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Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

American, 1899-1965
Francis Chapin, affectionately called the “Dean of Chicago Painters” by his colleagues, was one of the city’s most popular and celebrated painters in his day. Born at the dawn of the 20th Century in Bristolville, Ohio, Chapin graduated from Washington & Jefferson College near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before enrolling at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922. He would set down deep roots at the Art Institute of Chicago, exhibiting there over 31 times between 1926 and 1951. In 1927 Chapin won the prestigious Bryan Lathrop Fellowship from the Art Institute – a prize that funded the artist’s yearlong study trip to Europe. Upon his return to the United States, Chapin decided to remain in Chicago, noting the freedom Chicago artists have in developing independently of the pressure to conform to pre-existing molds (as was experienced by artists in New York, for example). Chapin became a popular instructor at the Art Institute, teaching there from 1929 to 1947 and at the Art Institute’s summer art school in Saugatuck, Michigan (now called Oxbow) between 1934 – 1938 (he was the director of the school from 1941-1945). A prolific painter, Chapin produced numerous works while traveling in Mexico, France, Spain, Saugatuck and Martha’s Vineyard, where he frequently spent summers and taught at the Old Sculpin Gallery there. Chapin was best recognized for his dynamic and vibrant images of Chicago during the 1930s and 40s. Chapin was a resident of the Old Town neighborhood where he lived and kept his studio on Menomonee Street for many years. Described as a “colorful figure, nearly 6 feet 6 inches tall, and thin, and usually wearing tweeds”, it is easy to imagine Chapin at work observing the busy street life of the city. In addition to his many exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, Chapin’s work was shown during his lifetime at such institutions as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the National Academy of Design, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, among others. Francis Chapin’s paintings are represented in the collections the Art Institute of Chicago; the Friedman Collection, Chicago; the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown; the Denver Art Museum; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse; the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach; the Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, among others.
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Artist: Francis Chapin
Large Watercolor & Pastel Dock Scene of Martha's Vineyard by Francis Chapin
By Francis Chapin
Located in Chicago, IL
A large & colorful ca. 1955 watercolor & pastel dock scene of Martha's Vineyard by notable artist Francis Chapin. Artwork size: 19" x 25". Archivally matted to: 24" x 30". Prove...
Category

1950s Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Pastel, Watercolor

MOMA Exhibited Watercolor by Chicago Artist Francis Chapin, "Tourists in Taxco"
By Francis Chapin
Located in Chicago, IL
A charming, vibrant, early Mexican city street scene by famed Chicago Modern artist Francis Chapin (Am. 1899-1965). Titled "Tourists in Taxco", the watercolor was exhibited at the M...
Category

1930s American Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

A Dynamic Mid-Century Modern Manhattan Scene, New York City by Francis Chapin
By Francis Chapin
Located in Chicago, IL
A Large, Dynamic 1950s Mid-Century Modern Watercolor of Lower Manhattan, New York City by Noted Chicago Artist, Francis Chapin (Am. 1899-1965). The image is watercolor, pastel and c...
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Mid-20th Century American Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor, Archival Paper, Charcoal, Pastel

Untitled
By Francis Chapin
Located in Dallas, TX
Francis Chapin was one of the most celebrated painters in Chicago during his lifetime. When he was a young art student, Valley House founder, Donald Vogel, painted with "Chape" on th...
Category

1930s American Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Untitled
By Francis Chapin
Located in Dallas, TX
Francis Chapin was one of the most celebrated painters in Chicago during his lifetime. When he was a young art student, Valley House founder, Donald Vogel, painted with "Chape" on th...
Category

1930s Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Untitled
By Francis Chapin
Located in Dallas, TX
Francis Chapin was one of the most celebrated painters in Chicago during his lifetime. When he was a young art student, Valley House founder, Donald Vogel, painted with "Chape" on th...
Category

1930s American Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Paper, Watercolor

An 1950's Modernist Watercolor of Amsterdam by Francis Chapin
By Francis Chapin
Located in Chicago, IL
A colorful & charming, Mid-Century, architectural, cityscape of Amsterdam by artist Francis Chapin. Artwork size: 7 3/4" x 10 3/4. Archivally matted to 14" x 18". Provenance: Est...
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1950s Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor, Paper, Ink

Untitled (Boat Repair)
By Francis Chapin
Located in Dallas, TX
Francis Chapin was one of the most celebrated painters in Chicago during his lifetime. When he was a young art student, Valley House founder, Donald Vogel, painted with "Chape" on th...
Category

1940s American Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Untitled
By Francis Chapin
Located in Dallas, TX
Francis Chapin was one of the most celebrated painters in Chicago during his lifetime. When he was a young art student, Valley House founder, Donald Vogel, painted with "Chape" on th...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

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Touch of Fall watercolor and pastel painting by Nell Blaine
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Signed "Nell Blaine" upper left in pencil. Signed, titled, dated verso on sheet. Signed, titled, dated verso on backing panel. The artist. Exhibited at Fischbach Gallery, NYC, in 1994 (Gallery label verso, and wall label affixed verso). Purchased by private collectors c.1994. By descent. Tibor de Nagy Gallery, NYC (the artist's estate representative), exhibited 2020 (label verso). Exhibited at Fischbach Gallery, NYC, in 1994 (Gallery label verso, and wall label affixed verso). Tibor de Nagy Gallery, NYC (the artist's estate representative), exhibited 2020 (label verso). From her November 15, 1996 NYT obituary: Nell Blaine, a widely respected New York landscape painter and watercolorist, died yesterday at Mount Sinai Hospital. She was 74 and had homes in Manhattan and Gloucester, Mass. Ms. Blaine, who had been hospitalized since July, had been confined to a wheelchair since 1959, when she contracted polio. Ms. Blaine was born in Richmond, Va., in 1922, and first studied at the Richmond School of Art, now part of Virginia Commonwealth University. She moved to New York in 1942 to study painting with Hans Hofmann and later studied etching and engraving at Atelier 17 with Stanley William Hayter. During her first years in New York, her work, which had previously been tightly realist, turned abstract, inspired by Mondrian, Leger and Jean Helion. At one time she was the youngest member of the American Abstract Artists. She was also a founding member of the Jane Street Gallery, one of Manhattan's earliest artists' cooperatives, and had her first solo show there in 1945. Just as Ms. Blaine was becoming known as a promising abstract painter, and gaining the admiration of such critics as Clement Greenberg, she started to shift back to representation. Inspired in part by a trip with Larry Rivers in 1950 to Paris, where she was especially impressed by the work of Vuillard and Bonnard, she immersed herself in the tradition of 19th-century European painting. From the mid-1950's, she cultivated an increasingly painterly and colorful style, usually working directly from nature, or still life, with particular emphasis on the forms and hues of flowers. Her work retained a sense of all-over structure and pulsating energy that she nonetheless credited to abstract art. ''It all goes back to Mondrian,'' she would say. In the 1950's, Ms. Blaine was prominent among a circle of New York artists and poets that included John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, Mr. Rivers, Jane Freilicher, Leland Bell, Louisa Matthiasdottir, Robert De Niro Sr. and Rudy Burckhardt. She had her first solo show of representational work at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1953 and was represented by the Poindexter Gallery until it closed in 1978, and, in recent years, by the Fischbach Gallery. During the 1950's she supported herself as a commercial artist, designing brochures for art galleries. In 1955, she designed the original logo, column heads and layout for The Village Voice. In 1957, Ms. Blaine was featured in Life magazine as one of five leading young female artists in America. In 1959, after several months of traveling and painting in Greece, she contracted severe bulbar polio on the island of Mykonos. ''To Nell Blaine,'' an exhibition organized at Poindexter to raise money for her hospital bills, included the work of 79 artists, including Saul Steinberg, Robert Motherwell, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Mr. Rivers, Ms. Freilicher and Robert Rauschenberg. After eight months in a New York hospital, including five months in an iron lung...
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"Chimneys at Dusk", Small Pastel San Francisco Abstract Urban Landscape
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“Rocky Mountain Meadow”
“Rocky Mountain Meadow”
$2,800 Sale Price
22% Off
H 19.5 in W 25.75 in D 1.5 in
"Hydrangeas, " Walter Inglis Anderson, Mississippi Southern Illustrator, Flowers
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1930s American Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

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Previously Available Items
Untitled (Columbia Dock)
By Francis Chapin
Located in Dallas, TX
Francis Chapin was one of the most celebrated painters in Chicago during his lifetime. When he was a young art student, Valley House founder, Donald Vogel, painted with "Chape" on th...
Category

1940s American Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Crayon, Paper, Watercolor

Untitled
By Francis Chapin
Located in Dallas, TX
Francis Chapin was one of the most celebrated painters in Chicago during his lifetime. When he was a young art student, Valley House founder, Donald Vogel, painted with "Chape&q...
Category

1940s American Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Untitled
By Francis Chapin
Located in Dallas, TX
Francis Chapin was one of the most celebrated painters in Chicago during his lifetime. When he was a young art student, Valley House founder, Donald Vogel, painted with "Chape" on th...
Category

1930s American Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Paper, Watercolor

Untitled
By Francis Chapin
Located in Dallas, TX
Francis Chapin was one of the most celebrated painters in Chicago during his lifetime. When he was a young art student, Valley House founder, Donald Vogel, painted with "Chape&q...
Category

1930s American Modern Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Untitled
By Francis Chapin
Located in Dallas, TX
Francis Chapin had an active exhibition history with over 24 major museum and gallery exhibitions including two at the Art Institute of Chicago (1928 & 1952) and one at the Museum of...
Category

1930s Francis Chapin Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Francis Chapin landscape drawings and watercolors for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Francis Chapin landscape drawings and watercolors available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Francis Chapin in paint, watercolor, paper and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the modern style. Not every interior allows for large Francis Chapin landscape drawings and watercolors, so small editions measuring 15 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of William Grauer, Alfred Bendiner, and Louis Wolchonok. Francis Chapin landscape drawings and watercolors prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $1,500 and tops out at $2,550, while the average work can sell for $2,250.

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