Serge Fontinsky Art

Drawings of skulls are often called vanitas, which often contain collections of objects symbolic of the inevitability of death and the transience and vanity of earthly achievements and pleasures; it exhorts the viewer to consider mortality and to repent. This still life vanitas drawing is matted with a heavy white mat and framed in a bronze toned wooden frame measuring 15.75 x 16.25 inches. John Hrehov Skull and Ornament colored pencil on paper 7h x 8w in 17.78h x 20.32w cm JHR006 John Hrehov Education 1985 MFA-Painting, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1981 BFA-Painting, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH. Solo Exhibitions 2017 John Hrehov, Paintings and Drawings. Tom Thomas...

Rockwell Kent, 'The Bather', wood engraving, 1931, edition 120, Burne Jones 63. Signed in pencil. A brilliant, black impression, on cream, wove Japan paper; the full sheet with margins (2 1/2 to 3 1/4 inches); slight skinning at the top sheet edge, verso, otherwise in excellent condition. Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 5 3/8 x 7 7/8 inches (137 x 200 mm); sheet size 11 1/8 x 14 1/2 inches (283 x 368 mm). Impressions of this work are held in the following public collections: Burne Jones Collection (Illinois), Chazen Museum of Art, Chegodaev Collection (Moscow), Kent Collection (New York), National Gallery of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art; SUNY Plattsburg Art Museum, Princeton University Library, Pushkin Museum (Moscow), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Spector Collection (New York), University of Illinois. ABOUT THE ARTIST Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), though best known as a painter, graphic artist, and illustrator, pursued many careers throughout his life, including architect, carpenter, explorer, writer, dairy farmer, and political activist. Born in Tarrytown, New York, Kent was interested in art from a young age. These ambitions were encouraged by his aunt Jo Holgate, an accomplished ceramicist. Jo came to live with the family after Kent’s father passed away in 1887 and took him to Europe as a teenager, undoubtedly kindling his interest in exploring the world. Kent attended the Horace Mann School in New York City, where he excelled at mechanical drawing. His family’s financial circumstances prevented him from pursuing a career in the fine arts; however, after graduating from Horace Mann in 1900, Kent decided to study architecture at Columbia University. Before matriculating at Columbia, Kent spent the first of three consecutive summers studying painting at William Merritt Chase’s art school in Shinnecock Hills, Long Island. There he found a community of mentors and fellow students who encouraged him to pursue his interest in art. At the end of Kent’s third summer at Shinnecock, Chase offered him a full scholarship to the New York School of Art, where he was a teacher. Kent began taking night classes at the art school in addition to his architecture studies but soon left Columbia to study painting full-time. In addition to Chase, Kent took classes with Robert Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller, where his classmates included the artists George Bellows and Edward Hopper. Kent spent the summer of 1903 assisting the eccentric painter Abbott Handerson Thayer at his studio in Dublin, New Hampshire—a position he secured through the recommendation of his Aunt Jo. Thayer’s naturalist lifestyle and almost mystical appreciation for natural phenomena greatly influenced Kent; he returned to Dublin for many years to visit Thayer and his family. Thayer gave the young artist time to pursue his work, and that summer Kent painted several views of the New Hampshire landscape, including Mount Monadnock...

An original mixed media drawing by American artist A.J. Fries.

Paul Kohn - Man Smoking Pipe, Year: 1969, Medium: Watercolor and Graphite, signed and dated in pencil lower right, Size: 11 x 8.5 x 3 in. (27.94 x 21.59 x 7.62 cm), Frame Size: 1...

Contemporary drawing work that combines the use of colored pencils and ink on a layer made with natural dyes from leaves and flowers. It is a surreal and fantastic drawing that seeks...

Paul Landacre, 'Laguna Cove', wood engraving, 1935; edition 60 (16 printed), 2nd edition 150 (6 printed), Woodcut Society 200, Wien 247. Signed and titled in pencil. A brilliant, black impression, on cream wove Japan, with full margins (3/4 to 1 3/4 inches), in excellent condition. Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed. This impression is from the edition published for the Twentieth Presentation Print of the Woodcut Society, 1941. Printed by Torch Press, Cedar Rapids. Literature: Reproduced in 'James Swann...

Lou Barlow (Louis Breslow), 'On the Beach' (Coney Island) wood engraving, c. 1937, edition c. 25. Signed and titled in pencil. Stamped 'FEDERAL ART PROJECT NYC WPA' in the bottom left margin. A fine, richly-inked impression, with all the fine lines printing clearly, on cream wove paper, with full margins (1 1/2 to 3 inches), in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Scarce. Image size 11 x 8 1/8 inches; sheet size 16 x 11 3/8 inches. Created during the Great Depression for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Federal Art Project, New York City. Impressions of this work are in the permanent collections of the Amon Carter Museum of Art, Illinois State Museum, and the New York Public Library. ABOUT THE IMAGE Due to Coney Island's proximity to Manhattan, Brooklyn, and other New York boroughs, it began attracting vacationers in the 1830s and 1840s. Most of the vacationers were wealthy and went by carriage roads and steamship services that reduced travel time from a formerly half-day journey to two hours. By the late 1870s, the development of Coney Island's amusement park attractions and hotels drew people from all social classes. When the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company electrified the steam railroads and connected Brooklyn to Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge at the beginning of the 20th century, Coney Island turned rapidly from a resort to an accessible location for day-trippers seeking to escape the summer heat in New York City's tenements. In 1915, the Sea Beach Line was upgraded to a subway line, and the opening of the Stillwell Avenue station in 1919 ushered in Coney Island's busiest era. On the peak summer days, over a million people would travel to Coney Island. In 1937, New York City purchased a 400-foot-wide strip of land along the shoreline to allow the boardwalk to be moved 300 feet inland. At this point, Coney Island was so crowded on summer weekends that parks commissioner Robert Moses...

Charles Turzak, 'North Bank of the Chicago River', color woodcut, c. 1935, edition 50. Signed and titled in pencil. A fine, richly-inked impression, with...

Artist Unknown "Tie and Glasses" c. 1940s Charcoal and pencil on paper 13.5"x17" site 19"x23" rustic wood frame Unsigned

Paul Landacre, 'Hill', wood engraving, 1936, edition 60 (only 54 printed); only 2 impressions printed in a second edition of 150. Signed, titled, and numbered '49/60' in pencil. Wien...

Charles Quest, 'Still Life', 1947, wood engraving, edition 8. Signed, dated, and numbered '3/8' in pencil. Titled and annotated 'wood engraving' in the bottom left margin. A fine impression, on off-white wove paper, with full margins (1 to 2 inches), in excellent condition. Scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed. ABOUT THE ARTIST Charles Quest, painter, printmaker, and fine art instructor, worked in various mediums, including mosaic, stained glass, mural painting, and sculpture. Quest grew up in St. Louis, his talent evident as a teenager when he began copying the works of masters such as Michelangelo on his bedroom walls. He studied at the Washington University School of Fine Arts, where he later taught from 1944 to 1971. He traveled to Europe after his graduation in 1929 and studied at La Grande Chaumière and Academie Colarossi, Paris, continuing to draw inspiration from the works of the Old Masters. After returning to St. Louis, Quest received several commissions to paint murals in public buildings, schools, and churches, including one from Joseph Cardinal Ritter, to paint a replica of Velasquez's Crucifixion over the main altar of the Old Cathedral in St. Louis. Quest soon became interested in the woodcut medium, which he learned through his study of J. J. Lankes' A Woodcut Manual (1932) and Paul Landacre's articles in American Artist magazine ‘since no artists in St. Louis were working in wood’ at that time. Quest also revealed that for him, wood cutting and engraving were ‘more enjoyable than any other means of expression.’ In the late 1940s, his graphic works began attracting critical attention—several of his woodcuts won prizes and were acquired by major American and European museums. His wood engraving entitled ‘Lovers’ was included in the American Federation of Art's traveling print exhibition in 1947. Two years later, Quest's two prize-winning prints, ‘Still Life with Grindstone’ and ‘Break Forth into Singing’, were exhibited in major American museums in a traveling show organized by the Philadelphia Print Club. His work was included in the Chicago Art Institute's exhibition, ‘Woodcut Through Six Centuries’, and the print ‘Still Life with Vise’ was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1951 he was invited by artist-Curator Jacob Kainen to exhibit thirty wood engravings and color woodcuts in a one-person show at the Smithsonian's National Museum (now known as the American History Museum). Kainen's press release praised the ‘technical refinement’ of Quest's work: ‘He obtains a great variety of textural effects through the use of the graver, and these dense or transparent grays are set off against whites or blacks to achieve sparkling results. His work has the handsome qualities characteristic of the craftsman and designer.’ At the time of the Smithsonian exhibition, Quest's work was represented by three New York galleries in addition to one in his home town. He had won 38 prizes, and his prints were in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Chicago Art Institute, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In cooperation with the Art in Embassies program, his color woodcuts were displayed at the American Embassy in Paris in 1951. Recognition at home came in 1955 with his first solo exhibition in St. Louis. Press coverage of the show heralded the ‘growth of graphic arts toward rivaling painting and sculpture as a major independent medium’. An exhibition of his prints at the Bethesda Art Gallery in 1983 attracted Curator Emeritus Joseph A. Haller, S.J., who began purchasing his work for Georgetown University's collection. In 1990 Georgetown University Library's Special Collections Division was the recipient of a large body of Quest's work, including prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, stained glass, and his archive of correspondence and professional memorabilia. These extensive holdings, including some 260 of his fine prints, provide a rich opportunity for further study and appreciation of this versatile and not-to-be-forgotten mid-Western American artist...

A Handsome 1940s Portrait of a Seated Man by Chicago Modern Artist, Harold Haydon (Am. 1909-1994). A wonderfully executed line drawing dating from 1946 with great character; looks ...