Frank Wilcox Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Tall French Landscape by Bernard Labbe (French mid 20th century) signed original watercolour/ gouache painting on paper , unframed size: 18.5 x 12.5 inches condition: very good and r...

At the Pool - Mid Century Illustration in Watercolor and India Ink on Paper Lovely watercolor of a sunny day at a public pool by an unknown artist (20th Century). People are swimmin...

Vintage 1930s watercolor and ink painting of Estes Park, Colorado, by American artist James Russell Sherman (1906-1989). This captivating work features a detailed view of storefronts...

This appears to be dated 1927. It came in with a piece dated 1929. A very early, rare work. Framed 22.5 x 18. Image 14.5 x 9 A great New York city street scene with an El train (elev...

'Family Farm in France', gouache on art paper, by Michel Debiève (circa 1970s). An extremely endearing depiction of a French family farm, the delight is...

"Times Square" Mid 20th Century 1937 Modernism Broadway Drawing NYC Cityscape Philip Goodwin (20th Century) "Times Square," 23 ½ x 17 ¼ inches. Gouache...

If you are interested in African American Art and in Women in the Arts, I will certainly not need to introduce Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1988). Often associated with the Harlem Renaissance, her work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Muscarelle Museum of Art, and The Phillips Collection. I am proud to present an original watercolour painting by the artist which dates from the late 1940s or early 1950s. Jones was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a father who became the first African-American to earn a law degree from Suffolk Law School. Jones's parents encouraged her to draw and paint using watercolors during her childhood. She held her first solo exhibition at the age of seventeen in Martha's Vineyard. He career began in the 1930s and she continued to produce art work until her death in 1998 at the age of 92. Her style shifted and evolved multiple times in response to influences in her life, especially her extensive travels. She felt that her greatest contribution to the art world was "proof of the talent of black artists". Her work echoes her pride in her African roots and American ancestry. In 1937, Jones received a fellowship to study in Paris at the Académie Julian, bringing her to France for the first time. The French were appreciative of her paintings and talent and Loïs Mailou Jones was thrilled at the country’s racial tolerance, so different from her reality in the United States. She summered in France annually from 1945 to 1953, sharing studio with her lifelong friend Celine Marie Tabary in Cabris, France. It was during one of these sojourns that the lovely work presented here was created. Our painting depicts the village of Tourettes sur Loup, just north of Nice, in the Provence Cote d'Azur region, about 14 miles from Cabris. Please note its similarities with her painting "Arreau, Hautes-Pyrénées" in the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Her portrayal of the picturesque village nestled in a valley evokes landscape paintings by Paul Cézanne, a stylistic influence she acknowledged. Over the course of the following 10 years, Jones exhibited at the Phillips Collection, Seattle Art Museum, National Academy of Design, the Barnett-Aden Gallery, Pennsylvania's Lincoln University, Howard University, galleries in New York, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. In 1952, the book Loïs Mailou Jones: Peintures 1937–1951 was published, reproducing more than one hundred of her art pieces completed in France.At the Barnett-Aden Gallery, Jones exhibited with a group of prominent black artists, such as Jacob Lawrence and Alma Thomas. These artists and others were known as the "Little Paris...

Lionel S. Reiss (1894 - 1988) New York City Skyline View from the East River Watercolor on paper 13 x 19 inches Signed lower left In describing his own style, Lionel Reiss wrote, “By nature, inclination, and training, I have long since recognized the fact that...I belong to the category of those who can only gladly affirm the reality of the world I live in.” Reiss’s subject matter was wide-ranging, including gritty New York scenes, landscapes of bucolic Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and seascapes around Gloucester, Massachusetts. However, it was as a painter of Jewish life—both in Israel and in Europe before World War II—that Reiss excelled. I.B. Singer, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, noted that Reiss was “essentially an artist of the nineteenth century, and because of this he had the power and the courage to tell visually the story of a people.” Although Reiss was born in Jaroslaw, Poland, his family immigrated to the United States in 1898 when he was four years old. Reiss's family settled on New York City’s Lower East Side and he lived in the city for most of his life. Reiss attended the Art Students League and then worked as a commercial artist for newspapers and publishers. As art director for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he supposedly created the studio’s famous lion logo. After World War I, Reiss became fascinated with Jewish life in the ‘Old World.’ In 1921 he left his advertising work and spent the next ten years traveling in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Like noted Jewish photographers Alter Kacyzne and Roman Vishniac, Reiss depicted Jewish life in Poland prior to World War II. He later wrote, “My trip encompassed three main objectives: to make ethnic studies of Jewish types wherever I traveled; to paint and draw Jewish life, as I saw it and felt it, in all aspects; and to round out my work in Israel.” In Europe, Reiss recorded quotidian scenes in a variety of media and different settings such as Paris, Amsterdam, the Venice ghetto, the Jewish cemetery in Prague, and an array of shops, synagogues, streets, and marketplaces in the Jewish quarters of Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lublin, Vilna, Ternopil, and Kovno. He paid great attention to details of dress, hair, and facial features, and his work became noted for its descriptive quality. A selection of Reiss’s portraits appeared in 1938 in his book My Models Were Jews. In this book, published on the eve of the Holocaust, Reiss argued that there was “no such thing as a ‘Jewish race’.” Instead, he claimed that the Jewish people were a cultural group with a great deal of diversity within and between Jewish communities around the world. Franz Boas...

Shops in a Small Town - Original Watercolor on Paper Beautiful watercolor painting a small town main street by Ken L. Stephens (American, 20th Century). There are several colorful b...

Reginald Marsh "Manhattan Bridge" NYC American Scene Modernism Watercolor WPA Urban Realism, 20 x 14 inches. Watercolor and pencil on paper, 1938. Signed...

Walter Anderson ( American, 1903 - 1965) Hydrangeas, circa 1950 Mixed media on paper 11 x 8 1/2 inches Provenance: Luise Ross Gallery, New York Private Collection, New Jersey Acquired from the estate of the above, 2021 Walter Anderson firmly believed that quality art was an important part of life and should be made available to everyone. As he said, "There should be simple, good decorations, to be sold at prices to rival the five-and-ten." Noticing that only poor quality art was available in stores and little was available for children, he resolved to make art which could be reproduced easily and sell inexpensively — linoleum block prints. This technique enabled him to provide affordable, quality art. The technique of linoleum block printing is a simple concept; however, it requires much skill and talent to actually produce memorable art. Anderson purchased surplus "battleship linoleum," thicker than ordinary linoleum with a burlap backing for better support, to create his blocks. During the mid-1940s, he created almost 300 linocuts working in the attic of the sea-side plantation house, Oldfields, his wife's family home in Gautier. Masses of linoleum chips accumulated at the foot of the attic stairs as he often worked night and day. He began with sketching out a design directly on the linoleum. Once he had carved the image into the surface, he used the back of faded, surplus stock wallpaper that a friend sent him, laying long strips on top of the inked linoleum. A roller made of sewer pipe filled with sand served as his press. When the print was completed, he often colored it by hand with bold strokes and vivid colors. The prints were sold at Shearwater Pottery, the family business, for a mere dollar a foot. But "what about a well-designed fairy tale for a child's room?" he asked himself. Since there was a lack of affordable art for children, much of his work with linoleum blocks focused on subjects for children. He depicted fables and fairy tales ranging from Arabian Nights, to Germany and the Grimm Brothers' Rapunzel, to the French story of The White Cat, to the Greek tales such as Europa and the Bull, and to tales from China, India, and other cultures. Anderson also created "mini" books featuring the alphabet and Robinson Cat. The blocks are not only alive with the story being depicted, but they are also filled with designs taken from Best-Maugard's Method for Creative Design. Swirls, half-circles and zig-zag lines fill every available space on the linoleum block making them come alive and capture their audience. But fairy tales, children's verses and the "mini" books, consisting of about 90 blocks, were not the sole subject of Anderson's linoleum block prints. In total, he created approximately 300 linoleum blocks with subjects ranging from coastal flora and fauna, coastal animals, and sports and other coastal activities. Anderson even created linoleum blocks to be used to print tablecloths and clothing, some worn by his own children. Color and subjects of the linoleum block prints were not the only things that got them noticed. In 1945 when Anderson was creating these prints, the standard size of linoleum block prints was only 12 by 18 inches. These small dimensions were due to the common size of the paper available and the restrictions made by national competitions. Since Anderson used wallpaper...

Clinton Hill (1922-2003), created quintessential mid-century images, but figures are unusual in his work. This is from a very early period. From 1949 to 1951 he attended the Brooklyn...