William Grauer Art

Original Painting New Yorker Mag Cover proposal. Army Wedding American Scene WPA Antonio Petruccelli (1907 – 1994) Army Wedding New Yorker cover proposal, c. 1939 11 1/2 X 8 inches ...

NYC Watercolor Drawing American Modern 20th Century Modernism Mid-Century WPA. David Fredenthal (1914-1958) "View of New York from New Jersey,"7 x 10 inches. Watercolor on Paper, c. 1948. Signed lower right. David Fredenthal (1914 - 1958) was one ot America's most respected watercolor artists. He was famous for his bold, intensely vigorous and complex paintings and drawings that expressed his deep feeling for excitement with life and living. He was a draftsman with seemingly a special gift for catching anything, physically and emotionally on the spot, and he never went anywhere without three or four loaded pens and a sketchbook in his pocket. As part of the WPA project he executed a number of murals including the Sports Pavilion on the Heinz Building of the New York World's Fair 1939. Some of his fresco and mural techniques were inspired by his friendship with Diego Rivera who had admired and encouraged him in the early 1930's. After he won a traveling scholarship to Europe from The Museum of Modern Art at age 19, he was the recipient of two Guggenheim grants in Painting. He had his first solo exhibition at the Downtown Gallery in New York in 1937 at age 23, and many others after that including the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1947. Because of Fredenthal's prodigious drawing gifts, he was chosen by Erskine Caldwell to illustrate his novel "Tobacco Road...

This small painting by Oscar Törnå captures the poetic serenity of a Swedish winter evening in the late 19th century. Set along a frozen stream near a village, the composition presen...

Figures Walking Through Paths singed initials by Irina Hale (British 1932-2022) oil paintings on artist paper mounted in a frame Glass covering Inscribed verso overall framed: 12.5 x...

A beautifully atmospheric 1938 watercolor by noted American Modernist Turner B. Messick (1878–1952) depicting a serene winter landscape in Colorado. A graceful leafless tree anchors ...

Man Working Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Industrial WPA Modern Jo Cain (1904 - 2003) Telephone Pole Worker 38 1/4 x 18 1/2 inches Oil on pap...

TOBACCO ROAD Mid 20th Century Realism 1940 Drawing from the Novel WPA Literary 2 10 1/2 x 6 (sight), Signed David Fredenthal lower right. Framed by Lowy....

Beautifully rendered seascape of a sailboat full of small figures out at sea on glassy water with colorful reflections by Jacquelyn Kammerer (American, b-1944). Signed "J. Krammerer"...

TOBACCO ROAD Mid 20th Century Realism 1940 Drawing from the Novel WPA Literary 3 10 1/2 x 6 (sight), Signed David Fredenthal lower right. Framed by Lowy. Offered here is one of several original drawings by WPA artist David Fredenthal that were first published in the 1940 illustrated edition of the novel TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell. Background on the Drawing Erskine Caldwell remarked, on seeing the work of David Fredenthal, 26-year-old painter: "That boy could draw my Tobacco Road people." A casual comment, it was enormously productive. The young painter was just finishing a two-year Guggenhcim Fellowship, preceded by a year's study in Paris, two one-man shows at New York's Downtown Gallery, and a fellowship at the Cranbrook Academy near Detroit. He was out in Colorado Springs when he heard what Caldwell had said about him. Fredenthal hadn't read Tobacco Road. He had not even seen the play - now breaking all records in its seventh year on Broadway. But he swapped a portrait for a second-hand Ford and headed East. In New York he learned that Dnell, Sloan & Pearce were bringing out a deluxe edition of Tobacco Road. But he had no entrée to the publishers, and Caldwell, to his disappointment, was out of town. So he drove on to Georgia to have a look at the Tobacco Road people. He found Dr. I. C. Caldwell, the author's father, in Wrens, Ga., going on his ministerial rounds among people like the Lesters. Fredenthal got a room from a couple who ran a 1-pump filling station...

Greenery and Country House singed initials by Irina Hale (British 1932-2022) oil paintings on artist paper mounted in a frame Glass covering overall framed: 16.5 x 12.5 inches Top pa...

View on the Cannaregio Canal Venice Italian Grand Tour Scene After Guardi by Italian School (Italian, 19th century, after Francesco Guardi) oil on panel Painting: 8 x 10 inches Prov...

Frederick Vezin (1859 Torresdale Philadelphia - 1933 Düsseldorf), Autumn Landscape in the Sunlight, oil on canvas, mounted on cardboard, 32 x 41 cm (inside measurement), 44 x 51 cm (frame), signed and dates lower right "F. Vezin. [19]05". - Cardboard slightly curved, small inconspicuous retouch at the centre of the upper edge of the picture. About the artwork Although the painting appears to be a sketch, Frederick Vezin considered it to be a finished work of art, as evidenced by his signature on the lower right. And it is precisely this sketchy quality that leads to an understanding of the painting, which was certainly created in the landscape itself: the natural phenomena were to be depicted artistically at the moment of their observation. This is not done by meticulously sketching nature, but - and here Vezin follows the teaching of French Impressionism - by illustrating nature in its visual fullness. The artist's eye is, as it were, immersed in the visuality of nature, which is made visible by his hand. The painting is therefore not a reflection of the landscape, but its artistic intensification. This intensification also includes the fact that the foreground of the painting - corresponding to the field of vision - eludes a detail-oriented close-up view. Instead, the spatula-like application of paint, the vertical structure of which corresponds to the structure of the floral growth, has the effect of making nature tangible in its colourful substance. At the same time, the foreground, which remains indeterminate in its concrete objectivity, creates an atmospheric space that connects with the actual protagonist of the picture, the group of trees, which flares up in shades of red and brown. Here, too, the leaves are more speckled than clearly outlined. It is precisely this 'sketchiness' that opens up a visual experience that makes the landscape accessible in its visual fullness, thus revealing its essence. In addition to this abundance, the landscape is presented as a structure of order in that the composition of the picture makes the composition of the landscape visible. For example, the group of trees forms a distinct dark green shadow, which is repeated in the shadows cast by the trees behind it. A patterned diagonal axis is created in the picture, which is composed in this way by the landscape itself. Strictly speaking, this is a cultivated landscape: a fence at the bottom and a low stone wall at the top, running from left to right, are two elements that also have a strong compositional effect. And on the top of the hill, a stone house is embedded in the landscape as the brightest surface in the picture. Nature and culture here form a harmonious synthesis, giving the painting an Arcadian touch. In order to give the landscape as much space as possible, the horizon line is raised, but the design of the sky is also crucial. The clouds, combined with the shapes of the trees, create a bright blue sky. To the European eye, such a sky is reminiscent of a summer landscape. Accordingly, within the seasonal cycle, the blue sky is reserved for summer, and French Impressionism is also primarily an ode to summer. In Vezin's painting, however, the brilliant blue sky stands above an autumnal landscape, some of the trees even defoliated. It can therefore be assumed that the painting was made not in Europe but in the United States, and that it illustrates the proverbial Indian summer, making Frederick Vezin a pioneer of American landscape painting. About the artist Frederick Vezin was the son of a French immigrant to the United States and a German-born mother. This predestined him to promote artistic exchange between the old and new worlds. Having spent part of his schooling in Germany, in 1876, at the age of 20, he enrolled at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, where he studied with Peter Janssen the Elder, Eduard von Gebhardt and Wilhelm Sohn, among others. He graduated in 1883, settled in Munich and returned to Düsseldorf in 1895, where he lived until his death in 1933. A native of the United States, he travelled to the country frequently and became a popular portrait and society painter. His artistic talent, however, was most evident in his landscape paintings. Trained in French Impressionism, he developed a virtuoso use of colour and a free brushwork that remained tied to the landscape motif, opening up the landscape itself in a new way. Frederick Vezin turned his attention primarily to the landscape of his homeland, becoming a pioneer of modern American landscape...