Arthur B. Davies Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Most accounts of the artistic achievements of Edward Lear (1812–1888) take as their starting point the notion that he is better known as the writer of nonsense verse than as a topographical draughtsman and painter. His art is then considered largely in isolation, as the extraordinary creation of a fascinatingly eccentric Victorian. However, Lear's art is outstanding. Although Lear suffered from epilepsy, asthma, poor eyesight, and chronic depression, he was an inveterate traveler and an indefatigable sketcher, documenting a lifetime of journeys throughout the Mediterranean and India. During his two-month tour to Athens, mainland Greece and the island of Euboea, Edward Lear made almost 150 landscape drawings and kept a diary of his experiences and impressions. Many years later, Lear’s travelling companion, Charles Church...

This large wash drawing is a slightly enlarged version of a composition executed by Hubert Robert in 1761, at the end of his stay in Rome. This composition is a marvellous synthesis of the painter's art: the clatter of the waterfall, in a grandiose setting inspired by antiquity, is opposed to the intimacy of a genre scene, made up of a few peasant women performing some agricultural work. 1. The stay in Italy, an important founding stage in Hubert Robert's carrier Hubert Robert came from a privileged family of Lorraine origin, linked to the Choiseul-Stainville family, where his father was an intendant. The protection of this powerful aristocratic family enabled him to study classical art at the Collège de Navarre (between 1745 and 1751). After a first apprenticeship in the workshop of the sculptor Slodtz (1705 - 1764), he was invited by Etienne-François de Choiseul-Beaupré-Stainville (the future Duke of Choiseul, then Count of Stainville) to join him in Rome when the latter had just been appointed ambassador. Hubert Robert arrived in Rome on 4 November 1754, aged twenty-one, and remained there until 24 July 1765. Thanks to his patron, he obtained a place as a pensioneer at the Académie de France without having won the prestigious Prix de Rome. On his arrival in Rome, he frequented the studio of the painter Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691 - 1765), the inventor of the ruins painting, and also benefited from the proximity of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s studio (1720 - 1778). During his eleven-year stay in Rome, Hubert Robert studied the great Italian masters and drew many of the great archaeological sites, multiplying the sketches which he would use throughout his career, becoming one of the masters of the "ruin landscape". Back in Paris in 1765, he was very successful. He was accepted and admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture on the same day, July 26th 1766, which was very unusual. He was appointed draughtsman of the king's gardens in 1784, then guard of the Royal Museum from 1784 to 1792. Arrested in 1793 and detained in the prisons of Sainte Pélagie and Saint-Lazare, he was released in 1794 after the fall of Robespierre and undertook a second trip to Italy. In 1800, Hubert Robert was appointed curator of the new Central Museum and died at his home in Paris in 1808. 2. Description of the artwork This composition, formerly called "La Cascade du Belvédère Pamphile" , is undoubtedly inspired by the water theatres of the Frascati villas. Hubert Robert presents a hemicycle of columns with rustic bossages at the foot of which is a cascade of water falls into a basin. The hemicycle is flanked by two high walls, pierced by window wells topped with antique masks...

'Fall Fog, Approaching'. Contemporary landscape painting, Cornwall Original Artwork, Unframed _________________ Heavy skies moving in over the autumnal landscape of West Cornwall: a ...

Bridge to Brooklyn #382, watercolor, 10.5 x 14 inches (Framed size: 18 x 21 inches), $1,750 Waldo Midgley (1888-1986) had a fruitful career spanning eig...

'Amalfi, Italy'. Mixed media on paper . circa 2005. painting 41cm x 54cm glazed frame 62cmx 82cm Atmospheric view of the seafront topography and buildings of the famous coastal town...

Mal's (At Cliff Evan's Cabin), by Waldo Midgley. watercolor, 9 x 12 inches (Framed size: 18.5 x 21 inches), $1,500 Waldo Midgley (1888-1986) had a fruit...

John Francis Murphy (1853 - 1921) Saratoga, 1876 Graphite on paper Sight 8 3/4 x 10 1/2 inches Titled and dated to lower right Provenance: Babcock Galleries, New York Spanierman Gallery, New York In his lifetime, John Francis Murphy (1853-1921) was known as “the American Corot.” He was renowned for his small, intimate views of nature, especially barren fields and farms, bare trees, and lonely marshland. More than a century later, the power of Murphy’s landscapes has not waned. One contemporary critic wrote, “It was Murphy’s unique accomplishment to achieve an absolute realism without a loss of that mystic, indefinable quality which transfigures realism.” John Francis Murphy was born at Oswego, NY in 1853 but his family moved to Chicago in 1868 where he worked painting theater sets. Murphy was basically a self-taught artist; his only formal training was a few weeks of instruction at the Chicago Academy of Design. In 1875, Murphy moved from Chicago to New York, eventually rooming with the painters Dennis Bunker and Bruce Crane above a bakery shop. Murphy’s early work was typical of the Hudson River school but he soon fell under the sway of the loose brushwork and moody style of French Barbizon painting...

Boat at the Dock, Alviso Bay Area Tonalist Landscape Watercolor by Iku Nagai Lovely Tonalist watercolor landscape of Alviso, California by Iku K. Nagai (Japanese/American, b. 1932)....

Cedar Breaks Saturation 11 x 11 inches (Framed size: 18 x 17.75 inches) watercolor on paper (painted using lightfast pigments, acid-free paper and archival framing materials) $1,850 Landscape: Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah. Colorful eroded sandstone cliffs. - Rebecca Livermore...

PEDRO J. LEMOS (American, 1882-1954) FOOTBALL STATUE THROUGH THE TREES - UC BERKELEY 1921 - THE ORIGINAL YEARBOOK PASTEL Pastel drawing on colored paper 12 5/8 x 9 5/8 inches. Full signature in pastel, Pedro J Lemos. In good condition. A few bits of old tape at the corners, verso. THE 1921 UC BERKELEY YEARBOOK CONTAINED SEVERAL LEMOS PASTEL REPRODUCTIONS. Pedro de Lemos was an important proponent of the Arts and Crafts Movement. He produced some of the finest color woodcuts of the period as well as fine pastels, paintings and architecture. He was also an instructor and director of the Stanford University Art Department, From Wikipedia: Pedro Joseph de Lemos (25 May 1882 – 5 December 1954) was an American painter, printmaker, architect, illustrator, writer, lecturer, museum director and art educator in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prior to about 1930 he used the simpler name Pedro Lemos or Pedro J. Lemos; between 1931 and 1933 he changed the family name to de Lemos, believing that he was related to the Count de Lemos (1576–1622), patron of Miguel de Cervantes. Much of his work was influenced by traditional Japanese woodblock printing and the Arts and Crafts Movement. He became prominent in the field of art education, and he designed several unusual buildings in Palo Alto and Carmel-by-the-Sea, California..... In 1911 he began teaching decorative design at the San Francisco Institute of Art.[8] In late 1912 he was one of the founders the California Society of Etchers, and the following year he started offering the Institute's first classes in printmaking. Some of his students, such as William S. Rice and John W. Winkler (1894-1979), went on to achieve significant fame as printmakers. He helped organize the California print...

This early 20th-century charcoal drawing by Swiss artist Frank Charles Peyraud (1858-1948) depicts a river landscape with boatmen. As a young ma...

'Ebren Ha Dor, Shifting Sky'. Contemporary landscape painting, Cornwall Original Artwork, Unframed _________________ The dancing light and rapidly changing skies, hung high above the...