Frank Dean Art

Large Italian Landscape circa 1890 painted by a heavily influenced follower of Claude Lorraine (1600-1682). Superb depth and detail. Indistinc...

The Great Fire of London in September 1666 was one of the greatest disasters in the city’s history. The City, with its wooden houses crowded together in narrow streets, was a natural fire risk, and predictions that London would burn down became a shocking reality. The fire began in a bakery in Pudding Lane, an area near the Thames teeming with warehouses and shops full of flammable materials, such as timber, oil, coal, pitch and turpentine. Inevitably the fire spread rapidly from this area into the City. Our painting depicts the impact of the fire on those who were caught in it and creates a very dramatic impression of what the fire was like. Closer inspection reveals a scene of chaos and panic with people running out of the gates. It shows Cripplegate in the north of the City, with St Giles without Cripplegate to its left, in flames (on the site of the present day Barbican). The painting probably represents the fire on the night of Tuesday 4 September, when four-fifths of the City was burning at once, including St Paul's Cathedral. Old St Paul’s can be seen to the right of the canvas, the medieval church with its thick stone walls, was considered a place of safety, but the building was covered in wooden scaffolding as it was in the midst of being restored by the then little known architect, Christopher Wren and caught fire. Our painting seems to depict a specific moment on the Tuesday night when the lead on St Paul’s caught fire and, as the diarist John Evelyn described: ‘the stones of Paul’s flew like grenades, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream and the very pavements glowing with the firey redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them.’ Although the loss of life was minimal, some accounts record only sixteen perished, the magnitude of the property loss was shocking – some four hundred and thirty acres, about eighty per cent of the City proper was destroyed, including over thirteen thousand houses, eighty-nine churches, and fifty-two Guild Halls. Thousands were homeless and financially ruined. The Great Fire, and the subsequent fire of 1676, which destroyed over six hundred houses south of the Thames, changed the appearance of London forever. The one constructive outcome of the Great Fire was that the plague, which had devastated the population of London since 1665, diminished greatly, due to the mass death of the plague-carrying rats in the blaze. The fire was widely reported in eyewitness accounts, newspapers, letters and diaries. Samuel Pepys recorded climbing the steeple of Barking Church from which he viewed the destroyed City: ‘the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw.’ There was an official enquiry into the causes of the fire, petitions to the King and Lord Mayor to rebuild, new legislation and building Acts. Naturally, the fire became a dramatic and extremely popular subject for painters and engravers. A group of works relatively closely related to the present picture have been traditionally ascribed to Jan Griffier...

Gustav Melcher (German, 1898-?) Segelschiffe vor Venedig - Sailing ships off Venice • India ink, water colour wash • Visible image ca. 11.5 x 18 cm • Glased Frame ca. 20 x 25 cm • Verso various inscriptions • Signed lower right Gustav Melcher was a German painter and a pioneer in film, film criticism and film theory and created this clever little picture of the skyline of Venice with various vessels. Going by the various inscriptions an the backing paper, this drawing was made in 1918 when Gustav was twenty years old and passed on three years later to Gertrud Melcher on the 1. 2. 1921. I have no reasons to doubt this information. The small drawing is still in its unopened frame, so maybe there is more information to be discovered , however this will be the privilege of the next owner. The picture also has retained its original antique frame – note that it has lost over the years various sections of the gesso decoration. The very precisely executed drawing is most enjoyable to look at and doing so, remember you are looking through the eyes of a young man, who saw this foreign sea cape over a century ago. Thank you for your interest and please note, that I offer free worldwide shipping on all my items. Gustav Melcher began his studies at the Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie under Peter Janssen and Eduard von Gebhardt. Originaly he was interested in figurative and portrait painting, but after time he decided to pursue the depiction of land- and marinescapes. Durin his studies the young artist undertook trips to visit England, Scotland, Belgium and France and he joined the artist society Malkasten. It was in those days he would hold speeches to his colleges about this new invention called ‘Kintopp’ – Melcher was a great advocate of the moving pictures...

Most accounts of the artistic achievements of Edward Lear (1812–1888) take as their starting point the notion that he is better known as the writer of nonsense verse than as a topographical draughtsman and painter. His art is then considered largely in isolation, as the extraordinary creation of a fascinatingly eccentric Victorian. However, Lear's art is outstanding. Although Lear suffered from epilepsy, asthma, poor eyesight, and chronic depression, he was an inveterate traveler and an indefatigable sketcher, documenting a lifetime of journeys throughout the Mediterranean and India. During his two-month tour to Athens, mainland Greece and the island of Euboea, Edward Lear made almost 150 landscape drawings and kept a diary of his experiences and impressions. Many years later, Lear’s travelling companion, Charles Church...

This large wash drawing is a slightly enlarged version of a composition executed by Hubert Robert in 1761, at the end of his stay in Rome. This composition is a marvellous synthesis of the painter's art: the clatter of the waterfall, in a grandiose setting inspired by antiquity, is opposed to the intimacy of a genre scene, made up of a few peasant women performing some agricultural work. 1. The stay in Italy, an important founding stage in Hubert Robert's carrier Hubert Robert came from a privileged family of Lorraine origin, linked to the Choiseul-Stainville family, where his father was an intendant. The protection of this powerful aristocratic family enabled him to study classical art at the Collège de Navarre (between 1745 and 1751). After a first apprenticeship in the workshop of the sculptor Slodtz (1705 - 1764), he was invited by Etienne-François de Choiseul-Beaupré-Stainville (the future Duke of Choiseul, then Count of Stainville) to join him in Rome when the latter had just been appointed ambassador. Hubert Robert arrived in Rome on 4 November 1754, aged twenty-one, and remained there until 24 July 1765. Thanks to his patron, he obtained a place as a pensioneer at the Académie de France without having won the prestigious Prix de Rome. On his arrival in Rome, he frequented the studio of the painter Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691 - 1765), the inventor of the ruins painting, and also benefited from the proximity of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s studio (1720 - 1778). During his eleven-year stay in Rome, Hubert Robert studied the great Italian masters and drew many of the great archaeological sites, multiplying the sketches which he would use throughout his career, becoming one of the masters of the "ruin landscape". Back in Paris in 1765, he was very successful. He was accepted and admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture on the same day, July 26th 1766, which was very unusual. He was appointed draughtsman of the king's gardens in 1784, then guard of the Royal Museum from 1784 to 1792. Arrested in 1793 and detained in the prisons of Sainte Pélagie and Saint-Lazare, he was released in 1794 after the fall of Robespierre and undertook a second trip to Italy. In 1800, Hubert Robert was appointed curator of the new Central Museum and died at his home in Paris in 1808. 2. Description of the artwork This composition, formerly called "La Cascade du Belvédère Pamphile" , is undoubtedly inspired by the water theatres of the Frascati villas. Hubert Robert presents a hemicycle of columns with rustic bossages at the foot of which is a cascade of water falls into a basin. The hemicycle is flanked by two high walls, pierced by window wells topped with antique masks...

An original mixed media piece on paper by Gradwell. painting 42cm x 55cm glazed oak frame 63cm x 82cm View of a cove and sea in Amalfi, Italy. in evening light.

Bridge to Brooklyn #382, watercolor, 10.5 x 14 inches (Framed size: 18 x 21 inches), $1,750 Waldo Midgley (1888-1986) had a fruitful career spanning eig...

Oil painting, boats fishing on a misty morning by Robert Chalmers 1874. Signed and dated by the artist. Canvas size: 69cm x 106cm, Framed size 87cm x 123cm Robert Chalmers, littl...

'Amalfi, Italy'. Mixed media on paper . circa 2005. painting 41cm x 54cm glazed frame 62cmx 82cm Atmospheric view of the seafront topography and buildings of the famous coastal town...

Artist: G. Rhumont Title: The Harvest Medium: Oil on Masonite Dimensions: 6.5 x 12" unframed, 18 x 12" Framed G. Rhumont was a turn of the century German landscape artist of romantic style with realistic scenes as seen here in “The Harvest”. This bucolic scene of harvesting hay depicts two farmers working in tandem loading the horse-drawn hay wagon in a field just outside their homestead. This early autumn painting...

Jack Lorimer Gray, 1927-1981, was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia to Scottish parents. His talents as an artist were spotted by E. Wyly Grier while Gray was still a child. He attended t...

View of Ostend. Oil sketch on cardboard. Signed and titled on the back. This work will be recorded in the catalogue raisonné of the work of the artist currently in preparation. Jule...