Frederick Alexander Duncan Art

Gouache and watercolour on corrugated cardboard after the famous self portrait by Vincent van Gogh with his fur hat, bandaged ear and pipe. This painting is by Jean Ducel who has pla...

A lovely gouache on cardboard painting featuring an Art Deco singer with a typical stylish outfit. Utilizing the contrast of black and white components against primary colors like y...

Framed Cuban Artist/Caricaturist Conrado Walter Massaguer presents Hollywood star Adolphe Menjou in a satirical dual portrait. In the foreground, the subject is seen in a dapper top hat, tux, fashionable cigarette and boutonnière, and is shown as being the epitome of being stylishly debonair. To make a larger point about this subject, Massaguer paints a cast shadow of Menjou as a burning red devil who studies his alter ego from above. Keeping with the artist's sarcasm, we see the good and bad in one image. Works by Massaguer are rare and this work is in keeping with his signature style. This work was most likely done on assignment for Life Magazine, Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker or Vanity Fair. Signed upper right. Inscribe lower right. Titled on verso. Unframed, Slight bend to board; toning to board; scattered faint foxing; pin point abrasions to margins, not affecting image. 19-1/2 x 15-1/8 inches board size. Conrado Walter Massaguer y Diaz was a Cuban artist, political satirist, and magazine publisher. He is considered a student of the Art Nouveau. He was the first caricaturist in the world to broadcast his art on television.He was first caricaturist to exhibit on Fifth Avenue. He was the first caricaturist in the world to exhibit his caricatures on wood. He, and his brother Oscar, were the first magazine publishers in the world to use photolithographic printing. Self portrait of Conrado Walter Massaguer, depicted on a carrousel ride, with the devil over his left shoulder and an angel over his right. (1945) He created the magazine Social with his brother Oscar to showcase Cuban artistic talent. The duo later created the magazine Carteles, which became for a period the most popular magazine in Cuba, which was purchased by Miguel Ángel Quevedo in 1953. In his life, he met and drew caricatures of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, the King of Spain, and many others.[ In sum total, he was the author of more than 28 thousand caricatures and drawings.Ernest Hemingway once had to refrain himself from punching Massaguer in the face after the artist drew an unflattering caricature of him. The dictator Gerardo Machado, however, did not punch Massaguer for his own unflattering caricature - he had the artist deported. He was one of the most internationally renowned Cuban artists of his day, and his art is still regularly featured in galleries across the Western Hemisphere and Europe. Early life Massaguer was born on October 18, 1889, in Cárdenas, Cuba.[In 1892, his family moved to Havana. When the Cuban War of Independence broke out, Massaguer's family escaped the country. From 1896 to 1908, he lived in Mérida, Mexico. However, during this time, his parents enrolled him in the New York Military Academy, where he stayed during school years. In 1905, after graduating the military academy, he briefly attended the San Fernando school in Havana, where he was tutored by Ricardo de la Torriente and Leopoldo Romañach. In 1906, less than a year later, he returned to the family home in Mexico. Career as artist Early career While living in Yucatán, Mexico, Massaguer published his first caricatures in local newspapers and magazines. These included La Campana, La Arcadia, and the Diario Yucateco. In 1908, he moved back to Havana. After returning to the island in 1908, Massaguer began mingling with Havana's aristocratic circles, forming close friendships with some of the city's most powerful and influential men, as well as winning the favor of many women who were quickly charmed by him. Massaguer, largely self-taught, honed his style using the avant-garde techniques he studied from the European and American magazines that were widely available in Cuba at the time. Cover of the immensely popular Cuban magazine El Figaro, drawn by Massaguer in 1909. This cover depicts two bumbling, incompetent American tourists to the island. He started drawing for El Fígaro, and was featured prominently on the cover in 1909. After two years of refining his craft, Havana announced a poster contest aimed at attracting North American tourists to stay in the city during the winter months. Notable figures like Leopoldo Romañach, Armando Menocal, Rodríguez Morey, Jaime Valls, and others also entered the competition. The jury was particularly impressed by the modern execution and creative solution of one piece, signed by Massaguer, who was relatively unknown at the time. The jury deliberations caused a great controversy.[5] The prize was ultimately awarded to the Galician painter Mariano Miguel, who had recently married the daughter of Nicolás Rivero, the wealthy owner of the conservative newspaper Diario de la Marina. Although Massaguer received only an honorable mention, the fraud scandal caused such an uproar that his name quickly entered the public spotlight, and he became an overnight sensation. In 1910, he became co-owner of the advertising agency Mercurio, with Laureano Rodríguez Castells. At Mercurio, he led the Susini cigar campaign, and earned substantial wealth. Massaguer has been described as a restless man, in both mind and body.After earning enough money from his art to begin traveling, he was almost always doing so. He constantly traveled between New York City and Havana, Mexico and France, Europe and the Americas. In 1911, his reputation among the Havana socialites solidified when he organized his own first public caricature exhibit, and also the first Caricature Salon ever held in the Americas, hosted at Athenaeum of Havana (the Ateneo), and the Círculo de La Habana. Other exhibitors here included Maribona, Riverón, Portell Vilá, Valer, Botet, Barsó, García Cabrera, Carlos Fernández, Rafael Blanco, and Hamilton de Grau. "Messaguer Visits Broadway." Caricatures of theatrical and literary figures. Elsie Janis, Raymond Hitchcock, S. Jay Kaufman (columnist), Ibanez, author of The Four Horsemen, and Frances White In 1912, in the New York American Journal, he published his first Broadway drawings. From 1913 to 1918, he was an editor for Gráfico. Social Main article: Social (magazine) Cover of the magazine Social, July 7, 1923 In 1916, he created the magazine Social with his brother, Oscar H. Massaguer. Social's contributors included Guillén Carpentier, Chacón y Calvo, Enrique José Varona and others.Social has been described as Massaguer's great love in the magazine industry, and was the property that historians say he cared the most about. Social was an innovative magazine, being the first magazine in the world to use a modern printing process called photolithographic printing. Social set cultural trends, not only in the fashion of Cuba, but in art, politics, and Cuban identity.[11] Social catered to a certain aesthetic in Cuba - that of the sophisticated elite socialite - but Massaguer would also use this magazine to ridicule and jibe against that same class of society when he found their personalities worthy of his contempt. In Social, readers could find a variety of content, including short stories, avant-garde poetry, art reviews, philosophical essays, and serialized novels, as well as articles on interior design, haute couture, and fashion. Occasionally, the magazine also featured reports on sports such as motor racing, rowing, tennis, and horse riding.The cultural promotion efforts of both Massaguer and Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring are evident in the magazine. Notably, this period overlaps with their involvement in the Minorista Group, which was then at the forefront of the country's intellectual life.[5] Many contributors were devoted members of the group, leading some experts to consider Social as the cultural voice of the Minoristas. One of the features of Social magazine was its section called "Massa Girls," which was a play on his own name, and pronounced with a glottal 'g' in a similar fashion to the letter in Massaguer.[12] Massaguer drew women as independent and free-thinking, and never drew the woman celebrity as a caricature of herself, but as a free agent surrounded by caricatures.[11] However, Massaguer himself has been described as a womanizer in his personal life, and hesitant to fully embrace every facet of women's liberation. In 1916, he also established la Unión de Artes Gráficas and the advertising agency Kesevén Anuncios.[9] The art critic Bernardo González Barroa wrote: “Massaguer has solved the problem of working hard, living comfortably off what his art produces and not missing any artistic, sporting or social event. His broad, childish laugh, of a carefree individual who carries his luck hidden in a pocket, appears everywhere for the moment, disguising the pranks of pupils that lurk, mock and, finally, flash with satisfaction at finding the characteristic point after having analyzed a soul... Massaguer's personality is beginning to solidify now. He has been the best-known and most popular caricaturist for a long time, but his technique had not reached the security, the mastery of values that he presents in his latest works, which is very natural and explainable”[5] Carteles Main article: Carteles Cover of the magazine Carteles, November 29, 1931 In 1919, Massaguer and his brother created the magazine Carteles.[9] Carteles gained the widest circulation of any magazine in Latin America, and the most popular magazine in Cuba for a time, until that title was claimed by Revista Bohemia. Carteles remained in print until July 1960.This magazine showcased Cuban commerce, art, sports, and social life before the revolution. In 1924, Carteles took a more political turn, with articles criticizing Gerardo Machado's government. it became a prime example of the humor and graphic design employed by artists like Horacio Rodríguez Suria and Andrés García...

Gustave Brisgand (1867-1944) began his artistic career by focusing on landscapes. However, he later specialized in portraits of notable personalities, women, and female nudes. One of...

Moreno Torricelli - Juventus Football Legend, UEFA Champions League 1995-96 - Determination Technique: Charcoal on paper, Signed and dated '96 Author: Marco Silombria (Savona, 1936 ...

Collections: Commissioned by Andrew Corbett, husband of the sitter; The Venerable Stuart Corbett; Sir Stuart Corbett; By descent to 2002; Sotheby’s, London 21 March 2002, lot.104; Lowell Libson...

Pastel on paper, oval 9 x 7 ¼ inches; 230 x 185 mm Inscribed on the verso: ‘The Revd Henry Dabzac D.D./ late Senior Fellow of/ Trinity College Dublin/ ever to be lamented by all that knew/ Him. Extensive learning, zeal, gently tempered/ by a spirit of charity & above all, a strong/ faith & a piety deservedly gained/ the character of a great and good man./ This exceptional man died 12th May 1790/ This picture was his give to Jane [Mary] Crofton, his sincerely [missing] sister.’ Collections: Rev. Dr Henry Dabzac gift to his sister, Jane Crofton (d.1797); Sir Hugh Crofton (1763-1834); By descent to 1990; Private collection, Dorset to 2020. Literature: Robert Staveley, Traces of Past and Present, Dublin, 1895, p.74; Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800, online edition, no.J3751247 This characteristic pastel portrait by Hugh Douglas Hamilton was made early in his career; it depicts precisely the kind of education, well-connected Irish sitter who fuelled his success. The Reverend Henry Dabzac was from a distinguished Huguenot family, a celebrated academic historian, Dabzac received the Donegall lectureship in 1764 and from 1785 was Librarian and Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. According to his earliest biographer, Hamilton was the son of a peruke-maker based in Crow Street, Dublin. As Anne Hodge has pointed out, this places Hamilton’s father at the heart of the city: Crow street was a narrow thoroughfare formed part of the busy warren of streets bordered by the old Houses of Parliament and Trinity College at one end, and by Dublin Castle at the other. It is perhaps telling that in this early portrait, Hamilton shows Dabzac in a splendid powdered wig and his clerical bands. In 1754 Hamilton was apprenticed to James Mannin, a ‘pattern drawer’ who two years later was appointed master of the school of ornament at the Dublin Society’s drawing school, run by Robert West. Here Hamilton took the first prize in the 1755 competition, winning a premium of £1/16/. Hamilton developed a popular and profitable method of making pastel likenesses of sitters in a distinctive oval format. Hamilton developed a technique of using a sharpened pastel to hatch shaded areas of the features and, in the case of this portrait of Dabzac, the white powdered wig, which is drawn with particular care. In 1764 Hamilton moved to London where this small, oval pastels proved...

BRITISH SCHOOL (20th Century) Woman in a Bonnet Pastel, unframed, in conservation mount 5 ½ by 3 ¼ in., 14 by 8 cm. This drawing is one of a group of similar theatrical portrai...

Georges Barat-Levraux (1878–1964) Young Girls Reading Pastel on paper, 39 x 31 cm Provenance: Private collection In this tender and intimate scene, Georges Barat-Levraux captures a ...

Pastel 41,5 x 30,5 cm (55 x 44,2 cm avec l’encadrement) = 16.3 × 12.0 in (21.7 × 17.4 in with frame) Signed and dated on lower right (1938) Julien Duvocelle remains a discreet and ...

An introspective, 1950s Mid-Century Modern pastel drawing of a young boy by notable Chicago artist Francis Chapin. Pastel on artist board. Image size: 16 x 15 inches. (Artwork is...

Original Vintage 1920's Ink and Watercolor Fashion Illustration by listed New England artist Harriette (Nutting) Cooper (1901 - 2002). The illustration depicts a lovely young flappe...