Virginia J. Hughins Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

This original circa 1910s plein air field study by renowned Colorado landscape artist Charles Partridge Adams captures the serene beauty of the Rocky Mountains in a masterful display...

A watercolor depicting a mountain view and the lake Gruyère, (Lac De La Gruyère) in Switzerland by the American Impressionist and Tonalist Mary Rogers Williams (1857–1907). Signed M.R. Williams. On the verso, the artist wrote: ‘Painted in Gruyère July 1902.’ This is a newly discovered work by a rare woman artist who seldom appears on the art market. Small in scale, yet rich in atmosphere, power, and depth—a genuine little gem. Mary Rogers Williams was born in 1857, in Hartford, Connecticut, the fifth of six children to a local baker. Orphaned by the age of fourteen, she pursued art with remarkable determination, studying at Hartford’s Decorative Art Society and the Art Students League in New York under William Merritt Chase. Her early mentor was James Wells Champney. In 1888, she joined Smith College as associate professor of art, where she taught for nearly twenty years to help support her family. Alongside her academic career, she maintained a serious and evolving artistic practice, though much of it was pursued within the limitations of her era’s gender roles and financial pressures. Her work is often classified as a blend of Tonalism and Impressionism—movements that were just taking shape during her lifetime. Tonalists used subdued palettes to evoke mood rather than detail, while Impressionists leaned toward brighter colors and broader subjects. Williams, working independently of art-world factions, forged a style rooted in mood, light, and atmosphere. She painted luminous pastels, watercolors, and oils—portraits, landscapes, and intimate studies of daily life. Despite knowing figures like Whistler, William Merritt Chase, and Childe Hassam, she rarely aligned herself with any artistic “school” and found many male contemporaries pretentious or repetitive. She famously dropped out of Whistler’s Paris school, calling him “a pompous fop surrounded by fawners.” Though Mary Cassatt and Williams were both American Impressionists living in Paris, they never met—Cassatt enjoyed wealth and elite circles, while Williams was a self-reliant educator without patrons. Williams traveled extensively throughout Europe—from the Arctic Circle to the ruins south of Naples—often alone or with her sister. She bicycled through fjords, hiked to medieval towns, and visited chateaux and harbors, all while sketching prolifically. She is likely the only 19th-century woman artist whose travels and daily life can be traced in such vivid, personal detail: what she ate, how she felt about fellow travelers, what she paid for trams, how the air smelled, what she wore, and how she missed home. She documented everything—museum visits, church restorations, conversations with hotel guests, and her frustrations with men’s treatment of women artists. These letters, rediscovered in 2012 in a family boathouse, provide an extraordinary insight into not only her art but the intellectual and emotional texture of her life. Her writings reveal not only artistic insight but the immense workload she carried. At Smith, she taught studio art and art history, organized faculty events, curated student exhibitions, wrote essays, handled housework, and even cooked and cleaned for her own lodgings. On vacations, she cooked for her family; in Europe, she waxed floors, painted walls, repaired clothing, and stoked fires—all while maintaining her painting and travel schedule. Unlike many of her male peers, she had no assistants, no household staff, and little inherited wealth. Yet, as her letters reveal, she never saw herself as a victim—she relished challenges and even the absurdities of her era, from Italian waiters pushing marriage to department heads at Smith dismissing women’s artistic capacity. Despite these challenges, Williams exhibited widely during her lifetime: Paris Salon (1899) National Academy of Design (1903–04) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts New York Water Color Club, American Water Color Society, Art Association of Indianapolis, and more. She was praised in The New York Times, Hartford Courant, and Springfield Republican, and compared by peers to figures like Emily Dickinson—another New England woman of quiet yet profound artistic power. But unlike Dickinson, Mary Williams...

This rare 1924 colored pencil drawing by renowned American artist George Elbert Burr (1859–1939) beautifully captures the raw, untamed drama of the Arizona de...

The watercolor painting with roses is a delicate, refined watercolor, made in a charismatic technique without the use of clear graphic lines. Sophisticated roses and peonies in water...

A watercolour and gouache on paper of pink chrysanthemums or oillets in a vase. The painting is monogram signed bottom right but as yet undeciphered. The painting is framed in a mode...

Vibrant Watercolor Landscape original watercolour painting on artist paper signed by Marjorie Schiele (1913-2008) *see notes below piece of paper is 9.5 x 12.5 inches In good conditi...

A watercolor painting with flowers of apple tree. A bright, juicy watercolor painting filled with the warmth of the spring sun. The lush petals of a blooming apple tree grow against ...

Signed lower right, 'Olga' for Her Imperial Highness, Olga Alexandrovna, Grand Duchess of Russia and painted circa 1925. Provenance: Formerly in the ...

Max Kuehne (1880 - 1968) Train Station, circa 1910 Watercolor on paper 8 1/4 x 10 1/4 inches Signed lower right Provenance: Private Collection, Illinois Max Kuehne was born in Halle, Germany on November 7, 1880. During his adolescence the family immigrated to America and settled in Flushing, New York. As a young man, Max was active in rowing events, bicycle racing, swimming and sailing. After experimenting with various occupations, Kuehne decided to study art, which led him to William Merritt Chase's famous school in New York; he was trained by Chase himself, then by Kenneth Hayes Miller. Chase was at the peak of his career, and his portraits were especially in demand. Kuehne would have profited from Chase's invaluable lessons in technique, as well as his inspirational personality. Miller, only four years older than Kuehne, was another of the many artists to benefit from Chase's teachings. Even though Miller still would have been under the spell of Chase upon Kuehne's arrival, he was already experimenting with an aestheticism that went beyond Chase's realism and virtuosity of the brush. Later Miller developed a style dependent upon volumetric figures that recall Italian Renaissance prototypes. Kuehne moved from Miller to Robert Henri in 1909. Rockwell Kent, who also studied under Chase, Miller, and Henri, expressed what he felt were their respective contributions: "As Chase had taught us to use our eyes, and Henri to enlist our hearts, Miller called on us to use our heads." (Rockwell Kent, It's Me O Lord: The Autobiography of Rockwell Kent. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1955, p. 83). Henri prompted Kuehne to search out the unvarnished realities of urban living; a notable portion of Henri's stylistic formula was incorporated into his work. Having received such a thorough foundation in art, Kuehne spent a year in Europe's major art museums to study techniques of the old masters. His son Richard named Ernest Lawson as one of Max Kuehne's European traveling companions. In 1911 Kuehne moved to New York where he maintained a studio and painted everyday scenes around him, using the rather Manet-like, dark palette of Henri. A trip to Gloucester during the following summer engendered a brighter palette. In the words of Gallatin (1924, p. 60), during that summer Kuehne "executed some of his most successful pictures, paintings full of sunlight . . . revealing the fact that he was becoming a colorist of considerable distinction." Kuehne was away in England the year of the Armory Show (1913), where he worked on powerful, painterly seascapes on the rocky shores of Cornwall. Possibly inspired by Henri - who had discovered Madrid in 1900 then took classes there in 1906, 1908 and 1912 - Kuehne visited Spain in 1914; in all, he would spend three years there, maintaining a studio in Granada. He developed his own impressionism and a greater simplicity while in Spain, under the influence of the brilliant Mediterranean light. George Bellows convinced Kuehne to spend the summer of 1919 in Rockport, Maine (near Camden). The influence of Bellows was more than casual; he would have intensified Kuehne's commitment to paint life "in the raw" around him. After another brief trip to Spain in 1920, Kuehne went to the other Rockport (Cape Ann, Massachusetts) where he was accepted as a member of the vigorous art colony, spearheaded by Aldro T. Hibbard. Rockport's picturesque ambiance fulfilled the needs of an artist-sailor: as a writer in the Gloucester Daily Times explained, "Max Kuehne came to Rockport to paint, but he stayed to sail." The 1920s was a boom decade for Cape Ann, as it was for the rest of the nation. Kuehne's studio in Rockport was formerly occupied by Jonas Lie. Kuehne spent the summer of 1923 in Paris, where in July, André Breton started a brawl as the curtain went up on a play by his rival Tristan Tzara; the event signified the demise of the Dada movement. Kuehne could not relate to this avant-garde art but was apparently influenced by more traditional painters — the Fauves, Nabis, and painters such as Bonnard. Gallatin perceived a looser handling and more brilliant color in the pictures Kuehne brought back to the States in the fall. In 1926, Kuehne won the First Honorable Mention at the Carnegie Institute, and he re-exhibited there, for example, in 1937 (Before the Wind). Besides painting, Kuehne did sculpture, decorative screens, and furniture work with carved and gilded molding. In addition, he designed and carved his own frames, and John Taylor Adams encouraged Kuehne to execute etchings. Through his talents in all these media he was able to survive the Depression, and during the 1940s and 1950s these activities almost eclipsed his easel painting. In later years, Kuehne's landscapes and still-lifes show the influence of Cézanne and Bonnard, and his style changed radically. Max Kuehne died in 1968. He exhibited his work at the National Academy of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, and in various New York City galleries. Kuehne's works are in the following public collections: the Detroit Institute of Arts (Marine Headland), the Whitney Museum (Diamond Hill...

A fine monochromatic watercolor landscape painting of Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire by American artist Gifford Beal (1879-1956). Beal was b...

Signed lower left, 'J. W. Nicoll' for John W. Nicoll (American, 1865-1943), titled lower left, 'Santa Barbara' and painted circa 1925. Sheet dimensions: 9 x 12.75 inches. A luminous, early twentieth-century landscape showing a picturesque view of a Spanish style cottage set in a lush garden with a view beyond towards the Santa Ynez Mountains rising towards clouded, blue skies. An unusual and elegant view of old-time Santa Barbara that retains much of its crispness and freshness of color. Born in New York, John Nicoll first studied with his uncle, the landscape painter, James Nicoll. He subsequently moved to Paris where he furthered his education for three years under Bouguereau and Ferrier at the Académie Julian. He then continued on to Seville where he studied for three years at the Academia Real, spending his winters traveling and painting in North Africa. By 1899, Nicoll had settled in Pasadena where he painted, exhibited and taught drawing at the College of Fine Arts from 1906-1935. Upon his retirement, he moved to San Diego where he continued to paint and exhibit until his death in 1943. Over the course of a long career, James Nicoll exhibited widely and with success including at the Stickley Building, Pasadena, 1899; Blanchard Hall, Los Angeles, 1899; the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St Louis, 1904; the Ruskin Art Club, Los Angeles, 1904; Lewis & Clark Expo Portland, 1905 (Bronze Medal); the Painters Club, Los Angeles, 1906-09; the Nicholson Gallery...

Idyllic Watercolor Landscape original watercolour painting on artist paper signed by Marjorie Schiele (1913-2008) *see notes below piece of paper is 9.5 x 12 inches In good condition...