John Foster Art

Circus Elephants American Modernism WPA Regionalism Mid-Century Modern Oil. Signed lower left. Not much is known about Marco de Marco, but just look at...

Summer Resort in Michigan is an exceptional work painted by the Chicago Modernist, William Schwartz. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago shortly ...

Snow in the Valley - Winter Landscape in Oil on Canvas Serene winter landscape by A. V. Gagliardi (20th Century). A valley is covered with snow, with a small house and river in thew...

Beautiful mid century plein air figural landscape of Laguna Niguel, California by an unknown artist (American, 20th Century). The morning sun gli...

Rites of Winter, by 1939, oil on canvas, 32 x 40 inches, exhibited: 134th Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, January 29 – March 5, 1939, no...

"Cruise Ship Rolls In" Mid 20th Century American Contemporary Modern Realism This is one sensational painting. And we can even identify the artist, but can't find anything about the...

Landscape, 1940, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches, signed, dated and titled verso: “Marcel Cailliet ’40 – S.C.” and “Marcel Cailliet Landscape”; likely exhibited at the annual juried st...

Dorothy Rivo Untitled (Mediterranean Village), c. 1960s–70s Oil on canvas Framed dimensions: 24 in. H × 36 in. W Presented in a contemporary white floater frame In Untitled (Mediter...

Wonderful and dynamic western painting of two wild fighting stallions by listed artist Bernard Preston Thomas (American, 1918-1992), dated 1951. Signed and dated lower left corner and on verso. Image size: 28"H x 36"W. Presented in rustic painted frame size: 34"H x 41"W x 3"D. Originally from Sheridan, Wyoming, he loved football and art, giving up the sport to concentrate on a career in art. Thomas graduated from Woodbury College in Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Science degree, earning the Leo Youngsworth Award for outstanding senior art student at Woodbury. He became a camouflage technician at the outbreak of WWII and caught the attention of General Patton...

Six O-Clock, c. 1942, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, signed and titled several times verso of frame and stretcher (perhaps by another hand), marked “Rehn” several times on frame (for the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York City, who represented Craig at the time); Exhibited: 1) 18th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings from March 21 to May 2, 1943 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. #87, original price $450 (per catalog) (exhibition label verso), 2) Craig’s one-man show at the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, New York City, from October 26 to November 14, 1942, #10 (original price listed as $350); and 3) Exhibition of thirty paintings sponsored by the Harrisburg Art Association at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg in March, 1944 (concerning this exhibit, Penelope Redd of The Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) wrote: “Other paintings that have overtones of superrealism inherent in the subjects include Tom Craig’s California nocturne, ‘Six O’Clock,’ two figures moving through the twilight . . . .” March 6, 1944, p. 13); another label verso from The Museum of Art of Toledo (Ohio): original frame: Provenance includes George Stern Gallery, Los Angeles, CA About the Painting Long before Chris Burden’s iconic installation outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Urban Light, another artist, Tom Craig, made Southern California streetlights the subject of one of his early 1940s paintings. Consisting of dozens of recycled streetlights from the 1920s and 1930s forming a classical colonnade at the museum’s entrance, Burden’s Urban Light has become a symbol of Los Angeles. For Burden, the streetlights represent what constitutes an advanced society, something “safe after dark and beautiful to behold.” It seems that Craig is playing on the same theme in Six O-Clock. Although we see two hunched figures trudging along the sidewalk at the end of a long day, the real stars of this painting are the streetlights which brighten the twilight and silhouette another iconic symbol of Los Angeles, the palm trees in the distance. Mountains in the background and the distant view of a suburban neighborhood join the streetlights and palm trees as classic subject matter for a California Scene painting, but Craig gives us a twist by depicting the scene not as a sun-drenched natural expanse. Rather, Craig uses thin layers of oil paint, mimicking the watercolor technique for which he is most famous, to show us the twinkling beauty of manmade light and the safety it affords. Although Southern California is a land of natural wonders, the interventions of humanity are already everywhere in Los Angeles and as one critic noted, the resulting painting has an air of “superrealism.” About the Artist Thomas Theodore Craig was a well-known fixture in the Southern California art scene. He was born in Upland California. Craig graduated with a degree in botany from Pomona College and studied painting at Pamona and the Chouinard Art School with Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Barse Miller among others. He became close friends with fellow artist Milford Zornes...

Highway Derelict, May, 1939, oil on canvas board, signed upper right, 18 x 20 inches, exhibited 1) Society of Independent Artists, American Society of Fine Arts (Art Students League), New York, NY, April 19 – May 12, 1940, no. 535 (noted verso, listed in catalog, and see Kantner, Dorothy, Palette Palaver, Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph, April 19, 1940 – “Helen F. Price and Ethel M. Dean, the former of Johnstown, the latter of this city, are two members of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh who are represented in the Independent Artist’s Exhibition which opens today in New York. Miss Price is represented by . . . ‘Highway Derelict’ . . . .”), 2) Solo Exhibition of Log Cabin Paintings...

Bold figurative work by Richard Cronin (American, b. 1952). Two figures stand on a patio, turned away from each other. The figures and scene are rendere...