Ken Messer Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Masterful Scottish watercolor landscape of Loch Tay with boats and small figures on the short by Aaron Edwin Penley (English, 1826-1897)....

Ernest William Christmas (Australian, 1863-1918) Signed: E. W. Christmas (Lower, Left) " Moss Beach, Ocean Shore, Cal. ", 1915 (California) Watercolor on Paper 20" x 25 3/4" Hou...

Serene depiction of a country house with ducks milling around in the grass by Josh Fisher (British, 1859-1930). Signed "JOSH FISHER" in the lower-left corne...

John Richard Flanagan was born in Sydney, Australia. At the age of thirteen Flanagan left school to help support his family as an assistant to a lithographer producing advertising co...

Discover this watercolor "Sunset Sailors" by Carl L. Lindqvist (1856-1941). Step into the enchanting world of the Swedish artist Carl L. Lindqvist with his captivating watercolor pa...

Johannes Friedrich Heinrich Hänsch (1875-1945), Red blooming war landscape with dead soldier, 1918. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 15 x 24.5 cm (image), 27 x 37 cm (sheet size / frame), monogrammed and dated "19JH18" at lower left. - Paper slightly darkened About the artwork Despite the relatively small format, the watercolor with an internal frame depicts a panoramic view of a flat landscape stretching to the horizon. As far as the eye can see, the poppies bloom in flaming red. The flowers are not rendered individually, however, creating an almost cohesive red surface. The bright red is interspersed with vegetal green. A complementary contrast that creates an intense color effect. In this color contrast, a white area breaks through from the middle ground, widening towards the foreground and surrounding a brown hole. Next to it, in blue, is the actual protagonist of the painting, the first thing that catches the eye: a dead soldier. Next to him is his helmet, revealing the empty interior. The brown, hollow shape corresponds to the hole in the ground. A shell funnel is surrounded by bright ash, which, like the inverted helmet, becomes a sign of death. The soldier's arms point to the funnel, while the empty helmet paraphrases the calotte of the skull and, like the funnel, thematizes the empty darkness of death. The soldier's body, however, is intact and not - as in Otto Dix's triptych "The War" - a dismembered corpse. Instead, Johannes Hänsch activates the landscape, especially the color, to illustrate a blooming landscape of death that extends from the shell funnel in the foreground to the rising column of smoke on the horizon. If the soldier's body is intact, the tangle of barbed wire emblematically placed over the empty helmet also appears tattered. On the right side of the picture, the barbed wire even seems to stretch its arms to the sky in horror. Against the background of this allegory, the content of the bright red also becomes clear: the landscape is drenched in blood, literally a sea of blood, and the single unknown soldier stands pars pro toto for all those who died on the battlefield. Dying in war is not dying in community, but in solitude. In order to emphasize the isolation in death, Johannes Hänsch has set the blue of the soldier in the axis given by his body in the middle ground of the picture into the red sea. A master of landscape painting, Hänsch succeeds in creating a natural-looking landscape allegory that illustrates the horror and death of war, without depicting the brutality of war itself. This singular 'war memorial' of the unknown soldier is the opposite of heroization and yet the dignity of the deceased soldier is preserved through the integrity of his body. About the artist As the son of the sculptor Adolf Haensch, the young Johannes received his first artistic training in his father's Berlin studio. However, he eventually decided to become a painter, and in 1897 he entered the Berlin Academy of Arts. He initially studied under Paul Vorgang and Eugen Bracht, and was particularly influenced by Bracht's increasingly colourful landscape painting. In 1901 he moved to the class of Friedrich Kallmorgen, with whom he spent several weeks on excursions into nature. In 1905 he became a master pupil of Albert Hertel, who taught him watercolour painting. From 1903 to 1933 he exhibited annually at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition, the exhibitions of the Berlin Artists' Association and the Munich Glaspalast. In 1905 he was awarded the Carl Blechen...

Titled "The faraway forest", this artwork created by Frank Girard, utilizes pigments, Chinese ink, watercolors, acrylics, and colored pencils on 400g/m2 neutral white paper. It remai...

An early Devonshire landscape, ex-collection West Collection of British Watercolors & the Fine Art Society, London. Circa 1800 Ink and brown wash on paper, 7 1/8 x 10 1/4 inches (...

Jane Starks immerses herself in the history and archaeology of the places she loves to paint: wilderness areas of Texas, New Mexico, and Utah. The paintings are begun and completed o...

Watercolour of Ireland Valley Countryside by 20th Century Irish Artist, George Trevor. Art measures 13.5 x 9.5 inches Frame measures 20.5 x 17 inches ...

Watercolor and gouache on cream wove paper. Signed and titled in watercolor in the lower right image area. Small circular pea-sized damp stain in the top center image area (visible in the are of the sky), and some additional small spots of unobtrusive foxing in the upper left sheet area. Otherwise in very good condition with fresh colors and intricate brushwork. Henri Schäfer...

This artwork "Fishing Village, Scotland" c.1930, is a watercolor on paper by British artist Ken Cherrington, 1886-1969. It is signed at the lower left corner by the artist. The artwo...