Joseph Stella was a visionary artist who painted what he saw, an idiosyncratic and individual experience of his time and place. Stella arrived in New York in 1896, part of a wave of Italian immigrants from poverty-stricken Southern Italy. But Stella was not a child of poverty. His father was a notary and respected citizen in Muro Lucano, a small town in the southern Apennines. The five Stella brothers were all properly educated in Naples. Stella’s older brother, Antonio, was the first of the family to come to America. Antonio Stella trained as a physician in Italy, and was a successful and respected doctor in the Italian community centered in Greenwich Village. He sponsored and supported his younger brother, Joseph, first sending him to medical school in New York, then to study pharmacology, and then sustaining him through the early days of his artistic career. Antonio Stella specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis and was active in social reform circles. His connections were instrumental in Joseph Stella’s early commissions for illustrations in reform journals.
Joseph Stella, from the beginning, was an outsider. He was of the Italian-American community, but did not share its overwhelming poverty and general lack of education. He went back to Italy on several occasions, but was no longer an Italian. His art incorporated many influences. At various times his work echoed the concerns and techniques of the so-called Ashcan School, of New York Dada, of Futurism and, of Cubism, among others. These are all legitimate influences, but Stella never totally committed himself to any group. He was a convivial, but ultimately solitary figure, with a lifelong mistrust of any authority external to his own personal mandate. He was in Europe during the time that Alfred Stieglitz established his 291 Gallery. When Stella returned he joined the international coterie of artists who gathered at the West Side apartment of the art patron Conrad Arensberg. It was here that Stella became close friends with Marcel Duchamp.
Stella was 19 when he arrived in America and studied in the early years of the century at the Art Students League, and with William Merritt Chase, under whose tutelage he received rigorous training as a draftsman. His love of line, and his mastery of its techniques, is apparent early in his career in the illustrations he made for various social reform journals. Stella, whose later work as a colorist is breathtakingly lush, never felt obliged to choose between line and color. He drew throughout his career, and unlike other modernists, whose work evolved inexorably to more and more abstract form, Stella freely reverted to earlier realist modes of representation whenever it suited him. This was because, in fact, his “realist” work was not “true to nature,” but true to Stella’s own unique interpretation. Stella began to draw flowers, vegetables, butterflies, and birds in 1919, after he had finished the Brooklyn Bridge series of paintings, which are probably his best-known works. These drawings of flora and fauna were initially coincidental with his fantastical, nostalgic and spiritual vision of his native Italy which he called Tree of My Life (Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth Foundation and Windsor, Inc., St. Louis, illus. in Barbara Haskell, Joseph Stella, exh. cat. [New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994], p. 111 no. 133).
(Biography provided by Hirschl & Adler)
Reclining Nude
By Joseph Stella
Located in Palm Desert, CA
A painting by Joseph Stella. "Reclining Nude" is a figurative painting, oil on canvas in a bright palette of yellows, greens, and tans by American Modernist artist Joseph Stella. The...
Canvas, Oil
$2,800
H 36 in W 50 in D 2 in
A Large, Dynamic Mid-Century Modern Figurative Landscape Painting by Rudolph Pen
Located in Chicago, IL
A large, dynamic Mid-Century Modern summer landscape painting with standing female bathers by notable Chicago artist, Rudolph T. Pen. A wonderful example of the artist's uniquely ex...
Canvas, Oil
$1,200
H 12.5 in W 16.5 in D 1.25 in
A Charming 1950s Painting of Lisbon, Portugal by Famed Artist Francis Chapin
By Francis Chapin
Located in Chicago, IL
A Charming, 1950s Painting of Lisbon, Portugal by Famed Chicago Modern Artist Francis Chapin (Am. 1899-1965). Depicting a bustling, colorful view of Lisbon's historic Black Horse Sq...
Board, Canvas, Oil
$1,600
H 20 in W 24 in D 1.25 in
A Serene 1940's Vermont Landscape Painting by Harold Haydon
By Harold Haydon
Located in Chicago, IL
A scenic, American Modern 1940s Vermont summer landscape painting, depicting evergreen trees overlooking a placid lake by notable Chicago artist, Harold Haydon. Oil on canvas, measu...
Canvas, Oil
$2,800
H 25 in W 31 in D 1.5 in
A Serene 1940s, Modern Western Landscape Painting with Horses by Francis Chapin
By Francis Chapin
Located in Chicago, IL
A serene, 1940s Modern Western landscape painting with horses by famed Chicago artist, Francis Chapin. Accompanied with a handsome walnut brown stained wooden frame. Canvas size: 22 x 28 inches. Framed size: 25 x 31 inches. Estate stamped on reverse. Provenance: Estate of the artist. 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 and 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). Chapin’s contemporaries among Chicago’s artists included such luminaries as Ivan Le Lorraine Albright...
Canvas, Oil
Blacksmith (Untitled)
By Erle Loran
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Blacksmith (Untitled), 1936, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, 28 x 30 inches Erle Loran was an influential American painter, art historian, and educator, renowned for h...
Canvas, Oil
$12,000
H 33.38 in W 28.38 in D 2.5 in
“The Big City, 1948” Grand Central Station NYC Manhattan Female WPA Modernist
Located in Yardley, PA
“The Big City, 1948” by Anna Elkan Meltzer (American, 1896-1974) One of Meltzer’s finest works, this painting encapsulates the organized chaos of Grand Central Terminal in NYC in th...
Oil, Canvas
$5,000
H 26 in W 28 in
"Spring" Milton Derr, Lyrical Modernist Landscape, Bright Green and Blue Hues
Located in New York, NY
Milton Derr Spring, 1982 Signed lower right; titled and dated verso Oil on canvas 26 x 28 inches Provenance Acquired by descent from the artist to the present owner Milton Derr wa...
Canvas, Oil
$1,800Sale Price|28% Off
H 22 in W 27 in D 2 in
A Colorful, Vintage 1950s Mid-Century Modern Martha's Vineyard Harbor Scene
By Francis Chapin
Located in Chicago, IL
A vibrant, colorful harbor scene of Martha's Vineyard by notable Chicago Modern artist, Francis Chapin (Am. 1899-1965). Depicting a blustery dockside view with fishing and sailboats...
Canvas, Oil
$9,500
H 20 in W 24 in D 2 in
Landscape with Artist. Mid-Century Chicago Modernist Oil Painting.
Located in Marco Island, FL
Chicago Modernist, William Schwartz, painted this dynamic landscape of an artist painting en plein air. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago shortly after emigrating to the Un...
Board, Oil, Canvas
$6,500
H 32 in W 32 in D 2.75 in
"The Champ, 1942" Joe Louis "Brown Bomber" Boxer Portrait Ex-Museum Oil Signed
Located in Yardley, PA
“The Champ, 1942” by Theodore Fried (1902-1980) This important portrait by Hungarian-American artist Theodore Fried depicts the legendary boxer Joe Louis aka “The Brown Bomber” and ...
Canvas, Oil, Board
$45,000
H 40 in W 40 in
"Cattleya Orchids" Jane Peterson, Modernist Bright Flowers, Female Impressionist
By Jane Peterson
Located in New York, NY
Jane Peterson Cattleya Orchids, circa 1940s Signed lower right Oil on canvas 32 x 32 inches Provenance Estate of the artist Artist’s estate sale, Ipswich, Massachusetts, 1960s Priva...
Canvas, Oil
$175,000
H 37 in W 45 in D 1.5 in
“Middleton Place II, 1974” Wolf Kahn, West Brattleboro, Vermont Barn Oil Canvas
By Wolf Kahn
Located in Yardley, PA
A fantastic early painting from Kahn’s iconic barn series depicting Dr. Middleton’s property in West Brattleboro, VT. Here, Kahn turns a familiar rural motif into something hovering ...
Canvas, Oil