John Burgess Art

I've included a photo here of the blue sticker a movie studio put on the back of this beautiful old German pastel when they rented it from my Magazine Street gallery for the shoot of...

This artwork is a watercolor on paper by noted artist Carolyn Bullis Blish, born 1928. It is signed at the lower right corner by the artist. The artwork size is 17 x 26 inches, framed is 28 x 37 inches. Framed in his original wooden gold and mahogany color frame. The artwork is in excellent condition, the frame is in very good condition, with very minor small dents and scratches, hardly visible. About the artist. A former model, actress, and newscaster, artist Carolyn Blish is known primarily for her watercolor landscapes. She received a very short training in painting under the tutelage of artist Edgar...

This artwork "Landscape with House" 1973 is a watercolor on paper by American artist Rachel Bentley, 1894-1991. It is signed and dated at the lower righ...

This artwork titled "Evening Fog, Moss Landing, California" 1970, is a watercolor on paper by noted French/American artist Albert Bechely Crundall, 1906-1997. It is signed at the low...

A beautiful antique original watercolor of the Dutch landscape. I apologize for the reflections on the glass - this piece comes already framed and behind glass, in an antique wood fr...

While his name is not as well-known as certain other classic New Orleans artists, Arnold Turtle is highly regarded and his work is prized by connoisseurs...

WOODED LANDSCAPE WITH HOUSES Signed original brush and ink on wove paper, circa 1950. WOODED LANDSCAPE WITH HOUSES is an original watercolor brush and ink on paper, hand signed in ink pen by African-American artist, teacher, and printmaker Ronald Joseph (1910--1992) Artwork depicts an abstract landscape, is in good condition, paper tape remaining on reverse side edges, mounted in an archival acid-free mat, unframed. Artwork paper size - 18 x 21.5 in. Year created - c. 1950 About the artist - Ronald Joseph (1910 -1992) was born on the island of St. Kitts, West Indies In 1910. When he was very young, his mother decided to move to the United States but she could not afford to take him with her. Mr. and Mrs. Theophilus Joseph, a childless couple who were friends of Joseph’s mother, adopted him. Afterwards, the Joseph family moved to the Island of Dominica, where they stayed for ten years. In 1921, his foster parents also decided to come to the United States. In New York, Joseph met his mother but remained living with his foster parents. In 1926 Ronald Joseph received a scholarship for the Ethical Culture School, were he spent two and half years of his high school period. At this time he obtained an art scholarship through Dr. Henry Fritz, with whom he became acquainted through his art teacher in public school. Joseph was taken into the Saturday art class, where he was the only black participant. An artistic prodigy, Ronald Joseph had his student works shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ronald Joseph graduated from Ethical Culture Fieldston School in 1929. He was honored as “the most promising” young artist in New York City’s schools. He began his study at Pratt Institute in 1931 and graduated in 1934. During the 1930s and 1940s, Joseph participated in many exhibitions of African-American art, the Works Progress Administration mural project, and the Harlem Artists Guild. Ronald Joseph enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps at the declaration of World War II and was posted as a member of the ground crew in Tuskegee, Alabama, and in Michigan. At the end of the war in 1945, he received his G. I. Bill of Rights scholarship. In 1948, he was presented with the Rosenwald Fellowship. The funds allowed him to live and work abroad – first in Peru for two years, then in Paris. Joseph used the G.I. bill to study in Paris at the Grande Chaumière. He described this period of his life as being “independent of economy”. His work from these travels is largely undocumented; according to Rosenwald scholar, Daniel Schulman, many pieces of art are undated or simply dated “1948-1952”. After this period he came back to New York without money and work and indicated this as period of hardship. Ronald Joseph left the U.S. in 1956, disappointed in the unreceptiveness of the art world to his work with mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, he felt guilty for having left the U.S. during a period when blacks were struggling for their civil rights; on the other, he felt “lucky” to have been able to live and work in place where he did not feel discrimination as intensely. He emigrated to Belgium and later settled permanently in Brussels. Ronald Joseph was married to Claire Joseph and they had a son, Robin Joseph. In 1989 Joseph returned to the United States after an absence of thirty-three years to attend the Lehman College exhibition and symposium and to renew his old friendships. Afterward, he returned to Brussels where he continued to work as a painter, living there for the remainder of his life. Ronald Joseph started his artistic career in Harlem, New York City at the Harlem Community Arts Center, where he was one of the youngest pupils. Joseph studied lithography and other printmaking techniques with Riva Helfond, who taught him many aspects of the process based on simple techniques, including how to operate the press, and how to prepare the stones. Helfond played a significant role as a teacher of lithography at the Harlem Art Center. Joseph produced his first lithographs under her supervision, and this was at a time when she was just beginning to learn the medium herself. At the Harlem Community Arts Center Joseph met Robert Blackburn, who was his classmate. In 1937 Ronald Joseph depicted Blackburn, in one of his most famous works, that is now located at The Metropolitan Museum collection. Experimenting with lithography and etching, as well as woodblock and silkscreen printing, Joseph explored the techniques of printmaking alongside his friend Robert Blackburn. Joseph described the Harlem Art Center as a “healthy and lively” place, where he had made wonderful friends. In the late thirties, he also served as a teacher at the Harlem Community Arts Center. There Joseph met younger artist Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight. They formed a friendship, where they enjoyed conversations and visiting museums together. Both Joseph and Knight would hire Lawrence to pose for them. Jacob Lawrence considered Ronald Joseph to be a very intellectual artist. In the 1930s, Joseph became chairman of the Harlem Artists Guild and represented it in Washington with Stuart Davis and Hugo Gellert. Ronald Joseph was also a participant in the mural section of WPA and a representative of the Harlem Artists’ Guild to the New York World’s Fair (1939-1940). Joseph’s early oil paintings were influenced by Picasso, Braque and other European artists while most of his contemporaries focused on social realism. By 1943, he was hailed by art historian James Porter as New York’s “foremost Negro abstractionist painter”. His pastels and gouaches from the late forties and early fifties showed a highly structured abstraction combined with a studied spontaneity. Ronald Joseph’s finely tuned abstractions often incorporated representational elements along with apparently “purer” forms. He described this aspect of his work in these terms: “It’s not abstract and abstract at the same time. It’s pure creation.” His works from the 1950s employed both still life and landscape as pretexts for masterly exercises in nearly abstract pictorial construction related to cubism and fauvism. During World War II, Joseph was drafted. After the war he formed “a kind of a group” with Robert Blackburn, Charles White, Larry Potter, and Reginald Gammon...

A lovely original watercolor of a cottage by the sea, showing a fisherman draping his nets over the porch rail to dry. I would guess this to be earl...

This artwork "Landscape with Cattle" c.1930 is a watercolor by noted American artist Raphael Senseman, 1870-1966 It is signed at the lower right ...

Artist: Merton Clivette (American, 1868-1931) Title: Landscape Year: Circa 1925 Medium: Gouache Paper: Heavy Bristol type Size image: 22.75 x 28 inches Paper size: 22.75 x 28 inches Signature: Signed lower left by the artist Condition: Excellent Frame: Unframed About the artist. Clivette was born in Portage, Wisconsin, in 1868 as Merton Clive Cook, the youngest of five (four sons and one daughter). His father was a retired British sea captain, and his mother was an American of French, Scottish and Iroquois Indian stock. He stayed with a circus for about five years, traveling all over the Western United States, Canada and Mexico. They did shows for the army forts, for railroad workers and on Indian Reservations. Clivette settled in San Francisco in 1886, when he was offered a job as a reporter and theatrical writer for the San Francisco Call. He met Frederic Remington during this period. He was the first serious artist Clivette had met and he was an inspiration to him. Clivette had done some drawing and painting on the road during his vaudeville years, he had a natural facility for it, and he had had some formal art training as well. He had had some training in Europe and was aware of the modern art movement in Europe. Later in New York he participated in symposiums and workshops at the Art Students League. Around 1910 he gave up his stage career and began to paint full time. He was about 40 years old and was to continue to paint vigorously and prolifically for the remaining 22 years of his life, His style can be identified with the Expressionist Movement, His subjects include portraits (some quite realistic, others more generalized) Indians and horsemen, laborers, gentlemen and vamps, jungle animals and birds, fish, seascapes and landscapes. He was an active participant in the art world of New York. He was a member of the Society of Independent Artists. In 1923 he showed at the Ainslee Art Gallery at 677 Fifth Ave., in 1925 at the Spanish Society in Brooklyn and in 1927 he had a solo show at the New Gallery, 600 Madison Ave. That same year there was also a solo show of his work in Paris at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, which included a catalogue. In 1929 he exhibited at the Art Center of the Roerich Museum in a group show of work from the collection of George Hellman. In 1930 he was in a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans" which also included the work of Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, William Glackens, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, George Luks and Mark Tobey and sculptors Gaston Lachaise and William Zorach among others. A description and critical analysis of his work in included in the book by Henry Rankin Poore...

Artist: Paul Lilo Stenberg (Norwegian, 1893-1981) Title: Winter landscape, with woman and dog Year: Circa 1940 Medium: Watercolor Paper: Watercolor Image size: 12 x 19 inches p...

This artwork titled "Saint Cergue Switzerland" c.1930 is a watercolor by noted Scottish artist William Stuart Orr, 1872-1944. It is hand signed by the artist at the lower left corner...