Theodore Wendel Art

Wonderful 1940s figurative of paper boy reading the comics by Louise Miller Clark (American, 20th Century). Signed "Louise Miller" lower right. Unframed. Im...

A wonderful image painted in an attractive palette. Franklin White (1892-1975) A cat resting in a sunny courtyard Signed and indistinctly dated (19)41? Oil on canvas laid on board ...

Midcentury Pacific Trail Landscape Beautiful mid century landscape of a path leading through the woods by California artist Florence Belle Boosey (American, 1906-1999), c.1960. Pai...

David Grossman's (US based) "Evening View to the South West" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a wide open plain of the West with fields of...

Ancient rocks in the Urals rising from the Chusovaya River like the image of an enchanted giant forever frozen in stone. These prototypes of the fairy tale can be found in the “Mistr...

"River Crossing" is an original oil painting created by Thomas Buchs. This piece features a view from a riverbank peeking out of a thicket. Buchs shows a...

A fine Italian coastal oil painting with boats titled “Venice at Dusk” by American artist Lucien Whiting Powell (1846-1930). Powell was born in Levinworth Manor, Virginia, joined the 11th Virginia Cavalry at 17 and fought in the Civil War, pursuing his art career after the war, studying with Thomas Moran in Philadelphia and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He is also said to have studied in New York City, probably with Moran who moved there in 1872. He was an admirer of British artist J...

Vivid Impressionist oil painting on canvas, ‘Harbor Scene’ gets attention with its palette of rich color. This 20th century painting makes an impact! Turquoise waters, green treeline...

Mt. Tamalpais Road California Landscape by Jesse Don Rasberry Lovely oil on artist board landscape painting of a road leading to Mt. Tamalpais by California artist Jesse Don Rasberr...

Beautiful impressionistic landscape of Shongum Lake, New Jersey countryside in Spring with Stream and blossoms by Rudolph J. Eicher (1884 - 1958), Circa 1940s. Bright springtime fo...

In March, the sun shines more often and there is less snow, it thaws and changes its color adding green shades. The color of trees in the sun becomes more interesting and varied, the...

The Great Fire of London in September 1666 was one of the greatest disasters in the city’s history. The City, with its wooden houses crowded together in narrow streets, was a natural fire risk, and predictions that London would burn down became a shocking reality. The fire began in a bakery in Pudding Lane, an area near the Thames teeming with warehouses and shops full of flammable materials, such as timber, oil, coal, pitch and turpentine. Inevitably the fire spread rapidly from this area into the City. Our painting depicts the impact of the fire on those who were caught in it and creates a very dramatic impression of what the fire was like. Closer inspection reveals a scene of chaos and panic with people running out of the gates. It shows Cripplegate in the north of the City, with St Giles without Cripplegate to its left, in flames (on the site of the present day Barbican). The painting probably represents the fire on the night of Tuesday 4 September, when four-fifths of the City was burning at once, including St Paul's Cathedral. Old St Paul’s can be seen to the right of the canvas, the medieval church with its thick stone walls, was considered a place of safety, but the building was covered in wooden scaffolding as it was in the midst of being restored by the then little known architect, Christopher Wren and caught fire. Our painting seems to depict a specific moment on the Tuesday night when the lead on St Paul’s caught fire and, as the diarist John Evelyn described: ‘the stones of Paul’s flew like grenades, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream and the very pavements glowing with the firey redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them.’ Although the loss of life was minimal, some accounts record only sixteen perished, the magnitude of the property loss was shocking – some four hundred and thirty acres, about eighty per cent of the City proper was destroyed, including over thirteen thousand houses, eighty-nine churches, and fifty-two Guild Halls. Thousands were homeless and financially ruined. The Great Fire, and the subsequent fire of 1676, which destroyed over six hundred houses south of the Thames, changed the appearance of London forever. The one constructive outcome of the Great Fire was that the plague, which had devastated the population of London since 1665, diminished greatly, due to the mass death of the plague-carrying rats in the blaze. The fire was widely reported in eyewitness accounts, newspapers, letters and diaries. Samuel Pepys recorded climbing the steeple of Barking Church from which he viewed the destroyed City: ‘the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw.’ There was an official enquiry into the causes of the fire, petitions to the King and Lord Mayor to rebuild, new legislation and building Acts. Naturally, the fire became a dramatic and extremely popular subject for painters and engravers. A group of works relatively closely related to the present picture have been traditionally ascribed to Jan Griffier...