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New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

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Item Ships From: New York
Bless You All Tony Award Broadway Costume Design Mid 20th Century Theatre Modern
Located in New York, NY
Bless You All Tony Award Broadway Costume Design Mid 20th Century Theatre Modern. Miles White (1915 – 2000) "Bless You All," 15 x 11 (sight) inches. Mixed media on paper. The musical opened December 13, 1950 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. Miles won the 1951 Tony Award for Costume Design. Miles was one of my closest friends for the last 20 years of his life. We live with one of his two Tony Awards and a dozen drawings. BIO White was a top Broadway and Hollywood costume designer. The artist created the costumes for the original Broadway productions of OKLAHOMA, CAROUSEL, PAL JOEY and BYE BYE BIRDIE...
Category

1950s Performance New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Ink, Watercolor, Gouache

Watercolor Landscape Study of the Palazzo Andrea Doria, Genoa
Located in New York, NY
Watercolor Landscape Study of the Palazzo Andrea Doria, Genoa. Antique French architectural study of the plan and gardens of the Doria Palace in Genoa, entitled "Plan du Palais Doria...
Category

Early 19th Century New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

“Bugs Bunny, Rocky and Mugsy”
Located in Southampton, NY
This is an original drawing by Virgil Ross featuring Bugs Bunny, Rocky, and Mugsy, likely from the classic looney tunes cartoons. Graphite, colored pencil on animation paper. Untrimm...
Category

1990s Other Art Style New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Archival Paper, Color Pencil, Graphite

"Beautifully Weird" - Figurative drawing on paper with text
Located in East Quogue, NY
Original mixed media work on paper by Adam Baranello. Mixed media, acrylic, spray paint on canvas. Size 17 x 14 in. Offered unframed. Ships rolled Multidisciplinary artist Adam Ba...
Category

2010s Contemporary New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Oil Pastel, Ink, Mixed Media, Spray Paint, Acrylic

Paris Cloud Drawing (signed and inscribed to David) unique work on colored paper
By KAWS
Located in New York, NY
KAWS Cloud Drawing done in white marker on colored paper, 2010 Signed, dated and inscribed to David in white marker with a dateline of Paris Floated and framed in a white wood frame ...
Category

2010s Street Art New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Permanent Marker

"Rail Yard" Urban Industrial WPA American Scene Drawing NYC Mid-Century
By Joseph Solman
Located in New York, NY
"Rail Yard" Urban Industrial WPA American Scene Drawing NYC Mid-Century. Initialed "JS" upper right Solman was a pivotal figure in the development of 20th century American art. He ...
Category

1930s American Modern New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Gouache

Sapath II, Halsey Chait, Abstract Drawing, Geometric, Circle, Black, White
By Halsey Chait
Located in New York, NY
"Sapath II" by Halsey Chait Acrylic on Paper Halsey Chait's drawings develop according to the rules and mathematics that govern the growth processes of life forms and molecular stru...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Acrylic

"Nope" 2025 watercolor on paper
By Katie DeGroot
Located in New York, NY
Katie DeGroot Nope, 2025 watercolor on paper 40 x 26 in. (groo125)
Category

2010s Contemporary New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Test Pattern 2 (Grey Study)
By Tom McGlynn
Located in London, GB
Ink, gouache and acrylic on Fabriano paper - Unframed. Test Pattern series sets up a generic template as a poetic prompt to consider how behavioural responses to color and form stim...
Category

Early 2000s Abstract New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Ink, Acrylic, Gouache

Miss Maude Hunters Cabin, Pop Art Watercolor by Gay Kabbash
By Gay Kabbash
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Gay Kabbash, American Title: Miss Maude Year: 1988 Medium: Watercolor on Paper, signed and dated Size: 18 in. x 23.5 in. (45.72 cm x 59.69 cm) Frame Size: 23 x 29 inches
Category

1980s Pop Art New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Watercolor

U 45 - white abstract geometric minimalist 3D composition with folded paper
Located in New York, NY
Anna Kruhelska is a visual artist and architect working across fields of art and design. She creates abstract, three-dimensional paper wall reliefs that startle in their intricacy an...
Category

2010s Abstract Geometric New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Archival Paper

Bow River Bends : landscape artwork on paper
Located in New York, NY
Yen Ha is an architect, artist and writer. Born in Saigon, she lives in New York City. Ha has been awarded residencies by the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativi...
Category

2010s New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Ink, Acrylic, Pen

Art Deco Portrait of a Young Blonde
By Franc Root McCreery
Located in Buffalo, NY
A beautiful pastel portrait by American female modern artist Franc Root McCreery Franc Root McCreery (1888-1957) Born: Dodge City, Kansas, US Franc Root M...
Category

1920s Art Deco New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Pastel

Gucci Spring 19 Accessories. Fashion watercolor on paper
By Manuel Santelices
Located in Miami Beach, FL
The artist has covered New York collections for over 16 years and has interviewed, as a journalist, several fashion designers and personalities for different publications. He loves t...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Ink, Watercolor

Josette Urso "Bella" Watercolor on Paper
By Josette Urso
Located in New York, NY
Of her recent works, Urso states, "I make exploratory paintings, working in response to my immediate environment. My approach involves moment-to-moment extrapolation governed by intu...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Watercolor

untitled
By Lester Johnson
Located in New York, NY
Lester Johnson untitled charcoal, conte crayon, and spray enamel on board from 1972. Framed.
Category

1970s Other Art Style New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Conté, Charcoal, Spray Paint, Board

untitled
$12,000 Sale Price
20% Off
Unique signed abstract painting on paper renowned artist, Albright Knox Gallery
By Jene Highstein
Located in New York, NY
Jene Highstein Untitled, 1982 Pastel and Chalk on Paper Hand signed and dated by artist on the front 32 × 40 inches Frame included Original hand signed pastel and chalk drawing, with...
Category

1980s Abstract New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Chalk, Pastel, Mixed Media

William Glackens Charcoal on Paper Drawing, Dated 1902
By William Glackens
Located in New York, NY
William Glackens, 1870-1938 Dubourg Drew from his Basket his Mechanical Syringe, 1902 Charcoal, gouache and white chalk on paper Signed (at bottom cen...
Category

Early 1900s New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Charcoal

Farindola 3
Located in New York, NY
Friederike Oeser, a contemporary abstract painter, lives and works in Munich, Germany. For Oeser there is no hierarchy of visual value. It all has import—whether it be a trickle of w...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Oil Pastel

Manhattan Arch
Located in New York, NY
Anthony Baus is an alumnus and instructor of the Grand Central Atelier in Long Island City, New York. His unique artistic vision, which mines the world of the Old Masters and antiqui...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary American Realist New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Ink, Pen, Paper

Ocean Cove unique signed pastel painting by America's foremost landscape painter
By Wolf Kahn
Located in New York, NY
Wolf Kahn Ocean Cove, 1996 Pastel on paper painting Hand signed and dated by Wolf Kahn on the lower right Frame included: matted and framed in a wood frame with UV plexiglass This u...
Category

1990s Contemporary New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Pastel, Oil Pastel

Abstract Mixed Media environmental art collage Andre Emmerich Gallery, Signed
By Judy Pfaff
Located in New York, NY
Judy Pfaff Untitled, 1994 Collage, Mixed media, Gouache and Leaves on paper, in Artist's Frame. Signed with Andre Emmerich & Bellas Artes Gallery Labels - accompanied by original shi...
Category

1990s Abstract Expressionist New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Mixed Media, Gouache

Two Wood Ducks on a Flowering Branch
By Joseph Stella
Located in New York, NY
Joseph Stella was a visionary artist who painted what he saw, an idiosyncratic and individual experience of his time and place. Stella arrived in New York in 1896, part of a wave of Italian immigrants from poverty-stricken Southern Italy. But Stella was not a child of poverty. His father was a notary and respected citizen in Muro Locano, a small town in the southern Appenines. The five Stella brothers were all properly educated in Naples. Stella’s older brother, Antonio, was the first of the family to come to America. Antonio Stella trained as a physician in Italy, and was a successful and respected doctor in the Italian community centered in Greenwich Village. He sponsored and supported his younger brother, Joseph, first sending him to medical school in New York, then to study pharmacology, and then sustaining him through the early days of his artistic career. Antonio Stella specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis and was active in social reform circles. His connections were instrumental in Joseph Stella’s early commissions for illustrations in reform journals. Joseph Stella, from the beginning, was an outsider. He was of the Italian-American community, but did not share its overwhelming poverty and general lack of education. He went back to Italy on several occasions, but was no longer an Italian. His art incorporated many influences. At various times his work echoed the concerns and techniques of the so-called Ashcan School, of New York Dada, of Futurism and, of Cubism, among others. These are all legitimate influences, but Stella never totally committed himself to any group. He was a convivial, but ultimately solitary figure, with a lifelong mistrust of any authority external to his own personal mandate. He was in Europe during the time that Alfred Stieglitz established his 291 Gallery. When Stella returned he joined the international coterie of artists who gathered at the West Side apartment of the art patron Conrad Arensberg. It was here that Stella became close friends with Marcel Duchamp. Stella was nineteen when he arrived in America and studied in the early years of the century at the Art Students League, and with William Merritt Chase, under whose tutelage he received rigorous training as a draftsman. His love of line, and his mastery of its techniques, is apparent early in his career in the illustrations he made for various social reform journals. Stella, whose later work as a colorist is breathtakingly lush, never felt obliged to choose between line and color. He drew throughout his career, and unlike other modernists, whose work evolved inexorably to more and more abstract form, Stella freely reverted to earlier realist modes of representation whenever it suited him. This was because, in fact, his “realist” work was not “true to nature,” but true to Stella’s own unique interpretation. Stella began to draw flowers, vegetables, butterflies, and birds in 1919, after he had finished the Brooklyn Bridge series of paintings, which are probably his best-known works. These drawings of flora and fauna were initially coincidental with his fantastical, nostalgic and spiritual vision of his native Italy which he called Tree of My Life (Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth Foundation and Windsor, Inc., St. Louis, illus. in Barbara Haskell, Joseph Stella, exh. cat. [New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994], p. 111 no. 133). Two Wood Ducks...
Category

20th Century American Modern New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Color Pencil

Great Western Staircase, New York State Capitol Building Albany (View II) Unique
By Richard Haas
Located in New York, NY
Richard Haas Great Western Staircase, New York State Capitol Building, Albany (View II), 1980 Pastel drawing on paper Hand-signed by artist, Signed and dated 1980; bears RDA (Readers Digest...
Category

1980s Realist New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Pastel

Bunny Rabbit Couchant
By Arianna Fioratti Loreto
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated
Category

2010s Old Masters New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, India Ink

contemporary figurative black and white charcoal drawing pop art interior female
Located in New York, NY
This is a hand drawn original artwork on heavyweight paper by internet sensation mad charcoal He is represented by Krause Gallery NYC Ships rolled in a ...
Category

2010s Contemporary New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Charcoal, Archival Ink, Archival Paper

Signed Feminist LGBTQ+ Colorful Ink on Paper Drawing - Profile Notation 418.006
Located in New York, NY
Linda Stein, Profile Notation 418.006 - Signed Feminist LGBTQ+ Colorful Ink on Paper Drawing Profile Notation 418.006 is from Linda Stein's Profiles series--drawings, collages and ...
Category

2010s Feminist New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Ink

Life study of a male nude in repose - European School, late 18th Century
Located in Middletown, NY
European School, late 18th century. Red chalk with primo pensiero in graphite on cream laid paper, 8 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches (215 x 293 mm). Scattered light handling wear and multiple s...
Category

Late 18th Century Naturalistic New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Chalk, Laid Paper, Pencil, Graphite

Mercurio / Mercury
Located in Middletown, NY
A lovely, early drawing of the Roman god Mercury. Pen and brown ink on cream laid paper, with a partial crown and shield watermark, 7 1/4 x 4 7/8 inches (184x 123 mm) (matrix). In go...
Category

Mid-18th Century Old Masters New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Ink, Handmade Paper, Laid Paper

contemporary figurative color oil charcoal pop art interior surreal
Located in New York, NY
This is a hand painted oil and mixed media artwork on canvas by internet sensation mad charcoal professionally framed He is represented by Krause Gallery...
Category

2010s Contemporary New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Charcoal, Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Canvas, Oil, Panel

Never Ending Story
Located in New York, NY
Philip Wittmann work is based on signs. Signs are for him an intermediary between abstraction and writing. He started painting 32 years ago, at the age...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Ink, Paper, Archival Ink, Acrylic, Archival Paper

"Portrait of the Black Ball Clipper Montezuma"
By William Minshall Birchall
Located in Southampton, NY
Watercolor on paper by William Minshall Birchall of the black ball clipper ship, the Montezuma. Titled and signed W. M. Birchall lower left in pencil. Findlay Gallery label verso. 0riginal frame and mat with normal wear due to age. The American packet ship...
Category

Early 1900s Academic New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Johnny Appleseed, UNIQUE signed (Abstract Expressionist acrylic paint on paper)
By Mark di Suvero
Located in New York, NY
Mark di Suvero Untitled, 2014 Acrylic hand painting on digital print. Unique trial proof. Hand signed and annotated Hand signed and annotated Trial Proof by di Suvero 17 1/2 × 16 inches Unframed This is a unique Trial Proof done with acrylic paint on paper, depicting the artist's public abstract expressionist sculpture "Johnny Appleseed...
Category

2010s Abstract Expressionist New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Acrylic, Digital Pigment

"Nest Building" contemporary surrealist painting, swan, French Setee, bluebird
By Thomas Broadbent
Located in New York, NY
29"x41" watercolor on paper. In this contemporary surrealist watercolor painting by Thomas Broadbent, a large white swan rests on a gold gilded French settee...
Category

2010s Contemporary New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Watercolor, Archival Paper

Mother and Children watercolor painting by John E. Costigan
By John Costigan
Located in Hudson, NY
Painting measures 22" x 28" and framed 26" x 32" x 2" Hand-signed "J.E. Costigan NA 1952" lower left. About this artist: John Costigan was a self-taught painter distinguished by h...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Impressionist New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Untitled: Standing Nude
Located in New York, NY
Unknown/ Unidentified Artist, "Standing Nude", Figurative/ Nude Charcoal Drawing on Brown Charcoal Paper, 24 x 20, Late 20th Century, 1968 Colors: White, Blue, Black, Red, Black "S...
Category

1960s Academic New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Charcoal

Abstract watercolor (de-accessioned from Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), w/ label)
Located in New York, NY
Robert Duran Untitled #1 (with Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) label), 1974 Watercolor on paper Includes labels from the Museum of Modern Art rental gallery label and Donna Schneier Inc; the artist's name is written on the board, not signed 18 × 23 1/2 inches Unframed This work was removed from the original vintage frame but comes with the back board with the original labels from MOMA Rental Gallery in New York and Donna Schneier Gallery in Manhattan (and later Palm Beach) Robert Duran Biography (courtesy of KARMA): Robert Duran (b. 1938, Salinas, CA; d. 2005, New Jersey) found his way from San Francisco to New York City in the mid-1960s, where he became associated with a Minimalist cohort that included Brice Marden, David Novros, and Paul Mogensen...
Category

1970s Abstract New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Watercolor

An Interior Language IV
Located in New York, NY
About the Series: Gilliam began the series Life Lines in 2017 after recently coming into possession of MRI scans of her brain. The scans, which she spent hours pouring over, both fas...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Etching, Aquatint, Photographic Paper, Photogram

Abstract vs. Figurative Portrait - Watercolor by Cuban Artist Alain Pino
By Alain Pino
Located in Brooklyn, NY
Abstract vs. Figurative Neutral Original Watercolor by Cuban Artist Alain Pino Pino’s new works continue his exploration on the intersection between identity and industrial design. ...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Watercolor, Archival Paper

Anthurium, Colorful Floral Painting by Amanda Watt
By Amanda Watt
Located in Long Island City, NY
A happy and bright floral painting with artist-painted frame by Irish artist Amanda Watt. Anthurium Amanda Watt, Irish (1960) Date: 1991 Acrylic on Paper, signed l.r. Size: 48 x 60 i...
Category

1990s Contemporary New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Acrylic

Untitled
By Mark Beard
Located in New York, NY
Charcoal with red and white conté crayon on Rives BFK paper Signed and dated, recto This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Mark Beard, born in 1956 in Salt ...
Category

2010s Realist New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Conté, Charcoal

Fractured Light, Abstract Expressionist Watercolor by Danielle Epstein
By Danielle Epstein
Located in Long Island City, NY
Danielle Epstein - Fractured Light, Year: 1987, Medium: Watercolor and pastel on paper, signed and titled verso, Size: 40 x 32 in. (101.6 x 81.28 cm)
Category

1980s Abstract Expressionist New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Pastel, Watercolor

Shiva Asilah
By Lucio Pozzi
Located in New York, NY
Shiva Asilah is a watercolor painting on paper by Italian artist Lucio Pozzi. The paper is signed by the artist himself, and the work is currently housed at Hal Bromm Gallery.
Category

1980s New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Daniel Garber Original Drawing, from Artist's Estate
By Daniel Garber
Located in New York, NY
Daniel Garber (American, 1880-1958) Balderstons, c. Early 20th Century Pencil on paper 7 x 9 in. Framed: 12 x 4 x 1/2 in. Titled and initialed lower right: Balderstons, D.G. Proven...
Category

Early 20th Century American Impressionist New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Pencil

Prison 14, Unique, signed, Graphite pencil and ink drawing on paper, Framed
By Peter Halley
Located in New York, NY
Peter Halley Prison 14, 1995 Graphite pencil and ink drawing on paper. Hand signed. Titled. Dated. Framed. Hand signed on lower right front corner Unique Frame included Unique earli...
Category

1990s Abstract Geometric New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Ink, Graphite

Minimalist painting on paper by pioneering sculptor Lyman Kipp, signed, Framed
Located in New York, NY
Lyman Kipp Untitled Minimalist painting on paper, 1981 Oil paint on paper Signed and dated 1981 on the front Floated and framed in the original vintage frame under UV plexiglass Meas...
Category

1980s Minimalist New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Ink, Oil

contemporary figurative black and white charcoal drawing pop art interior female
Located in New York, NY
This is a hand drawn original artwork on heavyweight paper framed in a flat black frame .
Category

2010s Contemporary New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Charcoal, Archival Paper

Landscape Sketch, Impressionist Graphite Drawing by John Koch
By John Koch
Located in Long Island City, NY
John Koch, American (1909 - 1978) - Landscape Sketch, Year: circa 1970, Medium: Graphite on Paper, Size: 13.75 x 20 in. (34.93 x 50.8 cm)
Category

1970s Impressionist New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Graphite

Chapel and houses along a lake, New England Landscape - American School, 19th C
Located in Middletown, NY
Watercolor and pencil on buff wove watercolor paper, 10 x 8 inches (255 x 203 mm). In good condition with overall minor toning. Some watercolor paint splatters on the verso, contem...
Category

Early 1900s American Modern New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Watercolor, Pencil

"Water Music Manuscript" John Cage, Composer, Music, Fluxus, Conceptual Music
By John Cage
Located in New York, NY
John Cage Water Music Manuscript, 1952 Dated "Spring 1952" lower right Ink on paper 10 3/4 x 16 1/2 inches Provenance The artist Gifted to Carolyn R. Brown, New York Estate of the a...
Category

1950s Conceptual New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Ink

Drawing - Love and the Minotaur by Cuban Artist Jesus Nodarse
By Jesus Nodarse
Located in Brooklyn, NY
For the Love and the Minotaur. Figurative Pencil Drawing on archival paper. Cuban Artist Jesus Nodarse 11 x 8 inches unframed THE MAN: Jesús Nodarse Valdés was born in Sagua la ...
Category

2010s Contemporary New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Archival Paper, Pencil

Partridge Hunting
By Aiden Lassell Ripley
Located in New York, NY
On verso: Original - A. Lassell Ripley / By – (D.R.) –
Category

20th Century New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Watercolor

Signed Feminist LGBTQ+ Acrylic Gouache on Paper Drawing - Profile Solid 383.049
Located in New York, NY
Linda Stein, Profile Solid 383.049 - Signed Feminist LGBTQ+ Colorful Acrylic and Gouache on Paper Drawing Profile Solid 383.049 is from Linda Stein's Profiles series--drawings, coll...
Category

1970s Feminist New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Acrylic, Gouache

Einstein's Ring
Located in New York, NY
Jody Rasch’s work is drawn from various science practices, including astronomy, biology, and sub-atomic physics. In his subject matter and technique, Rasch builds on historical conce...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Acrylic, Handmade Paper

View from the Charles River in Boston 1927
Located in Douglas Manor, NY
5125 Antique charcoal drawing of a landscape as viewed from the Charles River in Boston from 1827 Signed J.G.Berry
Category

1920s New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Carbon Pencil

Study for Old Canal, Red and Blue (Rockaway, Morris Canal)
By Oscar Florianus Bluemner
Located in New York, NY
Oscar Bluemner was a German and an American, a trained architect who read voraciously in art theory, color theory, and philosophy, a writer of art criticism both in German and English, and, above all, a practicing artist. Bluemner was an intense man, who sought to express and share, through drawing and painting, universal emotional experience. Undergirded by theory, Bluemner chose color and line for his vehicles; but color especially became the focus of his passion. He was neither abstract artist nor realist, but employed the “expressional use of real phenomena” to pursue his ends. (Oscar Bluemner, from unpublished typescript on “Modern Art” for Camera Work, in Bluemner papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, as cited and quoted in Jeffrey R. Hayes, Oscar Bluemner [1991], p. 60. The Bluemner papers in the Archives [hereafter abbreviated as AAA] are the primary source for Bluemner scholars. Jeffrey Hayes read them thoroughly and translated key passages for his doctoral dissertation, Oscar Bluemner: Life, Art, and Theory [University of Maryland, 1982; UMI reprint, 1982], which remains the most comprehensive source on Bluemner. In 1991, Hayes published a monographic study of Bluemner digested from his dissertation and, in 2005, contributed a brief essay to the gallery show at Barbara Mathes, op. cit.. The most recent, accessible, and comprehensive view of Bluemner is the richly illustrated, Barbara Haskell, Oscar Bluemner: A Passion for Color, exhib. cat. [New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2005.]) Bluemner was born in the industrial city of Prenzlau, Prussia, the son and grandson of builders and artisans. He followed the family predilection and studied architecture, receiving a traditional and thorough German training. He was a prize-winning student and appeared to be on his way to a successful career when he decided, in 1892, to emigrate to America, drawn perhaps by the prospect of immediate architectural opportunities at the Chicago World’s Fair, but, more importantly, seeking a freedom of expression and an expansiveness that he believed he would find in the New World. The course of Bluemner’s American career proved uneven. He did indeed work as an architect in Chicago, but left there distressed at the formulaic quality of what he was paid to do. Plagued by periods of unemployment, he lived variously in Chicago, New York, and Boston. At one especially low point, he pawned his coat and drafting tools and lived in a Bowery flophouse, selling calendars on the streets of New York and begging for stale bread. In Boston, he almost decided to return home to Germany, but was deterred partly because he could not afford the fare for passage. He changed plans and direction again, heading for Chicago, where he married Lina Schumm, a second-generation German-American from Wisconsin. Their first child, Paul Robert, was born in 1897. In 1899, Bluemner became an American citizen. They moved to New York City where, until 1912, Bluemner worked as an architect and draftsman to support his family, which also included a daughter, Ella Vera, born in 1903. All the while, Oscar Bluemner was attracted to the freer possibilities of art. He spent weekends roaming Manhattan’s rural margins, visiting the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and New Jersey, sketching landscapes in hundreds of small conté crayon drawings. Unlike so many city-based artists, Bluemner did not venture out in search of pristine countryside or unspoiled nature. As he wrote in 1932, in an unsuccessful application for a Guggenheim Fellowship, “I prefer the intimate landscape of our common surroundings, where town and country mingle. For we are in the habit to carry into them our feelings of pain and pleasure, our moods” (as quoted by Joyce E. Brodsky in “Oscar Bluemner in Black and White,” p. 4, in Bulletin 1977, I, no. 5, The William Benton Museum of Art, Storrs, Connecticut). By 1911, Bluemner had found a powerful muse in a series of old industrial towns, mostly in New Jersey, strung along the route of the Morris Canal. While he educated himself at museums and art galleries, Bluemner entered numerous architectural competitions. In 1903, in partnership with Michael Garven, he designed a new courthouse for Bronx County. Garven, who had ties to Tammany Hall, attempted to exclude Bluemner from financial or artistic credit, but Bluemner promptly sued, and, finally, in 1911, after numerous appeals, won a $7,000 judgment. Barbara Haskell’s recent catalogue reveals more details of Bluemner’s architectural career than have previously been known. Bluemner the architect was also married with a wife and two children. He took what work he could get and had little pride in what he produced, a galling situation for a passionate idealist, and the undoubted explanation for why he later destroyed the bulk of his records for these years. Beginning in 1907, Bluemner maintained a diary, his “Own Principles of Painting,” where he refined his ideas and incorporated insights from his extensive reading in philosophy and criticism both in English and German to create a theoretical basis for his art. Sometime between 1908 and 1910, Bluemner’s life as an artist was transformed by his encounter with the German-educated Alfred Stieglitz, proprietor of the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession at 291 Fifth Avenue. The two men were kindred Teutonic souls. Bluemner met Stieglitz at about the time that Stieglitz was shifting his serious attention away from photography and toward contemporary art in a modernist idiom. Stieglitz encouraged and presided over Bluemner’s transition from architect to painter. During the same period elements of Bluemner’s study of art began to coalesce into a personal vision. A Van Gogh show in 1908 convinced Bluemner that color could be liberated from the constraints of naturalism. In 1911, Bluemner visited a Cézanne watercolor show at Stieglitz’s gallery and saw, in Cézanne’s formal experiments, a path for uniting Van Gogh’s expressionist use of color with a reality-based but non-objective language of form. A definitive change of course in Bluemner’s professional life came in 1912. Ironically, it was the proceeds from his successful suit to gain credit for his architectural work that enabled Bluemner to commit to painting as a profession. Dividing the judgment money to provide for the adequate support of his wife and two children, he took what remained and financed a trip to Europe. Bluemner traveled across the Continent and England, seeing as much art as possible along the way, and always working at a feverish pace. He took some of his already-completed work with him on his European trip, and arranged his first-ever solo exhibitions in Berlin, Leipzig, and Elberfeld, Germany. After Bluemner returned from his study trip, he was a painter, and would henceforth return to drafting only as a last-ditch expedient to support his family when his art failed to generate sufficient income. Bluemner became part of the circle of Stieglitz artists at “291,” a group which included Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Arthur Dove. He returned to New York in time to show five paintings at the 1913 Armory Show and began, as well, to publish critical and theoretical essays in Stieglitz’s journal, Camera Work. In its pages he cogently defended the Armory Show against the onslaught of conservative attacks. In 1915, under Stieglitz’s auspices, Bluemner had his first American one-man show at “291.” Bluemner’s work offers an interesting contrast with that of another Stieglitz architect-turned-artist, John Marin, who also had New Jersey connections. The years after 1914 were increasingly uncomfortable. Bluemner remained, all of his life, proud of his German cultural legacy, contributing regularly to German language journals and newspapers in this country. The anti-German sentiment, indeed mania, before and during World War I, made life difficult for the artist and his family. It is impossible to escape the political agenda in Charles Caffin’s critique of Bluemner’s 1915 show. Caffin found in Bluemner’s precise and earnest explorations of form, “drilled, regimented, coerced . . . formations . . . utterly alien to the American idea of democracy” (New York American, reprinted in Camera Work, no. 48 [Oct. 1916], as quoted in Hayes, 1991, p. 71). In 1916, seeking a change of scene, more freedom to paint, and lower expenses, Bluemner moved his family to New Jersey, familiar terrain from his earlier sketching and painting. During the ten years they lived in New Jersey, the Bluemner family moved around the state, usually, but not always, one step ahead of the rent collector. In 1917, Stieglitz closed “291” and did not reestablish a Manhattan gallery until 1925. In the interim, Bluemner developed relationships with other dealers and with patrons. Throughout his career he drew support and encouragement from art cognoscenti who recognized his talent and the high quality of his work. Unfortunately, that did not pay the bills. Chronic shortfalls were aggravated by Bluemner’s inability to sustain supportive relationships. He was a difficult man, eternally bitter at the gap between the ideal and the real. Hard on himself and hard on those around him, he ultimately always found a reason to bite the hand that fed him. Bluemner never achieved financial stability. He left New Jersey in 1926, after the death of his beloved wife, and settled in South Braintree, Massachusetts, outside of Boston, where he continued to paint until his own death in 1938. As late as 1934 and again in 1936, he worked for New Deal art programs designed to support struggling artists. Bluemner held popular taste and mass culture in contempt, and there was certainly no room in his quasi-religious approach to art for accommodation to any perceived commercial advantage. His German background was also problematic, not only for its political disadvantages, but because, in a world where art is understood in terms of national styles, Bluemner was sui generis, and, to this day, lacks a comfortable context. In 1933, Bluemner adopted Florianus (definitively revising his birth names, Friedrich Julius Oskar) as his middle name and incorporated it into his signature, to present “a Latin version of his own surname that he believed reinforced his career-long effort to translate ordinary perceptions into the more timeless and universal languages of art” (Hayes 1982, p. 189 n. 1). In 1939, critic Paul Rosenfeld, a friend and member of the Stieglitz circle, responding to the difficulty in categorizing Bluemner, perceptively located him among “the ranks of the pre-Nazi German moderns” (Hayes 1991, p. 41). Bluemner was powerfully influenced in his career by the intellectual heritage of two towering figures of nineteenth-century German culture, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. A keen student of color theory, Bluemner gave pride of place to the formulations of Goethe, who equated specific colors with emotional properties. In a November 19, 1915, interview in the German-language newspaper, New Yorker Staats-Zeitung (Abendblatt), he stated: I comprehend the visible world . . . abstract the primary-artistic . . . and after these elements of realty are extracted and analyzed, I reconstruct a new free creation that still resembles the original, but also . . . becomes an objectification of the abstract idea of beauty. The first—and most conspicuous mark of this creation is . . . colors which accord with the character of things, the locality . . . [and which] like the colors of Cranach, van der Weyden, or Durer, are of absolute purity, breadth, and luminosity. . . . I proceed from the psychological use of color by the Old Masters . . . [in which] we immediately recognize colors as carriers of “sorrow and joy” in Goethe’s sense, or as signs of human relationship. . . . Upon this color symbolism rests the beauty as well as the expressiveness, of earlier sacred paintings. Above all, I recognize myself as a contributor to the new German theory of light and color, which expands Goethe’s law of color through modern scientific means (as quoted in Hayes 1991, p. 71). Hayes has traced the global extent of Bluemner’s intellectual indebtedness to Hegel (1991, pp. 36–37). More specifically, Bluemner made visual, in his art, the Hegelian world view, in the thesis and antithesis of the straight line and the curve, the red and the green, the vertical and the horizontal, the agitation and the calm. Bluemner respected all of these elements equally, painting and drawing the tension and dynamic of the dialectic and seeking ultimate reconciliation in a final visual synthesis. Bluemner was a keen student of art, past and present, looking, dissecting, and digesting all that he saw. He found precedents for his non-naturalist use of brilliant-hued color not only in the work Van Gogh and Cezanne, but also in Gauguin, the Nabis, and the Symbolists, as well as among his contemporaries, the young Germans of Der Blaue Reiter. Bluemner was accustomed to working to the absolute standard of precision required of the architectural draftsman, who adjusts a design many times until its reality incorporates both practical imperatives and aesthetic intentions. Hayes describes Bluemner’s working method, explaining how the artist produced multiple images playing on the same theme—in sketch form, in charcoal, and in watercolor, leading to the oil works that express the ultimate completion of his process (Hayes, 1982, pp. 156–61, including relevant footnotes). Because of Bluemner’s working method, driven not only by visual considerations but also by theoretical constructs, his watercolor and charcoal studies have a unique integrity. They are not, as is sometimes the case with other artists, rough preparatory sketches. They stand on their own, unfinished only in the sense of not finally achieving Bluemner’s carefully considered purpose. The present charcoal drawing is one of a series of images that take as their starting point the Morris Canal as it passed through Rockaway, New Jersey. The Morris Canal industrial towns that Bluemner chose as the points of departure for his early artistic explorations in oil included Paterson with its silk mills (which recalled the mills in the artist’s childhood home in Elberfeld), the port city of Hoboken, Newark, and, more curiously, a series of iron ore mining and refining towns, in the north central part of the state that pre-dated the Canal, harkening back to the era of the Revolutionary War. The Rockaway theme was among the original group of oil paintings that Bluemner painted in six productive months from July through December 1911 and took with him to Europe in 1912. In his painting journal, Bluemner called this work Morris Canal at Rockaway N.J. (AAA, reel 339, frames 150 and 667, Hayes, 1982, pp. 116–17), and exhibited it at the Galerie Fritz Gurlitt in Berlin in 1912 as Rockaway N. J. Alter Kanal. After his return, Bluemner scraped down and reworked these canvases. The Rockaway picture survives today, revised between 1914 and 1922, as Old Canal, Red and Blue (Rockaway River) in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D. C. (color illus. in Haskell, fig. 48, p. 65). For Bluemner, the charcoal expression of his artistic vision was a critical step in composition. It represented his own adaptation of Arthur Wesley’s Dow’s (1857–1922) description of a Japanese...
Category

20th Century American Modern New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Charcoal

Clemente Pujol de Gustavino An orientalist Arab Guardsman
Located in New York, NY
Artist: Clemente Pujol de Guastavino (1850-1905) Origin: Spanish Signature: signed C. Pujol (lower right) Medium: oil on canvas Dimension: 25 1/2 in x 19 3/4 in. Framed 34 by 2...
Category

19th Century New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Original flower drawing on Rockefeller Center Puppy print, Hand Signed by Koons
By Jeff Koons
Located in New York, NY
Jeff Koons Original flower drawing on Rockefeller Center Puppy poster (Hand Signed), 2000 Drawing done in silver marker on offset lithograph Hand signed by Jeff Koons in marker on t...
Category

Early 2000s Pop Art New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Permanent Marker, Lithograph, Offset

Original tulips in landscape ink drawing, signed & inscribed in monograph Framed
By Jeff Koons
Located in New York, NY
Jeff Koons Original tulips in landscape drawing, 2011 Original drawing done in ink across the title pages of Gagosian Gallery monograph Signed, dated and warmly inscribed to Jennifer...
Category

2010s Pop Art New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Ink, Mixed Media, Lithograph, Offset

Mughal School, 18th cent – Emperor Jahangir & Empress Nur Jahan on a Tiger Hunt
Located in Middletown, NY
A beautiful composition depicting Empress Nur Jahan on a tiger hunt, an act of feminism. Circa 1750. Gouache and ink with heightening in gold on brown laid paper, 12 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches (317 x 210 mm), with a floral-motif border painted in blue and oxblood, the full sheet. With extensive inscriptions in Persian written in black ink on the verso. In good condition with overall toning and minor creasing, all consistent with age. The color is rich and and fresh with bright yellow illumination. In the distance we see the Jahangir Mahal Agra, as well as a sage meditating in his hut. A beautiful composition. Nur Jahan was fond of hunting and often went on hunting tours with her husband and was known for her boldness in hunting ferocious tigers. She is reported to have slain four tigers with six bullets during one hunt. According to Sir Syed Ahmad Khan this feat, inspired a poet to declaim a spontaneous couplet in her honor: "Though Nur Jahan be in form a woman, In the ranks of men she...
Category

18th Century Rajput New York - Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Gold

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