Catalog: Fine Art (124)

A beautiful vintage original oil painting portrait of a woman in a kimono signed lower right and stamped on verso. Harry Lang Barton, artist and illustrator May 12, 1908 - August 12, 2001 Born in Cleveland and raised in Seattle, Harry Barton spent his life doing the thing he truly loved--painting. Whether in the Pacific Northwest around Seattle, Hood Canal, and Puget Sound, or in the Art Students League, Central Park, and the parks and beaches of Long Island, or in Pennsylvania and New England (he often summered in Rockport, Massachusetts, and Kennebunkport, Maine), Harry's life was art. Harry's career as an artist embraced almost every medium and a great many genres: from charcoal and pen and ink to watercolor, tempura, and oil; from his early work in Seattle as a silk-screen artist and an illustrator for the Sterling Theatres and the telephone company, to his New York work as an illustrator of Western pulp fiction, detective and mystery novels, and movie and fashion advertisements, and finally to his extensive activity as a portrait and landscape painter. In the spring of 1945, he decided to study for the summer at the Art Students League in New York with Frank Reilly, and in the fall of that year he was offered work in New York as an illustrator for Gale Phillips Associates. Moving his family from Seattle, he--along with his wife Pauline and his daughters Joan and Linda--took up residence in Bayside, Queens, and soon moved to the Auburndale area of Flushing, where he had his own freelance studio and where he lived the rest of his life. Over the years his illustrations were featured in The Saturday Evening Post, Argosy, Boy's Life, Down East, and American Artist, as well as on movie billboards for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and in fashion advertising for Lord & Taylor and Gertz department stores. But his main body of work as an illustrator can be found in hard-cover and paperback novels published by such major firms as Dell, Ace Books, Dial Press, and Farrar Straus & Giroux. Harry's paintings and sketches were exhibited in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; in the Salmagundi Club, Lord & Taylor, the Smith Gallery, and Illustration House in New York in the Blue Heron Gallery in Wellfleet, Cape Cod; in the Schaff Gallery in Cincinnati; and in Mast Cove Gallery in Kennebunkport. He received a number of prizes for his work, and his paintings are held in private collections in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Harry was a member of the American Artists Professional League, the Salmagundi Club, and the Art Students League of New York, where he kept on working throughout his life, studying with--in addition to Frank Reilly--Samuel Edmund Oppenheini, William Draper, and Everett Raymond Kintsler. Harry loved the Art Students League and was very proud of being a Life Member. His Saturday jaunts to the League continued right up to the time when the League closed for the summer three months before he died. He was fortunate in being able to do what he enjoyed most to the very end. less

Original vintage modernist abstract painting of books by Barry Nemett oil on canvas signed lower right and dated 1971. Presented in a natural oak wood frame. Measures 19ʺW × 1.5ʺD × 49ʺH in good condition minor touch ups. Biography: Barry Nemett, Chair of the Painting Department at Maryland Institute College of Art, studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, received his BFA at Pratt Institute and his MFA at Yale University. His awards include The Hugh Fraser Foundation, Ford Foundation Grant, MICA Trustee Grant for Excellence in Teaching, Maryland State Arts Council Individual Fellowship Grant, ITT International Travel Fellowship/Fulbright Hays Grant, Ely Harwood Schless Award for Excellence in Drawing and Painting at Yale University, Faculty Enrichment Grant, and the Berkeley T. Rulon Miller Award. Prof. Nemett has curated numerous traveling exhibitions, and has exhibited his own work at the National Academy Museum, Museum of Art, Rochefort-en-Terre, France, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan, Baltimore Museum of Art, Delaware Museum of Art, Institute of International Education, Washington County Museum of Art, Andre Zarre Gallery, Atlanta College of Art, Goucher College, Indiana University, Loyola College, New Jersey State Museum, University of North Carolina, Pratt Institute, St. John's University, University of Maryland, University of New Hampshire, University of Pennsylvania, Wellesley College, College of William and Mary, and Yale University.

An original vintage modernist carved wood sculpture of a female form by renowned Indian sculptor Kesavan Appukuttan Achary. Solid wood mounted on a solid wood base signed Appu the name he goes by. Measuring overall 18.5"wide by 11" high. x 5.5" deep. The actual measurements of the sculpture are 13" x 9" x 4". A beautiful example of this artists work. Born in Trivandrum in 1925, Appukuttan ( known as Appu ) (1925-1997) learned drawing and painting from the Ramavarma Drawing and Painting Institute, Trivandrum. In 1957 he joined the Regional Design Centre as a master craftsman for ivory carving and also as an artist of South Indian temple documentation. A number of his ink drawings have been included in ?Pratima Kosha? an encyclopaedia of Indian Iconography-published in VI volumes by professor S.K.Ramachandra Rao and by the Kalpatharu Research Acadamy. Appukuttan Achary received the National Award in the year 1965 for his ivory carving and also 15 awards from various state Lalit Kala Acadamies. His book "Rekha" which is to be published shortly depicts traditional motifs, designs and sculptural forms with a foreword written by the famous author and art critic Sri.Chaithanya.

Oil painting on canvas of a nude female figure signed A Brook lower right- Alexander Brook (1898 – 1980) . Image size 22"x 30", overall dimensions 26.5" x34.5". Lightly textured. In Good Condition. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Alexander Brook was a realist painter, whose works consisted mostly of still-life subjects, landscapes, and figures, often of women. He was very successful in his day, winning second prize to Picasso's first prize at the Carnegie Institute International Exhibition of Modern Painting in 1930. In New York, he studied at the Art Students League between the years of 1914-1918. It was at the Art Students League that Brook developed significant relationships with Niles Spencer, Reginald Marsh, Kenneth Hays Miller, Yasuo Kuniyoshi and, perhaps most significantly, Peggy Bacon, whom he married in 1920. Along with Kenneth Hayes Miller, Brook studied with John C. Johansen, Frank V. DuMond, George Bridgeman and Dimitri Romanofski. Within this group lay the foundations of American Realism. Brook was a member of the Society of Independent Artists, who rebelled against the strictures of the National Academy of Design. In 1938 Brook traveled to Savannah, Georgia, there he did some of his most provocative work. After two years in the South, Bacon and Brook were divorced. Brook later married the painter Gina Knee. During the years 1928 through 1939, Alexander Brook had works in over one-hundred exhibitions, fifteen of which were one man shows. By 1942, Brook had resumed teaching at the Art Students League. Demand for the artist's work kept him in significant collections, galleries, and museums, including the Downtown Gallery (New York), the National Academy of Design, the Rehn Gallery, the Larcada and the Knoedler galleries. Brook received awards at the Art Institute of Chicago (1929), the Pennsylvania Academy (1931), the Guggenheim Fellowship (1931), and the San Francisco Art Association (1938).

Vintage American Impressionist Oil Painting Girl Flowers on the Beach by Barton. Oil on 20 x 24" panel signed lower left presented in a quality gallery frame. Harry Lang Barton, artist and illustrator May 12, 1908 - August 12, 2001 Born in Cleveland and raised in Seattle, Harry Barton spent his life doing the thing he truly loved--painting. Whether in the Pacific Northwest around Seattle, Hood Canal, and Puget Sound, or in the Art Students League, Central Park, and the parks and beaches of Long Island, or in Pennsylvania and New England (he often summered in Rockport, Massachusetts, and Kennebunkport, Maine), Harry's life was art. Harry's career as an artist embraced almost every medium and a great many genres: from charcoal and pen and ink to watercolor, tempura, and oil; from his early work in Seattle as a silk-screen artist and an illustrator for the Sterling Theatres and the telephone company, to his New York work as an illustrator of Western pulp fiction, detective and mystery novels, and movie and fashion advertisements, and finally to his extensive activity as a portrait and landscape painter. In the spring of 1945, he decided to study for the summer at the Art Students League in New York with Frank Reilly, and in the fall of that year he was offered work in New York as an illustrator for Gale Phillips Associates. Moving his family from Seattle, he--along with his wife Pauline and his daughters Joan and Linda--took up residence in Bayside, Queens, and soon moved to the Auburndale area of Flushing, where he had his own freelance studio and where he lived the rest of his life. Over the years his illustrations were featured in The Saturday Evening Post, Argosy, Boy's Life, Down East, and American Artist, as well as on movie billboards for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and in fashion advertising for Lord & Taylor and Gertz department stores. But his main body of work as an illustrator can be found in hard-cover and paperback novels published by such major firms as Dell, Ace Books, Dial Press, and Farrar Straus & Giroux. Harry's paintings and sketches were exhibited in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; in the Salmagundi Club, Lord & Taylor, the Smith Gallery, and Illustration House in New York in the Blue Heron Gallery in Wellfleet, Cape Cod; in the Schaff Gallery in Cincinnati; and in Mast Cove Gallery in Kennebunkport. He received a number of prizes for his work, and his paintings are held in private collections in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Harry was a member of the American Artists Professional League, the Salmagundi Club, and the Art Students League of New York, where he kept on working throughout his life, studying with--in addition to Frank Reilly--Samuel Edmund Oppenheini, William Draper, and Everett Raymond Kintsler. Harry loved the Art Students League and was very proud of being a Life Member. His Saturday jaunts to the League continued right up to the time when the League closed for the summer three months before he died. He was fortunate in being able to do what he enjoyed most to the very end

A beautiful vintage set of three Chinese paintings on silk Muses of Music with Deer and Tiger with musical instruments. Presented beautifully framed and matted. Each measuring 16.5" W x 26.5" H x 0.75" D. Each artist signed with exquisite details.

Original vintage expressionist etching print titled "Garden of no Tomorrows" numbered9/15 signed titled circa 1964 by Sylvia T Gavurin. Printed on quality wove paper archival matted and framed in a contemporary gold frame overall size 25ʺW × 1ʺD × 19ʺH Sylvia T Gavurin (1911 - 2002) was a Los Angeles based artist best known for her printmaking she showed in local exhibits her work is held in several private collections. In the 1940s Sylvia Gavurin was a court stenogrepher for the military. She was assigned to record the trials at Dachau Germany. This had a profound affect on her life and was a influence in her art work. This is an example of her work expressing the holocaust.

A rare color lithograph by Wayne Thiebaud titled Coronado signed, numbered 5 of 15 and dated 1956. overall sheet size 16 x25 12.5 x 21.5 inches. A beautiful colorful modernist image of sail boats off the San Diego coast with the old Coranado Hotel in the left of the image. A very scarce print in excellent condition some slight discoloration from a previous matte.

Biography

A painter of pop-art realism combined with a great respect for traditional methods and subject matter, Wayne Thiebaud is one of the most prominent of the Bay Area painters in California in the latter part of the 20th century. His reputation spread far beyond his own state. In his painting, he focuses on the commonplace in a way that suggests irony and objective distance from his subjects. He also makes a point of keeping an independent distance from the New York art scene. He was born in Mesa, Arizona, in 1920, and for one summer during his high school years he apprenticed at the Walt Disney Studio and then studied at an Los Angeles trade school the next summer. He earned a degree from Sacramento State College in 1941. From 1938 to 1949, he worked as a cartoonist and designer in California and New York and served as an artist in the United States Army. In 1950, at the age of thirty, he enrolled in Sacramento State where he earned a Master's Degree in 1952 and began teaching at Sacramento City College. In 1960, he became assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, where he remained through the 1970s and influenced numerous artist students. However, he did not have much following among Conceptualists because of his adherence to basically traditional disciplines, emphasis on hard work rather than creativity, and love of realism. On a leave of absence, he spent time in New York City where he became friends with Willem De Kooning and Franz Kline and was much influenced by these abstractionists as well as Pop Artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. During this time, he began a series of very small paintings based on images of food displayed in windows, and he focused on their basic shapes. Returning to California, he pursued this subject matter and style, isolating triangles, circles, squares, etc. He also co-founded the Artists Cooperative gallery, now Artists Contemporary Gallery, and other cooperatives including Pond Farm, having been exposed to the concept of cooperatives in New York. In 1960, he had his first one-man shows in San Francisco at the Museum of Art and New York at the Staempfli and Tanager galleries. These shows received little notice, but two years later, a 1962 New York Sidney Janis Gallery exhibition officially launching Pop Art, brought him national recognition although he disclaimed being anything other than a painter of illusionistic form. In 1963, he turned increasingly to figure painting, wooden and rigid with each detail sharply emphasized; in 1967 his work was shown at the Biennale Internationale, and in 1985, he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Claude Lacaze original oil on panel cubist nudes by the sea signed lower left. measuring Approximately 20 x 30 inches in excellent condition.

Biography

Lacaze was a painter who was heavily influenced by Cubism and Post-Cubism, particularly by fellow Bordeaux painters such as André L’Hote. He was born in Angoulême, Charente and studied at the Lycée Montaigne in Bordeaux and it was there, under an inspirational art master, that his desire to be an artist was initiated. He enrolled at L’École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux and studied under André Edouard Marty. At first, his style was decidedly Cubist, showing the influence of Picasso through the aforementioned L’Hote. However he softened the linear effect somewhat as his career developed and this is particularly apparent in his paintings of nudes. He staged his first solo exhibition in Paris in Rue Visconti quite soon after leaving art school. He also exhibited through his career at other locations in Paris, his home city of Bordeaux, Sainte Maxine, Angoulême and Périgueux but he seems not to have had a particularly commercial attitude to his work apparently sometimes not even turning up to the opening nights. Lacaze was appointed Professor of Fine Art at Collège de Puyguillen and also joined the artistic group Maison des Artistes. Exhibitions:  Paris, Galerie Visconiti; Périgueux, N.T.P.; Angoulême, Galerie Tison d’Argence; Bordeaux, Galerie du Loup; Sainte Maxine, Galerie L’Oleil Fauve. The Musée des Beaux Arts de Bordeaux also exhibited his work.

An original vintage circa 1950 oil painting of a Colorado Rocky Mountain Landsape of Aspen trees titled "Flaming Autumn" in Estes Park. Oil on 24" x 30" panel signed lower left Stirling and titled on verso. Presented in a quality contemporary gallery frame overall size 30.5" x 36.5". David Stirling was born in 1887 in Corydon, Iowa to a pioneering family, and his father was a newspaper publisher. He died in Longmont, Colorado after a short illness in 1971 and was buried there in a family plot. There were 8 children in the family, of which he was the youngest, being 7 years younger than the next youngest son, and he was the first of the family to graduate from high school. He went on to the Cummings Art School in Des Moines, Iowa in 1906-07, and also attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago in 1908-09. After traveling to the North West where his older brother had a logging business, in which he worked, he discovered that he wasn't too interested in that kind of work. He passed through Estes Park, Colorado on this trip in 1916. He married Kitty Wolf in Corydon, and in 1918 they moved to Estes Park for the summer months, and this became a standard trek that lasted for many years. He alternated his time between Corydon in the winter, where he maintained a studio over the local bank, and Estes Park, where his studio was variously inside the Rocky Mountain National Park and on the main street. He painted the Rocky Mountain National Park and environs as well as other parts of the country but was most well known for his colorful aspen paintings. He worked exclusively in oils and painted on board for the most part. In the 1920s the Stirlings lived in Denver and Dave worked for the well known Meininger's Art Materials store there. While working there he could afford canvas and did produce a number of pieces on canvas during that time. In 1919 in the Rocky Mountain National Park, they built a studio called "Bugscuffle Ranch" along with an adjacent home where they lived in the summers. This structure was replaced in 1930 with the gallery and studio that remained until a few years after Dave's death. He became well known for his "cultural lectures on art" which were given in the gallery on a daily basis, and were attended by thousands of visitors. His line was, "Everyone goes away smarter than when they stumbled into the joint". He was also fond of quoting Will Rogers, on his first exposure to abstract art, when he said, "When you ain't nothing else you're an artist--it's one thing you can claim to be and no one can prove you ain't." Dave was an author as well and wrote several books of stories, myths and lies about the mountain west. His pen name was Pye-Eyed Pete Dave's wife contracted cancer, and he remained her sole care giver until her death. His daughter Hattie later also had cancer and died, and his son who was diabetic died on the dance floor of the Riverside Ballroom in Estes Park. He is survived by 4 grandchildren and 1 great grandchild (to date). His eldest grandson lives and works in Estes Park. Dave was famous as "The Youngest of the Old Masters", a title given him in an article, which he was quick to adopt. He painted the Rocky Mountain National Park and environs as well as other parts of the country but was most well known for his colorful aspen paintings.

Impressionist oil painting of a Mother Child Titled "Family Outing" at Mast Cove Kennebunkport Maine by Harry Barton. Oil on 24 x 30 panel signed lower left and with estate of the artists stamp on verso. Harry Lang Barton, artist and illustrator May 12, 1908 - August 12, 2001 Born in Cleveland and raised in Seattle, Harry Barton spent his life doing the thing he truly loved--painting. Whether in the Pacific Northwest around Seattle, Hood Canal, and Puget Sound, or in the Art Students League, Central Park, and the parks and beaches of Long Island, or in Pennsylvania and New England (he often summered in Rockport, Massachusetts, and Kennebunkport, Maine), Harry's life was art. Harry's career as an artist embraced almost every medium and a great many genres: from charcoal and pen and ink to watercolor, tempura, and oil; from his early work in Seattle as a silk-screen artist and an illustrator for the Sterling Theatres and the telephone company, to his New York work as an illustrator of Western pulp fiction, detective and mystery novels, and movie and fashion advertisements, and finally to his extensive activity as a portrait and landscape painter. In the spring of 1945, he decided to study for the summer at the Art Students League in New York with Frank Reilly, and in the fall of that year he was offered work in New York as an illustrator for Gale Phillips Associates. Moving his family from Seattle, he--along with his wife Pauline and his daughters Joan and Linda--took up residence in Bayside, Queens, and soon moved to the Auburndale area of Flushing, where he had his own freelance studio and where he lived the rest of his life. Over the years his illustrations were featured in The Saturday Evening Post, Argosy, Boy's Life, Down East, and American Artist, as well as on movie billboards for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and in fashion advertising for Lord & Taylor and Gertz department stores. But his main body of work as an illustrator can be found in hard-cover and paperback novels published by such major firms as Dell, Ace Books, Dial Press, and Farrar Straus & Giroux. Harry's paintings and sketches were exhibited in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; in the Salmagundi Club, Lord & Taylor, the Smith Gallery, and Illustration House in New York in the Blue Heron Gallery in Wellfleet, Cape Cod; in the Schaff Gallery in Cincinnati; and in Mast Cove Gallery in Kennebunkport. He received a number of prizes for his work, and his paintings are held in private collections in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Harry was a member of the American Artists Professional League, the Salmagundi Club, and the Art Students League of New York, where he kept on working throughout his life, studying with--in addition to Frank Reilly--Samuel Edmund Oppenheini, William Draper, and Everett Raymond Kintsler. Harry loved the Art Students League and was very proud of being a Life Member. His Saturday jaunts to the League continued right up to the time when the League closed for the summer three months before he died. He was fortunate in being able to do what he enjoyed most to the very end of his life

Serge Ivanhoff Nude at her Dressing Table. Conte Crayon Drawing signed and dated Paris 1945. image 9"x12". Serge Petrovitch Ivanoff was born in Moscow in 1893 and showed artistic ability from a young age. On the family’s move to St. Petersburg, he took the opportunity to further his artistic studies by enrolling at the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1917, at the height of the Russian Revolution. The turmoil of the aftermath of these events prompted Serge Ivanoff, with his wife and two young children, to move permanently to Paris in 1922. A talented portraitist, he quickly established himself in Paris and soon had the celebrities of the day commissioning him to paint their portraits, including Pope Pius XI, the dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar, poet Paul Valery, composer Arthur Honegger, and many notable Russian exiles now making their home in Paris. Between 1930 and 1950, he also regularly provided illustrations for the French journal L’Illustration, and painted a series of luminous and lyrical nudes. In 1950 Serge Ivanoff moved to the U.S.A., again specialising in portraiture, including Eleanor Roosevelt and the diplomat Jefferson Caffery amongst his subjects. However, by the 1960s he had returned to Paris where he continued to exhibit regularly at the Salon des Indépendants, receiving a Gold Medal from the Minister of Cultural Affairs, André Malraux, in 1966. Serge Ivanoff died in Paris in 1983.

Original N.C. Wyeth oil painting on art board title "Lumber" commissioned by Coca Cola company in 1943 for a series of posters in American industry. Signed lower right measuring 21 x 31 inches in excellent condition. A fine addition to any collection of American Art.

Biography

N. (Newell) C. (Convers) Wyeth (October 22, 1882-October 19, 1945), is one of the most celebrated illustrators in the history of art. He grew up on a farm in New England, and studied at the Massachusetts Normal Arts School where he attended classes taught by illustrators Eric Pape and Charles W. Reed. During 1902-04 he studied with the great illustrator Howard Pyle in Wilmington, Delaware. Wyeth accepted a commission from Scribner's and the Saturday Evening Post to paint western scenes, and traveled in the west to gain first hand knowledge of subjects. He worked as a ranch hand in Colorado and rode mail routes in New Mexico and Arizona. In 1906, Wyeth and Carolyn Brenneman Bockius were married in the Wilmington Unitarian church, and they made their home in nearby Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The focus of his painting soon shifted to the land and people of the region in which he lived. In 1911, Wyeth won a commission from Charles Scribner's Sons to illustrate a new edition of R. L. Stevenson's Treasure Island, a work that made him famous. He provided illustrations for dozens of other classic books, including Kidnapped (1913), The Black Arrow (1916), The Legends of Robin Hood (1917), The Last of the Mohicans (1919), and The Yearling (1939).

Ju Ming Taichi series bronze standing approx. 8 inches tall from an edition of 4 Signed by the artist. In excellent condition. Ju Ming’s Taichi Series has established an eminent position in the international art scene. Indeed, since his Nativist Series of the mid 1970s, Ju has opened up new directions for Taiwan’s modern sculptures. For decades, with the principle of “art as self-cultivation” in mind, he has made several artistic climaxes in the form and content of sculptural art. He explored his own unique artistic language while preserving the values of traditional cultural symbols of China in the modern abstract movement.

A original vintage oil painting of a Beautiful Girl with Flowers oil on canvas panel by Adrian Lamb. Signed lower left and presented in a contemporary gallery frame. The artist panel measures 8 x 10" overall framed size 15 x 18". Adrian Lamb (1901-1988) was born in New York City, where in the mid-1920s he studied at the Art Students League under Frank Vincent DuMond and George Bridgman. After attending the Académie Julien in Paris in 1929, he went on to travel and work in England, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Mexico as he developed his talent as a portrait painter. He painted many prominent subjects, including David Rockefeller, John J. McCloy, Joseph P. Kennedy, and Bernard. He executed the Gordon Gray portrait for the Secretarial Portrait Gallery at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C. Lamb's works are found in many collections, including the State Department, and the National Gallery of Art, The White House, the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Naval Academy, Harvard University, and the Supreme Court of the United States. His portrait of Maj. Gen. J. Franklin Bell is reproduced from the Army Art Collection. For much of his life, Lamb resided in Connecticut and maintained a studio in Manhattan.

Original pencil drawing a portrait of a man by Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, signed monogram lower right. Best known as Balthus, a French painter in the second half of the 20th century, famous for his somewhat disturbing paintings of pubescent girls and for his association with some of the greats in modern art, including Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. Balthus painted figures and landscapes in a more traditional style than his cubist and surrealist contemporaries, and throughout his career was supported primarily by other artists and dealers. He claimed to be a count, but he was also known to be a prankster who fabricated biographical details while keeping his real life story a mystery. Image site measures 8 x 10 Inches overall paper 11 x 17 inches. Minor staining top left. Provenance a private collection and sold at Sotheby's lot 7767, Impressionist and Modern Art, New York, Thursday, February 21, 2002

An original vintage Chinese ink painting of a Running Horse in the manner of Xu Beihong signed to the center right. Ink on a mottled colored paper presented matted and in a thin wood frame. Overall framed size 16.5" W x 23.5" H x 1.0" D. In good condition minor surface wear and very light crease to the paper. The most influential Chinese artist and art educator in twentieth-century China, Xu Beihong is widely known as the father of modern Chinese painting. Born into a poor family in 1895 in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, he learned Chinese classics and traditional Chinese painting from his father, a self-taught artist. Xu Beihong gained a government scholarship to study in France and attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts. Between 1919 and 1927, he studied sketching and oil painting in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland. Returning to China in 1927, he successfully integrated Western painting methods and techniques with traditional Chinese painting in order to develop Chinese painting. He demonstrated two fundamental ways to improve Chinese painting: “focusing on human activities” and rejuvenating the tradition of “learning from nature.” His creative work and extensive teaching offered a new direction for Chinese artists and art educators. He was the first to systematically incorporate high-standard Western sketching from life and oil painting into the curricula at China’s major art institutions. From 1927 until his death in 1953, Xu Beihong trained several generations of students. Many became accomplished artists and leading art educators who have continued to influence Chinese art in the twenty-first century. Since 1954, more than 1200 of his original drawings, sketches, oils, and Chinese ink brush paintings have been kept and displayed by the Xu Beihong Memorial Museum in Beijing.

An original Italian impressionist oil painting of Capri and the bay of Naples and Faraglioni Rocks on canvas signed indistinctly lower right. Presented in a quality contemporary gallery frame. Oil on canvas measuring 16 x 24" overall framed size 22 x 30". In good vintage condition some minor touch ups. A beautiful painting.