Catalog: Sold Items (421)

Artist Biography Austrian sculptor was born in Vienna in 1865. His teachers were Karl Waschmann (1848-1905), known for his ivory sculptures and portrait plaquettes of contemporary celebrities, and Stefan Schwartz (1851-1924), who exhibited in Paris, including the Exposition Universelle of 1900 where he won a gold medal. Kauba’s intricate bronzes, imported to the United States between 1895 and 1912, were cast at the Roman Bronze Works. Kauba was part of the nineteenth-century tradition of polychrome bronze sculpture. There were several types of patinas on a single statue: he could render the color of buckskin, variously tinted shirts, blankets, feathers, as well as beaded moccasins. Reportedly, Kauba came to America around 1886. Inspired by the Western tales of German author Karl May, he traveled to the West and made sketches and models. Critics, however, pointed out inaccuracies of costume and other details. For instance, the guns that his “mid-nineteenth-century” figures use are models produced after 1898. Apparently he did all of his works back in Vienna. Besides the variety of color, Kauba’s bronzes show a great range of textures and his style is highly naturalistic. The sculptor loved ornament, some of which he rendered with coiled wire for reins, rope and feathers in headdresses. He successfully rendered figures in motion and often executed compositions with more than one figure. Berman (1974) illustrates non-Western subjects by Kaula, such as the pendants Where? and There (ca. 1910), a seated Scottish couple, impressive in the expressions and the details on patterned fabrics of both sitters. Another genre piece is Buster Brown, ca. 1910, and Nude on Vase shows Kauba’s versatility even further. The smooth skin contrasts with the stylistic, plant-like vase.

Biography

Painter, illustrator. Born in Cincinnati, OH on Feb. 14, 1889. Baldwin moved to southern California in 1911 and had homes in Montrose and Carlsbad. He studied painting locally with Jean Mannheim, Paul Lauritz, and George Demont Otis. While on the staff of the Southwest Museum from 1933-41, he illustrated the books Gypsum Cave and Navajo Weaving. Baldwin died in Oceanside, CA on July 3, 1961. Member: Painters & Sculptors of LA; Carlsbad-Oceanside Art Club. Exh: Eagle Rock Artists, 1931. In: Southwest Museum (LA). Eagle Rock Sentinel, 10-2-1931; CA&A; AAA 1933; Sam; SCA; AAW; WWAA 1938-62; WWPC 1951.

Biography

A native of New York and the son of an engraver, James David Smillie earned his early reputation for his etching skills but later for watercolor landscapes. He began etching at age 8, learning from his father, James Smillie (1807-1885). At age 14, he did a set of plates illustrating John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost. He had a job as a bank note engraver, and then he and his father had a business, collaborating as engravers with a specialty of bank-notes. They also did the engravings for the 1857 Mexican Boundary Survey Report. James David Smillie helped organize the New York Etching Club, and he was the U.S. representative to supply examples of American etchers' work to the Painters-Etchers Society of London. Although he continued working with etching, drypoint, aquatint and lithography, in 1865, he began doing landscape painting and was especially interested in mountain scenery. Smillie traveled in California in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in Colorado in the Rocky Mountains, and in the eastern United States in the Catskills and Adirondacks. From these trips he did illustrations that were published in 1872 in the magazine Picturesque America. In 1881, Smillie got married, and the couple had two sons. By 1884, he was in France, and spent much time there doing prints of landscapes, figures, portraits and cityscapes. Between 1888 and 1896, he produced a set of drypoint floral still-life prints. James David Smillie founded the American Watercolor Society and served as president and treasurer. He also taught classes at the National Academy of Design in 1868 and from 1894 to 1903.

Richard DeTreville was born in Beaufort, South Carolina on November 17, 1864 into a prominent, old family of French ancestry. His grandfather fought with George Washington in the Revolutionary War and at the time of his birth during the Civil War, his father was Lt Governor of South Carolina. Little is known about his art training; he was possibly self-taught. In 1892 he moved to California and settled in Stockton where he established a small newspaper called Det's Magazine. Shortly after 1910 he moved from Stockton to San Francisco where he worked as a cartoonist for the Park Presidio News. In his studio on Clement Street he exhibited his paintings as well as in local department stores and art galleries. His works were handled locally by Schussler Brothers and Sanborn & Vail. The last few years of his life were spent across the bay in Alameda where he died on February 25, 1929. DeTreville worked in oil and, on rare occasions, in watercolor. He was known to be an excellent portraitist although his portraits are rare. The most prolific of early California painters, his thousands of small landscapes are invariably of the San Francisco Bay area, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, and northern California. He sometimes signed his works "DeT". Member: American Art Bureau. Exhibited: White House Department Store (San Francisco), 1926 (250 oils). Works held: California Historical Society; Oakland Museum; Alameda Historical Society.

Biography

SIMONPIETRI, Alfred H. (1916-2001). Painter. Born in Puerto Rico on June 20, 1916. While serving in the Army during World War Two, Simonpietri was in a plane crash. After the war he settled into a home in the Sunset District of San Francisco where he remained until his demise on December 2, 2001. A talented artist, he created hundreds of paintings, mostly nudes and still lifes. Biography provided courtesy of Edan Hughes Author Artists in California 1850-1940

Charles Baxter (March 1809 - 10 January 1879) was an English portrait and subject painter, known especially for his portraits of pretty young women. Baxter was born in Little Britain, London in 1809, the son of a book clasp maker, and started his career apprenticed to a bookbinder. However, he gave up this business to commence life as a professional painter, chiefly of miniatures and portraits. In 1834 he made the acquaintance of George Clint, from whom he received some valuable instruction, and in the same year exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy. In 1839 he joined the Clipstone Street Society, and studied there along with Paul Falconer Poole, William Müller, Edward Duncan (1804-1882), Joseph John Jenkins (1811-1885), Francis William Topham (1808-18), and others, who afterwards became distinguished in the profession. He became a member of the Society of British Artists in 1842, and contributed to its exhibitions many of the poetic and rustic subjects and fancy portraits upon which his reputation chiefly rests. His female heads are especially characterised by refinement of expression and purity of colour.

Verlys Glass History

In 1920, the Societe Holophane Français was set up as a subsidiary of the USA Holophane Company in a glassworks near Rouen in Northern France to make vehicle headlights. By 1925, they had expanded into making art glass vases and bowls. They created a separate department for these products, and named it "Verlys". Initially the pieces were blown vessels with several layers of glass, smooth on the outside with internal decoration. From 1933 onward, Verlys focused on high quality press-mould glass. They produced clear, frosted, opalescent and colored items with designs typical of Lalique-style glass of the 1930s.

Biography

A painter known for mixed-media abstractions, Alexander Nepote was born on a ranch in California near Stockton. He studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, at Mills College, and at the University of California from where he received a Master's Degree. From 1945 to 1950, he was Dean of the Faculty at the California College of Arts and Crafts and served in the same capacity at San Francisco State College from 1950 to 1977. Memberships included the West Coast Watercolor Society, the Bay Region Art Association, and the California Watercolor Society.Source: Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"

Provenance

From the collection of American pop culture legend Andy Warhol sold at the sale of Warhol’s estate at Sotheby’s in New York on April, 28, 1988 lot # 2479 Warhol was an avid and knowledgeable collector of fine art, furniture, jewelry and decorative objects. Over time, his 27-room Manhattan townhouse was filled to overflowing with the fruits of his obsessions. Exquisite Art Deco furniture and American folk art vied for space with Navajo Indian blankets and Empire sofas. After Warhol's death, Sotheby's auction house was given the daunting task of inventorying the contents of the townhouse and selling them at what has become a series of legendary auctions, which Time magazine characterized as "the most extensive estate sale in history, and the glitziest."

Ida Sedgwick Proper (1873 - 1957)

Rare original oil on canvas by signed lower right measuring 20 x 24 inches in good all original condition. Provenance: The Grandson of the artist.

Biography

Born in Bonaparte, Iowa, into a Baptist minister family, she attended Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas. Then at the Art Student's League in New York, she trained with William Merritt Chase, John Twachtmann, and Frank DuMond. In 1897, she began art studies in Munich and exhibited in European salons. From 1907 to 1911, she had a studio in New York. She is known for her Impressionist palette and diffused compositional elements.

Biography

Thomas L. Hunt was born in London, Ontario, Canada on February 11, 1882. He studied with his father John Powell Hunt and with Hugh H. Breckenridge. He resided in Laguna Beach, Hollywood and San Bernadino, California and maintained a studio in Laguna Beach, California. He was a founding member of the Laguna Beach Art Assn. and he was a member of the California Art Club and San Diego Art Guild. Examples of his paintings can be found in the Kansas City Museum, the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California and the Laguna Beach Museum of Art, Laguna Beach, California. He won First Prize at the California State Exposition in 1923, First Prize at the Laguna Beach Art Assn. in 1927 and 1935, and awards at the Pasadena Art Institute, 1933 and at the San Diego Fine Arts Guild in 1933. Thomas Hunt painted in Canada, Northern and Southern California and New England. Drawn to the seaside, he sought his preferred subject matter -- wharves and boats. He also painted beach scenes with crashing waves over rocks, cottages, snowy hillsides and village scenes. Known for his use of pure color, he creates paintings intended to sparkle and vibrate with scintilating light effects. His viewpoint and treatment of his subject matter is highly distinctive. A "Los Angeles Times" critic in 1931 summed up, "One is impressed, in fact, by the poetry of nature he has felt". Thomas Lorraine Hunt died in Santa Ana, California on April 17, 1938.

Biography

Born in San Francisco to a family of artists, Cuneo studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute with Arthur Mathews, before attending the Academie Colarossi in Paris from 1911-1913. Upon his return to California, Cuneo’s works were well received at the Panama Pacific International Exhibition in 1915, and was involved in every major art exhibition in the San Francisco area from 1916-1939. Also during these years Cuneo was the subject of numerous one-man shows, including those in Rome, Los Angeles, London, and Paris. Called “the Painter of San Francisco,” at the inaugural exhibition of the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1935, Cuneo had the most number of paintings displayed by any early California artist. In that same exhibition, his painting California Hills won the Museum’s Purchase Prize award. A pure impressionist early in his career, Cuneo’s style constantly evolved throughout his life, as he was always seeking and assimilating new methods of representation.

Biography

Thomas Corwin Lindsay, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, was a well-known painter of landscapes, animal subjects and occasional portraits. He studied in Dusseldorf, Germany, in the 1860s, but lived and worked most of his life in his native city where he opened a studio in 1856 or 1857. He taught several pupils from his studio, and was a founding member of the Cincinnati Art Club, which became the Men's Art Club. Most of his landscapes were painted in Pennsylvania, up-state New York, the White Mountains of New Hampshire or other Eastern states. He exhibited at the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition, from 1870-83; Pogue's, in 1875; and the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, in 1896. His work is in the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum. Jim Lawrence, a relative of the artist, provides the following: According to the U.S. Census for 1900, Thomas Corwin Lindsay was born on July 1838 in Ohio and not 1839 as so often is recorded. In 1900, he was living in Cincinnati with his wife and son and working as an artist. His parents Thomas Lindsay and Elizabeth Lawrence were both born in Pennsylvania, his father in Cumberland County and his mother in Philadelphia.

Biography

Born in 1936 in Yugoslavia, Stupar chose France as his permanent home in 1964 after completing his studies at the Beaux-Arts of Belgrade. Today we find that the art of Marko Stupar is totally integrated into the School of Paris. Although his work continues to be very personal, the graphic nature of his Slavic background is now uniquely combined with the subtlety found in Bonnard.Stupar has participated in juried exhibitions since 1966 when he won the Silver Medal at the Center of Diffusion of the Cote-d’Azur. He regularly participates in the Salon d’Automne, the Salon National des Beaux-Arts, the Salon des Artistes Français, and the Salon Comparaison. Among his other honors, Stupar has won both the Silver and Gold medals of the prestigious Salon des Artistes Français. One-man exhibitions of Stupar’s work have been held in cities all over the world including Paris, Geneva, Lyon, Osaka, Dusseldorf, Strasbourg, Zagreb, Annecy, Havre, New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Houston.

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A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, Van Soelen trained in art at the St. Paul Institute from 1908 to 1911, and then attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, 1911-1915. The Pennsylvania Academy awarded Van Soelen a Cresson Traveling Scholarship which enabled him to tour and study in Europe in 1913 and 1914. Shortly after launching his art career back in the United States, Van Soelen headed west, seeking relief from tuberculosis. After spending time in Utah and Nevada, he settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1916. Working as a commercial illustrator, he also began to sell his fine art paintings. To acquaint himself with the people and landscapes of New Mexico, Van Soelen spent time in the small towns and ranches of the region. Early on, scenes of ranch life became his favorite subjects. Van Soelen married Virginia Carr in 1922 and the couple moved to Santa Fe before permanently settling in nearby Tesuque, New Mexico in 1926. Van Soelen's reputation grew rapidly throughout this time, but like other New Mexico's easel painters, most of his customers were in the East. In the 1930s he established a second studio in Cornwall, Connecticut to be closer to that market. Van Soelen painted in a detailed, realistic style with a slightly muted palette and strong draftsmanship. Though most famous for his ranch-life genre paintings, he also painted landscapes and formal portraits, and produced several popular lithographs on cowboy themes. In 1938 Van Soelen won a mural commission for the Post Office in Portales, New Mexico. He was a Fellow of the National Academy and exhibited in various juried exhibitions including the National Academy, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Chicago Art Institute. In 1960 he was named Honorary Fellow in Fine Arts by the School of American Research.

Artist Biography.

Brought to New York City in 1850, William Keith was apprenticed to a wood engraver in 1856 working for "Harper’s" magazine. In 1858 (or 1859) he visited California for "Harper’s" and then after a trip to Great Britain, settled in California as an engraver in 1862. He began exhibiting paintings in 1864 in San Francisco where he opened his studio, after having been taught painting by his wife. The Northern Pacific Railroad commissioned him to do landscape paintings along its route about 1868. In 1869-70 he studied in Dusseldorf, Germany; in 1871-72, he shared a studio in Boston with William Hahn; and in 1872, he returned to California. A nature lover, he found there was “scarcely a mountain in three-fourths of California where he had not kept vigil for days as a time, studying every detail of color, flower, rock, forge, shadow, and sunshine.” Keith became Thomas Hill’s rival in monumental landscapes, saying, “I’d be satisfied if I could reach the power and success of Tom Hill.” When George Inness visited California in 1890, he worked in Keith’s studio for many weeks, and they made sketching trips together. The result for Keith was an influenced style reflecting the subjective rather than the spectacular. His "Majesty of the Oaks" painting sold at auction in New York City in 1903 for $2,300., and about the same time "Glory of the Heaven" sold at auction in San Francisco for $12,000. Of medium height with unruly curly hair, Keith had his studio next to the live oaks on the Berkeley campus where it was the center of the university-oriented California culture. The 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed 2,000 of Keith’s works.

Camille Pissarro (10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54. Pissarro is the only artist to have shown his work at all eight Paris Impressionist exhibitions, from 1874 to 1886. As a stylistic forerunner of Impressionism, he is today considered a "father figure not only to the Impressionists" but to all four of the major Post-Impressionists, including Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.[2]

Artist Biography,

Landscape painter. Born on Aug. 26, 1865 in Stockton, CA when it was still a small frontier town. Mersfelder began drawing at an early age and in his teens moved to San Francisco where he studied for three years at the School of Design under Virgil Williams. While studying at that school, he often visited the nearby studio of William Keith who offered criticism. Mersfelder then moved to NYC where he had a studio for a few years. During his stay there, he exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society of American Artists. He also enjoyed the hospitality and criticism of George Inness and A. H. Wyant. He later exhibited in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, and Baltimore. He won a bronze medal at the Louisiana Purchase Expo (St Louis) of 1904 and was awarded the Klio Assn prize at the annual exhibition held at the AIC where 18 of his canvases were accepted by the jury. He had a studio in Portland, OR in 1889 before returning to San Francisco in 1891. He was active in the local art scene when not out on painting forays in northern California. The year 1915 was spent in San Diego. Mersfelder lived his final years in Berkeley, CA and died there on Oct. 23, 1937. Although he made no known European trips, his works bear evidence of strong influence by the French Barbizons. Many of his landscapes of the rugged, old oaks of California compare favorably with those painted by William Keith during his late period. Exh: Calif. State Fair, 1882; Mark Hopkins Inst., 1897; Gumps (SF), 1900. In: St Francis Hotel (mural, Mt Tamalpais); Oakland Museum; CHS. CSL; BC; Ber; AAA 1907; DR.