William R. Leigh Art

Rare Set of 6 beautiful Naturalistic hand-colored lithograph prints by John Gould from his work Birds of Europe, embelished with gum arabic in vibrant colors. Published 1832 - 1837 by Hullmandel, Walter and Walton. Presented in gold leaf wood frames. Very charming . The price includes the set of 6 framed ones. John Gould (1804–1881) is the most prolific publisher of ornithological subjects of all time. In 19th-century Europe, his name was as well known as Audubon’s was in North America. Unlike Audubon, whose life’s work focused on one region, Gould traveled widely and employed other artists to help create his lavish, hand-colored lithographic folios. John Gould’s love of natural history was fostered in the gardens of King George III where his father was chief gardener at Windsor Castle. Although trained as a gardener, Gould’s interests quickly evolved, and at the age of 20, he was appointed taxidermist to the Zoological Society of London. After three years, he progressed to the position of curator of birds and chief taxidermist. In 1830, newly married, Gould and his artist wife, Elizabeth Gould...

*ABOUT Stephen Basso Stephen Basso's highly original pastels and oil paintings are romantic, yet thought provoking fantasies. His whimsical works are alive with boundless imagina...

Coney Island, Fourth of July, c. 1940s, oil on canvas applied to Masonite, signed upper right, 26 x 21 1/2 inches, presented in its original frame During the 1930s and 40s, Coney I...

RFD #1, 1937, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, titled verso, 24 x 30 inches Iowa had Grant Wood. Missouri had Thomas Hart Benton. Kansas had John Steuart Curry. And, Neb...

"Bathers" by Philadelphia born modernist painter Leon Kelly, is a fantasy nude scene of two female figures, one with towel in hand, one only depicted as a portrait within the paintin...

Georgina Klitgaard Pueblo Indians, Taos, New Mexico Signed lower right Oil on canvas 18 x 24 inches Georgina Klitgaard’s art has sometimes gotten lost in the critical propensity to...

Neighbors, 1939, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, 22 x 26 inches Norman Barr was an American Scene painter and muralist known for his poignant depictions of working-clas...

Grey tonal painting of a Falcon perched on a branch. The work is framed in a silver frame with a white matte. The artist signed the work in the bottom right corner. Artist Biograph...

Blacksmith (Untitled), 1936, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, 28 x 30 inches Erle Loran was an influential American painter, art historian, and educator, renowned for h...

A really charming and beautifully executed study of a horse by this very talented artist. A most attractive picture of this noble creature in ready to hang condition Rafael Mckenzi...

Carl Friedrich Deiker (1838 Wetzlar - 1892 Düsseldorf). Vigilant fox. Pencil drawing on brown paper, 18 × 29.5 cm (inside measurement), 31.5 x 43.5 cm (mount), signed and dated "Deiker [18]54" at lower right. - a little bit stained, with a light water stain at lower right About the artwork Carl Friedrich Deiker's consummate ability to depict animals is already evident in this early work. He brought a whole new psychological dimension to animal painting, so that one could literally speak of animal portraits. The naturalistic appearance of the fox alone makes it seem alive. Every strand of muscle, even every hair, is captured, which requires an intensive artistic study of animal anatomy and physiology. But the fox's real liveliness comes not from its natural appearance, but from its internal movement: Stretched out, it has been brought out of rest. It turns around and, with its ears pricked up, looks intently in the direction from which it has seen something. His mouth is slightly open and his pointed teeth are bared, as if he were growling. Tension gradually takes hold of his whole body. While the hind legs were still in a relaxed position, closely observed by Deiker, one front leg was already raised, ready to begin a rising movement. The fox seems so alarmed with all its senses that one gets the impression that, at any moment, its tail will move jerkily and the animal will jump up. While wild animals have traditionally been portrayed as beasts or anthropomorphised, often for caricatural purposes, Deiker explores their inherent nature by attempting to capture their psychic impulses. The wild animal is neither bestial nor human, but a creature in its own right, valued by Deiker for its own sake. In this way, he brought the dignity of the animal into representation and raised animal painting to a whole new artistic level. About the artist Carl Friedrich Deiker was the son of the drawing teacher Christian Friedrich Deiker and the younger brother of the animal painter Johannes Deiker. In addition to the family art lessons, Christian Friedrich shared a studio with his brother Johannes at Braunfels Castle, Deiker attended the drawing academy in Hanau, and from 1858 he was a student at the Karlsruhe Art Academy, where he studied under the landscape painter Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. Carl Friedrich Deiker was already in demand as an artist during his first year: Grand Duke Frederick I of Baden, Margrave Max of Baden and Grand Duke Michael of Russia bought hunting scenes by him. In 1859 he went on a study trip to the Reinhardswald. Just as the Barbizon School had rediscovered the landscape, Deiker opened up the forest for animal painting. From 1861-64 Deiker had his own studio in Karlsruhe, then moved to Düsseldorf, where his brother Johannes followed four years later. Deiker married a daughter of the landscape painter Karl Hilger and remained in Düsseldorf until his death. In 1868 he finally achieved international fame with his painting 'Pursued Noble Deer' and was regarded as a virtuoso new founder of animal painting. "Deiker brought for the first time a truly great artistic quality to animal painting [...]". - Hans Vollmer From 1870 he participated in the academic art exhibitions in Berlin, Dresden, Munich and Hanover. He was also very busy as an illustrator. He drew for the Gartenlaube, the Salon, the Universum, and produced many of the finely illustrated hunting and animal books of the period. He also worked as a printmaker, while his oil paintings circulated as reprints by Franz Dinger. From 1865 to 1892 Deiker was a member of the artists' association Malkasten. Carl Friedrich Deiker's life's work was honoured with a large posthumous memorial exhibition at the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle in 1892. His son Carl Deiker, born in 1879, also became a painter. Selection of art museums that own works by Carl Friedrich Deiker: Hamburger Kunsthalle / Kunsthalle Karlsruhe / Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf / Wallraff Richartz Cologne. Selected Bibliography H. Schmidt: Johannes and...

Six O-Clock, c. 1942, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, signed and titled several times verso of frame and stretcher (perhaps by another hand), marked “Rehn” several times on frame (for the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York City, who represented Craig at the time); Exhibited: 1) 18th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings from March 21 to May 2, 1943 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. #87, original price $450 (per catalog) (exhibition label verso), 2) Craig’s one-man show at the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, New York City, from October 26 to November 14, 1942, #10 (original price listed as $350); and 3) Exhibition of thirty paintings sponsored by the Harrisburg Art Association at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg in March, 1944 (concerning this exhibit, Penelope Redd of The Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) wrote: “Other paintings that have overtones of superrealism inherent in the subjects include Tom Craig’s California nocturne, ‘Six O’Clock,’ two figures moving through the twilight . . . .” March 6, 1944, p. 13); another label verso from The Museum of Art of Toledo (Ohio): original frame: Provenance includes George Stern Gallery, Los Angeles, CA About the Painting Long before Chris Burden’s iconic installation outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Urban Light, another artist, Tom Craig, made Southern California streetlights the subject of one of his early 1940s paintings. Consisting of dozens of recycled streetlights from the 1920s and 1930s forming a classical colonnade at the museum’s entrance, Burden’s Urban Light has become a symbol of Los Angeles. For Burden, the streetlights represent what constitutes an advanced society, something “safe after dark and beautiful to behold.” It seems that Craig is playing on the same theme in Six O-Clock. Although we see two hunched figures trudging along the sidewalk at the end of a long day, the real stars of this painting are the streetlights which brighten the twilight and silhouette another iconic symbol of Los Angeles, the palm trees in the distance. Mountains in the background and the distant view of a suburban neighborhood join the streetlights and palm trees as classic subject matter for a California Scene painting, but Craig gives us a twist by depicting the scene not as a sun-drenched natural expanse. Rather, Craig uses thin layers of oil paint, mimicking the watercolor technique for which he is most famous, to show us the twinkling beauty of manmade light and the safety it affords. Although Southern California is a land of natural wonders, the interventions of humanity are already everywhere in Los Angeles and as one critic noted, the resulting painting has an air of “superrealism.” About the Artist Thomas Theodore Craig was a well-known fixture in the Southern California art scene. He was born in Upland California. Craig graduated with a degree in botany from Pomona College and studied painting at Pamona and the Chouinard Art School with Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Barse Miller among others. He became close friends with fellow artist Milford Zornes...