Amos Sewell Figurative Paintings

"Paper Making" WPA Industrial Mid-Century American Scene Social Realism Workers Douglas Crockwell (1904-1968) "Paper Making" 19 x 39 inches Oil on board, c. 1936 Signed verso Framed: 28 x 47 Provenance: Estate of the Artist BIO Spencer Douglass Crockwell was born into a comfortable middle class household on April 29, 1904 in Columbus, Ohio. His father, Charles Roland Crockwell, was a mining engineer; his mother, Cora, was the daughter of an Iowa attorney. He became a commercial artist and experimental filmmaker who spent a good part of his career creating illustrations and advertisements for the Saturday Evening Post. In 1907 the Crockwell family moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he graduated from high school and then attended from Washington University. Initially he studied engineering, but soon switched to business. While still an undergraduate, Crockwell took courses at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts and quickly realized that he wanted to be an artist. After graduating from Washington University in 1926, Crockwell continued to study at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts until 1929. The following year he relocated to Chicago and continued his studies at the American Academy of Art. In 1930 and 1931 he studied in Europe on a Traveling Fellowship. In 1932 Douglass Crockwell moved to Glens Falls, New York, which was to be his home for the remainder of his life. The following year he married Margaret Braman. They had three children, a son Douglass and two daughters, Johanna and Margaret. During the depression he created murals and posters for the Works Progress Administration including Post Office murals in White River junction, Vermont; Endicott, New York; and Macon, Mississippi. In 1934 he painted Paper Workers, Finch Pruyn & Co. (the leading Glens Falls, New York company) for the WPA. In the 1930s Crockwell developed an interest in experimental animated films that occupied him for the rest of his life. In 1936 and 1937, he collaborated with David Smith, a sculptor, to create surrealist films. Because of his interest in experimental films, his output of paintings was limited to just twenty to forty illustrations a year during this time. Crockwell painted his first of many Saturday Evening Post cover in 1933. He also worked for Life, Look, and Esquire, and numerous national advertisers including Friskies dog food, Welch’s Grape Juice, Republic Steel...

Mural Study for "History of Water" American Scene Modernism Social Realism WPA Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975) "Water Story" (Study for The History of Water) Tempera and o...

Chess Players WPA Depression Era Mid-20th Century American Scene Realism Modern. Signed upper right and verso 8 x 10 inches oil on board. BIO The son of a men's haberdasher, Mervin ...

Only Ballantine Ale Brews "Brewer's Gold," ad illustration appeared in the major magazines of the day. A magic moment is caught at a peak point of drama. It's the instant of friends having fun. A cold beer from the fridge is offered and it's is acknowledged with a head nod. The woman in the foreground covers her giggling face reacting to a funny comment. The decisive moment is preserved. Sounds like a critique of an art photograph? No, it's an illustrator. This ingenious Infiniti "S" composition simultaneously represents the best of photography and painting. Cartier-Bresson could have captured the precise moment. While Nicolas Poussin could have rendered the complex figural composition. Add to it , a painting technique and color scheme with the quick drama of a post-impressionist. We have a great work of art by an overlooked American illustrator/artist/painter, Mike Ludlow...

Elegant and graphic study of a figure of undetermined gender. It's executed with quick and confident brush strokes in the artist's signature color scheme of black and red. It's a fla...

Original Painting. Colliers Magazine Cover Published 1933 Wedding Illustration Antonio Petruccelli (1907 - 1994) The Wedding Colliers published, June 17, 1933 17 1/4 X 11 1/2 inches (sight) Framed 23 1/4 X 17 1/2 inches Gouache on board Signed lower right BIOGRAPHY: Antonio Petruccelli (1907-1994) began his career as a textile designer. He became a freelance illustrator in 1932 after winning several House Beautiful cover illustration contests. In addition to 24 Fortune magazine covers, four New Yorker covers, several for House Beautiful, Collier’s, and other magazines he did numerous illustrations for Life magazine from the 1930s – 60s. ‘Tony was Mr. Versatility for Fortune. He could do anything, from charts and diagrams to maps, illustrations, covers, and caricatures,’ said Francis Brennan, the former art director for Fortune. Over the course of his career, Antonio won several important design awards, designing a U.S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Steel Industry and designing the Bicentennial Medal...

Bathers 1940s Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism WPA Modern Ashcan Marion Gilmore (1909-1984) Bathers 15 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches oil on canvas boar...

A striking and historically attentive portrait of the sidewheel steamer Kennebec, built in 1842. Rendered in crisp profile against a soft, painterly sky and calm Atlantic swells, Cameron’s portrait captures the stately elegance of early American steam navigation. The Kennebec, identified in bold red lettering on her paddle box, is shown under partial sail with twin smokestacks active - suggesting both the hybrid nature of early steam propulsion and the vessel’s readiness for sea. Flying period flags, including a U.S. ensign and company pennants, she presents as a proud representative of the Sanford Steamship Line, for whom she plied the route between Boston, Bangor, and the summer resorts of Maine. Her design, with a wood hull, 230-foot length, and distinctive “hogging truss,” speaks to mid-19th century innovation tailored to coastwise packets. Cameron’s style is reminiscent of 19th-century ship portraiture yet refined with contemporary technical precision. This is an excellent example of his work. This work is oil on canvas and is signed in the lower right. It is housed in its original black frame and retains the artist’s description of the ship on the reverse. Size: 22 inches tall by 44 inches wide (painting) 26 inches tall by 48 inches wide by 1 inch deep (frame) Provenance: Private collection; Acquired from the above About the artist: A Delaware artist, Scott Cameron paints the simple elegance of the America’s Cup races, serene coastal marsh scenes, timeless landscape vistas and historic steamboats in a style reminiscent of the era in which they reigned. An admirer of Andrew Wyeth and the Brandywine School of painters, Scott has combined the detail and quiet stillness of that School in his landscapes with the Luminist School’s sense of light glowing from within. A soft gentle atmosphere seems to fall over each scene adding to the peacefulness of the setting, and a sense of a time gone by. His America’s Cup scenes capture the action at a moment in time, allowing the beauty of the wind-filled sails to become the central design element of each painting. Scott Cameron has exhibited his oil paintings in numerous national and regional shows from the Mystic Seaport Museum to solo and group shows in some of the foremost galleries throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states. Favorite painting locations are the waterways and coastal inlets of Martha’s Vineyard and Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the gentle rolling landscapes of rural Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. Meticulous research is behind every historic steamboat and America’s Cup painting...

This refined trompe-l’œil botanical still life by American painter Bruce Kurland depicts a small branch of magnolia blossoms arranged in a simple cylindrical vessel resting on a narr...

Early 20th century oil on board portrait of a young schoolboy 'Le Petit Écolier', with Donald Duck, by Pierre Villain (French, 1880-1950). Signed top ri...

Artist: Raphael Soyer (1899-1987) Title: Girl with Braided Hair Year: Circa 1947 Medium: Oil on canvas Size: 12 x 9 inches; framed size, 19 x 16 inches Condition: Excellent Inscripti...

“Eastern White Pines, c. 1910” by Charles Warren Eaton (American, 1857-1937). A wonderful example of Eaton’s renowned compositions of Eastern white pine trees in his mature style. A...