Charles E. Burchfield

Untitled (Trees)

1916

An original American impressionist figurative watercolor of a California coastline with trees.

Robert Noel Blair (American, 1912-2003) was an American artist, painter, sculptor, printmaker and teacher. He is best known for his rural life & desert landscapes and World War II sc...

You are viewing a modernist American watercolor painting by Robert Noel Blair. Robert Noel Blair (American, 1912-2003) was an American artist, painter, sculptor, printmaker and te...

Gouache of a French cityscape titled "Street in Gordes France" by Sylvia Davis. This piece was originally part of the lending and sales gallery of the Memorial Art Gallery of the Uni...

An original watercolor on paper by American modernist Charles E. Burchfield, created in 1916. This work comes in an archival frame presentation and has been authenticated by the Bur...

An original watercolor painting by Westley "Wes" Olmsted. This work is currently featured in the exhibition Man of Extremes at Benjaman Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Westley G. Olmsted ...

If you are interested in African American Art and in Women in the Arts, I will certainly not need to introduce Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1988). Often associated with the Harlem Renaiss...

"NY Street Signs" Mid-20th Century WPA 1938 Modernist Abstract Realism Pop Art Stuart Davis (American, 1892-1964) "Street Signs" Modernist gouache and traces of pencil on paper in t...

Colorado Modernist landscape, watercolor on paper by Turner B. Messick (1878-1952) from 1938. Tree with houses and mountains in the background, pain...

John Marin New York from the Ferry, 1914 Signed and dated lower right Watercolor and graphite on paper 11 x 12 3/4 inches Provenance: An American Place, New York Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York Christie's, New York, March 16, 1990, Lot 278 Private Collection (acquired from the above) Sotheby's New York, American Paintings, Drawings, & Sculpture, October 2, 2014, Lot 10 A major figure in early twentieth-century modernism, John Marin captured the colliding energies of the American urban scene and the vibrant contrasts of natural elements in the coastal landscape of Maine and other countryside locales. As one of the premier watercolorists of his era, Marin developed a light, spontaneous style ideally suited to conveying the freshness and flux of city and country experience -- his watercolors are often considered to match in strength those created by Winslow Homer in previous century. At the same time, Marin's sensitivity to mass, form, color, and line and their dynamic interchanges provided a precedent for the Abstract Expressionist movement of the late 1950s. Marin was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, to a family of European descent. After studying mechanical drawing and mathematics for half a year at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New York, Marin worked as a draftsman for several architects. It was not until he was almost thirty years old that he began to study art. He enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia from 1899 to 1901, and at the Art Students League in New York from 1901 to 1903, where his teachers were William Merritt Chase and Frank Vincent Dumond. While Marin was attending the League, the radical ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow were being disseminated and had an impact on the direction Marin would soon take in his art. Marin left for Europe in 1905. The next five years, which he spent abroad, were of tremendous importance to his career. He became a significant figure in the expatriate community in Paris, frequenting the Dôme, a café that served as a meeting place for artists and writers. While in Europe, Marin visited the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and, despite his claims that he had been indifferent to the Paris art world, he undoubtedly became aware of the art of Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse. The works Marin created in Europe most strongly reflect the influence of James McNeill Whistler, especially the pastels he rendered in Venice. In the summer of 1909, Marin met Alfred Stieglitz in Paris. In February of the next year, Marin's work was shown along with that of Alfred Maurer at Stieglitz's gallery, 291. After returning to America in the following year, Marin became one of the most consistent members of Stieglitz's inner circle, showing at all three of his galleries -- 291, The Intimate Gallery, and An American Place. After 1910, Marin developed the routine that he would follow for the rest of his life, creating paintings, drawings, and prints in New York City and surrounding areas during the winter, and in the summer, traveling to the country, where he focused on the particular characteristics of the regions that he visited. He worked mainly in watercolor until 1928, when he began also to use oil. Marin never became purely abstract. He formulated a unique style melding influences of the art of the French Fauves, Cézanne, Matisse, and the French Cubists with a personal style of luminescent colors, agile brushwork, and a simultaneously delicate and strong handling. In city views, he used broken lines, a light touch, fluid color, and rhythmic compositions to convey what he described as the "great forces at work." He expressed the warring of the great and the small through relationships between masses. As he said, he sought to express the "pull forces" of the modern urban scene. Often portraying the new tall buildings of New York seen...

Colorado mountain landscape watercolor painting signed by artist Rita Derjue (1934-2020) depicts Cabins in the Snow in bright tones of blue, yellow, green and red/brown. Signed by the artist in the lower right corner. Presented in a custom frame with archival materials, outer dimensions measure 24 ⅛ x 31 ½ x 1 ¼ inches. Image sight size is 14 ½ x 21 ½ inches. About the Artist: Born Rhode Island, 1934 Artist, educator, mentor and community activist, Derjue is the daughter of European parents whose family members had previous connections with New York and New England. Her drawing talent as a youngster in Rhode Island caught the attention of family friend Johann Groen, a Dutch-born painter and photographer, who encouraged her to spend time touring and studying in Europe to further her art education. In 1956 she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Rhode Island School of Design that emphasized the fundamentals of drawing and design. Her most memorable teacher was Richard Hamilton, whose work was influenced by German Expressionist Max Beckmann and the jazz greats. Her studies from nature and Cubist compositions done at that time reflect her interest in early twentieth-century European modernist painting. She had the opportunity to experience it firsthand during a year of post-graduate work at the renowned Akademie den Bildenden Kunste in Munich, Germany, in 1956-57. She studied with Ernest Geitlinger (1895-1972) whom the Nazi government classified as a “degenerate” artist in the 1930s, preventing him from exhibiting in Germany. After World War II he was one of the co-founders of the Munich artists’ association, Neue Gruppe, in 1946 and played an important role in abstract painting. While studying with him in Munich she produced a number of canvases in a referential abstract style. She also became acquainted with the Blaue Reiter group that flourished in the early twentieth century and whose expressionism strongly influenced her color palette and painting style. She particularly admired the work of Blaue Reiter co-founder and Wassily Kandinsky’s long-time partner, Gabriele Münter, whose work she studied at the Lenbachhaus in Munich and at the Gabriele Münter Haus and the Schlossmuseum in Murnau south of Munich. Derjue’s immersion in German Expressionism imparted a bold, simplified style to her work. In 1958 with a friend from Munich she went to Mexico for a year, studying with artist Frank Gonzalez in his studio in San Angel, Mexico City, and with Canadian artist, Toni Onley, in San Miguel de Allende. Onley had recently won a scholarship to the Instituto Allende to study mural and fresco painting with David Siqueiros, one of the three greats of Mexican muralism. At the Instituto Onley began painting large black-and-white canvases in an abstract impressionistic style which he imparted to Derjue, who thereafter began exploring color and space in the dimensions of her own large compositions. With writer Gregory Strong, he subsequently published Onley’s Arctic and his autobiography, The Tony Onley Story. After returning to the United States, she worked as a graphic designer for Little, Brown and Company, publishers in Boston. She began dating her future husband, Carle Zimmerman, whom she met earlier in Europe and whom she married in 1960. Joining him at Cornell University where he was completing his Ph.D degree, she earned her Master of Arts degree at the same institution and participated in group shows at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum and the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in upstate New York. In 1963 Derjue and her husband relocated to Littleton, Colorado, where he spent his entire career, first as a research engineer and later as a departmental manager for the Marathon Oil...

Oscar Bluemner Sheepshead, Long Island, 1907 Signed with the artist's conjoined initials "OB" and dated "4-30 - 5 - 30" / "Aug 3, 07" Watercolor on paper 6 x 10 inches Provenance: J...