CW American Modernism Landscape Paintings

Highway Derelict, May, 1939, oil on canvas board, signed upper right, 18 x 20 inches, exhibited 1) Society of Independent Artists, American Society of Fine Arts (Art Students League), New York, NY, April 19 – May 12, 1940, no. 535 (noted verso, listed in catalog, and see Kantner, Dorothy, Palette Palaver, Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph, April 19, 1940 – “Helen F. Price and Ethel M. Dean, the former of Johnstown, the latter of this city, are two members of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh who are represented in the Independent Artist’s Exhibition which opens today in New York. Miss Price is represented by . . . ‘Highway Derelict’ . . . .”), 2) Solo Exhibition of Log Cabin Paintings...

Untitled, c. 1940s, oil on Masonite, signed lower right, 19 ¾ x 25 ¾ inches Ava Vorhaus Gabriel was a New York-based painter, lithographer, and designer. Born in Larchmont, Gabriel ...

Road Repairing, Lower Manhattan at Night, 1934, oil on Masonite, signed and dated lower right, 24 x 16 inches; original label verso has title and address Margit Varga was an artist,...

Gracie Mansion, c. 1944, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 25 x 30 inches, presented in a newer frame Isabella Markell was a painter, etcher, and sculptor, who is best known for ...

Laundry Day (Untitled), c. 1940s, oil on canvas, signed lower left, 30 x 24 inches Florence Walton Pomeroy was a New Jersey-based artist who primarily created portraits, still life...

Landscape, c. 1930-40s, oil on panel, signed lower right, 16 x 20 inches Jeanette Maxfield Lewis was a California-based landscape painter and etcher. Born in Oakland, she spent much...

Summer in Town, 1943, oil on board, signed and dated lower right, 13 ¾ x 22 inches, titled and dated verso, exhibited: 1) 139th Annual Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, ...

Rites of Winter, by 1939, oil on canvas, 32 x 40 inches, exhibited: 134th Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, January 29 – March 5, 1939, no...

Georgina Klitgaard (1893 – 1976) The Ledge, by 1931, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 32 1/8 x 50 1/8 inches, exhibited: 1) 44th Annual Exhibition of American Paintings & Sculptur...

Johnny Walker’s Place, by 1929, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 34 x 42 inches, exhibited 1) 28th International Exhibition of Paintings, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, Octobe...

Peck Slip, 1950, oil on cardboard, 15 x 20 inches, exhibition label verso reads: “Oil on cardboard, 20 x 15, 1950 / Title: Peck Slip / Price: $100 / Artist and Owner: Fiske Boyd / 30...

Closed Doors, 1957, polymer tempera on Masonite, signed lower right, 20 x 40 inches, inscribed verso “Zerbe Closed Doors June 1957,” label verso reads: “Artist Karl Zerbe / No. T / T...

Three Chimneys, 1956, oil on Masonite, signed and dated lower left, 18 x 36 inches, titled verso, presented in its original frame Three Chimneys is a prime example of Ethel Margolies’ Precisionist-influenced industrial scenes. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Margolies made a name for herself by painting the Northeast’s factories, foundries, and manufacturing plants. Although this subject matter is often associated with male artists, Margolies is part of an important lineage of female modernists who depicted symbols of America’s industrial might. Starting with artists like New Jersey’s Elsie Driggs and Chicago’s Yvonne Deluc Pryor, Margolies is part of a through line of women Precisionist painters that also included the West Coast’s Vanessa Helder. Whereas these artists tended towards a stark and pristine realism, Margolies seems to have been influenced by the 1920s and early 1930s work of Charles Demuth’s and Charles Sheeler’s highly designed paintings from the same period, as both adopted a cubo-futurist oriented brand of Precisionism. Ethel Polacheck Margolies was a Connecticut painter...

Seoul, Korea, 1954 - 56, watercolor on paper, signed lower right 21 x 28 inches (sight), Midtown Galleries label with artist’s name and title verso, likely exhibited at Kingman’s solo exhibition, Midtown Galleries, 1956, literature: Gruskin, Alan D., Saroyan, William (introduction), The Watercolors of Dong Kingman and How The Artist Works, The Studio Publications, Inc. in association with Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York and London (1958), p. 54 (illustrated) (“In Seoul on April 27th and 28th Kingman did some mountain sketching [see reproduction, on page 54, of handsome Kingman painting, “Seoul,” owned by Robert Clary...

Autumn Landscape, by 1958, tempera on Masonite, 24 x 36 inches, signed lower left, exhibited: 1) 133rd Annual Exhibition of the National Academy of Design, New York, NY, February 20 – March 16, 1958 (Henry Ward Ranger Purchase Prize); and 2) Henry Ward Ranger Centennial Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, NY, September 25 - October 12, 1958, #133 (see Levin, Meyer, Illustrative Paintings Gathered for Ranger Show at National Academy, St. Petersburg Times, October 13, 1958 (“There’s a warm, low-keyed picture of golden fields, with distant structures, called “Autumn Landscape,” by Robert Vickrey, whose magic realism is felt in so “regular” a subject.”), literature: 1) Watson, Ernest William, Composition in Landscape and Still Life, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1959, pp. 24, 155 and 157 (illustrated); and 2) Vickrey, Robert and Cochrane, Diane, New Techniques in Egg Tempera, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1973, p. 111 (illustrated); ex collection National Academy of Design Reflecting on his art, Robert Vickery...

Broadway (?), 1952, oil on Masonite, signed and dated lower left, 15 x 18 inches, inscription verso may say "Broadway", presented in its original frame Jean Dominique van Caulaert w...

Untitled (Highrise), 1954, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, 20 x 20 inches, presented in its original frame Karl Benjamin was a California-based artist who is best known...

The People, 1938, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 36 x 48 inches, label verso reads “348 / 89 / Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, USA / _____ The People / _______ Arnold Blanch ...

This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s. Blue Lake, c. 1940s, oil on masonite, signed lower right, 20 x 36 inches, label and inscriptio...

My Only Working Tool, 1949, oil on panel, signed and dated lower right, 16 x 12 inches, remnant of exhibition label verso, exhibited at the Art News Second Annual National Amateur Competition, National Academy of Design, New York, NY, December, 1950 (see The Best Amateurs, Art News, volume 49, issue 8, December 6 to 20, 1950, p. 65 – 66), presented in a period frame Fausto Sansone...

This work is part of our exhibition - American Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s A Valley Streetscape at Night, 1948, oil on masonite, signed and dated lower right, 18 x 24 inches; literature: King, Chloe, The Paintings of Edgard O. Kiechle – Unearthed After 60 Years, Ventura Blvd, January/February, 2023, pp. 46 – 53 (illustrated) Edgar Kiechle...

This work is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s Untitled (Farm in Winter), 1940s, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 26 x 30 inches, presented in an original frame Julius Delbos...

Orange Grove Landscape, 1941, gouache on illustration board, 14 inches x 18 inches (image), 22 x 26 inches (framed) signed and dated lower right, newly framed with museum glazing ...

Rabbit Hunters, egg tempera on Masonite, 12 x 9 inches, 1947, signed and dated lower left, signed, titled and dated verso “Rabbit Hunters Egg Tempera Roger Medearis 1947,” exhibited at Medearis' solo show at Kende Galleries, New York, in 1949 (Medearis’ record book, a copy of which is held by Vose Galleries in Boston, MA, indicates this is painting “No. 23” and that is was completed in 1947 and sold via Kende Galleries (at Gimbel Brothers...

Landscape, 1940, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches, signed, dated and titled verso: “Marcel Cailliet ’40 – S.C.” and “Marcel Cailliet Landscape”; likely exhibited at the annual juried st...

Untitled (Collapsed Shacks), c. 1940s, oil on canvas, signed lower left, 20 ½ x 26 ½ inches, presented in a period frame This work is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: ...

Untitled (Houses and Railroad Tracks), c. 1940s, oil on canvas board, signed lower right, 16 x 20 inches, presented in a newer frame This work is part of our exhibition America Coas...

This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness. Oil on canvas, 15 ¾ x 24 inches, Signed and titled verso on stretcher Exhibited: [Solo Exhibition] Cha...

This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness. Oil on canvas, 13 x 9 inches, Signed lower left

This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness. Oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches, Signed lower right Exhibited: 1) [Solo E...

This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness. Oil on canvas, 20 x 15 inches, Signed lower right Exhibited: 1) Portrai...

This mural study is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s Industry and Commerce, 1936, tempera on panel, 16 ½ x 39 ½ inches, signed verso “John Ballator, Portland Ore.” provenance includes: J.C. Penney Company, represented by Russell Tether Fine Arts Assoc.; presented in a newer wood frame About the Painting Industry and Commerce is a prime example of WPA Era muralism. Like a Mediaeval alter, this mural study is filled with icons, but the images of saints and martyrs are replaced with symbols of America's gospel of prosperity through capitalism. Industry and Commerce has a strong narrative quality with vignettes filling the entire surface. Extraction, logistics, design, power generation, and manufacturing for printing, chemicals, automobiles and metal products are all represented. To eliminate any doubt about the mural's themes, Ballator letters a description into the bottom of the study. Ballator also presents an idealized version of industrial cooperation, as his workers, lab-coated technicians and tie-wearing managers work harmoniously toward a common goal in the tidy and neatly designed environments. Although far from the reality of most industrial spaces, Ballator's study reflects the idealized and morale boosting tone that many mural projects adopted during the Great Depression. About the Artist John R Ballator achieved success as a muralist, lithographer, and teacher during the Great Depression. Born in Oregon, he studied at the Portland Museum Art School, the University of Oregon and at Yale University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Art. In 1936, Ballator was commissioned to paint a mural panel for the new Department of Justice Building in Washington DC, an important project that spanned five years with several dozen artists contributing a total of sixty-eight designs. Ballator completed murals for the St. Johns Post Office and Franklin High School, both in Portland, Oregon. He also contributed to the 1938 murals at Nathan Hale School in New Haven, Connecticut. During the late 1930s, Ballator taught art for several years at Washburn College in Topeka, Kanas, where he completed a mural for the Menninger Arts & Craft Shop before accepting a professorship at Hollins College...

This watercolor is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s Circus Wagons, 1927, watercolor on paper, signed and dated lower left, 10 x19 ¾ inches (sight), provenance includes Stary-Sheets Art Gallery (Gualala, CA); J. Ralph & Louis Stone Foundation; presented in a newer metal frame behind glazing About the Painting Millard Sheets was only twenty years old and in his third year of studies at the Chouinard Art Institute when he painted Circus Wagons. Despite his youth, Sheets was already an accomplished artist who had publicly exhibited his work and won prestigious prizes. Within several years, he would have his first solo exhibition at one of Los Angeles’ premiere galleries and become a painting instructor at his alma mater. In Circus Wagons we already see Sheets deft handling of the watercolor medium and his interest in the California Scene. In this case, Sheets captures a back lot view of a traveling circus, a subject he sometimes returned to, including in a color screen print in the collection of the National Gallery. Sheets made a career by painting what he knew and observed firsthand. This approach allowed Sheets to capture with authenticity the details of each narrative. Even with a narrowly limited palette and an economy of brushstrokes, Sheets effectively depicts the southern California scene with its strong and mysterious shadows, as well as the workers and circus animals. Seen through the hindsight of his six-decade long career, Circus Wagons offers a fascinating insight into the early development of California Scene painting which would by the mid-1930s become the best recognized style on the West Coast. About the Artist Millard Sheets was the dean of California watercolorists. His list of accomplishments is so extensive that his entry in Who was Who in American Art is over forty lines. Born in Pomona, California, Sheets became a painter at an early age, winning a prize at the Los Angeles County Fair in 1918. By the mid to late-1920s, Sheets became a regular at art exhibitions in the western part of the United States, winning several additional prizes before he reached the age of twenty-five. Sheets studied at the prestigious Chouinard Art Institute from 1925 through 1929 with Frank Tolles Chamberlin and Clarence Hinkle and had his first solo show with Los Angeles’ Dalzell Hatfield Gallery in 1929. During the 1930s, Sheets was invited to exhibit at almost every major American Museum and in many ways, his work came to represent the California watercolor school...

This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s Factory Worker, c. 1936, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 18 ¼ x 36 inches; exhibited in City ...

This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s Jefferson Market Library (Courthouse), c. 1930s, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches, signed lower right; presented in a newer silver painted frame About the Painting Writing about an exhibition of Charles W. Adams’ work at the Eighth Street Art Gallery in the mid-1930s, Emily Grenauer observed in The World-Telegram that the artist’s paintings were “distinguished for their solid form, well organized design and sumptuous color” and the art critic for The Herald Tribune found Adam’s work “a strong, formal realization of his subject . . . he paints with vital emphasis on structure and composition.” Although we do not know which works these critics referenced, it is likely they were writing about paintings like Jefferson Market Library (Courthouse). With its carefully designed reality, strong angles, solid forms, and well-disciplined puffs of smoke in the background, Adams presents a highly structured version of the Greenwich Village landmark, the Jefferson Market Library, which was a courthouse at the time Adams completed this work. The Jefferson Market Library was a prized subject for downtown painters, including the Ashcan School painter, John Sloan, the modernist, Stuart Davis, and the precisionist, Francis Criss...

This painting is part of our exhibition American Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s Knight’s Lodging, 1941, oil on canvas panel, signed and dated lower left, 16 x 20 inches, exhi...

This painting is part of our exhibition American Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s Subway Construction, c. 1928, oil on board, 19 x 15 ¾ inches, signed upper left, artist and title verso; exhibited: 1) 12th Annual Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, The Waldorf Astoria, New York NY, from March 9 to April 1, 1928, no. 864 (original price $250) (see Death Prevailing Theme of Artists in Weird Exhibits, The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), March 8, 1928); 2) Boston Tercentenary Exhibition Fine Arts and Crafts Exhibition, Horticultural Hall, Boston MA, July, 1930, no. 108 (honorable mention - noted verso); 3) 38th Annual Exhibition of American Art, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH, June, 1931 (see Alexander, Mary, The Week in Art Circles, The Cincinnati Enquirer, June 7, 1931); and 4) National Art Week Exhibition [Group Show], Montross Gallery, New York, New York, December, 1940 (see Devree, Howard, Brief Comment on Some Recently Opened Exhibitions in the Galleries, The New York Times, December 1, 1940) About the Painting Ernest Stock’s Subway Construction depicts the excavation of New York’s 8th Avenue line, which was the first completed section of the city-operated Independent Subway System (IND). The groundbreaking ceremony was in 1925, but the line did not open until 1932, placing Stock’s painting in the middle of the construction effort. The 8th Avenue line was primarily constructed using the “cut and cover” method in which the streets above the line were dug up, infrastructure was built from the surface level down, the resulting holes were filled, and the streets reconstructed. While many artists of the 1920s were fascinated with the upward thrust of New York’s exploding skyline as architects and developers sought to erect ever higher buildings, Stock turned his attention to the engineering marvels which were taking place below ground. In Subway Construction, Stock depicts workers removing the earth beneath the street and building scaffolding and other support structures to allow concrete to be poured. Light and shadow fall across the x-shaped grid pattern formed by the wooden beams and planks. It is no surprise that critics reviewing the painting commented on Stock’s use of an “interesting pattern” to form a painting that is “clever and well designed.” About the Artist Ernest Richard Stock was an award-winning painter, print maker, muralist, and commercial artist. He was born in Bristol, England and was educated at the prestigious Bristol Grammar School. During World War I, Stock joined the British Royal Air Flying Corps in Canada and served in France as a pilot where he was wounded. After the war, he immigrated to the United States and joined the firm of Mack, Jenny, and Tyler, where he further honed his architectural and decorative painting skills. During the 1920s, Stock often traveled back and forth between the US and Europe. He was twice married, including to the American author, Katherine Anne Porter. Starting in the mid-1920s, Stock began to exhibit his artwork professionally, including at London’s Beaux Arts Gallery, the Society of Independent Artists, the Salons of America, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Whitney Studio and various locations in the Northeast. Critics often praised the strong design sensibility in Stock’s paintings. Stock was a commercial illustrator for a handful of published books and during World War II, he worked in the Stratford Connecticut...

(Note: This work is part of our exhibition Connected by Creativity: WPA Era Works from the Collection of Leata and Edward Beatty Rowan) Oil on panel, 14 ½ x 18 inches unframed, 22 x 25 ½ inches framed, inscribed “painted by David McCosh Property of Edward b. Rowan” and numbered “8” verso Exhibited: The First Exhibit of the Iowa Artist...

The Railway Station, c. 1934, oil on canvas, signed lower right, titled verso and noted "34"; illustrated Kaufman, Jeffrey, Brush with Life: The Art of Being Edward Biberman...

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...

Lake Street, c. 1920 -30s, oil on board, 12 x 9 inches, signed lower right and verso, titled verso About the Painting At the center of Oscar Daniel Soellner’s Lake Street, we see the stairway leading to an elevated railway station on what is now Chicago’s Green Line route. When its first section opened in 1893 as the second permanent elevated rapid transit line in Chicago, this route was known as the Lake Street Elevated Railroad. Chicago’s “L,” like the New York subway and rapid transit system, played an instrumental role in the development of the urban economy and the overall look and feel of the city. The formal aspects of urban railroads and the role they played in efficiently moving large number of everyday citizens across America’s growing metropolises were catnip for many American Scene painters during the first half of the 20th Century. Here, Soellner uses the techniques of the impressionists and the palette of the Ash Can School, to convincingly depict a classic Chicago scene...

Moonlight Shanties, c. 1940s, oil on canvas, 24 x 18 inches, signed lower right, signed and titled verso About the Painting In Moonlight Shanties, Joachim depicts a lower-class neighborhood sitting along-side an elevated road or railway which crowds out the small nearby houses and structures. Joachim’s use of an expressionist palette and gestural brushstrokes together with the isolated figures obscured in the shadows, create a feeling of unease, isolation and even loneliness. From the 1920s through 1940s, American artists commonly employed expressionist conventions in their social realist works which portrayed the gritty side of urban America, especially the communities of the city-dwelling poor. Expressionist styles were considered appropriate for bridging the gap between the modernist idea of art-for-art’s-sake and the narrative qualities demanded by the dual crises of the Great Depression and World War II. Moonlight Shanties successfully uses these expressionist methods to portray a neighborhood and its people who appear to be literally and figuratively “on the edge.” About the Artist Paul Lamar Joachim...

Pittsburgh Alleyway, c. 1946, oil on gouache on paper on “prestwood” (Masonite), 9 x 12 inches, signed lower middle, Bohrod’s original label verso from his gallery at 4811 Tonyawatha...

Exterior Stairway, c. 1970s, oil on masonite, signed upper right, 12 x 24 inches; illustrated (film) Kaufman, Jeffrey, Brush with Life: The Art of Being Edward Biberman...