William Edward Croxford Art

Chiura Obata Dahlias, 1940 Signed, dated and stamped lower right Watercolor on paper 15 x 9 5/8 inches Born in the Okayama prefecture of Japan, Chiura Obata was adopted by his uncle, an artist. As a child he was trained in ink painting, and at 14 he was apprenticed to the painter Murata Tanryo in Tokyo. He also studied with Kogyo Terasaki and Goho Hasimoto. In 1903, Obata moved to San Francisco and began working as an illustrator for The New World and The Japanese American, two of the city's Japanese newspapers. He also did work as a commercial designer. Obata helped establish the East West Art Society in San Francisco in 1921, which sought to promote cross-cultural understanding through art. This goal was reflected in his embrace of the Nihonga style, which fused traditional Japanese sumi-e ink painting with the conventions of western naturalism. He spent much of the 1920s painting landscapes throughout California, and among his favorite subjects were mountain landscapes. In 1927, he visited Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, creating over a hundred paintings and sketches of the high country. Obata stayed in the USA until the death of his father in 1928. Between 1928 and 1932, he worked in Tokyo as a painter and transformed his California landscape watercolors...

Howard Daum Croton Park, 1940 Signed, titled and dated lower right Watercolor on paper 8 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches Provenance The artist Ashby Gallery, New York Carl Ashby, New York Estat...

Sketch for BDSM Scenography is an original drawing in ink and watercolor on paper realized by an anonymous artist of the late XX century. Good Conditions except for some stains. Im...

Eugene Higgins In Foreign Parts, circa 1913 Signed lower right Watercolor on paper Sight 17 x 13 inches Born William Victor Higgins in 1884 to a Shelbyville, Indiana farm family where the only art Victor was aware of as a child was his father's love of flowers. "He loved their forms and their colors, and he tended his garden as a painter might work a canvas." At the age of nine, Victor met a young artist who traveled the Indiana countryside painting advertisements on the sides of barns. He purchased paints and brushes so the young Higgins could practice his own artwork on the inside of his father's barn. He also taught Victor about art museums and especially about the new Chicago Art Institute. This information never left the young artist, and he saved his allowance until his father allowed him at the age of fifteen to attend Chicago Art Institute. He worked a variety of jobs to finance his studies both there and at the Academy of Fine Arts. Victor Higgins traveled to New York in 1908, where he met Robert Henri, who became a significant influence by depicting every-day scenes and stressing the importance of the spirit and sense of place as important factors in painting. Higgins was also greatly affected by the New York Armory Modernism Show of Marsden Hartley in 1913. While Victor Higgins was in Chicago he met former mayor and avid collector Carter H. Harrison who was to prove instrumental in the growth of Higgins career for several years. Harrison agreed to support Higgins for four years to go to Paris and Munich and paint and study in the great museums in Europe. While at the Academie de la Grande Chaumier in Paris (1910-1914) he met Walter Ufer, who was another Chicago artist being sponsored by Carter Harrison. This meeting was not only a life-long friendship, but the beginning of a great change in the way Higgins looked at "American" art. He decided that America needed it's own authentic style rather than the 19th Century classic style he was taught in Europe. Very soon after returning to Chicago in 1914, Harrison sent him and Walter Ufer on a painting trip to Taos, New Mexico for a year in exchange for paintings. Higgins made other similar agreements and was able to support himself with his painting. This trip was a life-changing experience and introduced Higgins to the authentic America he had been looking for. In 1914 Taos was an isolated village about twelve hours from Santa Fe on an impossible dirt road. But the colorful life of the pueblo people and the natural beauty drew a collection of artists who became the Taos art colony, from which the Taos Society of Artists was founded in 1915. Victor Higgins became a permanent resident within a year of his arrival and a member of the society in 1917, exhibiting with Jane Peterson in 1925 and with Wayman Adams and Janet Scudder in 1927. The members would travel around the country introducing the Southwest scenes with great success. He remained a member until the Society's dissolution in 1927. Higgins was the youngest member of the group of seven. Other members were Joseph Henry Sharp, Bert Phillips...

Martha Walter Mothers and Children, North Africa Signed lower right Watercolor on paper 6 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches Martha Walter was best known as a painter of colorful beach scenes and ...

Anne Ramsdell Congdon Chrysanthemums, 1900 Signed and dated lower right Watercolor on paper 26 x 19 inch Provenance Matthew O'Connell, Gloucester, Massachusetts Anne Ramsdell Congdon studied art at a young age in Worcester. Originally a watercolorist, she attended the Académie de Lécluse in Paris in 1891, and later with Rhoda Holmes Nichols (1854–1938), an assistant to William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), at a summer extension to Chase’s Shinnecock School of Art in Oguinquit, Maine. She also studied with Boston and Oguinquit marine painter and etcher Charles H. Woodbury (1864–1940), who taught his students to “paint in verbs, not nouns,” thus advocating the quick stroke of a brush. She was active in Nashua as a watercolorist until she married a New Hampshire surgeon and Nantucket native, Dr. Charles E. Congdon, in 1902. She reportedly suspended her art career to maintain an antiques shop in Nashua, her birthplace, while raising two sons. By the mid-1920s, she was attending the summer classes in oil painting with Frank Swift Chase (1886-1958) on Nantucket, and she rapidly became a plein air painter in the bold style of her new mentor. The Boston Herald observed, “Her work is direct, facile, and without mannerisms.” She painted a series of waterfront paintings...

This artwork titled "Oaxaca Coast" c.1990 is a watercolor on paper by noted California artist Arnold A. Grossman, 1923-2016. It is signed at the lower left corner by the artist. The ...

Martha Walter Families near Seville, Spain Signed lower left Watercolor on paper 7 x 8 inches Martha Walter was best known as a painter of colorful beach scenes and landscapes. Inf...

Crash Pleased to See You, 1989 Signed and dated lower left Watercolor and ink on paper 30 x 20 1/2 inches A contemporary of Keith Haring and a modern-day master of this present day ...

The Dutch artist Pierre Tetar van Elven (1828-1908), the court painter of King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy (1828-1878) is responsible for this stunning watercolour painting. The image portrays the Russian Queen...

We are very happy to present the wonderful work of Gérard Blain, a passionate and talented artist. Gérard Blain, born in 1938, is an atypical artist. Coming from a modest family, h...

Bruges is an original Black Marker and Watercolor on paper realized by an anonymous artist in the Mid-20th Century. Good conditions except for consumed margins and a small cut-away ...