Cecil Beaton Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

“Old love, new love” Drawing, acrylic, ink and colored pencils on paper. I developed a drawing technique based on natural pigments from leaves, flowers and bark with which I intend t...

A fascinating orientalist art deco composition. Pen and brownish brown ink with gouache on cream wove paper, 9 5/8 x 7 1/2 inches (245 x 190 mm), the full sheet. In good condition w...

Johannes Friedrich Heinrich Hänsch (1875-1945), Red blooming war landscape with dead soldier, 1918. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 15 x 24.5 cm (image), 27 x 37 cm (sheet size / frame), monogrammed and dated "19JH18" at lower left. - Paper slightly darkened About the artwork Despite the relatively small format, the watercolor with an internal frame depicts a panoramic view of a flat landscape stretching to the horizon. As far as the eye can see, the poppies bloom in flaming red. The flowers are not rendered individually, however, creating an almost cohesive red surface. The bright red is interspersed with vegetal green. A complementary contrast that creates an intense color effect. In this color contrast, a white area breaks through from the middle ground, widening towards the foreground and surrounding a brown hole. Next to it, in blue, is the actual protagonist of the painting, the first thing that catches the eye: a dead soldier. Next to him is his helmet, revealing the empty interior. The brown, hollow shape corresponds to the hole in the ground. A shell funnel is surrounded by bright ash, which, like the inverted helmet, becomes a sign of death. The soldier's arms point to the funnel, while the empty helmet paraphrases the calotte of the skull and, like the funnel, thematizes the empty darkness of death. The soldier's body, however, is intact and not - as in Otto Dix's triptych "The War" - a dismembered corpse. Instead, Johannes Hänsch activates the landscape, especially the color, to illustrate a blooming landscape of death that extends from the shell funnel in the foreground to the rising column of smoke on the horizon. If the soldier's body is intact, the tangle of barbed wire emblematically placed over the empty helmet also appears tattered. On the right side of the picture, the barbed wire even seems to stretch its arms to the sky in horror. Against the background of this allegory, the content of the bright red also becomes clear: the landscape is drenched in blood, literally a sea of blood, and the single unknown soldier stands pars pro toto for all those who died on the battlefield. Dying in war is not dying in community, but in solitude. In order to emphasize the isolation in death, Johannes Hänsch has set the blue of the soldier in the axis given by his body in the middle ground of the picture into the red sea. A master of landscape painting, Hänsch succeeds in creating a natural-looking landscape allegory that illustrates the horror and death of war, without depicting the brutality of war itself. This singular 'war memorial' of the unknown soldier is the opposite of heroization and yet the dignity of the deceased soldier is preserved through the integrity of his body. About the artist As the son of the sculptor Adolf Haensch, the young Johannes received his first artistic training in his father's Berlin studio. However, he eventually decided to become a painter, and in 1897 he entered the Berlin Academy of Arts. He initially studied under Paul Vorgang and Eugen Bracht, and was particularly influenced by Bracht's increasingly colourful landscape painting. In 1901 he moved to the class of Friedrich Kallmorgen, with whom he spent several weeks on excursions into nature. In 1905 he became a master pupil of Albert Hertel, who taught him watercolour painting. From 1903 to 1933 he exhibited annually at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition, the exhibitions of the Berlin Artists' Association and the Munich Glaspalast. In 1905 he was awarded the Carl Blechen...

Early 20th century orientalist watercolour on paper by Aiveill, signed bottom right. In art history, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction ...

A beautiful 17th century design for a confessional from the most important woodshop in Bergamo. Pen and grayish black ink on cream laid paper, 11 1/8 x 7 1/4 inches (283 x 185 mm), ...

Ex Libris 1982, paper, ink, gouache, 17,5х13 cm Information about artist: Gunārs Vīndedzis (1918 - 1991) - cartoonist, illustrator. Born in a fami...

John Collingham Moore (England, 1829-1880) four children, circa 1860s Rare pencil, watercolor and white wash by listed artist John Collingham Moore, 19th century. Here we have the children of Henry and Elizabeth Young...

Born in Szeged, Hungary, he became one of the better known and successful illustrators of the Golden Age of Illustration, completing over 100 books. Among them are "A Treasury of Verse for Little Children," "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam," and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." He is probably best known for pen and ink drawings of mythology subjects geared towards children. He studied at Budapest Technical University and attended art schools in Munich and Paris before moving to London at age 23. In 1907, he began illustrating children's books and did a series of annual gift books...

One of the characters in this scene is a mature man, kneeling with his head bowed and hands clasped near his chest in a gesture of supplication. His posture conveys a sense of humili...

18th Century Roman School A Palazzo with antiques Brown ink and pen, brown ink wash on paper 12.5 x 20 cm Framed : 28,5 x 35.5 This nice drawing represents a genre scene, with a nobleman, priests, a mother and her children...

Jan Goeree (Middelburg 1670 – Amsterdam 1731) Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam (c. 1724) Red chalk for the architecture, pen and black ink, grey wash on paper Composition reversed in preparation for engraving 25 × 17.5 cm Watermark: Hunting horn, Churchill 318 (dated 1724) Unsigned Provenance Private collection, France Context & Attribution Trained in the studio of Gérard de Lairesse, Jan Goeree was among the finest Dutch engravers of the early eighteenth century, celebrated for his architectural views of Amsterdam. This drawing is a preparatory study for an engraving of the same subject now preserved in a major public collection. The final print—slightly larger—closely follows the reversed composition of this sheet. Subject In the center of the Gothic nave, five bearers carry a catafalque toward a freshly dug grave—a tribute to the naval heroes often buried in the Nieuwe Kerk. This funerary motif, familiar from Dutch painting (e.g. Emanuel de Witte, 1657), evokes the vanitas theme and the transience of earthly life. Technical Analysis Goeree’s use of red chalk for the architecture and ink for the figures reveals his working method: the chalk lines could be used to produce a counterproof restoring the correct orientation of the architecture, while the inked figures remained adjustable before the design was transferred to the copper plate. Place within the Oeuvre Drawings of church...

Signed lower right, "Dignimont" for André Dignimont (French, 1891-1965) and painted circa 1950. A substantial, mid-century interior showing a man and ...