Small Painting by Jean Hugo from 1927

This haunting image by Eugene Berman was painted on a sheet of paper cut in the shape of a heart, mounted to a paint-speckled ground, encircled with metal shavings, and placed in a frame of the artist’s own devising. Berman wrote the title, Radiograph of a Heart, on the back. It refers to the medical X-rays that doctors had recently come to rely on. Yet Berman’s point seems to be that while a heart can be monitored scientifically, the emotions associated with it lie beyond the power of medical science. Russian by birth, Berman fled St. Petersburg during the Revolution and settled in Paris. Later, as a Jew, he fled the Nazi advance and took refuge in New York and Hollywood. His peace of mind, however, was shattered by the suicide of his wife, actress Una Munson (who played Belle Watling in Gone With the Wind). That distressing event — “Don’t follow me” she admonished in her suicide note...

Emilio Terry -- architect, interior, and furniture designer -- was the inventor and sole-practitioner of what was drolly referred to as his “Louis XVII style...

This Mughal miniature was painted at one of the princely courts of India. It depicts a raven-haired princess in a gold-trimmed saffron-colored silk sari. Under a glowering evening sky she dawdles on a white marble terrace, with a pet fawn on a leash, before a landscape dotted with buildings nestled amongst trees beyond a river. Her hair, falling loosely about her shoulders, rather than carefully dressed on her head, indicates that she is a maiden. The overall mood is one of expectancy. Perhaps walking a pet and catching an evening breeze is a pretext to escape palace scrutiny for a lovers’ assignation. In Mughal India tender sentiments were a bridge to the erotic – and if this seems contradictory, so too is the balance of realism and caricature, and naturalism with the schematic. Both are hallmarks of miniatures painted in this place and time. The earliest Mughal Indian miniatures date to the 16th century. They were inspired by those painted at the refined Moslem courts of the neighboring Persian empire. They incorporated figures in spite of the Moslem faith’s proscription against depicting the human form. Such was the nature of sophisticated courtly life everywhere that beauty and pleasure trumped systems of morality. This was no less the case at the provincial Indian courts, where our miniature, marked by a charming pictorial naiveté, was most likely painted. Yet the artist was undeniably accomplished. His command of perspective, introduced by Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century, is seen in the landscape, which rolls back to a distant horizon, contrary to the flat two-dimensional ones following Indian-painting traditions. And if Mughal artists were influenced by Western art, the compliment was returned by Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds, among others, who collected Indian miniatures (as did, perhaps, Giovanni Bellini who painted in Mughal style the famous miniature of a Persian man...

Remie Lohse was born in Puerto Rico, studied painting in Denmark, and settled in New York in 1928, where he became a professional photographer. In the 1930s he was a freelancer who specialized in advertising and magazine features, and shot covers for Vogue. If he often focused on the high life, seen in this couple stepping out on the town, he also shot humble subjects. He was more interested in his art than a particular milieu, and many of his photographs are little masterpieces. His contemporary Gilbert Seldes, the noted Vanity Fair media critic and “public intellectual” (not to mention father of actress Marian Seldes), featured Lohse in his 1934 book 'This is New York, The First Modern Photographic Book of New York.' In 1939 Lohse came out with his own book titled 'The Miniature Camera in Professional Hands.' Our photograph was one of three shot by Lohse for a 1934 Vogue article titled “High Spots and Low Music." If the photograph (image size 4 1/4" x 6") show a couple making the nocturnal rounds of Manhattan restaurants, bars, and jazz clubs, the story itself also covers the daytime meeting places of the ladies who lunch. The twist is that Lohse’s model was the author herself, Elena Mumm Thornton, and her husband James Worth...

An oil on canvas by Rene Mendes of the ballroom in a gilt frame. René Mendes-France (1888-1985) is an artist born in 1888 The oldest auction result ever registered on the website ...

painting sign L.Gache

An original 1950s mixed media on paper painting by French artist Raymond Boville. This piece depicts two figures in blue, gray, and white hues. Unsigned. Presented as photographed in...

An 19th Century French painting by Eugène Devéria (1805-1865) A romantic sketch depicting a courting couple. Oil on board with gilt frame. Circa 1840-1850 Minor gilt touch-up to cor...