Léon Frédéric Art

Signed (at lower right): MOORE

Farmhands working in a field on a hot summer's day. Building on iconic depictions of farmworkers by Millet, Huys sought to imbue his figures with a sensitivity and reverence that ...

Signed Lower Right Cyprien-Eugène Boulet (1877 - 1927)

Monogrammed lower left: ABierstadt

David R. Buchanan 20th Century British. 'Men at Work' circa 1930's oil on canvas 45cmx60cm good quality gallery frame 61cmx76cm A dymanic scene of a gang of road workers laying mains...

It is infrequent, to say the least, that a diagnosis of tuberculosis proves fortuitous, but that was the event, in 1921, that set Paul Starrett Sample on the road to becoming a professional artist. (The best source for an overview of Sample’s life and oeuvre remains Paul Sample: Painter of the American Scene, exhib. cat., [Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, 1988] with a detailed and definitive chronology by Sample scholar, Paula F. Glick, and an essay by Robert L. McGrath. It is the source for this essay unless otherwise indicated.) Sample, born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1896 to a construction engineer and his wife, spent his childhood moving with his family to the various locations that his father’s work took them. By 1911, the family had landed in Glencoe, Illinois, settling long enough for Paul to graduate from New Trier High School in 1916. Sample enrolled at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, where his interests were anything but academic. His enthusiasms included the football and basketball teams, boxing, pledging at a fraternity, and learning to play the saxophone. After the United States entered World War I, Sample, to his family’s dismay, signed on for the Naval Reserve, leading directly to a hiatus from Dartmouth. In 1918 and 1919, Sample served in the U.S. Merchant Marine where he earned a third mate’s license and seriously contemplated life as a sailor. Acceding to parental pressure, he returned to Dartmouth, graduating in 1921. Sample’s undergraduate life revolved around sports and a jazz band he formed with his brother, Donald, two years younger and also a Dartmouth student. In November 1933, Sample summarized his life in a letter he wrote introducing himself to Frederick Newlin Price, founder of Ferargil Galleries, who would become his New York art dealer. The artist characterized his undergraduate years as spent “wasting my time intensively.” He told Price that that “I took an art appreciation course and slept thru it every day” (Ferargil Galleries Records, circa 1900–63, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, available on line). In 1920, Donald Sample contracted tuberculosis. He went for treatment to the world-famous Trudeau Sanitorium at Saranac Lake, in New York State’s Adirondack Mountains for the prescribed regimen of rest, healthful food, and fresh air. Visiting his brother in 1921, Paul also contracted the disease. Tuberculosis is highly contagious, and had no certain cure before the development of streptomycin in 1946. Even for patients who appeared to have recovered, there was a significant rate of recurrence. Thus, in his letter to Price, Sample avoided the stigma conjured by naming the disease, but wrote “I had a relapse with a bad lung and spent the next four years hospitalized in Saranac Lake.” The stringent physical restrictions imposed by adherence to “the cure” required Sample to cultivate an alternate set of interests. He read voraciously and, at the suggestion of his physician, contacted the husband of a fellow patient for instruction in art. That artist, then living in Saranac, was Jonas Lie (1880–1940), a prominent Norwegian-American painter and an associate academician at the National Academy of Design. Lie had gained renown for his dramatic 1913 series of paintings documenting the construction of the Panama Canal (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; United States Military Academy, West Point, New York). Primarily a landscape artist, Lie had a particular affinity for scenes with water. His paintings, impressionistic, atmospheric, and brushy, never strayed from a realistic rendering of his subject. Sample regarded Lie as a mentor and retained a lifelong reverence for his teacher. Sample’s early paintings very much reflect Lie’s influence. ` In 1925, “cured,” Sample left Saranac Lake for what proved to be a brief stay in New York City, where his veteran’s benefits financed a commercial art course. The family, however, had moved to California, in the futile hope that the climate would benefit Donald. Sample joined them and after Donald’s death, remained in California, taking classes at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. In Sample’s account to Price, “I couldn’t stomach the practice of painting a lot of High Sierras and desert flowers which seemed to be the only kind of pictures that were sold here so I got a job teaching drawing and painting at the art school of the University of Southern California.” Initially hired as a part-time instructor, Sample progressed to full-time status and ultimately, by the mid-1930s, to the post of Chairman of the Fine Art Department. Sample, however, did not want to wind up as a professor. “Teaching is all right in small doses,” he wrote, “but I have a horror of drifting into being a college professor and nothing more.” At the same time as he taught, Sample began to exhibit his work in a variety of venues at first locally, then nationally. Though he confessed himself “a terrible salesman,” and though occupied with continued learning and teaching, Sample was nonetheless, ambitious. In 1927, he wrote in his diary, “I am eventually going to be a painter and a damned good one. And what is more, I am going to make money at it” (as quoted by Glick, p. 15). In 1928, Sample felt sufficiently solvent to marry his long-time love, Sylvia Howland, who had also been a patient at Saranac Lake. The Howland family were rooted New Englanders and in summertime the Samples regularly traveled East for family reunion vacations. While the 1930s brought serious hardship to many artists, for Paul Sample it was a decade of success. Buttressed by the financial safety net of his teacher’s salary, he painted realist depictions of the American scene. While his work addressed depression-era conditions with a sympathetic eye, Sample avoided the anger and tinge of bitterness that characterized much contemporary realist art. Beginning in 1930, Sample began to exhibit regularly in juried exhibitions at important national venues, garnering prizes along the way. In 1930, Inner Harbor won an honorable mention in the Annual Exhibition of the Art Institute of Chicago. That same year Sample was also represented in a show at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo and at the Biennial Exhibition of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. In 1931, Dairy Ranch won the second Hallgarten Prize at the Annual Exhibition of the National Academy of Design, in New York. Sample also made his first appearances at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, and The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. In 1936, Miner’s Resting won the Temple Gold Medal at the Pennsylvania Academy’s Annual Exhibition. Always interested in watercolor, in 1936, Sample began to send works on paper to exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, New York. While participating in juried exhibitions, Sample also cultivated commercial possibilities. His first New York art dealer was the prestigious Macbeth Gallery in New York, which included his work in a November 1931 exhibition. In 1934, Sample joined the Ferargil Galleries in New York, after Fred Price arranged the sale of Sample’s Church Supper to the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1937, The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased Sample’s Janitor’s Holiday from the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design, a notable honor. As prestigious as this exhibition schedule may have been, by far Sample’s most visible presence in the 1930s and 1940s was the result of his relationship with Henry Luce’s burgeoning publishing empire, Time, Inc. Sample’s first contribution to a Luce publication appears to have been another San Pedro...

Lucien Delarue (1925-2011) Paris Seine River Scene. "Seine at Paris" Provenance: Newman Gallery, Phila. Label verso. Hand signed on Canvas. Dimensions: H: 25 inches: W: 31.5 inches: Frame: 35 X 41 inches Artist Lucien Delarue was born in Paris in 1925, and he is known for his spectacular cityscape painting. Post Impressionist painter He studied at the studios of Grande Chaumiere, Paris and was a pupil of Maitre Yves Brayer. He is best know as a French Impressionist. He loved to paint the romantic streets of Paris with its stunning architecture and beauty. Also included in his repertoire is colorful French floral still life paintings, South of France country cottages, harbor views, and river scenes. At a very early age Delarue began taking part in exhibitions. Quickly he was talking medals for his works including first prize and the Vermeil-Medaille at the Salon Violet. Other gold medals include the Salon of Vincennes, and the Salon of Clichy (1973). In 1974 he won the silver medal at the Salon des Artistes Francais, and a bronze medal at the "Arts-Sciences-Lettres" exhibition in Paris. He also exhibited works at the Museum of Ile de France in the chateau of Sceaux. He held exhibitions in New York and in San Francisco in the United States. He was a member of the Salon des Artistes Francais and of the French Watercolor Society.Lucien Delarue excelled in recreating the cottages, harbor views, and expressionist architecture of Paris in his artwork. His watercolor paintings include color-rich representations of France's many scenic rivers. Delarue would eventually become a member of the French Watercolor Society and the Salon des Artistes Francais. He showed with Henk Bos...

Signed post impressionist oil on canvas landscape by French painter Jacques-Emile Blanche. The work depicts crowds of people enjoying a day at Brighton beach on the south coast of England. Bathers are dotted across the sandy beach with the pier on the right hand of the scene and the Grand Hotel behind. Signature: Signed lower right Dimensions: Framed: 29.5"x47.5" Unframed: 22.5"x39.5" Provenance: Private collection - Italy This work will be included in the catalogue raisonne of the work of Jacques Emile Blanche currently under preparation by Dr Jane Roberts & Muriel Molines Blanche received training from Gervex and Fernand Humbert. His grandfather was Émile Antoine Blanche, the psychiatrist who treated the poet Gérard de Nerval on several occasions. He was awarded a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, and was a Commander of the Légion d'Honneur. He was well known in French and British artistic circles, and married the daughter of John Lemoine, the leader of the Diary of the Proceedings ( Journal des Débats), and author of the Life of Brummel. He exhibited his works in London and Paris. Blanche had a wide circle of acquaintances, and the list of portraits which he executed is indicative of the diversity of those who used to meet at his home: Henri Bergson; Stéphane Mallarmé; Henry Bernstein (1902); André Gide (1912); Anna de Noailles (1912); Jean Cocteau (1912); Igor Stravinsky (1915); Francis Jammes (1917); Paul Claudel (1919); Jean Giraudoux; Paul Valéry; Marcel Proust; Max Jacob (1921); Maeterlinck (1931); Debussy; Antoine Bourdelle; George Moore; André Maurois; François Mauriac; Maréchal Foch and the Princess de Broglie. He also wrote novels, which were more or less autobiographical, and essays, such as From David to Degas; Dates; From Gauguin to the Negro Review; Journals of an Artist ( De David à Degas; Dates; De Gauguin à la Revue nègre; Cahiers d'un artiste) in six volumes, and Manet. During meetings at his studio, he used to collect any snippets that would flesh out the essays he wrote, which alternated between being sharp and emotive. He gave them in series to the magazine Comoedia, under the title of Studio Talk. It was said that he aroused tremendous debate, notably with André Lhote, a painter younger than himself, who also doubled as a critic. The latter initially attempted to define the main characteristics of the art of the 'rebellious and charming Jacques Émile Blanche,' but subsequently treated him less generously, referring to a painter 'attached to the notion of 'high-and-mighty' genre painting.' He added that this sort of painting was marvellously illustrated by Manet. The quality of his flat surfaces, the precious greys and silvery light effects cause Jacques Émile Blanche to be compared more with Manet, whom he admired, than with the Impressionists, with whom he was compared in terms of his early works. Nevertheless, his outdoor backgrounds with traces of sometimes vivid colours have something in common with them. In the aftermath of World War I, he spent a long time on an enormous composition entitled Tribute to those who Died in the War. It was executed in a style which was totally different to his work as a whole. He offered this work to the church in Offranville near Dieppe. He also donated around 100 of his works to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen. He regularly exhibited in Paris, at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (also known as the Salon de Mars) from the time it was founded in 1890. At the time of the initial exhibitions held by the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, he rapidly gained fame by exhibiting such portraits as Paul Adam and Charles Cottet...

Louis Eilshemius', American (1864 -1941), early works were influenced by the Barbizon School and Corot among others. This oil on canvas painting from 1890-1910 is from the era when h...

Ashley John is proud to offer this artwork by: John Fabian Carlson (1874/75 - 1945) John F. Carlson was one of the leading American landscape p...

Signed post impressionist landscape oil on canvas by French painter Henri Le Sidaner. This stunning piece depicts two fishing boats moored in a fishing village at sunset. The last l...

'Agay, le château et le Sémaphore'. Oil on canvas. +/- 1922 Signed lower right Measurements : 60 x 73 cm. This painting will be recorded in the second volume of the Catalogue Raisonn...