Benjamin G. Benno Still-life Drawings and Watercolors

Botanical watercolour and gouache on paper circa 1920 by French fauvist painter Raoul Dufy. The work depicts flowers in red, blue and green. This work was executed by Dufy as a fabric design. Dimensions: Framed: 19.5"x19.5" Unframed: 12"x12" Provenance: Private collection of works by Raoul Dufy for Bianchini Ferier Bianchini Ferrier Collection - Christie's London - July 2001 SF Fall Show Raoul Dufy was one of a family of nine children, including five sisters and a younger brother, Jean Dufy, also destined to become a painter. Their father was an accountant in the employ of a major company in Le Havre. The Dufy family was musically gifted: his father was an organist, as was his brother Léon, and his youngest brother Gaston was an accomplished flautist who later worked as a music critic in Paris. Raoul Dufy's studies were interrupted at the age of 14, when he had to contribute to the family income. He took a job with an importer of Brazilian coffee, but still found time from 1892 to attend evening courses in drawing and composition at the local college of fine arts under Charles Marie Lhullier, former teacher of Othon Friesz and Georges Braque. He spent his free time in museums, admiring the paintings of Eugène Boudin in Le Havre and The Justice of Trajan in Rouen. A municipal scholarship enabled him to leave for Paris in 1900, where he lodged initially with Othon Friesz. He was accepted by the École des Beaux-Arts, where he studied under Léon Bonnat, whose innate conservatism prompted Dufy to remark later that it was 'good to be at the Beaux-Arts providing one knew one could leave'. And leave he did, four years later, embarking with friends and fellow students on the rounds of the major Paris galleries - Ambroise Vollard, Durand-Ruel, Eugène Blot and Berheim-Jeune. For Dufy and his contemporaries, Impressionism represented a rejection of sterile academism in favour of the open-air canvases of Manet, the light and bright colours of the Impressionists, and, beyond them, the daringly innovative work of Gauguin and Van Gogh, Seurat, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and others. Dufy was an out-and-out individualist, however, and was not tempted to imitate any of these artists. He produced, between 1935 and 1937, Fée Electricité (Spirit of Electricity), the emblem for the French utilities company Electricité de France (EDF). Dufy visited the USA for the first time in 1937, as a member of the Carnegie Prize jury. In 1940, the outbreak of war (and his increasingly rheumatic condition) persuaded him to settle in Nice. When he eventually returned to Paris 10 years later, his rheumatism had become so debilitating that he immediately left for Boston to follow a course of pioneering anti-cortisone treatment. He continued working, however, spending time first in Harvard and then in New York City before moving to the drier climate of Tucson, Arizona. The cortisone treatment was by and large unsuccessful, although he did recover the use of his fingers. He returned to Paris in 1951 and decided to settle in Forcalquier, where the climate was more clement. Within a short time, however, he was wheelchair-bound. He died in Forcalquier in March 1953 and was buried in Cimiez. Between 1895 and 1898, Raoul Dufy painted watercolours of landscapes near his native Le Havre and around Honfleur and Falaise. By the turn of the century, however, he was already painting certain subjects that were to become hallmarks of his work - flag-decked Parisian cityscapes, Normandy beaches teeming with visitors, regattas and the like, including one of his better-known early works, Landing Stage at Ste-Adresse. By 1905-1906 Friesz, Braque, Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, Van Dongen and Rouault were described collectively as Fauves (the wild beasts). What they had in common was a desire to innovate, but they felt constrained nonetheless to meet formally to set out the guiding principles of what promised to be a new 'movement'. Dufy quickly established that those principles were acceptable; moreover, he was most impressed by one particular painting by Henri Matisse ( Luxury, Calm and Voluptuousness) which, to Dufy, embodied both novelty and a sense of artistic freedom. Dufy promptly aligned himself with the Fauves. Together with Albert Marquet in particular, he spent his time travelling the Normandy coast and painting views similar...

Signed lower center, 'Leo Kenney' (American, 1925-2001) and dated 1947. A seminal figure in the second generation of Northwest School artists, Leo Kenney was, like many of his conte...

Compass Rose and Flower design. Sealed on the back with the design studio name and number 397 We offer a small number of these original illustration designs by this design studio ba...

JEFF KOONS Original Flower drawing on Michael Jackson and Bubbles poster (Hand Signed), 1992 Drawing done in marker on offset lithograph 25 × 39 inches Hand signed and dated '92 in b...

'Desert Flower', gouache on coloured paper, by Pierre Roy (circa 1930s). The artist has skilfully captured the beautiful white flowers extending from the ma...

Paula Valenzuela Underworld, 2025 Alcohol ink and watercolor ink on Yupo paper 14 x 11 inches This one-of-a-kind work on paper comes unframed. External, visible frame and glass in s...

A new series inspired by architecture, décor and stylish personalities of the world of interior design. The worlds of fashion, society and pop culture are captured in the illustrati...

A new series inspired by architecture, décor and stylish personalities of the world of interior design. The worlds of fashion, society and pop culture are captured in the illustrati...

Bold mid century modern abstracted pastel on paper still life of several terra cotta jugs and vessels distilled down to their most basic shapes and ar...

This cubist black ink pen drawing by André Lhote (1885 - 1962), circa 1910, features a still-life composition, a bowl with fruits on a table with a cubist geometric design. We added ...

Signed lower right, 'Beverly Fields' (American, 20th century) and dated 1988. Accompanied by a copy of the artist's poster from the same series. This listed California artist has exhibited widely and with success and is the recipient of numerous medals and juried awards. Beverly Fields first studied with Zoltan Szabo and later with Charles Reid...

Estate stamp, verso, for Victor di Gesu (American, 1914-1988) and painted circa 1955. Winner of the Prix Othon Friesz, Victor di Gesu first attended the Los Angeles Art Center and t...