titled and dated on verso. Excellent condition. Born in Moosic, PA, and graduated from the College of Fine Arts of Syracuse University in New York, J Philip Richards worked and studied with such artists of international reputation as William Von Schlagell, James Fitzgerald, David Porter, and John Taylor.He was professor emeritus of Fine Arts at Wilkes College in Wilkes-Barre, PA. Member of the American Watercolor Society, NYC, NY; York Artists Association, York, ME; Ogunquit Art Association, Ogunquit, ME; Wyoming Valley Art League, Wilkes-Barre, PA; National Society of Casein Painters, NYC, NY; Director Ancestor's Art Workshops, Searsport, ME; Gallery Director, "Gallery 164," Kennebunk, ME; Professional Artists League of America, NYC, NY; Art Guild of Kennebunks, Kennebunk, ME; Maine Artists...

In this prototypical oil painting, Walter Launt Palmer's title as "the painter of the American winter" can be vividly and brilliantly seen. As an impressionist painter that emerged at the turn of the 20th century, Palmer took great interest in the picturesque American landscape, though he particularly focused on the rendering of this landscape glistening with snow. His pictures evoke an unreplicable natural serenity, and in this oil painting "The Winter Scene...

Original vintage 1941 Colorado landscape painting with autumn leaves and Pikes Peak blanketed in snow by Charles Bunnell (1897-1968). Inscribed verso, "To Laura, November 22, 1941", egg tempera on board. Signed by the artist in the lower left corner and titled verso. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 15 ½ x 19 ¼ x 1 ¼ inches. Image size is 7 ¾ x 11 inches About the Artist: Artist and teacher, Charles ("Charlie") Bunnell worked in a variety of styles throughout his career because as an artist he believed, "I’ve got to paint a thousand different ways. I don’t paint any one way." At different times he did representational landscapes while concurrently involved with semi- or completely abstract imagery. He was one of a relatively small number of artists in Colorado successfully incorporating into their work the new trends emanating from New York and Europe after World War II. During his lifetime he generally did not attract a great deal of critical attention from museums, critics and academia. However, he personally experienced a highpoint in his career when Katherine Kuh, curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, personally chose one of his paintings - Why? - for its large exhibition of several hundred examples of abstract and surrealist art held in 1947-48, subsequently including it among the fifty pieces selected for a traveling show to ten other American museums. An only child, Bunnell developed his love of art at a young age through frequent drawing and political cartooning. In high school he was interested in baseball and golf and also was the tennis champion for Westport High School in Kansas City. Following graduation, his father moved the family to Denver, Colorado, in 1916 for a better-paying bookkeeping job, before relocating the following year to Colorado Springs to work for local businessman, Edmond C. van Diest, President of the Western Public Service Company and the Colorado Concrete Company. Bunnell would spend almost all of his adult life in Colorado Springs. In 1918 he enlisted in the United States Army, serving in the 62nd Infantry Regiment through the end of World War I. Returning home with a 10% disability, he joined the Zebulon Pike Post No. 1 of the Disabled American Veterans Association and in 1921 used the benefits from his disability to attend a class in commercial art design conducted under a government program in Colorado Springs. The following year he transferred to the Broadmoor Art Academy (founded in 1919) where he studied with William Potter and in 1923 with Birger Sandzén. Sandzén’s influence is reflected in Bunnell’s untitled Colorado landscape (1925) with a bright blue-rose palette. For several years thereafter Bunnell worked independently until returning to the Broadmoor Art Academy to study in 1927-28 with Ernest Lawson, who previously taught at the Kansas City Art Institute where Bunnell himself later taught in the summers of 1929-1930 and in 1940-41. Lawson, a landscapist and colorist, was known for his early twentieth-century connection with "The Eight" in New York, a group of forward-looking painters including Robert Henri and John Sloan whose subject matter combined a modernist style with urban-based realism. Bunnell, who won first-place awards in Lawson’s landscapes classes at the Academy, was promoted to his assistant instructor for the figure classes in the 1928-29 winter term. Lawson, who painted in what New York critic James Huneker termed a "crushed jewel" technique, enjoyed additional recognition as a member of the Committee on Foreign Exhibits that helped organize the landmark New York Armory Exhibition in 1913 in which Lawson showed and which introduced European avant-garde art to the American public. As noted in his 1964 interview for the Archives of American Art in Washington, DC, Bunnell learned the most about his teacher’s use of color by talking with him about it over Scotch as his assistant instructor. "Believe me," Bunnell later said, "[Ernie] knew color, one of the few Americans that did." His association with Lawson resulted in local scenes of Pikes Peak, Eleven Mile Canyon, the Gold Cycle Mine near Colorado City and other similar sites, employing built up pigments that allowed the surfaces of his canvases to shimmer with color and light. (Eleven Mile Canyon was shown in the annual juried show at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1928, an early recognition of his talent outside of Colorado.) At the same time, he animated his scenes of Colorado Springs locales by defining the image shapes with color and line as demonstrated in Contrasts (1929). Included in the Midwestern Artists’ Exhibition in Kansas City in 1929, it earned him the gold medal of the Kansas City Art Institute, auguring his career as a professional artist. In the 1930s Bunnell used the oil, watercolor and lithography media to create a mini-genre of Colorado’s old mining towns and mills, subject matter spurned by many local artists at the time in favor of grand mountain scenery. In contrast to his earlier images, these newer ones - both daytime and nocturnal -- such as Blue Bird Mine essentially are form studies. The conical, square and rectangular shapes of the buildings and other structures are placed in the stark, undulating terrain of the mountains and valleys devoid of any vegetation or human presence. In the mid-1930s he also used the same approach in his monochromatic lithographs titled Evolution, Late Evening, K.C. (Kansas City) and The Mill, continuing it into the next decade with his oil painting, Pikes Peak (1942). During the early 1930s he studied for a time with Boardman Robinson, director of the Broadmoor Art Academy and its successor institution, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 1930 to 1947. In 1934 Robinson gave him the mural commission under the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) for West Junior High School in Colorado Springs, his first involvement in one of several New Deal art...

Central Park by Kamil Kubik, Czech/American (1930–2011) Oil on canvas, signed l.r. Size: 35.5 x 30 in Kamil Kubik, defecting from his home country of Czechoslovakia in 1948 when the Communists seized power, he would become known as "Master of Cityscapes", known internationally for his street scenes, cityscapes and magnificent florals, memorializing royal weddings and inaugurations on his canvas pieces. His cityscape paintings for sale are highly coveted pieces thanks to his popularization through magazines, books, and even White House Christmas cards. Private collectors of his work have included U.S. presidents and English royalty...

This is a 'Plein Air" landscape Painting by Jane Chapin as seen in the viewing room exhibition on Silas VON MORISSE GALLERY. “Plein-Air” is the French expression to describe the act of painting in situ within the landscape, capturing the ever changing weather and light with tonal qualities, colour, loose brushwork and softness of form... The practice of “Plein Air Painting” goes back for centuries but was truly made into an art form by the French Impressionists such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir who were advocating of plein air painting. Much of their work was done outdoors in the diffuse light of a large white umbrella. Another major proponent of Plein Air was Jean Baptiste Camille Corot whom Claude Monet considered as “The only One Master here”. Corot provides a transition from the sharp academic style that ruled in his day with focus on the natural world and the lyrical expressiveness of one's work. With her "Plein Air Paintings", Jane Chapin is part of one of the largest art movements in history. Her paintings carry human emotions. We can read her moods and feelings with places that carry deep remembrances for the artist that go beyond the descriptive. "My paintings grow from observing and interpretating light as it emerges from, surrounds and reflects on everyday people and scenes. They seek to remind us of the beauty of our common surroundings, regardless of where we are." - Jane Chapin Jane Chapin Painting the Land of the Free...

Charles Caryl Coleman (Buffalo 1840 – Capri 1928), Peasant woman at work in the fields of Capri (1901) Oil painting on canvas 35 x 49 cm, signed, located and dated Capri 1901 lower ...

Vivid abstracted landscape of Monument Valley, Utah by N. Mallory (American, 20th Century), circa 1945. Signed lower left corner. Condition: Good: Some edge and corner wear consisten...

Lake Street, c. 1920 -30s, oil on board, 12 x 9 inches, signed lower right and verso, titled verso About the Painting At the center of Oscar Daniel Soellner’s Lake Street, we see the stairway leading to an elevated railway station on what is now Chicago’s Green Line route. When its first section opened in 1893 as the second permanent elevated rapid transit line in Chicago, this route was known as the Lake Street Elevated Railroad. Chicago’s “L,” like the New York subway and rapid transit system, played an instrumental role in the development of the urban economy and the overall look and feel of the city. The formal aspects of urban railroads and the role they played in efficiently moving large number of everyday citizens across America’s growing metropolises were catnip for many American Scene painters during the first half of the 20th Century. Here, Soellner uses the techniques of the impressionists and the palette of the Ash Can School, to convincingly depict a classic Chicago scene...

Brenda Horowitz’s continuing focus on the outer Cape landscape has allowed her to develop a deep understanding of the land, water, sky, and the relatio...

Walt Kuhn (1877-1949)was associated with the art group known as "The Eight" and with Arthur B. Davies, was a the key figure in forming the American Association of painters and Sculp...

AS THE DAYS WASH OVER ME‐ BY E. Melinda Morrison is egg tempera on a prepped aluminum panel This egg tempera paintings is 12 x 24 is painted by E. Melinda Morrison in her studio wh...

The Harbor at Camden, Maine (c.1907) Oil on canvas 24" x 27" 32 ½" x 35 ½" x 3 ½" framed Signed "Irvine" lower right. Provenance: Private collection, Beverly Hills California until 1944 Private collection, Glendale, California 1944-1987 By descent About this artist: American Impressionist painter Wilson Henry Irvine was born just outside of Byron, Illinois in 1869. Though raised in the Midwest, Irvine was captivated by the scenic coast and landscape of New England and spent most of his adult life there. Painting in the American Barbizon tradition, modeled after the nineteenth century French Barbizon School, Irvine sketched and painted directly from nature preferring to work en plein air. His impressionistic style and choice of subjects are often compared to painters of the American Barbizon School, particularly Irvine’s contemporary, Childe Hassam. Irvine stands out from other American Impressionists of his time, for his willingness to push the traditional techniques of impressionism with his aquaprints and prismatic paintings of the late 1920s. Shortly after graduating from Rockford’s Central High School, Irvine moved from the suburbs to Chicago in order to attend business school. He worked at the Chicago Portrait Company starting in 1893, and began evening classes at The Art Institute of Chicago two years later. Irvine continued taking courses at the Art Institute for eight years. His classes included life drawing and illustration with a heavy focus on human anatomy. In 1895, Irvine founded the Palette and Chisel Club of Chicago with his classmates, and served as both treasurer and president. It was with this group that he began exploring landscape painting, and soon he began showing his landscapes at group shows at The Art Institute of Chicago. Initially Irvine’s work is reminiscent of early impressionism, with the artist’s use of lively, visible brush strokes and his emphasis on the contrasts of color and texture to create a sense of depth in his paintings. Though he spent a brief amount of time sketching in Brown County with Indiana based “Hoosier” school...