Skip to main content

Nell Blaine Art

American, 1922-1996
Nell Blaine, painter of still lifes and landscapes in brilliant colors, created abstract work that gives the appearance of being done in a carefree, totally lighthearted manner but in fact is the result of years of disciplined study. It is also an effect achieved after rehabilitation from polio, which nearly took her life. Suffering a paralyzed right hand, she taught herself to paint with her left hand, and she devoted much time to applying colors, some times as many as fifty varieties. She attributed her fascination with color with its discovery when she was two years old and corrective eye surgery allowed her to see color for the first time. Blaine was raised in the Richmond, Virginia, where she grew to hate the prevalent racial discrimination and left home at an early age. In high school, she was skilled enough to begin selling her artwork, which was mostly posters and portraits. She attended the Richmond School of Art, now Virginia Commonwealth University, between 1939 and 1942 but left its classical realist curriculum when one of the instructors introduced her to modern art. She used money she had earned from commercial art and went to New York and studied with Hans Hofmann, teacher of Abstract Expressionism. Shortly after, she married a jazz musician and immersed herself in the world of jazz, beating drums and improvising expressive dances, and associating with Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, and Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac. Her paintings of that time reflect her strong developing sense of relationship between jazz and abstract art. In 1944 at age twenty two, she became the youngest member of the American Abstract Artists and exhibited hard-edged geometric paintings, mostly black and white with accents of bright colors. She joined a cooperative of abstract artists and worked so hard at organizing shows that some referred to it as the Blaine Street Gallery. She was a strong personality who had special influence on Larry Rivers and Jane Freilicher and appeared to thrive in the New York art scene of the 1940s. However, she decided that her lifestyle was unhealthy, and she left the city, had a period of seclusion, and then went to France where she admired the work of Gustave Courbet, Jean Antoine Watteau, Eugene Delacroix, and Nicholas Poussin and took up figurative art in an abstract style. She became known as a "painterly realist," and added landscapes and interiors to her subject matter. She earned fellowships to Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony and began spending at least half the year in Gloucester, Massachusetts. She also traveled in Mexico. In 1959 on the island of Mykonos, Greece, she had polio. Her New York art friends in an exhibition of seventy-one artists raised money for extensive treatment at Mount Sinai Hospital. After recovery, she settled in a studio on Riverside Drive, spent her summers in Gloucester, and painted from her wheelchair. She died in 1996.
to
2
2
2
1
Overall Width
to
Overall Height
to
7
3
1
1
1
3
3
1
6
1
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
5
3
2
2
2
20
8,900
2,810
1,332
1,332
5
7
Artist: Nell Blaine
"Tree at the Edge of the Field, Springs" Nell Blaine, 1967 Abstracted Landscape
By Nell Blaine
Located in New York, NY
Nell Blaine Tree at the Edge of the Field, Springs, 1967 Signed and dated lower left Watercolor on paper 14 1/2 x 20 inches Nell Blaine was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1922. She ...
Category

1960s Modern Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Ledge and Sea, Early Morning
By Nell Blaine
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Provenance: Fischbach Gallery Tibor De Nagy Gallery Exhibited in The Virginia Museum, 1979 Nell Blaine, painter of still lifes and landscapes in brilliant colors, created abstract wo...
Category

1970s Abstract Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Summer, Quaker Hill oil painting by Nell Blaine
By Nell Blaine
Located in Hudson, NY
This work by Nell Blaine was exhibited at the Poindexter Gallery, as well as the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, both in New York City. It is signed lower left, and signed, titled, and dated ...
Category

1960s American Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Oil, Board

The Harbor From Banner Hill
By Nell Blaine
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Nell Blaine (1922-1996) American Original India Ink and Wash titled "The Harbor from Banner Hill" The sight size is 17 x 27 inches. Signed and dated 1986 lower right and again verso...
Category

1980s Abstract Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

India Ink, Watercolor

Touch of Fall watercolor and pastel painting by Nell Blaine
By Nell Blaine
Located in Hudson, NY
Signed "Nell Blaine" upper left in pencil. Signed, titled, dated verso on sheet. Signed, titled, dated verso on backing panel. The artist. Exhibited at Fischbach Gallery, NYC, in 1994 (Gallery label verso, and wall label affixed verso). Purchased by private collectors c.1994. By descent. Tibor de Nagy Gallery, NYC (the artist's estate representative), exhibited 2020 (label verso). Exhibited at Fischbach Gallery, NYC, in 1994 (Gallery label verso, and wall label affixed verso). Tibor de Nagy Gallery, NYC (the artist's estate representative), exhibited 2020 (label verso). From her November 15, 1996 NYT obituary: Nell Blaine, a widely respected New York landscape painter and watercolorist, died yesterday at Mount Sinai Hospital. She was 74 and had homes in Manhattan and Gloucester, Mass. Ms. Blaine, who had been hospitalized since July, had been confined to a wheelchair since 1959, when she contracted polio. Ms. Blaine was born in Richmond, Va., in 1922, and first studied at the Richmond School of Art, now part of Virginia Commonwealth University. She moved to New York in 1942 to study painting with Hans Hofmann and later studied etching and engraving at Atelier 17 with Stanley William Hayter. During her first years in New York, her work, which had previously been tightly realist, turned abstract, inspired by Mondrian, Leger and Jean Helion. At one time she was the youngest member of the American Abstract Artists. She was also a founding member of the Jane Street Gallery, one of Manhattan's earliest artists' cooperatives, and had her first solo show there in 1945. Just as Ms. Blaine was becoming known as a promising abstract painter, and gaining the admiration of such critics as Clement Greenberg, she started to shift back to representation. Inspired in part by a trip with Larry Rivers in 1950 to Paris, where she was especially impressed by the work of Vuillard and Bonnard, she immersed herself in the tradition of 19th-century European painting. From the mid-1950's, she cultivated an increasingly painterly and colorful style, usually working directly from nature, or still life, with particular emphasis on the forms and hues of flowers. Her work retained a sense of all-over structure and pulsating energy that she nonetheless credited to abstract art. ''It all goes back to Mondrian,'' she would say. In the 1950's, Ms. Blaine was prominent among a circle of New York artists and poets that included John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, Mr. Rivers, Jane Freilicher, Leland Bell, Louisa Matthiasdottir, Robert De Niro Sr. and Rudy Burckhardt. She had her first solo show of representational work at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1953 and was represented by the Poindexter Gallery until it closed in 1978, and, in recent years, by the Fischbach Gallery. During the 1950's she supported herself as a commercial artist, designing brochures for art galleries. In 1955, she designed the original logo, column heads and layout for The Village Voice. In 1957, Ms. Blaine was featured in Life magazine as one of five leading young female artists in America. In 1959, after several months of traveling and painting in Greece, she contracted severe bulbar polio on the island of Mykonos. ''To Nell Blaine,'' an exhibition organized at Poindexter to raise money for her hospital bills, included the work of 79 artists, including Saul Steinberg, Robert Motherwell, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Mr. Rivers, Ms. Freilicher and Robert Rauschenberg. After eight months in a New York hospital, including five months in an iron lung...
Category

1990s Abstract Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Paper, Pastel, Watercolor

Nell Blair Walden Blaine "Standing Figure" Pastel Drawing, circa 1967
By Nell Blaine
Located in San Francisco, CA
Nell Blair Walden Blaine (1922-1996) "Standing Figure" pastel drawing circa 1967 A Fine original pastel portrait of a standing nude figure by listed artist Nell Blaine. Dimensions ...
Category

Mid-20th Century Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Pastel

Daureen, II
By Nell Blaine
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Daureen, II Etching, 1969 Signed in pencil lower right Edition: 28 (17/28) Condition: Excellent Two hinges from previous matting Blaine studied etching at Atelier 17 in New York and considered one of their distinguished alums. "Blaine was foremost an abstract painter, first a student of Theresa Pollak...
Category

1960s Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Etching

Related Items
Stinchcombe Hill, Rupert Aker, Original painting, Impressionist style Landscape
By Rupert Aker
Located in Deddington, GB
Stinchcombe Hill by Rupert Aker [2022] original Oil on board Image size: H:30 cm x W:30 cm Complete Size of Unframed Work: H:30 cm x W:30 cm x D:2cm Frame Size: H:33 cm x W:33 cm x ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Nude with Tree at El Capitan - Yosemite Mid Century Figurative Landscape
By Margaret Wherry Ziegler
Located in Soquel, CA
Mid century figurative landscape of a nude female figure with tree at El Capitan, Yosemite, California by Margaret Wherry Ziegler (American, 1909-1989). Signed "M. Ziegler" lower right. Displayed in a rustic new silver gilt frame. Image, 24"H x 12"W. Margaret Wherry Ziegler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on November 27, 1909. At a young age she traveled with her parents to the Philippines, Japan, India, Italy, Greece, and Europe. She studied art at the Cincinnati Art Academy, Minneapolis Art Institute, the University of the Philippines, and the California College of Arts and Crafts. While in Japan she studied Japanese brush painting...
Category

1950s American Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Oil, Illustration Board, Canvas

Autumn Trees, Mid Century Fall Landscape with Orange & Earthtones
By Jon Blanchette
Located in Soquel, CA
Autumn Trees, Mid Century Fall Landscape with Orange & Earthtones Lovely late 1960's vintage landscape oil painting of an autumnal scene by Cal...
Category

1960s American Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Cardboard

Basement Systems
By Kory Twaddle
Located in Kansas City, MO
Artist : Kory Twaddle Title : Basement Systems Materials : Acrylic, tempera, gouache, and glitter glue on cardboard drawing pad back Date : 2019 Dimensions : 18 x 12 x .2 in. Kory ...
Category

2010s Abstract Expressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Paint, Paper, Conté, Charcoal, India Ink, Acrylic, Tempera, Watercolor, ...

Basement Systems
$1,150
H 18 in W 12 in D 0.2 in
Early 20th Century Figurative -- The Paper Boy and His Comics
By Louise Miller Clark
Located in Soquel, CA
Wonderful 1940s figurative of paper boy reading the comics by Louise Miller Clark (American, 20th Century). Signed "Louise Miller" lower right. Unframed. Im...
Category

1940s American Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Cardboard

Sumac, colorful Abstract Impressionist landscape gouache
By Sandy Litchfield
Located in New York, NY
Sandy Litchfield found peace and inspiration in regular solitary walks through nature throughout the pandemic. Her most recent body of work diaristically documents her constitutional...
Category

2010s Abstract Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Paper, Gouache

Kashmir Valley Almond Blossom Dina Nath Walli Mountain Landscape India Art
Located in Norfolk, GB
Dina Nath Walli (1908–2006) Almond Blossom, Kashmir Watercolour on Board c 1960 Framed size: 42.8cm x 52.8cm Image size: 27.5cm x 38cm Signed and dated 1970 on the verso, gifted fro...
Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Board, Watercolor

Mid Century Novato Afternoon Country Landscape
By Ted Lewy
Located in Soquel, CA
Wonderful mid century landscape titled "Late Afternoon in Novato" by Ted Lewy (American, 1912-1963). Presented in a rustic wooden frame. Signed "Ted Lewy" and dated "1962" lower righ...
Category

1960s American Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Cardboard

Mid Century Novato Afternoon Country Landscape
Mid Century Novato Afternoon Country Landscape
$1,100 Sale Price
20% Off
H 24.5 in W 28.5 in D 2 in
Two Trees, Country Road - Mid Century California Landscape
By Fred O. Bohne
Located in Soquel, CA
Charming rural landscape with a two lane country road, mountains in the background, and two trees in the foreground by Fred O. Bohne (American 19th-20th C...
Category

1960s American Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Cardboard

Two Trees, Country Road - Mid Century California Landscape
Two Trees, Country Road - Mid Century California Landscape
$1,200 Sale Price
20% Off
H 29.25 in W 35.15 in D 2.5 in
Nude Laying Over the Edge of the Bed in Pastel on Paper
Located in Soquel, CA
Nude Laying Over the Edge of the Bed in Pastel on Paper Elegant pastel composition of a nude woman by an unknown artist (20th Century). The model is laying on her back, with her hea...
Category

Late 20th Century American Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Paper, Pastel

"Chimneys at Dusk", Small Pastel San Francisco Abstract Urban Landscape
Located in Soquel, CA
Abstracted Bay Area skyline against a pink sunset creates beautiful and soft geometries in this small pastel urban landscape by San Francisco artist Chris...
Category

1990s Abstract Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Paper, Pastel, Watercolor

Rare Chaim Gross Watercolor Painting Manhattan Skyscrapers Train NYC WPA Artist
By Chaim Gross
Located in Surfside, FL
This appears to be dated 1927. It came in with a piece dated 1929. A very early, rare work. Framed 22.5 x 18. Image 14.5 x 9 A great New York city street scene with an El train (elev...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Previously Available Items
Beach at Malcesine
By Nell Blaine
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Nell Blaine, painter of still lifes and landscapes in brilliant colors, created abstract work that gives the appearance of being done in a carefree, totally lighthearted manner but i...
Category

1980s American Modern Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Pastel, Watercolor

1994 Nell Blaine 'Jestina's Reds' Contemporary USA Lithograph
By Nell Blaine
Located in Brooklyn, NY
Paper Size: 30.75 x 29 inches ( 78.105 x 73.66 cm ) Image Size: 24 x 23 inches ( 60.96 x 58.42 cm ) Framed: No Condition: B-: Good Condition, Signs of Handling and Age Addition...
Category

1990s Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Lithograph

Jestina's Reds
By Nell Blaine
Located in Long Island City, NY
Nell Blaine was inspired by the flower arrangements of her longtime aide, Jestina Forrester for this lithograph. Nell suffered from polio which required her to have full-time help, a...
Category

1990s Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Lithograph

"Anemones and Star of Bethlehem" Impressionist Still Life Painting
By Nell Blaine
Located in Houston, TX
A beautiful still life of flowers titled "Anemones and Star of Bethlehem" by renowned artist Nell Blaine. Oil on canvas circa 1970. Dimensions with...
Category

1970s American Impressionist Nell Blaine Art

Materials

Oil

Nell Blaine art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Nell Blaine art available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Nell Blaine in crayon, paint, pastel and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the Impressionist style. Not every interior allows for large Nell Blaine art, so small editions measuring 10 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of James March Phillips, Constantin Alajalov, and Walter Tittle. Nell Blaine art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $100 and tops out at $9,250, while the average work can sell for $2,400.

Artists Similar to Nell Blaine

Recently Viewed

View All