Catalog: Fine Art (124)

An original vintage charcoal drawing of Christmas Carolers in winter snow by William Gropper. Charcoal on paper signed lower right presented matted and framed. Image size 13 x 17" overall framed size 19 x 25". Biography: William Gropper was a painter and political cartoonist who is best remembered for his striking social commentary. He was born in 1897 on the Lower East Side in New York City to a large, poor immigrant family. Due to the family's financial difficulties, Gropper was forced to leave school at a very young age and work in a garment sweatshop with his mother and siblings. Several years later, he enrolled in art classes at the socially progressive Ferrer School where he received instruction from noted Ashcan artists Robert Henri and George Bellows. Gropper later recalled the influence of these men saying, "Right then, I began to realize that you don't paint with color—you paint with conviction, freedom, love and heartaches, with what you have." Following his time at the Ferrer School, Gropper continued his education at the Chase School, later known as Parson's School of Design. After graduation, Gropper briefly illustrated for the New York Tribune, during which time he began contributing to socialist publications, such as The New Masses, Labor Defender and The Nation. In 1924, he began a long career as a regular cartoonist for the Freiheit, a left-wing Yiddish daily newspaper. As his career progressed in the 1930s, Gropper turned his attention more towards painting. In addition to the early influence of Henri and Bellows, he also looked to Cubism for inspiration and incorporated sharp angles and exaggerated figures in his paintings. In the 1930s and 1940s, Gropper completed several murals for New York businesses, and for post offices in Detroit and on Long Island. In 1937, Gropper was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship which he used to travel to the Great Plains and to the Southeast. In 1942, he painted Field Workers, based on sketches made while in the South. It was completed during the height of his career as a painter and the saturated coloring and exaggerated angles are characteristic of his mature painting style. Though Gropper worked in different mediums his subject was always people, and he is often referred to as "the workingman's protector." In an interview, Gropper explained his motivations for exposing the wrongs committed against workers, "That's my heritage. I'm from the old school, defending the underdog. Maybe because I've been an underdog or still am. I put myself in their position. I feel for the people . . . . I become involved."

Gustave Leonard De jonghe "The Looking Glass" A beautiful woman at her dressing table looking into a mirror. A fine antique original oil by this highly regarded Belgian artist signed lower left in pristine condition in a remarkable frame. Measuring approx. 24 x 32 oil on canvas. Provenance: Hirschl Adler galleries

Modernist landscape Marsh series #1 by Ernest Garthwaite. Acrylic on paper measuring 22"w x 30"H.

Biography

Ernest Garthwaite was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1940. He studied at Loras College in Iowa, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in 1961, and at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, receiving his Master of Arts in 1962. He subsequently studied in Europe (including in Italy, Germany, and France) and at the University of Wisconsin in 1964 and the Art Students' League of New York in 1966. Garthwaite's work is represented in over 75 collections, including the Medicine Hat Museum and Art Gallery, New Rochelle Public Library, Art Gallery of Windsor, Bank of Montreal, Concordia University (Montreal), Marymount College (New York), Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies (Banff), and York College of the City University of New York.

Close Description Original antique painting of a native American Indian woman braiding her daughters hair. Gouache on paper signed lower right L. C. Perry. Presented in the original antique frame. Born in Boston, Lilla Cabot Perry was a key person, along with Mary Cassatt, in bringing French Impressionism* to the United States from France. "For many years, she lectured, wrote, and encouraged American patronage of the style." (Dunn, 16) She was also the artist most closely involved with the Guild of Boston Artists*, which opened its galleries in 1914 to promote accomplished painters and sculptors. She served on the board as the first secretary and worked hard to cultivate persons for financial backing. Pery had prominent Boston social credentials that included the Cabot and Lowell families. Her father was a distinguished surgeon; and her husband's great uncle, Commodore Matthew Perry, opened Japan to the world in 1853. In 1874, she married Professor Thomas Sergeant Perry, a professor of 18th-century literature, and their home became a gathering place for many Boston intellectuals including Henry James, William Dean Howells, and her brother-in-law, painter John LaFarge. She had elite private schooling and began her art studies with Robert Vonnoh and Dennis Bunker at the Cowles School in Boston. Having first traveled to Europe with her family in 1887, she studied in France privately with Alfred Stevens and at the Julian* and Colarossi* Academies. She also exhibited at the salons and expositions and in 1889, attended Claude Monet's exhibition, "Impressions", which "was a revelation for Perry, who decided to take up residence in Giverny." (Dunn, 16) In 1889, Perry and Cecilia Beaux visited Claude Monet at Giverny*, France, and she was highly intrigued with his painting. He, who never took pupils, did give Perry advice and encouraged her to put down on canvas her first impression, saying that was the truest and most pure expression. Between 1889 and 1909, she and her husband spent ten summer seasons in Giverny, where they lived next door to Monet and became close friends. Perry recorded interviews with Monet, who seemed very fond of her, and the result was Perry's book, published in 1927, Reminiscences of Claude Monet. She also successfully encouraged her wealthy friends to purchase Monet's paintings. In 1889, she returned to Boston with one of Monet's paintings, Etretat, one of the first Impressionist works to appear in that area, and she was surprised that no one was very taken with the painting. Several years later, she gave lectures on Monet to the Boston Art Students Association. In 1898, her husband, accepted a college teaching position in Tokyo, Japan as chair of English Literature, and living there until 1901, she painted the landscape and the people, completing more than eighty paintings. Of this period in her life, art historian William Gerdts wrote: "Lilla Perry was one of the most significant of the American painters who went to Japan in the late 19th century; . . . of all the Americans to work there, Perry's work is the least traditional and is the most indebted to the Impressionist aesthetic, and some of her Japanese scenes are, in color and brushwork, extremely close to Monet." (97) In her later years, she lived in the upper class Back Bay area of Boston, and spent her summers in Hancock, New Hampshire. Lilla was a founder and first Secretary of the Guild of Boston Artists. Much of her painting of that period was for her own enjoyment and focused on activities of upper class women, with her daughters frequently serving as the models. She seldom did any preliminary sketching, and pastel was a favorite medium. In very good all original condition overall size 17ʺW × 2.5ʺD × 15ʺH.