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Item Ships From: Wisconsin
Weightless, Timeless: Oil Painting of Two Women Swimming in Pool
By Samantha French
Located in Hudson, NY
Horizontal figurative photo-realist painting of women swimming in an aqua blue pool
"Weightless, Timeless," painted by Hudson Valley artist, Samantha French, is 2019
oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches
Sides are cleanly painted white so additional framing is optional
Excellent condition and ready to hang as is
This photorealist figurative painting captures a peaceful water scene of a women leisurely floating in a crisp, aqua blue pool. The sunlight reflecting off their sun kissed skin complements the cool color palette, making for a serene visual experience. The brush work is highly detailed with little texture (impasto) on the surface. The horizontal painting on canvas is currently unframed and has clean, white painted sides, so additional framing is optional.
About the Artist:
Born and raised in north central Minnesota, Samantha French graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2005. French’s current body of work explores the idea of escape, the tranquility and nostalgia for the lazy summer days of her childhood. The series is inspired by Samantha’s own reflections and memories of her childhood summers spent in the lakes of Northern Minnesota. French actively exhibits her paintings and is included in many private and public collections throughout the country while her work has garnered extensive international and national press. She is a full-time painter and keeps a studio in New York’s Hudson Valley.
"My current body of work is focused on swimmers underwater and above. Using vague yet consuming memories from my childhood summers spent immersed in the tepid lakes of northern Minnesota, I attempt to recreate the quiet tranquility of water and nature; of days spent sinking and floating, still and peaceful. These paintings are a link to my home and continual search for the feeling of the sun on my face and warm summer days at the lake. They are my escape, a subtle reprieve from the day-to-day. At the same time, I am drawn to an idealistic time before my own, where swim caps and wool swimsuits were commonplace. This combination of memory, observation and photography has allowed me to preserve the transitory qualities of water and remembrance."
Artist Resume:
2019 Winter Swim, Rubine Red...
Category
2010s Photorealist Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Fishing
By George Raab
Located in Milwaukee, WI
7.25 x 12.25 inches (sheet), 5 x 11.88 inches (block)
Framed 12.63 x 19.50 in
Linoleum block print on laid paper
Unsigned
Category
1930s Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Linocut
$1,740
Maravillas con variaciones acrósticas en el jardín de Miró, 1975, (VI/XV)
By Joan Miró
Located in Milwaukee, WI
Joan Miró produced this original color lithograph especially for Rafael Alberti's text 'Maravillas con Variaciones Acrósticas en el Jardín de Miró' (Wonders with Acrostic Variations ...
Category
Late 20th Century Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Lithograph
17th century etching Rembrandt landscape house trees field sky cow
By Rembrandt van Rijn
Located in Milwaukee, WI
This piece is from a collection of originally designed etchings with drypoints by Rembrandt. It is printed on Ingres D'arches off-white laid paper. The prints are the sixth and final state Posthumous Impression. Printing plates were made in 1650, this collection was printed in 1998.
Rembrandt van Rijn was one of the masters of the landscape genre in his prints and drawings. In his etching, "Landscape with a Cow...
Category
17th Century Renaissance Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Etching
'Cartouche 1-16' Mixed Media, Signed & Dated by Artist
By John Baughman
Located in Milwaukee, WI
Mixed Media, signed & dated lower margin.
Art: 36"x 12 1/2"
Frame: 45 1/2"x 21 1/2"
BORN 1947 - GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN
His mother always thought he was just a little bit of a rebel. And not just because he mixed his paints and painted out of the lines on his paint-by-number pictures. To this day, John Baughman marches to his own drummer, which is apparent when viewing his multi-media artwork. That is also part of his charm. Growing up in rural Western Michigan, John was the oldest of five children. There were no artists in his family, but he was interested in drawing at a very young age; he differed from most young artists in that he wanted to be experimental rather than ordinary. A kind, neighbor lady, Paula Larson, who was a Director of Art, encouraged John to keep his interest in art by always leaving artistic materials on her kitchen table. They were open to him whenever he pleased.
John's father was an executive for GM and hoped his son would grow up to be an engineer. John loved...
Category
Early 2000s Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Mixed Media
Poincons Ramie #624
By Pablo Picasso
Located in Milwaukee, WI
Stamped with artist stamp on verso. Edition number written on verso. Ed. 50/500.
Framed dimensions: 15.88 x 15.88 inches
Category
Late 20th Century Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Ceramic, Terracotta
Tapies Mid-Century Dau al Set Dada Spain Abstract Surrealism Dark Monster Signed
By Antoni Tàpies
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Sarpta" is an original oil on canvas painting created by Antoni Tapies. This is a fantastically dark mid-century abstract painting. There is a monstrous figure barely visible on the left side of the painting. Also a sinister face breathing smoke out of the right side of the painting. This piece is perfect for a collector that enjoys a more avantgarde style. Tapies signed...
Category
Mid-20th Century Surrealist Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
19th century classical religious oil painting portrait female subject red dark
By Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Caterina d'Alexandria (Saint Catherine of Alexandria)" is a copy oil painting on wood panel, after Italian artist Giampietrino (Giovanni Pietro Riz...
Category
19th Century Old Masters Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Oil, Wood Panel
Kees Van Dongen Circus Performers 1900s Vintage Vibrant Figure Fauvist Signed
By Kees van Dongen
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Les Artistes du Cirque" is an original painting in ink, watercolor, and gouache on paper by leading Fauvist artist Kees Van Dongen, signed in the lower right. In the piece, two circus performers stand against against a wall. On the left, a pale woman in a blue leotard with red flowers on the shoulder stands with her arms crossed, looking out at the viewer. The painter fills in her tights with delicate white brushstrokes, lending them an almost iridescent appearance. Her strawberry blond hair is piled on top of her hair according to the fashion of the period. On the right, an African man stands in a vivid orange toga, looking somewhere off to the left. His feet are clad in bright white shoes...
Category
Early 1900s Fauvist Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Paper, Ink, Watercolor, Gouache
Abstract color lithograph 20th century poster
By Joan Miró
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Galerie Maeght Miro" is an original color lithograph poster with art by Joan Miro. It was printed by Maeght Editeur Imprimeur in 1970. The poster showcase...
Category
1970s Surrealist Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Lithograph
"Yanagibashi in Snow, " Color Woodcut Portrait with Umbrella
By Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III)
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Yanagibashi in Snow" is an original color woodcut by Utagawa Kunisada. This woodblock print depicts a woman walking in the snow near the Motoyanagi canal, which was located in Tokyo...
Category
1920s Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Woodcut
'Forest at Fountainbleau' Original Oil Painting on Board from Barbizon School
Located in Milwaukee, WI
This small painting of the Forest at Fontainebleau in France is an excellent example of the Barbizon School. The Barbizon School of artists were working in France roughly between 182...
Category
Mid-19th Century Barbizon School Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Oil, Board
17th century etching Rembrandt biblical scene crucifixion figures
By Rembrandt van Rijn
Located in Milwaukee, WI
Rembrandt's print 'Christ Crucified Between Two Thieves: an oval plate' is one of the most captivating of the artist's oeuvre. Etched to an oval rather than a rectangular plate and t...
Category
1640s Dutch School Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Paper, Etching, Printer's Ink, Drypoint
'So Runs The Story' abstract oil painting by Deirdre Schanen
By Deirdre Schanen
Located in Milwaukee, WI
'So Runs The Story' is an oil painting by the American artist Deirdre Schanen. Schanen's works weave between non-objective abstraction and representative landscape painting. This exa...
Category
2010s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Koi Fish Water Motion Movement Neo Impressionism Realism Contemporary Signed
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Koi" is an original oil painting on canvas created by Thomas Buchs.
Artwork Size: 36" x 36"
Artist Statement:
"I attended Layton School of Art and bec...
Category
2010s American Impressionist Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Ultramarine Oval (Colorful Abstract Three Dimensional Wood Wall Sculpture)
By Peter Hoffman
Located in Hudson, NY
Large vertical abstract three-dimensional wood wall sculpture with colorful pops of acrylic paint in blue, red, yellow, and red
"Ultramarine Oval" by Hudson Valley artist, Peter Hoff...
Category
2010s Abstract Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Wood, Acrylic
20th century color lithograph poster cartoon Snoopy animal print dog bird text
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Snoopy Come Home" is an original lithograph poster by Charles Schulz. It features the popular characters from Peanuts, Snoopy and Woodstock, on top of ...
Category
1970s Pop Art Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Lithograph
Allure, bright purple abstract painting on canvas
By Lisa Fellerson
Located in New York, NY
Lisa Fellerson’s paintings provoke an interplay and tension between line, shape, and color. With no preconceived idea in mind, she begins by dripping, scrapping, and gouging acrylic ...
Category
2010s Abstract Expressionist Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Canvas, Acrylic
Original Sketch for "Tempest, " Sepia Pencil on Paper
By Karin Krohne Kaufman
Located in Milwaukee, WI
This artwork is an original sketch for a painting called "Tempest," by Karin Krohne Kaufman. The artist signed the piece lower right. This piece feat...
Category
1990s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Pencil, Color Pencil
'Preoccupied' original signed Shona stone sculpture by Colleen Madamombe
By Colleen Madamombe
Located in Milwaukee, WI
'Preoccupied' is an original black serpentine sculpture by the celebrated second generation Shona artist Colleen Madamombe. The sculpture presents a character common to Madamombe's w...
Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Stone
"White Calf, " Farm Genre Scene Original Lithograph by Thomas Hart Benton
By Thomas Hart Benton
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"White Calf" is an original lithograph print by Thomas Hart benton. It features the image of a man milking a cow while her calf lays down in front. Benton's breathtaking way of rende...
Category
1940s American Modern Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Lithograph
'Listening Friend' springstone Shona sculpture signed by Chemedu Jemali
By Chemedu Jemali
Located in Milwaukee, WI
'Listening Friend' is an original springstone sculpture signed by the Zimbabwean artist Chemedu Jemali. The sculpture presents the head and torso of a figure, highly abstracted in Jemali's signature style: The figure's head leans to one side, eyes closed, as if carefully listening to the viewer. Like rippling sound waves, ridges cover half the figures face and body, each undulating and glistening with a polished surface. As the viewer walks around the sculpture, they can see that Jemali has left parts of the figure as natural stone, allowing the rough-hewn texture to create an exquisite contrast of surface with the mesmerizing polish.
46 x 13 x 10.5 inches
Signed "Chemedu Jemali" along base, proper right
Chemedu Jemali was born on March 3, 1971 in Harare, where he did his primary education. He and his family then moved to the Shamva township where he completed high school. His family is originally from Malawi and their totem is of the Miranzi (mouse).
Chemedu's work focuses on stylized and abstracted figuration, ranging from spirit birds to stylized busts. Chemedu took an interest in carving in the early 1990s, inspired by the success of his older brother, Chituwa, and became an established carver. Initially, he worked as an apprentice to Chituwa who introduced him to carving the local hard stone such as verdite, springstone, cobalt and lemon opal. He has three brothers and one sister; his brother, Salim, is also a full time sculptor.
He has become a well known artist not only in the Shona Art...
Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Stone
'Kudu' original springstone Shona sculpture antelope signed by Terence Nehumba
By Terence Paradzai Nehumba
Located in Milwaukee, WI
'Kudu' is an original springstone sculpture signed by the Zimbabwean artist Terence Paradzai Nehumba. Terence was trained in the Shona stone carving tradition and this is an excellen...
Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Stone
"New Orleans Streetscape, " Watercolor Cityscape signed by William Collins
Located in Milwaukee, WI
'New Orleans Streetscape" is an original watercolor painting by William Collins. It features a view of a street in New Orleans,. Tall houses with large...
Category
1950s Post-Modern Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Watercolor
'Dancing in the Wind' original Shona stone sculpture by Wellington Karuru
Located in Milwaukee, WI
'Dancing in the Wind' is an original opal serpentine sculpture by the Zimbabwean artist Wellington Karuru. The artist presents an elegant and curvilinear figure of a woman, her hair seeming to billow upward and behind her. The sculpture is on one hand a celebration of the stone material, and on the other it calls back to art historical precedent: her body is brought to a high polish, reflecting the softness of skin, while her hair is left rough-hewn to create the effect of the untamed wind. At the same time, the woman's body is highly stylized and emphasizes her hips and belly, recalling Paleolithic "Venus" sculptures like the lauded Venus of Willendorf and thusly ideas of maternity and womanhood.
opal stone (serpentine)
not signed
23" high x 8" widest point x 4" smallest point, sculpture
4"x4"x4", sculpture bottom
1 x 6 x 6 inches, base
Overall excellent condition with no signs of wear
Sculpture comes with base.
Born on August 17, 1976, Wellington Karuru is the first born to a family of five children and has two brothers and two sisters. As the first born child in a Zimbabwean family, many responsibilities were shouldered upon Wellington. Both his brothers, Gilbert and Esau, are also talented sculptors. He completed his primary and secondary education in Mashonaland West Province and was involved in almost every sporting activity at the school. After he graduated, he was employed at National Foods LTD where he worked as a machine operator for a period of four years and was later promoted to work as a sales clerk. In his free time he assisted some well known artists in sculpting, was able to learn much from them and soon thereafter started to develop his own talent and unique style. Inspired by such well known sculptors such as Gardener Sango and Garison Muchinjili, Wellington started sculpting small pieces for himself and soon found a buyer for his favorite piece titled ‘A Cry For Help’. From that day forward, he has never looked back. He eventually went to work with Garison Machinjili whose influence is clearly shown in his work. Some of his pieces have been chosen already for international exhibitions and galleries. Well established and internationally renowned artists like Joe Mutasa...
Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Stone
"L'Entree en scene (The Emergence), " Color Lithograph after Rene Magritte
By René Magritte
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"L'Entree en scene (The Emergence)" is a color lithograph after a 1961 original piece by Rene Magritte. A transparent bird flies over the ocean. The body of this bird shows through it a clean light sky with fluffy clouds. The view around the bird is instead the dark night, stars shine at the top of the scene. Clouds blow by and the waves are turbulent.
Art: 20.25 x 14.25 in
Frame: 31.38 x 25.38 in
René-François-Ghislain Magritte was born November 21, 1898, in Lessines, Belgium and died on August 15, 1967 in Brussels. He is one of the most important surrealist artists. Through his art, Magritte creates humor and mystery with juxtapositions and shocking irregularities. Some of his hallmark motifs include the bourgeois “little man,” bowler hats, apples, hidden faces, and contradictory texts.
René Magritte’s father was a tailor and his mother was a miller. Tragedy struck Magritte’s life when his mother committed suicide when he was only fourteen. Magritte and his two brothers were thereafter raised by their grandmother.
Magritte studied at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts from 1916 to 1918. After graduating he worked as a wallpaper designer and in advertisement. It was during this period that he married Georgette Berger, whom he had known since they were teenagers.
In 1926, René Magritte signed a contract with the Brussels Art Gallery, which allowed him to quit his other jobs and focus completely on creating art. A year later he had his first solo show at the Galerie la Centaurie in Brussels. At this show Magritte exhibited what is today thought of as his first surrealist piece, The Lost Jockey, painted in 1926. In this work a jockey and his steed run across a theater stage, curtains parted on either side. Throughout the scene, there are trees with trunks shaped somewhat like chess pawns with musical scores running vertically up their sides and branches sticking out from all angles. Critics did not enjoy this style of art; it was new, different, and took critical thought to understand, but The Lost Jockey was only the first of many surrealist artworks Magritte would paint.
Because of the bad press in Brussels, René and Georgette moved to Paris in 1927, with the hope that this center of avant-garde art would bring him success and recognition. In Paris, he was able to become friends with many other surrealists, including André Breton and Paul Éluard. They were able to learn from and inspire one another, pushing the Surrealist movement further forward.
It was also in Paris that Magritte decided to add text to some of his pieces, which was one of the elements that made his artwork stand out. In 1929, he painted one of his most famous oil works: The Treachery of Images. This is the eye-catching piece centered on a pipe. Below the pipe is written “Ceci n’est pas un pipe,” which translates to “This is not a pipe.” This simple sentence upset many critics of the time, for of course it was a pipe. Magritte replied that it was not a pipe, but a representation of a pipe. One could not use this oil on canvas as a pipe, to fill it with tobacco and smoke it. Thus, it was not a pipe.
In 1930, Magritte and Georgette moved back to Brussels. Though they would travel to his exhibitions elsewhere, their home going forward would always be in Brussels.
Magritte had his first American exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City in 1936 and his first show in England two years later in 1938 at The London Gallery...
Category
2010s Surrealist Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Lithograph
'Reclining Nude, ' after Degas study for 'Les Maheurs de la Ville d'Orleans'
By Joan Dvorsky
Located in Milwaukee, WI
In this drawing, Milwaukee-based artist Joan Dvorsky presents a drawing after a sketch by Edgar Degas. Degas' original drawing was a study for an 1863 painting entitled 'Les malheurs...
Category
1990s Impressionist Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Paper, Graphite
Effervescent, abstract expressionist painting on canvas, pink and grey
By Lisa Fellerson
Located in New York, NY
Lisa Fellerson’s paintings provoke an interplay and tension between line, shape, and color. With no preconceived idea in mind, she begins by dripping, scraping and gouging acrylic pa...
Category
2010s Abstract Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Canvas, Acrylic
19th century woodcut engraving print figurative American forest trees scene
By Winslow Homer
Located in Milwaukee, WI
The present woodcut engraving is an original print designed by Winslow Homer, originally published in Harper's Weekly on April 30, 1859. It is an excellent example of the many prints Homer produced of fashionable people engaged in leisurely activities, in this case along a picturesque countryside lane. The sign reading 'Belmont' on the left indicates this is probably near his home in Belmont Massachusetts. The image presents multiple figures, both men and women, riding horseback: Some in the distance gallop away, toward a town marked by a church steeple beyond. Three others in the foreground, including two equestrian women, gather around a group of children who have been gathering flowers and trapping birds...
Category
1850s Victorian Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Woodcut, Engraving
Horse & Rider Attacking Foot Soldier from De La Bataille Vol. I
By Claude Weisbuch
Located in Milwaukee, WI
Homage a Leonardo d'Vinci (Horse & Rider Attacking Foot Soldier from De La Bataille Vol. I)
Original drypoint, signed lower right, ed. VIII/L
Art: 11-5/8" x 15-1/2"
Frame: 27-5/8"...
Category
1970s Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Drypoint
"Trapped in New York, " Acrylic on Canvas Field of Trees signed by Tom Shelton
By Tom Shelton
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Trapped in New York" is an original acrylic painting by Tom Shelton. The artist signed, titled, and dated the piece in the lower right. This piece features a forest with animals and...
Category
1990s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Canvas, Acrylic
"Paricutin (Volcano in Michoacan, Mexico)" Woodcut & Monotype signed by Summers
By Carol Summers
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Paricutin (Volcano in Michoacan, Mexico)" is a woodcut and monotype signed by Carol Summers. In the image, an abstracted volcano erupts in a joyous burst of purples and oranges. The playfulness of the image is enhanced by Summers' signature printmaking technique, which allows the ink from the woodblock to seep through the paper, blurring the edges of each form.
Art: 8 x 11 in
Frame: 17 x 19 in
Carol Summers (1925-2016) has worked as an artist throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the first years of the next, outliving most of his mid-century modernist peers. Initially trained as a painter, Summers was drawn to color woodcuts around 1950 and it became his specialty thereafter. Over the years he has developed a process and style that is both innovative and readily recognizable. His art is known for it’s large scale, saturated fields of bold color, semi-abstract treatment of landscapes from around the world and a luminescent quality achieved through a printmaking process he invented.
In a career that has extended over half a century, Summers has hand-pulled approximately 245 woodcuts in editions that have typically run from 25 to 100 in number. His talent was both inherited and learned. Born in 1925 in Kingston, a small town in upstate New York, Summers was raised in nearby Woodstock with his older sister, Mary. His parents were both artists who had met in art school in St. Louis. During the Great Depression, when Carol was growing up, his father supported the family as a medical illustrator until he could return to painting. His mother was a watercolorist and also quite knowledgeable about the different kinds of papers used for various kinds of painting. Many years later, Summers would paint or print on thinly textured paper originally collected by his mother.
From 1948 to 1951, Carol Summers trained in the classical fine and studio arts at Bard College and at the Art Students League of New York. He studied painting with Steven Hirsh and printmaking with Louis Schanker. He admired the shapes and colors favored by early modernists Paul Klee (Sw: 1879-1940) and Matt Phillips (Am: b.1927- ). After graduating, Summers quit working as a part-time carpenter and cabinetmaker (which had supported his schooling and living expenses) to focus fulltime on art. That same year, an early abstract, Bridge No. 1 was selected for a Purchase Prize in a competition sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum.
In 1952, his work (Cathedral, Construction and Icarus) was shown the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in an exhibition of American woodcuts. In 1954, Summers received a grant from the Italian government to study for a year in Italy. Woodcuts completed soon after his arrival there were almost all editions of only 8 to 25 prints, small in size, architectural in content and black and white in color. The most well-known are Siennese Landscape and Little Landscape, which depicted the area near where he resided. Summers extended this trip three more years, a decision which would have significant impact on choices of subject matter and color in the coming decade.
After returning from Europe, Summers’ images continued to feature historical landmarks and events from Italy as well as from France, Spain and Greece. However, as evidenced in Aetna’s Dream, Worldwind and Arch of Triumph, a new look prevailed. These woodcuts were larger in size and in color. Some incorporated metal leaf in the creation of a collage and Summers even experimented with silkscreening. Editions were now between 20 and 50 prints in number. Most importantly, Summers employed his rubbing technique for the first time in the creation of Fantastic Garden in late 1957.
Dark Vision of Xerxes, a benchmark for Summers, was the first woodcut where Summers experimented using mineral spirits as part of his printmaking process. A Fulbright Grant as well as Fellowships from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation followed soon thereafter, as did faculty positions at colleges and universities primarily in New York and Pennsylvania. During this period he married a dancer named Elaine Smithers with whom he had one son, Kyle. Around this same time, along with fellow artist Leonard Baskin, Summers pioneered what is now referred to as the “monumental” woodcut. This term was coined in the early 1960s to denote woodcuts that were dramatically bigger than those previously created in earlier years, ones that were limited in size mostly by the size of small hand-presses. While Baskin chose figurative subject matter, serious in nature and rendered with thick, striated lines, Summers rendered much less somber images preferring to emphasize shape and color; his subject matter approached abstraction but was always firmly rooted in the landscape.
In addition to working in this new, larger scale, Summers simultaneously refined a printmaking process which would eventually be called the “Carol Summers Method” or the “ Carol Summers Technique”. Summers produces his woodcuts by hand, usually from one or more blocks of quarter-inch pine, using oil-based printing inks and porous mulberry papers. His woodcuts reveal a sensitivity to wood especially its absorptive qualities and the subtleties of the grain. In several of his woodcuts throughout his career he has used the undulating, grainy patterns of a large wood plank to portray a flowing river or tumbling waterfall. The best examples of this are Dream, done in 1965 and the later Flash Flood Escalante, in 2003. In the majority of his woodcuts, Summers makes the blocks slightly larger than the paper so the image and color will bleed off the edge.
Before printing, he centers a dry sheet of paper over the top of the cut wood block or blocks, securing it with giant clips. Then he rolls the ink directly on the front of the sheet of paper and pressing down onto the dry wood block or reassembled group of blocks. Summers is technically very proficient; the inks are thoroughly saturated onto the surface of the paper but they do not run into each other. The precision of the color inking in Constantine’s Dream in 1969 and Rainbow Glacier in 1970 has been referred to in various studio handbooks. Summers refers to his own printing technique as “rubbing”. In traditional woodcut printing, including the Japanese method, the ink is applied directly onto the block. However, by following his own method, Summers has avoided the mirror-reversed image of a conventional print and it has given him the control over the precise amount of ink that he wants on the paper. After the ink is applied to the front of the paper, Summers sprays it with mineral spirits, which act as a thinning agent. The absorptive fibers of the paper draw the thinned ink away from the surface softening the shapes and diffusing and muting the colors. This produces a unique glow that is a hallmark of the Summers printmaking technique. Unlike the works of other color field artists or modernists of the time, this new technique made Summers’ extreme simplification and flat color areas anything but hard-edged or coldly impersonal.
By the 1960s, Summers had developed a personal way of coloring and printing and was not afraid of hard work, doing the cutting, inking and pulling himself. In 1964, at the age of 38, Summers’ work was exhibited for a second time at the Museum of Modern Art. This time his work was featured in a one-man show and then as one of MoMA’s two-year traveling exhibitions which toured throughout the United States. In subsequent years, Summers’ works would be exhibited and acquired for the permanent collections of multiple museums throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. Summers’ familiarity with landscapes throughout the world is firsthand. As a navigator-bombardier in the Marines in World War II, he toured the South Pacific and Asia.
Following college, travel in Europe and subsequent teaching positions, in 1972, after 47 years on the East Coast, Carol Summers moved permanently to Bonny Doon in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Northern California. There met his second wife, Joan Ward Toth, a textile artist who died in 1998; and it was here his second son, Ethan was born. During the years that followed this relocation, Summers’ choice of subject matter became more diverse although it retained the positive, mostly life-affirming quality that had existed from the beginning. Images now included moons, comets, both sunny and starry skies, hearts and flowers, all of which, in one way or another, remained tied to the landscape.
In the 1980s, from his home and studio in the Santa Cruz mountains, Summers continued to work as an artist supplementing his income by conducting classes and workshops at universities in California and Oregon as well as throughout the Mid and Southwest. He also traveled extensively during this period hiking and camping, often for weeks at a time, throughout the western United States and Canada. Throughout the decade it was not unusual for Summers to backpack alone or with a fellow artist into mountains or back country for six weeks or more at a time. Not surprisingly, the artwork created during this period rarely departed from images of the land, sea and sky. Summers rendered these landscapes in a more representational style than before, however he always kept them somewhat abstract by mixing geometric shapes with organic shapes, irregular in outline. Some of his most critically acknowledged work was created during this period including First Rain, 1985 and The Rolling Sea, 1989. Summers received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Bard College in 1979 and was selected by the United States Information Agency to spend a year conducting painting and printmaking workshops at universities throughout India. Since that original sabbatical, he has returned every year, spending four to eight weeks traveling throughout that country.
In the 1990s, interspersed with these journeys to India have been additional treks to the back roads and high country areas of Mexico, Central America, Nepal, China and Japan. Travel to these exotic and faraway places had a profound influence on Summers’ art. Subject matter became more worldly and non-western as with From Humla to Dolpo, 1991 or A Former Life of Budha, 1996, for example. Architectural images, such as The Pillars of Hercules, 1990 or The Raja’s Aviary, 1992 became more common. Still life images made a reappearance with Jungle Bouquet in 1997. This was also a period when Summers began using odd-sized paper to further the impact of an image.
The 1996 Night, a view of the earth and horizon as it might be seen by an astronaut, is over six feet long and only slightly more than a foot-and-a-half high. From 1999, Revuelta A Vida (Spanish for “Return to Life”) is pie-shaped and covers nearly 18 cubic feet. It was also at this juncture that Summers began to experiment with a somewhat different palette although he retained his love of saturated colors. The 2003 Far Side of Time is a superb example of the new direction taken by this colorist.
At the turn of the millennium in 1999, “Carol Summers Woodcuts...
Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Monotype, Woodcut
"Kente Cloth Ashanti Tribe, Ghana, " Silk and Cotton Weaving created circa 1970
Located in Milwaukee, WI
This silk and cotton fabric was made by an unknown Ashanti artist. It features green and orange accents. The Ashanti are a major ethnic group of the Akans in Ghana, a fairly new nation, barely more than 50 years old. Ghana, previously the Gold Coast, was a British colony until 1957. It is now politically separated into four main parts. Ashanti is in the center and Kumasi is the capital.
The Ashanti have a wide variety of arts. Bark cloth was used for clothing before weaving was introduced. With weaving, there is cotton and silk. Women may pick cotton...
Category
1970s Folk Art Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Cotton, Silk
Jusqu'a L'Abstraction' color lithograph poster Wassily Kandinsky
By Wassily Kandinsky
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Jusqu'a L'Abstraction" is a lithograph poster by Wassily Kandinsky. This poster depicts abstract forms in purple, pink, blue, and black and was created for the Maeght gallery in Par...
Category
1940s Modern Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Lithograph
"Original Lithograph XI" from Miro Lithographs II, Maeght Publisher by Joan Miró
By Joan Miró
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Original Lithograph XI" is an original color lithograph by Joan Miro, published in "Miro Lithographs II, Maeght Publisher" in 1975. It depicts Miro's signature biomorphic abstract s...
Category
1970s Abstract Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Lithograph
Toulouse Lautrec Original Lithograph Famous Political 1800s Collection Signed
By Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Lautrec Book: From Au Pied du Sinai written by Georges Clemenceau" lithographs created by the legendary Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. This book, Au Pied...
Category
1890s Post-Impressionist Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Mulberry Paper, Lithograph
"Indonesian Mask, " Wood with Gold Leaf of Smiling Man
Located in Milwaukee, WI
This mask was made by an unknown Indonesian sculpture. It is carved out of wood and covered in gold leaf. It features an abstracted face and is 7" tall by 5 1/2" wide.
Category
19th Century Folk Art Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Gold Leaf
"Family of Six, " Original Lithograph signed by John Thomas Biggers
By John Thomas Biggers
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Family of Six" is an original black and white lithograph by John Biggers. The artist signed and dated the piece in the lower right and titled and editioned it (AP III) in the lower ...
Category
1980s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Lithograph
Original Lithograph Native American Figure Portrait Male Tribe Bold Stoic Signed
By Leonard Baskin
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Kill Spotted Horse" is an original lithograph created by Leonard Baskin. It was published by Fox Graphics. This is a proof purchased directly from the artist. Baskin signed the work in the lower right margin and labelled the work as a proof in the lower left margin, written with graphite. It depicts Kill Spotted Horse, an Assinniboine Native American, in a feather headdress against a light blue background.
Artwork Size: 15" x 13 1/2"
Frame Size: 27 1/2" x 26 3/8"
Artist Bio:
Leonard Baskin (1922-2000) was an american artist born in New Jersey and taught art classes in Massachusetts. He has received many public commissions (including a bas relief for the FDR Memorial), honors, and his work is owned by many major museums around the world. Additionally, Baskin was a teacher at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. As a champion for human rights, Baskin created many pieces celebrating those who were seldom recognized.
Baskin’s interest in nineteenth century Native Americans was roused into acute attendance from ignorant indifference, when the National Park Service asked him to provide illustrations for the handbook that described the then called “Custer National Park”, now called “Little Big...
Category
1990s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Lithograph, Ink
17th century etching animal print sketch ram sheep black and white signed
By Karel Dujardin
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Two Rams Looking Down & To Their Left" is an original etching by Karel DuJardin. DuJardin completed many delicate etchings of rams.
3 3/4" x 7 3/4" art
16 3/8" x 19 1/2" frame
Du Jardin was a master of various genres of painting, including refined and tranquil Italianising landscapes, monumental historical paintings and superb portraits of the aristocracy.
Unlike the majority of his contemporaries, Karel du Jardin (b. Amsterdam 1626, d. Venice 1678) was a talented painter in not one, but many different genres. He is especially famous for his small-scale landscapes, such as the charming Italian landscape with a woman milking a goa" (1652) from the Rijksmuseum's collection. Du Jardin depicted both sun-filled Italianate scenes and Dutch farmyards with pigs and sheep. He also painted a range of elegant portraits of aristocrats and merchants. His self-portrait (1662) on copper is one of the most fascinating 17th-century portraits of a Dutch artist. Du Jardin's spectacular large-scale historical pieces, represented is the show by the impressive Conversion of Saint Pau" (1662) from the collection of the National Gallery of London, are among his most remarkable achievements; he often chose themes that were only rarely depicted by other Dutch painters of the period.
During his own lifetime Du Jardin was praised by poets and writers, particularly for his attention to detail and elegant painting technique. As Cornelis de Bie, the artist’s biographer, wrote in 1661: "the surety of the brush at his finger and such sharpe clarity […] that the eye thereon doth linger." Du Jardin's valuable paintings were mainly purchased by rich individuals with an eye for elegance, but were also commissioned by prominent institutions such as the Amsterdam 'Spinhuis' (a women's prison), for whom he painted a vast group portrait of the prison-governors.
Karel du Jardin was an artist who liked to travel. He lived for a time in Lyon and in Paris, and sailed with Joan Reynst, Heer van Drakestein, by ship via England, Portugal and Spain to Tangier and Algiers, where they met Michiel de Ruyter...
Category
17th Century Old Masters Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Etching
'Blue Sea Square Vase' original blue hand-blown glass vase signed by Ioan Nemtoi
By Ioan Nemtoi
Located in Milwaukee, WI
This hand-blown square vase by Ioan Nemtoi could easily be the centerpiece of any collection of glass art. Nemtoi's incorporation of gestural composition techniques derived from Abstract Expressionism into his glass work yields a dazzling array of colors when this vase is illuminated from the inside.
Hand-blown glass
13.25 x 7.4375 x 7.25 inches
Signed 'Nemtoi' along the base
Ioan Nemtoi was born in 1964 on a farm in Trusesti near Dorohoi, in North-Eastern Romania, as the eldest son of a large family. When Nemtoi was in the fifth grade, one of his teachers noticed his artistic talent and sent him to art school. Later he went on to the art branch...
Category
1990s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Glass, Blown Glass
Friendship by Barbara Schaumann - Contemporary Abstract Cubistic Painting
Located in DE
Barber Schaumann is a contemporary artist known for her vibrant, abstract interpretations of the female form. Her work combines bold colors with modern, geometric shapes, blending el...
Category
2010s Abstract Geometric Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
"Setting Moon, " Nighttime Landscape Oil on Wood signed by Robert Richter
By Robert Richter
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Setting Moon" is an original oil painting on wood by Robert Richter. The artist signed, titled, and dated the piece in pencil on the back of the piece. This artwork features a bright moon setting behind deep green trees at night. The artist hand-carved the frame to become an integral part of the artwork.
23" x 28 1/4" art
30" x 35 1/4" frame
Artist's Statement:
"I was born in Milwaukee over half-a-century ago in the year of the horse...
Category
2010s Outsider Art Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Wood, Oil
"La Reconnaissance Infinie (The Infinite Recognition)" Litho after Rene Magritte
By René Magritte
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"La Reconnaissance Infinie (The Infinite Recognition)" is a color lithograph after the 1963 painting by Rene Magritte. Two of Magritte's bourgeois "littl...
Category
2010s Surrealist Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Lithograph
Bahia, lime green abstract expressionist painting, broad brushstrokes
By Lisa Fellerson
Located in New York, NY
Lisa Fellerson’s paintings provoke an interplay and tension between line, shape, and color. With no preconceived idea in mind, she begins by dripping, scrapping, and gouging acrylic ...
Category
2010s Abstract Expressionist Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Canvas, Acrylic
"Indonesian Golek Puppet (Male), " Handmade Carved, Painted Wood & Fabric c. 1900
Located in Milwaukee, WI
This Golek puppet was made by an unknown Indonesian artist using wood and cloth. It is approximately 24" tall.
Traditional Wayang Golek plays can be compared to European and North America: most performances revolve around Kings, Queens, Princes and Princesses who fight against evil, mystical, beings to (usually) end happily.
Three-dimensional Indonesian puppets...
Category
Early 20th Century Folk Art Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Textile, Wood
Maori Tribe, Chiefs Staff (Elaborate Carving)
Located in Milwaukee, WI
Chiefs Staff (Elaborate Carving) c 1900-1925
Wooden staffs were used by Maori chiefs and other notables as a physical sign of their status. They were hel...
Category
Early 20th Century Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Wood
20th century landscape pastel drawing colorful grass path hills sky signed
By Wolf Kahn
Located in Milwaukee, WI
'Study for Connecticut at Putney' is an original pastel drawing by American artist Wolf Kahn. The landscape is an exploration of color and light: it is rendered in cool blues and purples with fields of subtle yellow, the pastels treated with the same gesture as Kahn's paintbrush on a canvas. Indeed, this pastel was a study executed en plein air for a painting – the painting now sometimes called 'Bend in the River' – that he later created in the studio. This process of creating studies, selecting the best of the studies, and then recreating them as paintings was typical of Kahn's studio process and makes this pastel a significant example of the artist's creative output.
9 x 11 inches, artwork
15.5 x 18.13 inches, frame
Signed 'W. Kahn' lower right
Framed to conservation standards using archival materials including 100 percent rag matting. Housed in a gold finish wood moulding.
Acquired directly from the artist.
Wolf Kahn, the youngest of four siblings, was born into a well-to-do artistic family. His father was the conductor of the Stuttgart Philharmonic Symphony, and his mother came from a family of art collectors.(1) During 1938, Kahn took his first art lessons, but most of his initial drawings were of military or historical events. The next year Kahn was sent to England for safety following the ascendancy of Hitler to power, and in 1940, he immigrated to the United States.
In 1942, he entered New York's High School of Music and Art, and while there, he was employed by a commercial art firm doing illustrations. After a stint in the Navy, Kahn entered Hans Hofmann's school, and among his fellow students were Neil Blaine, Jane Freilicher, Allan Kaprow and Larry Rivers. His initial results were done with a dark palette and abstracted forms, and although Hofmann's style of teaching was difficult, Kahn has consistently praised him for teaching him the value of control and understanding.(2)
Kahn's first exhibition was a 1951 group show in a loft with several other artists in lower Manhattan. From this impromptu show, a group effort evolved called the Hansa Gallery Cooperative.(3) In 1953, Wolf Kahn had a one-man show at this gallery, which was reviewed by Fairfield Porter, and at this same time bolder, more vivid colors began to appear in his work. By the mid-1950's, on a summer trip to Provincetown, Kahn's paintings indicated a new direction of softening warm colors in the manner of Bonnard. He was included in Meyer Shapiro's seminal exhibition, The New York School: The Second Generation at the Jewish Museum, and by the end of the 1950s, he had developed his abstracted landscape style for which he is best known.
In 1966, he made his first "barn" painting on Martha's Vineyard that reduced the complexities of detail of the architecture to a more basic shape, a stylistic convention that is evident in the Museum's painting. Kahn has since commented frequently on his use of color as a unique and specific component of each work as the situation demands, where the gradual buildup of the colors resembles the beauty and translucent nature of pastels.(4) Since then Kahn has had one-person exhibitions at the Kansas City Art Institute, Chrysler Museum, San Diego Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art and the Columbus Museum, among others. His work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums throughout the United States.
Footnotes:
1. Much of the biographical information is drawn from Justin Spring, Wolf Kahn (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996).
2. Spring, 21. Wolf Kahn draws this from a 1973 address to the College Art Association.
3. This group included Jane Wilson...
Category
1970s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Pastel, Paper
"Red Egg, " Hand Blow Glass signed by Ioan Nemtoi
By Ioan Nemtoi
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Red Egg" is a blown glass piece by Ioan Nemtoi. It features swirls of red, yellow, blue, and black.
6" length, 4 1/4" max diameter
IOAN NEMTOI was born in ...
Category
Early 2000s Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Blown Glass
18th century diptych portraits man and woman American formal dress flower
By William Jennys
Located in Milwaukee, WI
The present pair of portraits would make an exceptional addition to any collection of early American art not only because they were painted by the notable William Jennys, but also because the sitters are members of notable and influential New England families. In addition, these pendants have impeccable provenance: they have never left ownership of the decedents of the Kimball family and this is the first time they have been available for purchase.
David Kimball (1766-1848) and Nancy Stacy Kimball (1774-1844) were members of historic Massachusetts families. David Kimball is a sixth-generation decedent of Richard Kimball (d. 1675) and Ursula Scott (d. 1659), who emigrated from Rattlasden, Suffolk County, England to Watertown MA around 1634. The family then relocated in 1637 to Ipswich, the city with which the family is now most strongly identified, when Richard was appointed to be a wheelwright.[1] Nancy likewise had early New England ancestry, descended from Simon Stacy and Elizabeth Clark, who were married in London in 1620.[2]
Nancy Stacy was the second wife of David Kimball, and the two were married in 1799. Given this, the present pendant portraits were likely completed shortly after the marriage. David had two children by his first wife Mary Morse, who died in September of 1798. David and Nancy would have nine additional children between 1801 and 1815.[3]
Most notably, the couple were parents of the Boston politician and showman Moses Kimball (1809-1895).[2][3] Moses would found the Boston Museum, an early for-profit museum and theater opened in 1841 that resembled European curiosity cabinets: the museum displayed paintings of Thomas Scully and Charles Peale alongside Chinese artwork, stuffed animals, dwarves and mermaids. Alongside these exhibits, visitors could attend the theater which held performances by gymnasts and contortionists, followed by performances of Shakespeare and Dickens.[4] This museum set the model for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which when founded in 1870 held a similarly diverse collection and appealed to the interests of a diverse set of visitors.[5] Moreover, some Greek antiquities from Moses Kimball's museum were eventually given to the MFA and Moses donated approximately $5,000 to the MFA's endowment upon his death.[6][7]
William Jennys (1774–1859), also known as J. William Jennys, is an important American primitive portrait...
Category
1790s Academic Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
'It Is Sad Only To Us' original abstract oil painting by Deirdre Schanen
By Deirdre Schanen
Located in Milwaukee, WI
'It Is Sad Only To Us' is an oil painting by the American artist Deirdre Schanen. Schanen's works weave between non-objective abstraction and representative landscape painting. This ...
Category
2010s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
"Triplets (C-25), " Black Serpentine Stone Sculpture signed by Colleen Madamombe
By Colleen Madamombe
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Triplets (C-25)" is an original black serpentine sculpture by Colleen Madamombe. The artist signed the piece. This artwork features three women in large, textured dresses, gesturing and standing close to one another.
9 1/2" x 13" x 8" art
Colleen Madamombe was born in 1964 in Harare, Zimbabwe. Considered to be among the finest new talents from Zimbabwe, she has won the award of Best Female Artist of Zimbabwe for the past three consecutive years, and is quickly becoming an established figure of the Second Generation of Zimbabwean stone...
Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Stone
"Gehl Dairy Farm, " Original Mixed Media Surrealist signed by David Barnett
By David Barnett
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Gehl Dairy Farm" is an original mixed media piece by David Barnett and his daughter, Sarah Barnett, signed and dated in the lower right. Begun in 1997 and ...
Category
Early 2000s Surrealist Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Paper, Mixed Media
"Moche Owl Pot, " Animalic Ceramic Vessel created in Pre-Columbian Peru
Located in Milwaukee, WI
This piece is a pot made by an unknown artist in Pre-Columbian Peru. It takes the shape of an owl and has a circular handle with the opening on its back. This pot is a light beige an...
Category
15th Century and Earlier Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Ceramic
"French Guinea Baga Machole Bird, " Carved and Painted Wood created circa 1980
Located in Milwaukee, WI
This bird sculpture was created by an unknown Baga artist in French Guinea. The bird's head is covered with paint and intricate patterns. Among the less well known Baga art forms are the a-Bamp (or a-Bemp) bird figures. They range from the naturalistic to the abstract and often have small birds or other animals on their backs. Different birds are represented including pelicans, egrets and other fishing birds...
Category
1980s Folk Art Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Wood, Paint
19th century color lithograph seascape boat ship waves maritime landscape
By Currier & Ives
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"The Celebrated Clipper Ship Dreadnought" is an original hand-colored lithograph by Currier & Ives. It depicts a sailing ship.
13 1/4" x 17 1/2" art
19" x 23 1/2" frame
Nathaniel Currier was a tall introspective man with a melancholy nature. He could captivate people with his piercing stare or charm them with his sparkling blue eyes. Nathaniel was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts on March 27th, 1813, the second of four children. His parents, Nathaniel and Hannah Currier, were distant cousins who lived a humble yet spartan life. When Nathaniel was eight years old, tragedy struck. Nathaniel’s father unexpectedly passed away leaving Nathaniel and his eleven-year-old brother Lorenzo to provide for the family. In addition to their mother, Nathaniel and Lorenzo had to care for six-year-old sister Elizabeth and two-year-old brother Charles. Nathaniel worked a series of odd jobs to support the family, and at fifteen, he started what would become a life-long career when he apprenticed in the Boston lithography shop of William and John Pendleton.
A Bavarian gentleman named Alois Senefelder invented lithography just 30 years prior to young Nat Currier’s apprenticeship. While under the employ of the brothers Pendleton, Nat was taught the art of lithography by the firm’s chief printer, a French national named Dubois, who brought the lithography trade to America.
Lithography involves grinding a piece of limestone flat and smooth then drawing in mirror image on the stone with a special grease pencil. After the image is completed, the stone is etched with a solution of aqua fortis leaving the greased areas in slight relief. Water is then used to wet the stone and greased-ink is rolled onto the raised areas. Since grease and water do not mix, the greased-ink is repelled by the moisture on the stone and clings to the original grease pencil lines. The stone is then placed in a press and used as a printing block to impart black on white images to paper.
In 1833, now twenty-years old and an accomplished lithographer, Nat Currier left Boston and moved to Philadelphia to do contract work for M.E.D. Brown, a noted engraver and printer. With the promise of good money, Currier hired on to help Brown prepare lithographic stones of scientific images for the American Journal of Sciences and Arts. When Nat completed the contract work in 1834, he traveled to New York City to work once again for his mentor John Pendleton, who was now operating his own shop located at 137 Broadway. Soon after the reunion, Pendleton expressed an interest in returning to Boston and offered to sell his print shop to Currier. Young Nat did not have the financial resources to buy the shop, but being the resourceful type he found another local printer by the name of Stodart. Together they bought Pendleton’s business.
The firm ‘Currier & Stodart’ specialized in "job" printing. They produced many different types of printed items, most notably music manuscripts for local publishers. By 1835, Stodart was frustrated that the business was not making enough money and he ended the partnership, taking his investment with him. With little more than some lithographic stones, and a talent for his trade, twenty-two year old Nat Currier set up shop in a temporary office at 1 Wall Street in New York City. He named his new enterprise ‘N. Currier, Lithographer’
Nathaniel continued as a job printer and duplicated everything from music sheets to architectural plans. He experimented with portraits, disaster scenes and memorial prints, and any thing that he could sell to the public from tables in front of his shop. During 1835 he produced a disaster print Ruins of the Planter's Hotel, New Orleans, which fell at two O’clock on the Morning of the 15th of May 1835, burying 50 persons, 40 of whom Escaped with their Lives. The public had a thirst for newsworthy events, and newspapers of the day did not include pictures. By producing this print, Nat gave the public a new way to “see” the news. The print sold reasonably well, an important fact that was not lost on Currier.
Nat met and married Eliza Farnsworth in 1840. He also produced a print that same year titled Awful Conflagration of the Steamboat Lexington in Long Island Sound on Monday Evening, January 18, 1840, by which melancholy occurrence over One Hundred Persons Perished. This print sold out very quickly, and Currier was approached by an enterprising publication who contracted him to print a single sheet addition of their paper, the New York Sun. This single page paper is presumed to be the first illustrated newspaper ever published.
The success of the Lexington print launched his career nationally and put him in a position to finally lift his family up. In 1841, Nat and Eliza had their first child, a son they named Edward West Currier. That same year Nat hired his twenty-one year old brother Charles and taught him the lithography trade, he also hired his artistically inclined brother Lorenzo to travel out west and make sketches of the new frontier as material for future prints. Charles worked for the firm on and off over the years, and invented a new type of lithographic crayon which he patented and named the Crayola. Lorenzo continued selling sketches to Nat for the next few years.
In 1843, Nat and Eliza had a daughter, Eliza West Currier, but tragedy struck in early 1847 when their young daughter died from a prolonged illness. Nat and Eliza were grief stricken, and Eliza, driven by despair, gave up on life and passed away just four months after her daughter’s death.
The subject of Nat Currier’s artwork changed following the death of his wife and daughter, and he produced many memorial prints and sentimental prints during the late 1840s. The memorial prints generally depicted grief stricken families posed by gravestones (the stones were left blank so the purchasers could fill in the names of the dearly departed). The sentimental prints usually depicted idealized portraits of women and children, titled with popular Christian names of the day.
Late in 1847, Nat Currier married Lura Ormsbee, a friend of the family. Lura was a self-sufficient woman, and she immediately set out to help Nat raise six-year-old Edward and get their house in order. In 1849, Lura delivered a son, Walter Black Currier, but fate dealt them a blow when young Walter died one year later. While Nat and Lura were grieving the loss of their new son, word came from San Francisco that Nat’s brother Lorenzo had also passed away from a brief illness. Nat sank deeper into his natural quiet melancholy. Friends stopped by to console the couple, and Lura began to set an extra place at their table for these unexpected guests. She continued this tradition throughout their lives.
In 1852, Charles introduced a friend, James Merritt Ives, to Nat and suggested he hire him as a bookkeeper. Jim Ives was a native New Yorker born in 1824 and raised on the grounds of Bellevue Hospital where his father was employed as superintendent. Jim was a self-trained artist and professional bookkeeper. He was also a plump and jovial man, presenting the exact opposite image of his new boss.
Jim Ives met Charles Currier through Caroline Clark, the object of Jim’s affection. Caroline’s sister Elizabeth was married to Charles, and Caroline was a close friend of the Currier family. Jim eventually proposed marriage to Caroline and solicited an introduction to Nat Currier, through Charles, in hopes of securing a more stable income to support his future wife.
Ives quickly set out to improve and modernize his new employer’s bookkeeping methods. He reorganized the firm’s sizable inventory, and used his artistic skills to streamline the firm’s production methods. By 1857, Nathaniel had become so dependent on Jims’ skills and initiative that he offered him a full partnership in the firm and appointed him general manager. The two men chose the name ‘Currier & Ives’ for the new partnership, and became close friends.
Currier & Ives produced their prints in a building at 33 Spruce Street where they occupied the third, fourth and fifth floors. The third floor was devoted to the hand operated printing presses that were built by Nat's cousin, Cyrus Currier, at his shop Cyrus Currier & Sons in Newark, NJ. The fourth floor found the artists, lithographers and the stone grinders at work. The fifth floor housed the coloring department, and was one of the earliest production lines in the country. The colorists were generally immigrant girls, mostly German, who came to America with some formal artistic training. Each colorist was responsible for adding a single color to a print. As a colorist finished applying their color, the print was passed down the line to the next colorist to add their color. The colorists worked from a master print displayed above their table, which showed where the proper colors were to be placed. At the end of the table was a touch up artist who checked the prints for quality, touching-in areas that may have been missed as it passed down the line. During the Civil War, demand for prints became so great that coloring stencils were developed to speed up production.
Although most Currier & Ives prints were colored in house, some were sent out to contract artists. The rate Currier & Ives paid these artists for coloring work was one dollar per one hundred small folios (a penny a print) and one dollar per one dozen large folios. Currier & Ives also offered uncolored prints to dealers, with instructions (included on the price list) on how to 'prepare the prints for coloring.' In addition, schools could order uncolored prints from the firm’s catalogue to use in their painting classes.
Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives attracted a wide circle of friends during their years in business. Some of their more famous acquaintances included Horace Greeley, Phineas T. Barnum, and the outspoken abolitionists Rev. Henry Ward, and John Greenleaf Whittier (the latter being a cousin of Mr. Currier).
Nat Currier and Jim Ives described their business as "Publishers of Cheap and Popular Pictures" and produced many categories of prints. These included Disaster Scenes, Sentimental Images, Sports, Humor, Hunting Scenes, Politics, Religion, City and Rural Scenes, Trains, Ships, Fire Fighters, Famous Race Horses, Historical Portraits, and just about any other topic that satisfied the general public's taste. In all, the firm produced in excess of 7500 different titles, totaling over one million prints produced from 1835 to 1907.
Nat Currier retired in 1880, and signed over his share of the firm to his son Edward. Nat died eight years later at his summer home 'Lion’s Gate' in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Jim Ives remained active in the firm until his death in 1895, when his share of the firm passed to his eldest son, Chauncey.
In 1902, faced will failing health from the ravages of Tuberculosis, Edward Currier sold his share of the firm to Chauncey Ives...
Category
1870s Other Art Style Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Lithograph
Original Lithograph X, from Miro Lithographs II, Maeght Publisher by Joan Miró
By Joan Miró
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Original Lithograph X" is an original color lithograph by Joan Miro, published in "Miro Lithographs II, Maeght Publisher" in 1975. It depicts Miro's signature biomorphic abstract st...
Category
1970s Abstract Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Lithograph
Lithographie Originale I, from Miro Lithographs IV, Maeght Publisher, Joan Miró
By Joan Miró
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Lithographie Originale I" is an original color lithograph by Joan Miro, published in "Miro Lithographs IV, Maeght Publisher" in 1981. It depicts Miro's signature biomorphic abstract...
Category
1980s Abstract Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Lithograph
"Tribal Cloth, Ewe Ghana, " Multicolored Cotton Textile created circa 1965
Located in Milwaukee, WI
The Ewe people from Ghana are master weavers. People of means commission cloths called adanudo ("skilled/wise cloths"). Ewe adanudo textiles often display a tweed effect by twisting ...
Category
1960s Folk Art Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Cotton
'Teacher or Preacher' original signed Shona stone sculpture by Colleen Madamombe
By Colleen Madamombe
Located in Milwaukee, WI
'Teacher or Preacher' is an original black serpentine sculpture by the celebrated second generation Shona artist Colleen Madamombe. The sculpture presents a character common to Madam...
Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Wisconsin - Art
Materials
Stone