Richard Westall Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

We are delighted to present a stunning watercolor by the Swedish artist Albert Theodor Gellerstedt. This artwork, titled "Sickelsjö Trädgård" was created on June 8, 1883. The paintin...

A delightful rustic scene dating to circa 1800 with the sailor returning to his thankful wife and the domestic idyll of his country cottage. The harbour with sailing ships ferrying c...

Louis Gallait (1810-1887) Portrait of a Gentleman, Watercolor and gouache on paper, square white lines, 24 x 16 cm Stamp of the Louis Gallait Estate on the mount on the lower righ...

Philip Richard Morris. English ( b.1836 - d.1902 ). The Cloaked Shepherdess. Watercolor. Signed Lower Left. Image size 14 inches x 9.3 inches ( 35.5cm x 23.5cm ). Frame size 26.3 in...

Ex Libris 1982, paper, ink, gouache, 17,5х13 cm Information about artist: Gunārs Vīndedzis (1918 - 1991) - cartoonist, illustrator. Born in a fami...

Auguste Mayer (1803-1890 A seascape with a boat signed with the initials on the lower left Pencil and heightenings of white gouache on paper 17.5 x 26 cm...

Early 20th century orientalist watercolour on paper by Aiveill, signed bottom right. In art history, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction ...

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...

John Collingham Moore (England, 1829-1880) four children, circa 1860s Rare pencil, watercolor and white wash by listed artist John Collingham Moore, 19th century. Here we have the children of Henry and Elizabeth Young...

Gustave Fraipont (1849-1923) A Peasant girl with her flock of Turkeys, Ink and heightenings of blue watercolor on paper 23 x 15 cm Signed on the lower left and titled on lower righ...

One of the characters in this scene is a mature man, kneeling with his head bowed and hands clasped near his chest in a gesture of supplication. His posture conveys a sense of humili...

Jules-Eugène Lenepveu (1819-1898) Portrait of a man in profile signed on the lower right Pencil and heightenings of white gouache on paper 19.5 x 13 cm Framed : 29 x 22.7 cm Jules-Eugène Lenepveu is of course particularly well known for his large-scale paintings, such as the one on the ceiling of the Paris Opera, but his work here is much more delicate and intimate. We recognise the artist's mastery of talent, but the play of textures, with its highlights of white that enliven and illuminate the model's face, is also very subtle. There's a particularly charming sense of life and impression of light. Jules-Eugène Lenepveu was born in Angers on 12 December 1819, on the site of the street that now bears his name, into a family of small shopkeepers. The painter showed a deep attachment to his family throughout his life through his correspondence and the many portraits of his relatives. He entered the drawing school in Angers in 1833, where he was a pupil of Jean-Michel Mercier. There he rubbed shoulders with the sculptor Ferdinand Taluet. He arrived in Paris in 1837 and entered the Beaux-Arts, where he was officially admitted to François-Édouard Picot's studio in 1838. He exhibited his work "L'Idylle" at the Salon of 1843 and, that same year, left for his first visit to Italy. He was awarded the Second Prix de Rome in 1843 for "Cincinnatus recevant les députés du Sénat" (Cincinnatus receiving the deputies of the Senate), then the First Prize in 1847 for "La Mort de Vitellius" (The Death of Vitellius). A resident at the Villa Médicis from 1848, he was surrounded by painters Alexandre Cabanel, Léon Benouville, Gustave Boulanger, Félix Barrias...