Augustus Koopman Still-life Drawings and Watercolors

Untitled, Still Life of Shell Graphite on paper, 1945-1951 Signed lower right in pencil "Bisttram" (see photo) Condition: Excellent Sheet size: 9.63 x 7 .5 inches EMIL BISTTRAM (189...

A ca. 1945, Cubist black & white graphite drawing of fruit by artist Illinois and Michigan artist Stanley Bielecky. Image size: 4" x 5". Archivally matted to: 13 1/4" x 16". Stanley Bielecky was an Indiana artist who painted the American scene, from the factories and workers around East Chicago to the bucolic settings of Mackinac Island...

A ca. 1938 graphite on paper, study of a classical drapery by notable Modernist artist Jan Matulka. The image is drawn on the back of a typewritten, folded sheet of stationery, from...

Joseph Stella was a visionary artist who painted what he saw, an idiosyncratic and individual experience of his time and place. Stella arrived in New York in 1896, part of a wave of Italian immigrants from poverty-stricken Southern Italy. But Stella was not a child of poverty. His father was a notary and respected citizen in Muro Locano, a small town in the southern Appenines. The five Stella brothers were all properly educated in Naples. Stella’s older brother, Antonio, was the first of the family to come to America. Antonio Stella trained as a physician in Italy, and was a successful and respected doctor in the Italian community centered in Greenwich Village. He sponsored and supported his younger brother, Joseph, first sending him to medical school in New York, then to study pharmacology, and then sustaining him through the early days of his artistic career. Antonio Stella specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis and was active in social reform circles. His connections were instrumental in Joseph Stella’s early commissions for illustrations in reform journals. Joseph Stella, from the beginning, was an outsider. He was of the Italian-American community, but did not share its overwhelming poverty and general lack of education. He went back to Italy on several occasions, but was no longer an Italian. His art incorporated many influences. At various times his work echoed the concerns and techniques of the so-called Ashcan School, of New York Dada, of Futurism and, of Cubism, among others. These are all legitimate influences, but Stella never totally committed himself to any group. He was a convivial, but ultimately solitary figure, with a lifelong mistrust of any authority external to his own personal mandate. He was in Europe during the time that Alfred Stieglitz established his 291 Gallery. When Stella returned he joined the international coterie of artists who gathered at the West Side apartment of the art patron Conrad Arensberg. It was here that Stella became close friends with Marcel Duchamp. Stella was nineteen when he arrived in America and studied in the early years of the century at the Art Students League, and with William Merritt Chase, under whose tutelage he received rigorous training as a draftsman. His love of line, and his mastery of its techniques, is apparent early in his career in the illustrations he made for various social reform journals. Stella, whose later work as a colorist is breathtakingly lush, never felt obliged to choose between line and color. He drew throughout his career, and unlike other modernists, whose work evolved inexorably to more and more abstract form, Stella freely reverted to earlier realist modes of representation whenever it suited him. This was because, in fact, his “realist” work was not “true to nature,” but true to Stella’s own unique interpretation. Stella began to draw flowers, vegetables, butterflies, and birds in 1919, after he had finished the Brooklyn Bridge series of paintings, which are probably his best-known works. These drawings of flora and fauna were initially coincidental with his fantastical, nostalgic and spiritual vision of his native Italy which he called Tree of My Life (Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth Foundation and Windsor, Inc., St. Louis, illus. in Barbara Haskell, Joseph Stella, exh. cat. [New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994], p. 111 no. 133). Two Wood Ducks...

Jehudith Sobel (1924-2012 ) Polish/Jewish artist (also known as Judyta Sobel) Judith Sobel was born in Lwow, Poland in 1924. After Word War II she attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz, Poland from 1947-1950, where she studied with the famous Abstract Constructivist, Wladyslaw Strzeminski and Stefan Wegner from whom she learned the principles of Modern Art as per the European Cubists. She was also part of the First Exhibit of Modern Art in Krakow in 1948/1949. From Poland she emigrated to Israel, where she exhibited and was collected by the major art museums of Israel including the Museum of Modern Art at Haifa. In 1956, Sobel came to New York on a scholarship and before that she lived in France for two years. Same year she received the First Prize at the Exhibition in the Saks Gallery...

Pencil on cream laid paper, 10 x 8 3/4 inches (254 x 222 mm). Uniform age tone, scattered surface soiling, and handling wear. One pea-sized area of skinning in the top-center sheet ...

Van Amerige - Carrot, Year: 1969, Medium: Color Marker and Pencil Drawing, Image Size: 13.75 x 10.75 inches, Size: 22.25 x 15 in. (56.52 x 38.1 cm)

Four pencil drawings, each with hand coloring in watercolor, each 6 3/4 x 10 inches (sheet) (172 x 254 mm), full margins. Each with inscriptions and notations by the artist in the up...

Hachiya Persimmons & Fan, Modern Still Life with Red-Orange and Blue Lovely modern still-life of a fan and persimmons by Santa Cruz, California artist Anita Heckman (American, b.20th Century). This 1987 mixed media work on paper depicts three vivid Hachiya persimmons on a windowsill beside an elegant paper fan with a tassel. A decorative window drape...

A 1930s graphite on pencil drawing of Surrealist still life of an egg beater by notable artist Jan Matulka. Artwork size: 8 1/2" x 11". Archivally matted...

Watercolor of pink begonias by Barbara Gibson (20th Century). A large tuberous begonia is potted in a green pot. There are several large blossoms, and a few ...

American artist Jessie Bone Charman (1895-1986) was known for her expressive still-life paintings, landscapes and marine scenes, as well as her abstract watercolors. The framed dim...