Reilee Bach - The Letter

See: http://www.reileebach.com/

[Oil on canvas, 25 x 26 inches]

Palmer Hayden - The Janitor Who Paints [c.1930]

Palmer C. Hayden (January 15, 1890 – February 18, 1973) was an American painter who depicted African American life. He painted in both oils and watercolours, and was a prolific artist of his era. Much of Hayden's influences came from the environment around him. He enjoyed painting, and used his time in Paris for inspiration. Over his next five years in Paris, Hayden was very productive, trying to capture elements of Parisian society. On his return to America, Hayden began working for the United States government. Much of Hayden’s work after Paris focused on the African American experience. He tried to capture both rural life in the, as well as urban backgrounds in New York City. Many of these urban paintings were centred in Harlem.

[Oil on canvas, 99.3 x 83.6 cm]

Jan Steen - Two Kinds Of Games [c.1636-79]

A group of men are having fun in a tavern. A young man is drinking beer, draining his tankard, while a couple of others are playing backgammon. Like cards, this popular game was associated with idleness and folly. On the left, another game is being played: an old man tries to pull a young woman (the landlady) onto his lap. The woman resists him half-heartedly. Her red stockings, however, suggest that she would not have been all that worried about her morals: red stockings often indicated the woman was a prostitute. Taverns were sometimes disguised brothels and this place certainly has a rather dubious air. The lute on the wall, the dog, the pipe on the firepan and the mussel and eggshells on the ground suggest debauchery, lust and idleness.

[Oil on canvas, 63 x 69.50 cm]

Juan Carlos Martinez - Lidia

Juan Carlos Martínez is an award-winning artist living in Toronto, Canada, whose work has been featured in various publications and exhibitions around the world. He was trained classical atelier and works in what is now considered the classical realist tradition. Juan studied in Toronto, Canada, and Florence, Italy, under the tutelage of master painter, M. John Angel. Prior to that period he had been, among other things, a lawyer, but gave up that life to pursue his vocation as a professional classical painter. Today, in addition to maintaining an award-winning portfolio and working on portrait commissions, Juan is usually busy writing and teaching.

See: http://www.juanmartinez.com/

[Oil on panel, 20 x 16 inches]

Jean-Leon Gérome - Slave Market in Ancient Rome [c.1884]

Thanks to an ability to combine romantic and realistic elements, and to the broad range of his subjects, Gérome made his name early in life and went on to enjoy a brilliant career. His works were regularly accepted for exhibitions at the Salon and he received many official commissions, being awarded the Legion d'Honneur in 1898. A considerable place in his work was occupied by subjects from Ancient Rome, in the treatment of which we feel the hand of an experienced director who knew how to give each scene the necessary element of spectacle.

At the centre of a high dais are two naked women; the slave dealer is displaying them to the crowd, showing off the goods he has for sale. The smooth painterly style, the precise linear drawing and sculptural modelling of forms were the traditional academic principles taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where Gérome was on the staff for over 40 years.

Daniel Gerhartz - In Her Care

Born 1965 in Kewaskum, Wisconsin, where he now lives with his wife Jennifer, and their young children, Gerhartz 's interest in art emerged as a teenager. Studies at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Illinois and his voracious appetite for museums and the modern masters such as John Singer Sargent, Alphonse Mucha, Nicolai Fechin, Joaquin Sorolla, Carl von Marr as well as a host of other French and American impressionists have inspired him.

Gerhartz has a particular interest and appreciation for modern Russian art and the sumptuous canvases of the painters Nicolai Fechin, Isaac Levitan and Ilya Repin. As Dan says, their paintings are "completely loose yet deliberate and faithful, not at all flashy."

[Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches]

Albert Edelfelt - Good Friends, Portrait of the Artists Sister Bertha Edelfelt [1881]

Albert Gustaf Aristides Edelfelt (July 21, 1854 – August 18, 1905) was a Finnish-Swedish painter. Albert Edelfelt was born in Porvoo , Finland. Edelfelt was one of the first Finnish artists to achieve international fame. He enjoyed considerable success in Paris and was one of the founders of the Realist art movement in Finland. He influenced several younger Finnish painters and helped fellow Finnish artists such as Akseli Gallen-Kallela to make their breakthrough in Paris.

[Oil on panel, 41 x 31.5 cm]

Hans Holbien the Younger - The Ambassadors [1533]

This picture memorialises two wealthy, educated and powerful young men. On the left is Jean de Dinteville, aged 29, French ambassador to England in 1533. To the right stands his friend, Georges de Selve, aged 25, bishop of Lavaur, who acted on several occasions as ambassador to the Emperor, the Venetian Republic and the Holy See.
 The picture is in a tradition showing learned men with books and instruments. The objects on the upper shelf include a celestial globe, a portable sundial and various other instruments used for understanding the heavens and measuring time. Among the objects on the lower shelf is a lute, a case of flutes, a hymn book, a book of arithmetic and a terrestrial globe. Certain details could be interpreted as references to contemporary religious divisions. The broken lute string, for example, may signify religious discord, while the Lutheran hymn book may be a plea for Christian harmony. 

In the foreground is the distorted image of a skull, a symbol of mortality. When seen from a point to the right of the picture the distortion is corrected.

[Oil on oak, 207 x 209.5 cm]

Lucien Freud - Girl with a White Dog [1951-52]

This picture shows the artist’s first wife when she was pregnant. The style of the painting has roots in the smooth and linear portraiture of the great nineteenth-century French neoclassical painter, Ingres. This, together with the particular psychological atmosphere of Freud’s early work, led the critic Herbert Read to make his celebrated remark that Freud was ‘the Ingres of Existentialism.’ The sense that Freud gives of human existence as essentially lonely, and spiritually if not physically painful, is something shared by his great contemporaries, Francis Bacon and the sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

[Oil on canvas, 762 x 1016 mm]

Caspar David Friedrich - The Stages of Life [c.1835]

Both Friedrich's life and art are marked with an overwhelming sense of loneliness. This becomes more apparent in his later works, from a time when friends, members of his family and fellow pioneers of early romanticism began to either become distant from him or die.

Friedrich (September 5, 1774 – May 7, 1840) suffered depressive episodes in 1799, 1803–1805, c.1813, in 1816 and between 1824 and 1826. There are noticeable thematic shifts in the works he produced during these episodes, which see the emergence of such motifs and death symbols as vultures, owls, graveyards and ruins. From 1826 these motifs became a permanent feature of his output, while his use of colour became more dark and muted. Carus wrote in 1929 that Friedrich "is surrounded by a thick, gloomy cloud of spiritual uncertainty", while in 2004 the psychiatrist Carsten Spitzer wrote that he believed during his life, Friedrich suffered prolonged inertia, a suicide attempt and what the artist himself described as a "dreadful weariness.”

[Oil on canvas, 72.5 x 94 cm]

Paul Delaroche - The Execution of Lady Jane Grey [1834]

Lady Jane Grey was Queen of England for just 9 days until she was driven from the throne and sent to the Tower of London to be executed. 
Jane became queen after the death of her cousin, Edward VI in 1553. As a Protestant, Jane was crowned queen in a bid to shore up Protestantism and keep Catholic influence at bay.
 The plan didn't work. Jane's claim to the crown was much weaker than Edward VI's half sister Mary. Mary, a Catholic, had popular support and soon replaced Jane as queen. 
Lady Jane Grey was executed at Tower Green on 12 February 1554. She was just 16 years old.
In this painting, she is guided towards the execution block by Sir John Brydges, Lieutenant of the Tower. The straw on which the block rests was intended to soak up the victim's blood. The executioner stands impassive to the right and two ladies in attendance are shown grieving to the left.
The painting was exhibited in Paris at the city's famous Salon in 1834, where it caused a sensation.

Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy - Study of an Old Woman’s Head

Henri-Jules-Jean Geoffroy (also known as Geo) was a French artist. He born in 1853 and died in 1924. He specialized in genre works paintings with children.

[Oil on cardboard attached to plywood, 45.5 x 39.5 cm]

Joseph Solman - Dick and Betsy

Joseph Solman (January 25, 1909 – April 16, 2008) was a Jewish American painter, a founder of The Ten, a group of New York City Expressionist painters in the 1930s. Born in Vitebsk, Belarus, he was brought to America from Belarus as a child in 1912, Solman was a prodigious draftsman and knew, in his earliest teens, that he would be an artist. Joseph Solman died in his sleep, at his long-time home in New York City, on April 16, 2008.

Claire Bridge - Ignorance Isn't Bliss [2009]

Claire Bridge is an Australian contemporary realist painter with a parallel pursuit in text-based art exploring the poignant emotional terrain of the human experience. In 2009, Bridge has won both the People's Choice Award and the Living Art Award for the Stan and Maureen Duke Gold Coast Art Prize. With her portrait If Looks Could Kill, she is a finalist in the 2009 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize for the second year running. A banner of her work currently hangs outside the State Library of New South Wales promoting the exhibition.

See: http://www.clairebusuttilbridge.com/index.htm

[Oil on Belgian linen, 123.4 x 85.7 cm]

Rembrandt - Portrait of Maria Trip [1639]

This beautifully dressed young woman is Maria Trip, the daughter of a rich Amsterdam merchant. Rembrandt - who was at this time one of the most important portrait painters in Amsterdam - painted her in 1639. Maria was twenty years old and still unmarried. Two years later she married Balthasar Coymans who had gathered a fortune in business. He was thirty years older than Maria.

Rembrandt has made the most of Maria's rich clothes and jewellery by playing with the light and shade. A small light dances in each pearl. Even the thick folds of her black clothes shine with the light. The gossamer-fine linen is brilliantly depicted: the black fabric of the dress on her shoulders and the skin tones of her chest, glimmer through the white. She is holding a folded fan with a ribbon of gold lace that falls across her hand. Throughout the painting, Rembrandt has added subtle edges of shadow: in the sleeves, along the collar and on her hand.

[Oil on panel, 107 x 82 cm]

Rembrandt - Portrait of Johannes Wtenbogaert [1633]

The minister Johannes Wtenbogaert is standing beside a table upon which lies an open manuscript. It is as though he has interrupted his studies to turn to look at the viewer. Rembrandt's use of light directs the viewers attention towards Wtenbogaert's wrinkled face, the bright expression of his eyes, his grey beard and his snow-white, pleated ruff. The open manuscript also catches the light. Wtenbogaert was one of the most important religious leaders of the Dutch Golden Age. The young Rembrandt painted this imposing and lively portrait in 1633, at a time when he was well on the way to becoming one of Amsterdam's most celebrated portrait painters. He signed the painting with his first name, Rembrandt.

[Oil on canvas, 130 x 103 cm]

Francesco Zefferino - Delorazepam [2009]

Francesco Zefferino was born in Bari, Italy in 1969; he lives and works in Acquaviva delle Fonti in Italy.

[Oil on canvas, 180 x 150 cm]

Zinaida Serebriakova - Self Portrait

Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebriakova (née Lanceray) (December 10, 1884 – September 19, 1967) was among the first female Russian painters of distinction. In the autumn of 1924, Serebriakova went to Paris, having received a commission for a large decorative mural. On finishing this work, she intended to return to the Soviet Union, where her mother and the four children remained. However, she was not able to return, and although she was able to bring her younger children, Alexandre and Catherine, to Paris in 1926 and 1928 respectively, she could not do the same for her two older children, Evgenyi and Tatiana, and did not see them again for many years. She died in Paris on September 19, 1967, at the age of 82.

Jean-Paul Laurens - Emperor Maximilian of Mexico before the Execution [1882]

Jean-Paul Laurens (March 28, 1838 – March 23, 1921), was a French painter and sculptor, and one of the last major exponents of the French Academic style.

Born in Fourquevaux, he was a pupil of Léon Cogniet and Alexandre Bida. Strongly anti-clerical and republican, his work was often on historical and religious themes, through which he sought to convey a message of opposition to monarchical and clerical oppression. His erudition and technical mastery were much admired in his time, but in later years his hyper-realistic technique, coupled to a highly theatrical mise-en-scène, came to be regarded as overly didactic and even involuntarily comical. He died in Paris in 1921.

[Oil on canvas, 222 x 303 cm]

Dean Mitchell - French Quarter Bookstore

Recognised as one of the finest painters in America, Dean Mitchell has been awarded almost every major painting award in the country. His images "retain the essence of time and the true meaning of life." His paintings can be found in such museum collections as the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, St. Louis Museum, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Margaret Harwell Art Museum, Hubbard Museum, Mississippi Museum of Art, and the Arkansas Art Centre.

[Watercolour, 20 x 15 inches]

Francois Flameng - Bathing of Court Ladies [1888]

Please click artist label for further information.

[Oil on canvas, 90 x 115 cm]

Hendrick Goltzius - The Fall of Man [1608]

Hendrick Goltzius (January or February 1558 - Haarlem, January 1, 1617) was an outstanding Dutch engraver and draughtsman who took up painting only at the age of 38. Together with a group of Mannerist painters he founded an academy in Haarlem. They introduced to Holland the systematic study of human anatomy and drawing from a naked model, which is reflected in these two important works.

The cat at Eve's feet is a symbol of the devil who awaits the sinner's soul in order to ruin it forever. The snake who occupies the place of a halo over Eve's head recalls the snake who first tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, offering her an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, and thus also symbolises the devil. Olives like those in Eve's hand are a symbol of the Eucharist, the future redemption of sins. The dog at Adam's feet and the whole walnut in his hand are symbols of virtue which resists temptation. The tulip which has blossomed between Adam and Eve has an ambiguous reading, for it could be both the brief joys which Adam and Eve will find in the world into which they are being cast, or hope of salvation. We should see a world of purity and plenty in the far of landscape with its bluish haze in the air.

[Oil on panel, 203 x 134 cm]

Louis Gabriel Eugene Isabey - After a Storm [1869]

Louis Gabriel Eugene Isabey (Paris, July 22, 1803 - April 27, 1886) was a French painter, draftsman, and printmaker. Early in his career his paintings consisted of mostly watercolor landscapes. In 1820, he travelled to Normandy and Britain painting land and seascapes.

[Oil on canvas, 36.5 x 60 cm]

Alphonse Mucha - The Times of the Day [1899]

Alfons Mucha The Times of the Day 1899, originally uploaded by Art & Vintage.

Alphonse Mucha was born in 1860 in Ivancice, Moravia, which is near the city of Brno in the modern Czech Republic. It was a small town, and for all intents and purposes life was closer to the 18th than the 19th century. Though Mucha is supposed to have started drawing before he was walking, his early years were spent as a choirboy and amateur musician. It wasn't until he finished high school (needing two extra years to accomplish that onerous task) that he came to realize that living people were responsible for some of the art he admired in the local churches. That epiphany made him determined to become a painter, despite his father's efforts in securing him "respectable" employment as a clerk in the local court.

Like every aspiring artist of the day, Mucha ended up in Paris in 1887. He was a little older than many of his fellows, but he had come further in both distance and time. A chance encounter in Moravia had provided him with a patron who was willing to fund his studies. After two years in Munich and some time devoted to painting murals for his patron, he was sent off to Paris where he studied at the Academie Julian. After two years the supporting funds were discontinued and Alphonse Mucha was set adrift in a Paris that he would soon transform. At the time, however, he was a 27 year old with no money and no prospects - the proverbial starving artist.

Paul Gauguin - Sacred Spring Sweet Dreams [1894]

Gauguin returned from his first stay in Tahiti (1891-1893) to spend nearly two years in Paris, where he painted this work. The exotic world of Oceania had captured the artist's imagination with its harmony of man and nature, with what he saw as the preservation of primitive simplicity. This work captures his recollections of Tahiti and his romantic dreams of the harmony of all on earth.

The Tahitian girls symbolise different stages in life. The young islander with the halo above her head, deep in sleep, is the embodiment of virgin purity, while the second girl with the fruit in her hand, ready to take a bite, is like Eve. In the depths of the landscape islanders are dancing around an idol, some mysterious ancient god. The canvas reveals the artist's very individual style with its pure colours applied in generalised flat areas which, like the lines, are subjugated to a single rhythm.

[Oil on canvas, 74 x 100 cm]

Robert Green - Chloe with Tobias and Angels [1980]

Robert Green (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1909 - Lawrence, Kansas, 2007) was an American painter.

[Watercolour on paper, 35.6 x 49.5 cm]

Nikolai Blokhin - Patricia and Margo from the Taos Tribe [2008]

Nikolai Blokhin was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1968. His education in art began very early at the Art School for Gifted Children in 1980, and continued through his postgraduate work and professorship at the prestigious St. Petersburg Academy of Art. With more than 20 years of artistic studies Nikolai is a young master with unequaled genius. His paintings are the embodiment of the classics with a contemporary approach. He is well versed in landscape and still life, as he is in portraiture. Nikolai's paintings are represented in some of the world's greatest collections, in Russia, the Netherlands, China, Belgium, Finland, and the United States.

[Oil on canvas, 130 x 130 cm]

Marie Laurencin - Bacchante [1911]

Marie Laurencin (October 31, 1883 - June 8, 1956) was a French painter and printmaker. While her work does show the influence of Cubist painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who was her close friend, she developed a unique approach to abstraction which often centered on the representation of groups of women and female portraits. Further, her work lies outside the bounds of Cubist norms in her pursuit of a specifically feminine aesthetic by her use of pastel colours and curvilinear forms. Laurencin, when painting her tender visions, attempted to reaffirm feminine seduction in the face of victorious modernism. The insistence on the creation of a visual vocabulary of femininity in her art can be seen as a response to what some consider to be the arrogant masculinity of Cubism. Laurencin continued to explore themes of femininity and feminine modes of representation until her death.

[Oil on canvas pasted on cardboard, 32.7 x 41 cm]

Unknown Artist - The Last Supper

I thought you might be interested in this 16th century copy of the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci. The copy is currently housed in the Hermitage Museum.

[Oil on canvas, 77 x 132 cm]

Edouard Dantan - A Casting From Life [1887]

On August 28, 1848, in Paris, Édouard Dantan was born into a well-respected artistic lineage. Édouard's grandfather Antoine-Joseph-Laurent Dantan was a well-known sculptor in wood; his uncle, Jean-Pierre Dantan, was also a sculptor, known for his satirical caricatures in clay and bronze; and his father, Antoine-Laurent Dantan, was a famous sculptor in marble, winning the Prix de Rome in 1828. Despite the strong influence of sculpture in his life (and which would always play a major role in his art), Édouard chose painting as his artistic outlet.

Theodore Bernard de Heuvel - After the Unsealing of the Will [1869]

Theodore Bernard de Heuvel (1817 - 1907) was a Belgian painter. He was a painter of portraits, but had a preference for works of genre, often village scenes of schools and games, or interiors with family events. These paintings generally held an understanding and depth of appeal all their own.

[Oil on canvas, 88.5 x 115 cm]

Ivan G. Olinsky - Serviceman's Wife [c.1942]

In Serviceman’s Wife, Ivan Olinsky (Elizabethgrad, Russia, 1878 - United States, 1962) painted a woman looking up expectantly, perhaps to greet her husband, who has just opened the door. Her skirt draws out the yellow of the pears in the background and her full lips match the apple’s rosy skin. The greys and blues of her shirt echo those of the white cloth on which the fruits rest. She is integrated into her environment as if she is simply one part of a still life. Olinsky specialized in idealized images of women, and his portraits were successful on the market, selling for up to $2,000 each in the 1920s. His work had grown even more popular by the 1940s, when he worked for the commercial firm Portraits, Inc. Critics noted that each of his women looked like “a hardy perennial despite her delicate air.”

[Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 76.5 cm]

Sir William Russell Flint - Models For Olympians

Sir William Russell Flint (Edinburgh, April 4, 1880 – 1969) was a Scottish artist who was known for his watercolor paintings. He was president of Britain’s Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours (now the Royal Watercolour Society) from 1936 to 1956, and knighted in 1947.

Franz Kruger - Portrait of Count Alexander Kushelev-Bezborodko [1850-51]

Franz Kruger (Anhalt, September 10, 1797 - Berlin, January 21, 1857) was a German painter and lithographer. He was best known for his romantic and lively portraits and pictures of horses, which made him the most in demand military and portrait painter in Berlin. His paintings of military parades and hundreds of portraits led to him painting many of the "well to do" of the city.

Count Alexander Kushelev-Bezborodko (1834-1862) bought his first work at the age of 15 and, after a brief career in the army, devoted himself wholly to his painting collection. He had a particular liking for the French Romantic painters of the day. On his death in 1862 Nikolai left his 275 paintings to the Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg so that they would ‘form a gallery that will be permanently open to artists and the public.'

[Oil on canvas, 99 x 77 cm]

Charles Guilloux - The Flood [1893]

Charles Guilloux (French, 1866 - 1946) a modest employee at the Bibliothèque Nationale, was a self-taught artist placed in the Symbolist movement. From 1891, his works were successfully received at exhibitions held by the Independent Artists Society, then, shortly afterwards, at the Impressionists and Symbolists exhibitions at the Barc de Boutteville gallery.

[Colour lithograph, 20.7 x 29 cm]

Louis Ritman - The Open Window

Louis Ritman (1889 - 1963) was a Russian-born American Impressionist Painter. The critical success that Louis Ritman enjoyed throughout his career can be attributed in large part to the sunny, impressionistic canvases that he executed in Giverny during the 1910s. Like many other American artists of his time, Ritman travelled from his home in Chicago to Paris as soon as he could afford to pay for the trip. After studying at the Academie Julian, he was accepted into the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts. However, it was at one of the legendary cafes in Paris that he became acquainted with Frederick Frieseke, who introduced Ritman to the artistic scene in Giverny.

Paul Robert Turner - Attach

Please click artist's label for further information.

[Oil on canvas, 128 x 149 cm]