William S. Schwartz Art

NYC Cityscape American Scene WPA Modern Realism Mid 20th Century Architectural Ernest Fiene (1894-1965) Cityscape 36 x 30 inches Oil on canvas Signed and dated 1930. lower right Provenance Estate of the artist. ACA Galleries, New York Exhibited New York, Frank Rehn Gallery, Changing Old New York, 1931. New York, ACA Galleries, Ernest Fiene: Art of the City, 1925-1955, May 2-23, 1981, n.p., no. 5. BIO Ernest Fiene was born in Elberfeld, Germany in 1894. As a teenager, Fiene immigrated to the United States in 1912. He studied art at the National Academy of Design in New York City from 1914 to 1918, taking day classes with Thomas Maynard and evening classes with Leon Kroll. Fiene continued his studies at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York from 1916 to 1918, adding classes in printmaking at the Art Students League in 1923. Fiene began his career as an artist in 1919 with his first exhibition of watercolors at the MacDowell Club arranged by his mentor Robert Henri. In 1923 the Whitney Studio Club mounted a large exhibition of his works. The following year he had an exhibition at the New Gallery in New York, which completely sold out all fifty-two works, including paintings, watercolors, drawings, and etchings. With the proceeds of sales from the New Gallery exhibition, Ernest Fiene and his younger brother Paul, a sculptor, built studios in Woodstock, New York in 1925. In the early Twenties Ernest Fiene painted mostly landscapes of Woodstock and both the Ramapo and Hudson River Valleys. The first monograph from the Younger Artists Series was published on Fiene in 1922. Published in Woodstock, the series went on to include Alexander Brook, Peggy Bacon, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. The book reproduced 1 illustration in color and another 27 reproductions in black and white. Around 1925 Fiene became fascinated with the intensity, excitement, and opportunities for color harmonies New York City offered as a subject. His paintings shifted to urban and industrial themes with architecture, industry, and transportation becoming his subjects. By 1926 Fiene had attracted the dealer Frank K.M. Rehn, who gave him a one-man exhibition that year, which travelled to the Boston Arts Club. C.W. Kraushaar Galleries gave Fiene a one-man exhibition of urban, landscape, portrait, and still life paintings in 1927. Julianna Force, the director of the Whitney Studio Club and first director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, included two of Fiene’s paintings in a fall exhibition in 1928. The Whitney Studio Club showed Fiene’s paintings in a two-man exhibition with Glenn O. Coleman that year and acquired three of Fiene’s paintings. Also in 1928 Fiene became affiliated with Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery where he had an exhibition of 20 lithographs in the spring. Fiene sold his house in Woodstock in 1928 to spend more of his time in New York City. With so many successful exhibitions, Fiene returned to Paris in 1928-29 where he rented Jules Pascin's studio and studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In France, Fiene painted both landscape and urban subjects developed from ideas influenced by Cubist geometry and the use of flat areas of broad color. Upon returning to New York in 1930, Fiene used this new approach to continue to paint New York skyscraper and waterfront subjects, as well as to begin a series of paintings on changing old New York based on the excavations for Radio City Music Hall and the construction of the Empire State Building. Frank K.M. Rehn Galleries exhibited this series, titled “Changing Old New York,” in 1931. Fiene also has solo exhibitions at Rehn Galleries in 1930 and 1932. Fiene’s oil paintings are exhibited at the Chicago Arts Club in 1930 as well. Fiene was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans in December of 1931. Visiting New York, Henri Matisse saw the exhibition and called Fiene’s Razing Buildings, West 49th Street the finest painting he had seen in New York. Fiene had two mural studies from his Mechanical Progress series exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Murals by American Painters and Photographers in 1932. Fiene sent View from my Window which depicts Fiene working on a lithograph stone while looking out his window to the newly completed Empire State Building to the Carnegie International in 1931. In 1932 Fiene participated in the first Biennial of American Painting at the Whitney Museum and his prints were included in exhibitions at the Downtown Gallery and the Wehye Gallery. In the same year, Fiene was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to further study mural painting in Florence, Italy. On his return from Italy in 1933 Fiene re-engaged himself in New York City life and won several public and private mural projects. Fiene resumed his active exhibition schedule, participating in two group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum and a one-man exhibition of recent paintings at the Downtown Gallery in January 1934. In 1933 he purchased a farm in Southbury, Connecticut, which added Connecticut scenes to his landscape subjects. This was also the year Fiene began to spend summers on Monhegan Island, Maine, where he painted seascapes, harbor scenes, and still lifes. Fiene’s landscape paintings attracted numerous commissions as part of the American Scene movement. Through the fall and winter of 1935-36, Fiene took an extended sketching trip through the urban, industrial, and farming areas of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Most of the twenty-four Pennsylvania urban and rural paintings...

Till the Clouds Roll By 1945 Frank Sinatra Mid Century Modern Hollywood Film WPA TILL THE COULDS ROLL BY (Film Set), oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches signed “Richard Whorf” lower right and signed and dated on the verso “R. Whorf/ Dec. 21, 1945. Frame by Hendenryk. ABOUT THE PAINTING This painting is from the collection of Barbara and Frank Sinatra, dated December 21, 1945 (just nine days after Frank Sinatra’s 30th birthday), and depicts the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Culver City backlot during the filming of Till the Clouds Roll By, the direction of the film having been taking over by Richard Whorf in December 1945. It is not presently clear if Whorf gave the Sinatras this painting as a gift, as the presence of the Dalzell Hatfield Galleries label on the verso indicates the painting may have been sourced there. Frank and Nancy Sinatra acquired a number of works from Dalzell Hatfield Galleries during the 1940’s, or perhaps they framed it for the couple. Sinatra performed “Old Man River’ in the film. Sinatra and June Allyson are depicted in the center of the painting. PROVENANCE From the Estate of Mrs. Nancy Sinatra; Dalzell Hatfield Galleries, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles. An image of the Dalzell Hatfield label and the back of the original frame (which we replaced with a stunning Heydenrk frame) are attached. Nancy Sinatra was Fran's first wife. Nancy Rose Barbato was 17 years old when she met Frank Sinatra, an 18-year-old singer from Hoboken, on the Jersey Shore in the summer of 1934. They married in 1939 at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Jersey City where Frank gave Nancy a recording of a song dedicated to her titled "Our Love" as a wedding present. The young newlyweds lived and worked in New Jersey, where Frank worked as an unknown singing waiter and master of ceremonies at the Rustic Cabin while Nancy worked as a secretary at the American Type Founders. His musical career took off after singing with big band leaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey...

"Winter" American Modernism WPA Regionalism Landscape Mid-Century Magic Realism. 30 x 40 inches. Oil on canvas, c. 1960s, Signed lower right. As we list the painting now, the work is currently being cleaned, restored and a hand carved frame is being built. Additional photos will be uploaded as soon as possible. Our gallery, Helicline Fine Art, just launched our new digital exhibition: American Art: The WPA and Beyond. Three dozen paintings, works on paper and sculptures which are available here on 1stDibs. In person viewings can be arranged by appointment at our midtown Manhattan gallery. Provenance: "Winter" was originally purchased by Stanley Byer. Mr. Byer owned homes in Key West, New York City, and Washington, D.C. He purchased the painting from Dunning Auction in 1984 in Elgin, Illinois. Mr. Byer was related to Abraham Weiss from Florida. Saul Babbin, now deceased was a cousin of Mr. Weiss. I purchased the painting from Joy Babbin, Mr. Babbin's wife, now living in from New Mexico. Dale Nichols (1905 – 1995) Artist, printmaker, illustrator, watercolorist, designer, writer and lecturer, Nichols did paintings that reflected his rural background of Nebraska where he was born in David City, a small town. Although he did much sketching outdoors, most of his paintings were completed in his studio and often included "numerology, magic squares...

Basketball Player Gouache on card stock, c. 1940 Signed by the artist in ink lower center A study for the fresco mural in the Social Security Buildin...

Very impressive mid 20th century cubist abstract. Oil on canvas. Framed.

A Very Finely Drawn 1930s Figure Study of a Young Male Nude Model (Shoulder, Arm & Torso) by Notable Chicago Modern Artist, Harold Haydon (Am. 1909-1994). An early charcoal drawing...

Hans Burkhardt The Artist's Wife (1930) Oil on canvas, 20" x 16" 24" x 20 ½" x 1 ½" framed Dated 1930 lower right recto. Annotated "To Elsa HB Louise Burkhardt 1930. HB" verso. ...

Snow in the Valley - Winter Landscape in Oil on Canvas Serene winter landscape by A. V. Gagliardi (20th Century). A valley is covered with snow, with a small house and river in thew...

Still Life with Violin by Ismael de la Serna (1898-1968) Oil on canvas 81 x 65 cm (31 ⁷/₈ x 25 ⁵/₈ inches) Signed lower centre, La Serna Executed circa 1930 Provenance: Private coll...

Impressive 1963 modernist painting. A cubist abstract with great composition and color. Framed. Signed.

A Fine, Modern 1930s Academic Anatomical Figure Study Drawing of a Standing Young Male Nude Model by Notable Chicago Artist, Harold Haydon (Am. 1909-1994). An exceptionally well exe...

Waterline Fine Art, Austin, TX is pleased to present the following work: Oil on board. Signed and dated lower right and verso, titled verso. 36.25 x 48 in. 40.5 x 52.25 in. (framed) Framed in contemporary silver, tiered floater frame. Dennis Eugene Norman Burton was a Canadian modernist who was born in Lethbridge, Ontario. He attended the Ontario College of Art from 1952 to 1956, and worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a graphic designer until 1960. Inspired by a 1955 exhibition of the “Painters Eleven” at Toronto’s Hart House, as well as American Abstract Expressionist artists such as Robert Motherwell, Jack Tworkov, and Willem de Kooning, Burton shifted his focus toward abstraction in the mid-1950s. Burton showed with the famed Isaacs Gallery in Toronto, becoming one of the youngest members on the gallery’s roster. A talented musician, he also played saxophone in the Artist’s Jazz Band in Toronto - a pioneering Canadian free-jazz group...