1950s Landscape Paintings

Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 30 x 40 Frame Size: 39 x 49 Medium: Oil on Canvas Dated 1957 "Bluebonnet Creek" Texas Hill Country Biography Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) Porfirio Salinas was a self-taught artist who painted landscapes of Central Texas with an emphasis on the vast bluebonnet fields that grow there in the springtime. Born in 1910 in Bastrop, Texas, he attended public schools in San Antonio. He also observed works in progress by the director of the San Antonio Art School, Jose Arpa, as well as landscape painter, Robert Wood. Wood is said to have paid Salinas five dollars a picture to paint bluebonnets because "he hated to paint bluebonnets". Salinas served in the military from 1943 to 1945. Although he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, he was allowed to live at home. At the fort, Colonel Telesphor Gottchalk assigned him to paint murals for the officer's lounge and various other projects, and Salinas continued to be able to paint during his entire conscripted period. Even before he achieved notoriety among galleries, dealers, and museums, Salinas was widely followed and appreciated by many Texans, including former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who may be considered responsible for launching Salinas popularity beyond the boundaries of Texas. In 1973, Texas capital, Austin, honored Salinas for having "done much to bring the culture of Mexico and Texas closer together with his paintings". Salinas died in April 1973 in San Antonio, Texas. From the years of the Great Depression through President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society of the 1960s, Texan Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) remained one of the Lone Star State's most popular artists. Today, his works remain popular with Texas collectors and those who love landscapes of the beautiful "Hill Country" that lies in the center of the state. One of the first Mexican American painters to become widely recognized for his art, Salinas was a favorite of President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, as well as of Sam Rayburn, the longest-serving Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Texas Governor John Connelly. In fact, President Johnson was so enamored with his Salinas paintings that the artist will forever be associated with America's first Texas-born President. Works by Porfirio Salinas are in a number of museum collections, grace the halls of the Texas State Capitol and the Governor's Mansion in Austin, and are included in virtually every major private collection of Early Texas Art. Porfirio Salinas was born on November 6, 1910, near the small town of Bastrop, Texas, about thirty miles from Austin. His father, Porfirio G. Salinas (1881-1967), and his mother, Clara G. Chavez, struggled to make a hardscrabble living as tenant farmers, but eventually were forced to give up farming. The family moved to San Antonio, where Salinas' father was able to get a job working as a laborer for the railroad, but the scenic area around Bastrop, with its pine trees and the wide expanse of the Rio Grande River, would forever remain a touchstone for the artist. For the rest of his life, Salinas and his brothers went back frequently to visit their grandmother in her little farmhouse. When in Bastrop, Porfirio painted on the banks of the Rio Grande or in the groves of pine trees. The Salinas family was close-knit and Porfirio was the middle child of five children, so he had an older brother and sister as well as a younger brother and sister. His mother was a native of Mexico, so throughout his childhood the family made the long drive to Mexico to visit Clara Salinas' family. As a child growing up in the bi-lingual section of San Antonio, Salinas drew and painted incessantly and by the time he was ten, he was already producing work that was mature enough to sell to his schoolteachers. Many years later in an article in the New York Times he was described as a "boy whose textbooks were seldom opened and whose sketchbook was never closed." Instead of studying, the young artist spent his spare time watching artists paint in and around San Antonio. As an aspiring painter, Salinas was fortunate to grow up in the historic city, which had the most active art scene in Texas. It was his exposure to older, professional painters that encouraged the precocious young painter to leave school early in order to help his family and pursue a career as a professional artist, despite his father's inability to see art as a career with any future for his son. When Salinas was about fifteen he came to know the artist Robert W. Wood (1889-1979). He met Wood while he was employed in an art supply store and he soon began to work as an assistant to the English-born painter, who had moved from Portland to San Antonio in 1924. Although the diminutive Englishman was already an established professional artist, he did not have a great deal of formal art training and so he was then studying with the academically trained Spanish painter Jose Arpa (1858-1952) in order to augment his knowledge and give his work a more polished look. Salinas was an eager young man, and while working in Wood's downtown San Antonio studio he learned to stretch canvases, frame paintings and to sketch in larger compositions from small plein-air studies for the English artist. He began to accompany Wood and Arpa to the hills outside San Antonio, where they painted small Plein-air studies of fields of blue lupin - the state flower, the famous "Bluebonnets" of Texas - in the springtime and scenes of the gnarled Red Oaks as they changed color in the fall. He was soon assisting Wood in the tedious work of painting the tiny blue flowers that collectors wanted to see in the landscapes they purchased of central Texas. According to a 1972 newspaper story, "Legend has it that one day in the 1920s artist Robert Wood decided he could not bear to paint another bluebonnet in one of his landscapes. He hired young Porfirio Salinas to paint them in for him at five dollars a painting." Whether this story is accurate or apocryphal isn't clear, but the ambitious and independent young Salinas wasn't destined to be anyone's assistant for very long. The formative event of Porfirio Salinas' teenage years was the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibitions, a Roaring-Twenties dream of the eccentric oilman Edgar B. Davis (1873-1951). These competitive shows of paintings of wildflowers and Texas life were mounted in San Antonio from 1927 to 1929. Held at the newly opened Witte Museum each spring, the exhibition featured large cash prizes donated by the philanthropic Davis, which were an inducement for artists to travel from all over the United States to paint in the Hill Country of Texas. The "Davis Competitions," as they were known, helped to cement San Antonio's reputation as an art center, a legacy that remains with the "River City" today. The shows generated a great deal of excitement in the area, helping to make celebrities of the some of the artists who had already settled there and encouraging others to make San Antonio their home. Over the three years that the wildflower competitions were held, more than 300 paintings were exhibited, and many thousands of viewers saw the paintings at the Witte Museum and on tours throughout the state and in New York. Each year Davis would generously purchase the winning paintings and then donate them to the San Antonio Art League. Young Porfirio Salinas would have been able to not only watch his two mentors - Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa - paint the works that they entered in the Davis Competitions, he would have been able to see Arpa take several of the major prizes, receiving the judge's accolades for "Verbena," "Cactus Flower" and "Picking Cotton," works that are still on view at the San Antonio Art League Museum today. Unfortunately, Davis eventually put his donations to work in other charitable endeavors, bringing to an end the wildflower events, but only after they inspired Salinas and other young painters and had helped to make wildflower paintings the most sought-after subject for traditionalist Texas collectors. In 1930, when he was only twenty, Salinas hung out a shingle and began to paint professionally, augmenting the sales of his easel paintings with what little business he could garner by painting signs for local concerns. It was a struggle for the young artist to make a living, as the effects of the Great Depression were settling in. His early works are very similar to those of Robert Wood's, both in subject matter and treatment. Salinas did small paintings of Bluebonnets for the tourists who visited San Antonio to see the famous Alamo as well as paintings of the Texas missions...

Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 25 x 30 Frame Size: 34 x 39 Medium: Oil on Canvas Circa 1950 "Lazy Day Blues" Texas Bluebonnet Biography Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) Porfirio Salinas was a self-taught artist who painted landscapes of Central Texas with an emphasis on the vast bluebonnet fields that grow there in the springtime. Born in 1910 in Bastrop, Texas, he attended public schools in San Antonio. He also observed works in progress by the director of the San Antonio Art School, Jose Arpa, as well as landscape painter, Robert Wood. Wood is said to have paid Salinas five dollars a picture to paint bluebonnets because "he hated to paint bluebonnets". Salinas served in the military from 1943 to 1945. Although he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, he was allowed to live at home. At the fort, Colonel Telesphor Gottchalk assigned him to paint murals for the officer's lounge and various other projects, and Salinas continued to be able to paint during his entire conscripted period. Even before he achieved notoriety among galleries, dealers, and museums, Salinas was widely followed and appreciated by many Texans, including former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who may be considered responsible for launching Salinas popularity beyond the boundaries of Texas. In 1973, Texas capital, Austin, honored Salinas for having "done much to bring the culture of Mexico and Texas closer together with his paintings". Salinas died in April 1973 in San Antonio, Texas. From the years of the Great Depression through President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society of the 1960s, Texan Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) remained one of the Lone Star State's most popular artists. Today, his works remain popular with Texas collectors and those who love landscapes of the beautiful "Hill Country" that lies in the center of the state. One of the first Mexican American painters to become widely recognized for his art, Salinas was a favorite of President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, as well as of Sam Rayburn, the longest-serving Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Texas Governor John Connelly. In fact, President Johnson was so enamored with his Salinas paintings that the artist will forever be associated with America's first Texas-born President. Works by Porfirio Salinas is in a number of museum collections, grace the halls of the Texas State Capitol and the Governor's Mansion in Austin, and are included in virtually every major private collection of Early Texas Art. Porfirio Salinas was born on November 6, 1910, near the small town of Bastrop, Texas, about thirty miles from Austin. His father, Porfirio G. Salinas (1881-1967), and his mother, Clara G. Chavez, struggled to make a hardscrabble living as tenant farmers, but eventually were forced to give up farming. The family moved to San Antonio, where Salinas' father was able to get a job working as a laborer for the railroad, but the scenic area around Bastrop, with its pine trees and the wide expanse of the Rio Grande River, would forever remain a touchstone for the artist. For the rest of his life, Salinas and his brothers went back frequently to visit their grandmother in her little farmhouse. When in Bastrop, Porfirio painted on the banks of the Rio Grande or in the groves of pine trees. The Salinas family was close-knit, and Porfirio was the middle child of five children, so he had an older brother and sister as well as a younger brother and sister. His mother was a native of Mexico, so throughout his childhood the family made the long drive to Mexico to visit Clara Salinas' family. As a child growing up in the bi-lingual section of San Antonio, Salinas drew and painted incessantly and by the time he was ten, he was already producing work that was mature enough to sell to his schoolteachers. Many years later in an article in the New York Times he was described as a "boy whose textbooks were seldom opened and whose sketchbook was never closed." Instead of studying, the young artist spent his spare time watching artists paint in and around San Antonio. As an aspiring painter, Salinas was fortunate to grow up in the historic city, which had the most active art scene in Texas. It was his exposure to older, professional painters that encouraged the precocious young painter to leave school early in order to help his family and pursue a career as a professional artist, despite his father's inability to see art as a career with any future for his son. When Salinas was about fifteen he came to know the artist Robert W. Wood (1889-1979). He met Wood while he was employed in an art supply store and he soon began to work as an assistant to the English-born painter, who had moved from Portland to San Antonio in 1924. Although the diminutive Englishman was already an established professional artist, he did not have a great deal of formal art training and so he was then studying with the academically trained Spanish painter Jose Arpa (1858-1952) in order to augment his knowledge and give his work a more polished look. Salinas was an eager young man, and while working in Wood's downtown San Antonio studio he learned to stretch canvases, frame paintings and to sketch in larger compositions from small plein-air studies for the English artist. He began to accompany Wood and Arpa to the hills outside San Antonio, where they painted small Plein-air studies of fields of blue lupin - the state flower, the famous "Bluebonnets" of Texas - in the springtime and scenes of the gnarled Red Oaks as they changed color in the fall. He was soon assisting Wood in the tedious work of painting the tiny blue flowers that collectors wanted to see in the landscapes they purchased of central Texas. According to a 1972 newspaper story, "Legend has it that one day in the 1920s artist Robert Wood decided he could not bear to paint another bluebonnet in one of his landscapes. He hired young Porfirio Salinas to paint them in for him at five dollars a painting." Whether this story is accurate or apocryphal isn't clear, but the ambitious and independent young Salinas wasn't destined to be anyone's assistant for very long. The formative event of Porfirio Salinas' teenage years was the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibitions, a Roaring-Twenties dream of the eccentric oilman Edgar B. Davis (1873-1951). These competitive shows of paintings of wildflowers and Texas life were mounted in San Antonio from 1927 to 1929. Held at the newly opened Witte Museum each spring, the exhibition featured large cash prizes donated by the philanthropic Davis, which were an inducement for artists to travel from all over the United States to paint in the Hill Country of Texas. The "Davis Competitions," as they were known, helped to cement San Antonio's reputation as an art center, a legacy that remains with the "River City" today. The shows generated a great deal of excitement in the area, helping to make celebrities of the some of the artists who had already settled there and encouraging others to make San Antonio their home. Over the three years that the wildflower competitions were held, more than 300 paintings were exhibited, and many thousands of viewers saw the paintings at the Witte Museum and on tours throughout the state and in New York. Each year Davis would generously purchase the winning paintings and then donate them to the San Antonio Art League. Young Porfirio Salinas would have been able to not only watch his two mentors - Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa - paint the works that they entered in the Davis Competitions, he would have been able to see Arpa take several of the major prizes, receiving the judge's accolades for "Verbena," "Cactus Flower" and "Picking Cotton," works that are still on view at the San Antonio Art League Museum today. Unfortunately, Davis eventually put his donations to work in other charitable endeavors, bringing to an end the wildflower events, but only after they inspired Salinas and other young painters and had helped to make wildflower paintings the most sought-after subject for traditionalist Texas collectors. In 1930, when he was only twenty, Salinas hung out a shingle and began to paint professionally, augmenting the sales of his easel paintings with what little business he could garner by painting signs for local concerns. It was a struggle for the young artist to make a living, as the effects of the Great Depression were settling in. His early works are very similar to those of Robert Wood's, both in subject matter and treatment. Salinas did small paintings of Bluebonnets for the tourists who visited San Antonio to see the famous Alamo as well as paintings of the Texas missions...

Emilio Grau Sala (1911-1975) - La Rochelle - Mixed media Artwork 49x65 cm. Frame measures 69x85 cm. Son of cartoonist Juan Grau Miró, he was born in Barcelona in 1911. Although he a...

Very impressive early abstract painting by Peter Busa (1914 - 1985). Oil on canvas. Signed lower left. Housed in a period modernist frame.

Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 12 x 16 Frame Size: 21 x 25 Medium: Oil Dated 1958 "Prickly Pear Path" Texas Hill Country Biography Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) Porfirio Salinas was a self-taught artist who painted landscapes of Central Texas with an emphasis on the vast bluebonnet fields that grow there in the springtime. Born in 1910 in Bastrop, Texas, he attended public schools in San Antonio. He also observed works in progress by the director of the San Antonio Art School, Jose Arpa, as well as landscape painter, Robert Wood. Wood is said to have paid Salinas five dollars a picture to paint bluebonnets because "he hated to paint bluebonnets". Salinas served in the military from 1943 to 1945. Although he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, he was allowed to live at home. At the fort, Colonel Telesphor Gottchalk assigned him to paint murals for the officer's lounge and various other projects, and Salinas continued to be able to paint during his entire conscripted period. Even before he achieved notoriety among galleries, dealers, and museums, Salinas was widely followed and appreciated by many Texans, including former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who may be considered responsible for launching Salinas popularity beyond the boundaries of Texas. In 1973, Texas capital, Austin, honored Salinas for having "done much to bring the culture of Mexico and Texas closer together with his paintings". Salinas died in April 1973 in San Antonio, Texas. From the years of the Great Depression through President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society of the 1960s, Texan Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) remained one of the Lone Star State's most popular artists. Today, his works remain popular with Texas collectors and those who love landscapes of the beautiful "Hill Country" that lies in the center of the state. One of the first Mexican-American painters to become widely recognized for his art, Salinas was a favorite of President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, as well as of Sam Rayburn, the longest-serving Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Texas Governor John Connelly. In fact, President Johnson was so enamored with his Salinas paintings that the artist will forever be associated with America's first Texas-born President. Works by Porfirio Salinas are in a number of museum collections, grace the halls of the Texas State Capitol and the Governor's Mansion in Austin, and are included in virtually every major private collection of Early Texas Art. Porfirio Salinas was born on November 6, 1910 near the small town of Bastrop, Texas, about thirty miles from Austin. His father, Porfirio G. Salinas (1881-1967), and his mother, Clara G. Chavez, struggled to make a hardscrabble living as tenant farmers, but eventually were forced to give up farming. The family moved to San Antonio, where Salinas' father was able to get a job working as a laborer for the railroad, but the scenic area around Bastrop, with its pine trees and the wide expanse of the Rio Grande River, would forever remain a touchstone for the artist. For the rest of his life, Salinas and his brothers went back frequently to visit their grandmother in her little farmhouse. When in Bastrop, Porfirio painted on the banks of the Rio Grande or in the groves of pine trees. The Salinas family was close-knit and Porfirio was the middle child of five children, so he had an older brother and sister as well as a younger brother and sister. His mother was a native of Mexico, so throughout his childhood the family made the long drive to Mexico to visit Clara Salinas' family. As a child growing up in the bi-lingual section of San Antonio, Salinas drew and painted incessantly and by the time he was ten, he was already producing work that was mature enough to sell to his schoolteachers. Many years later in an article in the New York Times he was described as a "boy whose textbooks were seldom opened and whose sketchbook was never closed." Instead of studying, the young artist spent his spare time watching artists paint in and around San Antonio. As an aspiring painter, Salinas was fortunate to grow up in the historic city, which had the most active art scene in Texas. It was his exposure to older, professional painters that encouraged the precocious young painter to leave school early in order to help his family and pursue a career as a professional artist, despite his father's inability to see art as a career with any future for his son. When Salinas was about fifteen he came to know the artist Robert W. Wood (1889-1979). He met Wood while he was employed in an art supply store and he soon began to work as an assistant to the English-born painter, who had moved from Portland to San Antonio in 1924. Although the diminutive Englishman was already an established professional artist, he did not have a great deal of formal art training and so he was then studying with the academically trained Spanish painter Jose Arpa (1858-1952) in order to augment his knowledge and give his work a more polished look. Salinas was an eager young man, and while working in Wood's downtown San Antonio studio he learned to stretch canvases, frame paintings and to sketch in larger compositions from small plein-air studies for the English artist. He began to accompany Wood and Arpa to the hills outside San Antonio, where they painted small Plein-air studies of fields of blue lupin - the state flower, the famous "Bluebonnets" of Texas - in the springtime and scenes of the gnarled Red Oaks as they changed color in the fall. He was soon assisting Wood in the tedious work of painting the tiny blue flowers that collectors wanted to see in the landscapes they purchased of central Texas. According to a 1972 newspaper story, "Legend has it that one day in the 1920s artist Robert Wood decided he could not bear to paint another bluebonnet in one of his landscapes. He hired young Porfirio Salinas to paint them in for him at five dollars a painting." Whether this story is accurate or apocryphal isn't clear, but the ambitious and independent young Salinas wasn't destined to be anyone's assistant for very long. The formative event of Porfirio Salinas' teenage years was the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibitions, a Roaring-Twenties dream of the eccentric oilman Edgar B. Davis (1873-1951). These competitive shows of paintings of wildflowers and Texas life were mounted in San Antonio from 1927 to 1929. Held at the newly opened Witte Museum each spring, the exhibition featured large cash prizes donated by the philanthropic Davis, which were an inducement for artists to travel from all over the United States to paint in the Hill Country of Texas. The "Davis Competitions," as they were known, helped to cement San Antonio's reputation as an art center, a legacy that remains with the "River City" today. The shows generated a great deal of excitement in the area, helping to make celebrities of the some of the artists who had already settled there and encouraging others to make San Antonio their home. Over the three years that the wildflower competitions were held, more than 300 paintings were exhibited, and many thousands of viewers saw the paintings at the Witte Museum and on tours throughout the state and in New York. Each year Davis would generously purchase the winning paintings and then donate them to the San Antonio Art League. Young Porfirio Salinas would have been able to not only watch his two mentors - Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa - paint the works that they entered in the Davis Competitions, he would have been able to see Arpa take several of the major prizes, receiving the judge's accolades for "Verbena," "Cactus Flower" and "Picking Cotton," works that are still on view at the San Antonio Art League Museum today. Unfortunately, Davis eventually put his donations to work in other charitable endeavors, bringing to an end the wildflower events, but only after they inspired Salinas and other young painters and had helped to make wildflower paintings the most sought-after subject for traditionalist Texas collectors. In 1930, when he was only twenty, Salinas hung out a shingle and began to paint professionally, augmenting the sales of his easel paintings with what little business he could garner by painting signs for local concerns. It was a struggle for the young artist to make a living, as the effects of the Great Depression were settling in. His early works are very similar to those of Robert Wood's, both in subject matter and treatment. Salinas did small paintings of Bluebonnets for the tourists who visited San Antonio to see the famous Alamo as well as paintings of the Texas missions. While a few of his early works have a soft, tonalist quality, with subtle gradations of sunset colors, most were painted in a style that fits well within the currents of the late American Impressionist style, with solid drawing and a warm, chromatic palette. Like Robert Wood's works of the 1930s, the paintings Salinas produced as a young man were usually well composed and detailed views of the spring wildflowers in full bloom in the Texas countryside. In contrast to Wood's work, however, early Salinas compositions were usually pure landscapes without the pioneer farms or dilapidated fences that Wood often used to add visual interest to his wildflower scenes, and he also painted scenes of San Antonio itself as his mentor Jose Arpa had done. To residents of the Hill Country, Salinas was especially adept at accurately capturing the palette of the region and its unique atmosphere. In 1939 Salinas began working with Dewey Bradford (1896-1985), one of the great characters of Texas art. Bradford was a second-generation dealer whose family operated the Bradford Paint Company in Austin, where they sold art supplies, framed artwork, restored paintings and exhibited paintings by Texas artists. Salinas was struggling when he met Bradford, but the older man took the young artist under his wing and began to sell his work reliably, even though the prices that people would pay for a painting were still low due to the lingering effects of the Great Depression. Bradford was a born salesman with a gift for storytelling, and truth be told, a bit of embroidery. The relationship between Bradford and Salinas was often rocky, but it was to last the rest of the artist's life and give him a modest sense of loyalty and security, things which are all too rare in the art world. While Bradford could be critical of his work, Salinas knew that he had a dealer who encouraged him, believed in him and was not shy about singing his praises to anyone who entered Bradford's store on Guadalupe Street. During the early years of World War II Salinas met a pretty Mexican woman from Guadalajara named Maria Bonillas, who was working as a secretary for the Mexican National Railways office in San Antonio. While he was walking downtown with a painting of a bullfighter under his arm, he started a conversation with the young woman, and things progressed rapidly. The couple were married on February 15, 1942 and settled into life in bi-lingual San Antonio and they eventually purchased a tidy stone home on Buena Vista street that had a detached studio in back. By the time the United States entered World War II, Salinas was starting to make a decent living selling his art and beginning to garner recognition across Texas. However, in 1943, like millions of other young men, he was drafted into the service of his country. Fortunately, as an older Army draftee with special talents, after his training he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, right in San Antonio, allowing him to remain at home while still completing his obligation to "Uncle Sam." Because of his artistic abilities, Salinas was asked to do paintings for the Army as well as a mural for the Officer's Club, which has been re-discovered in recent years. In his spare time he kept working on landscapes and when the war ended in 1945, he was not faced with the same rocky transition from military to civilian life as many veterans. That same year, Salinas became a father as he and Maria celebrated the birth of his only child, Christina Maria Salinas. Like most landscape artists of the era, Salinas was an avid Plein-air painter, and he took his easel and paint box with him on trips throughout Texas and into Mexico. He and his wife traveled deep into her native country, where the artist painted the majestic volcanic peaks of Iztaccihuatl (known as the "Sleeping Woman" because of its unique shape) and Popocatepetl (called the "smoking mountain" because the volcano is still active), south of Mexico City. Salinas also painted studies of rustic villages and their residents. While his most popular paintings were always the scenes of the Texas Bluebonnets and other wildflowers that bloom all over the Hill Country in the spring, he also painted scenes of the twisted Texas oak trees of central Texas, the more arid landscapes of the Texas panhandle and West Texas, and the historic Texas missions; he even sold rapidly executed scenes of bullfights and cockfights for Mexican-American collectors. By the late 1940s, the American economy was finally growing again and wealthier Texans began to collect Salinas paintings, purchasing them from galleries in San Antonio and Dallas and at Dewey Bradford's County Store Gallery in Austin. Salinas also sold work to the Atlanta dealer Dr. Carlton Palmer, who represented Robert W. Wood for many years. In 1948 Palmer sold two large Salinas paintings to the Citizen National Bank in Abilene, Texas. Because Austin was the state capitol, Bradford counted many of the state's elite among his patrons, and due to his interest in history and literature, he played a large role in the cultural history of central Texas. Bradford introduced a number of the major Texas political figures to Salinas' work, including Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973), who was then in the House of Representatives and on his way to winning a controversial election that vaulted him in the United States Senate. Johnson became an enthusiastic collector, as did his political mentor, the legendary House Speaker Sam Rayburn (1882-1961). Johnson decorated his Washington offices with Salinas paintings and he brought a number of them home to his vast LBJ Ranch, near Johnson City, Texas. In spite of his important patrons, Salinas went through a fallow and difficult period in the late 1950s. He had a volatile temperament, which made relationships difficult, and it took great patience for his wife to help him manage his career. As Salinas entered middle age his work began to sell steadily, but except for tourists who purchased his paintings in San Antonio, he was known primarily only to Texas art collectors. All that changed in 1961 with the election of John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) to the Presidency of the United States and his running mate Lyndon Johnson to the Vice Presidency. Johnson was an expansive, larger-than-life character and his status as a long, tall Texan in a cowboy hat was a large part of his imposing political image. During his storied career in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007) spent their time in Washington in a modest house on the edge of Rock Creek Park, but this home would not do for a Vice President. So, in 1961, the Johnsons purchased a French chateau-styled home in the Spring Valley section of the Capitol. Obtained from the famed socialite and ambassador Perle Mesta (1889-1975), the house came with a fine collection of French furniture and tapestries, and the designer Genevieve Hendricks was hired to meld the French look with objects from the Johnsons' overseas travels and paintings of the flora and fauna of their native Texas. Featured prominently in the foyer were the paintings of Porfirio Salinas. Because of the Johnsons' patronage, his work was mentioned in Time Magazine and other national publications. Lady Bird Johnson loved her landscapes of the Texas Hill Country and told reporters that, "I want to see them when ever I open the door, to remind me where I come from." After President Kennedy's death thrust Lyndon Johnson into the Presidency, he brought his Salinas paintings into the historic halls of the White House, further enhaning the Texas painter's national reputation. At the time of the President Kennedy's assassination, Salinas had completed a scene of a horse drinking titled "Rocky Creek" that was to have been presented to Kennedy during his ill-fated visit to Dallas. Instead, in an effort to memorialize the fallen President, Salinas painted a symbolic work of a lone horse depicted against foreboding clouds. During his tenure in the White House, President Johnson presented a Salinas landscape as a state gift to the President of Mexico, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1911-1979). During the 1960s, Salinas paintings sold briskly and, thanks to Presidential patronage, for escalating prices. In an interview with a writer from the New York Times, President Johnson enthused about the work of "his favorite artist" and said that, "his work reminds me of the country around the ranch." Salinas was invited to the LBJ Ranch frequently during the Johnson administration and his paintings were hung throughout the ranch, in the President's offices and even in the private quarters of the White House. The connection to President Johnson was a great boon to sales of Salinas paintings, and in 1964, when the demand was at its height, Texas Governor John Connelly (1917-1993) was told that all Salinas'work was sold and that he would have to wait for a painting. In 1960, a half century after his birth, Salinas was honored by his home town of Bastrop, a celebration that touched the modest artist. In 1962 Salinas was given a solo exhibition at the Witte Museum in San Antonio that featured more than twenty of his works. By the early 1960s, sales of reproductions of the artist's landscapes by the New York Graphic Society and other publishers grew rapidly, enlarging his audience throughout the United States. In 1967, Dewey Bradford helped to organize the production of a book of Texas stories titled "Bluebonnets and Cactus" (Austin: Pemberton Press: 1967), which was profusely illustrated with paintings by Salinas. His works were still popular when Salinas died after a brief illness in April of 1973, just a few months after former President Johnson's passing. He was memorialized in the City of Austin by Porfirio Salinas Day, which honored him for having "done much to bring the culture of Mexico and Texas together with his paintings." Bastrop, Texas, the city of the artist's birth, has been holding a Salinas Art Exhibition annually since 1981. He painted hundreds of scenes of the wildflowers, including the various varieties of Blue Lupin, the state flower, as well as other flowering flora. These show the influence of his artistic mentors Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa Y Perea. Salinas also painted a number of scenes of Prickly Pear Cactus that show the influence of the English painter Dawson Dawson-Watson (1864-1939), who painted many such works during his tenure in Texas. He painted the more arid Texas landscape infrequently and these works are very rare today and sought after by collectors from the Texas Panhandle and West Texas. Salinas also painted many river landscapes along the Guadalupe, Rio Frio, the San Antonio and the Rio Grande. On trips to his wife's homeland of Mexico, he painted a number of scenes of the volcanic peaks as well as scenes of peasant villages and villagers. Figurative paintings are rare among Salinas' works and these scenes of bullfights, fandangos and cock fights are probably the least sought after of his paintings. There are also a small number of modest marines, painted on trips to the Texas and California coast. Salinas paintings are highly prized by collectors of early Texas art, with the paintings of wildflowers in greatest demand. Works by Porfirio Salinas can be found in a number of public collections, including the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas; the Texas State Capitol; the Texas Governor's Mansion; the Lyndon Baines Johnson Ranch; the Sam Rayburn Library and Museum in Bonham, Texas; Amarillo High School; the Witte Museum in San Antonio; the historic Joan and Price Daniel House in San Antonio; the Stark Museum in Orange, Texas; the R.W. Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport, Louisiana; the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center in Pueblo, Colorado; Texas A & M University and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Salinas has been featured in a number of reference works as well as anthologies devoted to American Western Art...

Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 27 x 33 Frame Size: 35 x 41 Medium: Oil On Canvas Late 1940s-Early 1950s "Bluebonnet Time" Texas Hill Country Landscape Biography Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) Porfirio Salinas was a self-taught artist who painted landscapes of Central Texas with an emphasis on the vast bluebonnet fields that grow there in the springtime. Born in 1910 in Bastrop, Texas, he attended public schools in San Antonio. He also observed works in progress by the director of the San Antonio Art School, Jose Arpa, as well as landscape painter, Robert Wood. Wood is said to have paid Salinas five dollars a picture to paint bluebonnets because "he hated to paint bluebonnets". Salinas served in the military from 1943 to 1945. Although he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, he was allowed to live at home. At the fort, Colonel Telesphor Gottchalk assigned him to paint murals for the officer's lounge and various other projects, and Salinas continued to be able to paint during his entire conscripted period. Even before he achieved notoriety among galleries, dealers, and museums, Salinas was widely followed and appreciated by many Texans, including former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who may be considered responsible for launching Salinas popularity beyond the boundaries of Texas. In 1973, Texas capital, Austin, honored Salinas for having "done much to bring the culture of Mexico and Texas closer together with his paintings". Salinas died in April 1973 in San Antonio, Texas. From the years of the Great Depression through President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society of the 1960s, Texan Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) remained one of the Lone Star State's most popular artists. Today, his works remain popular with Texas collectors and those who love landscapes of the beautiful "Hill Country" that lies in the center of the state. One of the first Mexican-American painters to become widely recognized for his art, Salinas was a favorite of President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, as well as of Sam Rayburn, the longest-serving Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Texas Governor John Connelly. In fact, President Johnson was so enamored with his Salinas paintings that the artist will forever be associated with America's first Texas-born President. Works by Porfirio Salinas are in a number of museum collections, grace the halls of the Texas State Capitol and the Governor's Mansion in Austin, and are included in virtually every major private collection of Early Texas Art. Porfirio Salinas was born on November 6, 1910 near the small town of Bastrop, Texas, about thirty miles from Austin. His father, Porfirio G. Salinas (1881-1967), and his mother, Clara G. Chavez, struggled to make a hardscrabble living as tenant farmers, but eventually were forced to give up farming. The family moved to San Antonio, where Salinas' father was able to get a job working as a laborer for the railroad, but the scenic area around Bastrop, with its pine trees and the wide expanse of the Rio Grande River, would forever remain a touchstone for the artist. For the rest of his life, Salinas and his brothers went back frequently to visit their grandmother in her little farmhouse. When in Bastrop, Porfirio painted on the banks of the Rio Grande or in the groves of pine trees. The Salinas family was close-knit and Porfirio was the middle child of five children, so he had an older brother and sister as well as a younger brother and sister. His mother was a native of Mexico, so throughout his childhood the family made the long drive to Mexico to visit Clara Salinas' family. As a child growing up in the bi-lingual section of San Antonio, Salinas drew and painted incessantly and by the time he was ten, he was already producing work that was mature enough to sell to his schoolteachers. Many years later in an article in the New York Times he was described as a "boy whose textbooks were seldom opened and whose sketchbook was never closed." Instead of studying, the young artist spent his spare time watching artists paint in and around San Antonio. As an aspiring painter, Salinas was fortunate to grow up in the historic city, which had the most active art scene in Texas. It was his exposure to older, professional painters that encouraged the precocious young painter to leave school early in order to help his family and pursue a career as a professional artist, despite his father's inability to see art as a career with any future for his son. When Salinas was about fifteen he came to know the artist Robert W. Wood (1889-1979). He met Wood while he was employed in an art supply store and he soon began to work as an assistant to the English-born painter, who had moved from Portland to San Antonio in 1924. Although the diminutive Englishman was already an established professional artist, he did not have a great deal of formal art training and so he was then studying with the academically trained Spanish painter Jose Arpa (1858-1952) in order to augment his knowledge and give his work a more polished look. Salinas was an eager young man, and while working in Wood's downtown San Antonio studio he learned to stretch canvases, frame paintings and to sketch in larger compositions from small plein-air studies for the English artist. He began to accompany Wood and Arpa to the hills outside San Antonio, where they painted small Plein-air studies of fields of blue lupin - the state flower, the famous "Bluebonnets" of Texas - in the springtime and scenes of the gnarled Red Oaks as they changed color in the fall. He was soon assisting Wood in the tedious work of painting the tiny blue flowers that collectors wanted to see in the landscapes they purchased of central Texas. According to a 1972 newspaper story, "Legend has it that one day in the 1920s artist Robert Wood decided he could not bear to paint another bluebonnet in one of his landscapes. He hired young Porfirio Salinas to paint them in for him at five dollars a painting." Whether this story is accurate or apocryphal isn't clear, but the ambitious and independent young Salinas wasn't destined to be anyone's assistant for very long. The formative event of Porfirio Salinas' teenage years was the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibitions, a Roaring-Twenties dream of the eccentric oilman Edgar B. Davis (1873-1951). These competitive shows of paintings of wildflowers and Texas life were mounted in San Antonio from 1927 to 1929. Held at the newly opened Witte Museum each spring, the exhibition featured large cash prizes donated by the philanthropic Davis, which were an inducement for artists to travel from all over the United States to paint in the Hill Country of Texas. The "Davis Competitions," as they were known, helped to cement San Antonio's reputation as an art center, a legacy that remains with the "River City" today. The shows generated a great deal of excitement in the area, helping to make celebrities of the some of the artists who had already settled there and encouraging others to make San Antonio their home. Over the three years that the wildflower competitions were held, more than 300 paintings were exhibited, and many thousands of viewers saw the paintings at the Witte Museum and on tours throughout the state and in New York. Each year Davis would generously purchase the winning paintings and then donate them to the San Antonio Art League. Young Porfirio Salinas would have been able to not only watch his two mentors - Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa - paint the works that they entered in the Davis Competitions, he would have been able to see Arpa take several of the major prizes, receiving the judge's accolades for "Verbena," "Cactus Flower" and "Picking Cotton," works that are still on view at the San Antonio Art League Museum today. Unfortunately, Davis eventually put his donations to work in other charitable endeavors, bringing to an end the wildflower events, but only after they inspired Salinas and other young painters and had helped to make wildflower paintings the most sought-after subject for traditionalist Texas collectors. In 1930, when he was only twenty, Salinas hung out a shingle and began to paint professionally, augmenting the sales of his easel paintings with what little business he could garner by painting signs for local concerns. It was a struggle for the young artist to make a living, as the effects of the Great Depression were settling in. His early works are very similar to those of Robert Wood's, both in subject matter and treatment. Salinas did small paintings of Bluebonnets for the tourists who visited San Antonio to see the famous Alamo as well as paintings of the Texas missions. While a few of his early works have a soft, tonalist quality, with subtle gradations of sunset colors, most were painted in a style that fits well within the currents of the late American Impressionist style, with solid drawing and a warm, chromatic palette. Like Robert Wood's works of the 1930s, the paintings Salinas produced as a young man were usually well composed and detailed views of the spring wildflowers in full bloom in the Texas countryside. In contrast to Wood's work, however, early Salinas compositions were usually pure landscapes without the pioneer farms or dilapidated fences that Wood often used to add visual interest to his wildflower scenes, and he also painted scenes of San Antonio itself as his mentor Jose Arpa had done. To residents of the Hill Country, Salinas was especially adept at accurately capturing the palette of the region and its unique atmosphere. In 1939 Salinas began working with Dewey Bradford (1896-1985), one of the great characters of Texas art. Bradford was a second-generation dealer whose family operated the Bradford Paint Company in Austin, where they sold art supplies, framed artwork, restored paintings and exhibited paintings by Texas artists. Salinas was struggling when he met Bradford, but the older man took the young artist under his wing and began to sell his work reliably, even though the prices that people would pay for a painting were still low due to the lingering effects of the Great Depression. Bradford was a born salesman with a gift for storytelling, and truth be told, a bit of embroidery. The relationship between Bradford and Salinas was often rocky, but it was to last the rest of the artist's life and give him a modest sense of loyalty and security, things which are all too rare in the art world. While Bradford could be critical of his work, Salinas knew that he had a dealer who encouraged him, believed in him and was not shy about singing his praises to anyone who entered Bradford's store on Guadalupe Street. During the early years of World War II Salinas met a pretty Mexican woman from Guadalajara named Maria Bonillas, who was working as a secretary for the Mexican National Railways office in San Antonio. While he was walking downtown with a painting of a bullfighter under his arm, he started a conversation with the young woman, and things progressed rapidly. The couple were married on February 15, 1942 and settled into life in bi-lingual San Antonio and they eventually purchased a tidy stone home on Buena Vista street that had a detached studio in back. By the time the United States entered World War II, Salinas was starting to make a decent living selling his art and beginning to garner recognition across Texas. However, in 1943, like millions of other young men, he was drafted into the service of his country. Fortunately, as an older Army draftee with special talents, after his training he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, right in San Antonio, allowing him to remain at home while still completing his obligation to "Uncle Sam." Because of his artistic abilities, Salinas was asked to do paintings for the Army as well as a mural for the Officer's Club, which has been re-discovered in recent years. In his spare time he kept working on landscapes and when the war ended in 1945, he was not faced with the same rocky transition from military to civilian life as many veterans. That same year, Salinas became a father as he and Maria celebrated the birth of his only child, Christina Maria Salinas. Like most landscape artists of the era, Salinas was an avid Plein-air painter, and he took his easel and paint box with him on trips throughout Texas and into Mexico. He and his wife traveled deep into her native country, where the artist painted the majestic volcanic peaks of Iztaccihuatl (known as the "Sleeping Woman" because of its unique shape) and Popocatepetl (called the "smoking mountain" because the volcano is still active), south of Mexico City. Salinas also painted studies of rustic villages and their residents. While his most popular paintings were always the scenes of the Texas Bluebonnets and other wildflowers that bloom all over the Hill Country in the spring, he also painted scenes of the twisted Texas oak trees of central Texas, the more arid landscapes of the Texas panhandle and West Texas, and the historic Texas missions; he even sold rapidly executed scenes of bullfights and cockfights for Mexican-American collectors. By the late 1940s, the American economy was finally growing again and wealthier Texans began to collect Salinas paintings, purchasing them from galleries in San Antonio and Dallas and at Dewey Bradford's County Store Gallery in Austin. Salinas also sold work to the Atlanta dealer Dr. Carlton Palmer, who represented Robert W. Wood for many years. In 1948 Palmer sold two large Salinas paintings to the Citizen National Bank in Abilene, Texas. Because Austin was the state capitol, Bradford counted many of the state's elite among his patrons, and due to his interest in history and literature, he played a large role in the cultural history of central Texas. Bradford introduced a number of the major Texas political figures to Salinas' work, including Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973), who was then in the House of Representatives and on his way to winning a controversial election that vaulted him in the United States Senate. Johnson became an enthusiastic collector, as did his political mentor, the legendary House Speaker Sam Rayburn (1882-1961). Johnson decorated his Washington offices with Salinas paintings and he brought a number of them home to his vast LBJ Ranch, near Johnson City, Texas. In spite of his important patrons, Salinas went through a fallow and difficult period in the late 1950s. He had a volatile temperament, which made relationships difficult, and it took great patience for his wife to help him manage his career. As Salinas entered middle age his work began to sell steadily, but except for tourists who purchased his paintings in San Antonio, he was known primarily only to Texas art collectors. All that changed in 1961 with the election of John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) to the Presidency of the United States and his running mate Lyndon Johnson to the Vice Presidency. Johnson was an expansive, larger-than-life character and his status as a long, tall Texan in a cowboy hat was a large part of his imposing political image. During his storied career in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007) spent their time in Washington in a modest house on the edge of Rock Creek Park, but this home would not do for a Vice President. So, in 1961, the Johnsons purchased a French chateau-styled home in the Spring Valley section of the Capitol. Obtained from the famed socialite and ambassador Perle Mesta (1889-1975), the house came with a fine collection of French furniture and tapestries, and the designer Genevieve Hendricks was hired to meld the French look with objects from the Johnsons' overseas travels and paintings of the flora and fauna of their native Texas. Featured prominently in the foyer were the paintings of Porfirio Salinas. Because of the Johnsons' patronage, his work was mentioned in Time Magazine and other national publications. Lady Bird Johnson loved her landscapes of the Texas Hill Country and told reporters that, "I want to see them when ever I open the door, to remind me where I come from." After President Kennedy's death thrust Lyndon Johnson into the Presidency, he brought his Salinas paintings into the historic halls of the White House, further enhaning the Texas painter's national reputation. At the time of the President Kennedy's assassination, Salinas had completed a scene of a horse drinking titled "Rocky Creek" that was to have been presented to Kennedy during his ill-fated visit to Dallas. Instead, in an effort to memorialize the fallen President, Salinas painted a symbolic work of a lone horse depicted against foreboding clouds. During his tenure in the White House, President Johnson presented a Salinas landscape as a state gift to the President of Mexico, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1911-1979). During the 1960s, Salinas paintings sold briskly and, thanks to Presidential patronage, for escalating prices. In an interview with a writer from the New York Times, President Johnson enthused about the work of "his favorite artist" and said that, "his work reminds me of the country around the ranch." Salinas was invited to the LBJ Ranch frequently during the Johnson administration and his paintings were hung throughout the ranch, in the President's offices and even in the private quarters of the White House. The connection to President Johnson was a great boon to sales of Salinas paintings, and in 1964, when the demand was at its height, Texas Governor John Connelly (1917-1993) was told that all Salinas'work was sold and that he would have to wait for a painting. In 1960, a half century after his birth, Salinas was honored by his home town of Bastrop, a celebration that touched the modest artist. In 1962 Salinas was given a solo exhibition at the Witte Museum in San Antonio that featured more than twenty of his works. By the early 1960s, sales of reproductions of the artist's landscapes by the New York Graphic Society and other publishers grew rapidly, enlarging his audience throughout the United States. In 1967, Dewey Bradford helped to organize the production of a book of Texas stories titled "Bluebonnets and Cactus" (Austin: Pemberton Press: 1967), which was profusely illustrated with paintings by Salinas. His works were still popular when Salinas died after a brief illness in April of 1973, just a few months after former President Johnson's passing. He was memorialized in the City of Austin by Porfirio Salinas Day, which honored him for having "done much to bring the culture of Mexico and Texas together with his paintings." Bastrop, Texas, the city of the artist's birth, has been holding a Salinas Art Exhibition annually since 1981. He painted hundreds of scenes of the wildflowers, including the various varieties of Blue Lupin, the state flower, as well as other flowering flora. These show the influence of his artistic mentors Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa Y Perea. Salinas also painted a number of scenes of Prickly Pear Cactus that show the influence of the English painter Dawson Dawson-Watson (1864-1939), who painted many such works during his tenure in Texas. He painted the more arid Texas landscape infrequently and these works are very rare today and sought after by collectors from the Texas Panhandle and West Texas. Salinas also painted many river landscapes along the Guadalupe, Rio Frio, the San Antonio and the Rio Grande. On trips to his wife's homeland of Mexico, he painted a number of scenes of the volcanic peaks as well as scenes of peasant villages and villagers. Figurative paintings are rare among Salinas' works and these scenes of bullfights, fandangos and cock fights are probably the least sought after of his paintings. There are also a small number of modest marines, painted on trips to the Texas and California coast. Salinas paintings are highly prized by collectors of early Texas art, with the paintings of wildflowers in greatest demand. Works by Porfirio Salinas can be found in a number of public collections, including the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas; the Texas State Capitol; the Texas Governor's Mansion; the Lyndon Baines Johnson Ranch; the Sam Rayburn Library and Museum in Bonham, Texas; Amarillo High School; the Witte Museum in San Antonio; the historic Joan and Price Daniel House in San Antonio; the Stark Museum in Orange, Texas; the R.W. Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport, Louisiana; the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center in Pueblo, Colorado; Texas A & M University and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Salinas has been featured in a number of reference works as well as anthologies devoted to American Western Art...

John Walter Stephan was an early member of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. He was born in Chicago and studied art at the University of Illinois and the Art Institute o...

This oil on paper piece by Federico Castellón exhibits the hallmarks of his artistic style, blending elements of surrealism with a striking, yet subtle, realism. The composition is r...

*Dimensions include the frame Claude Grosperrin's artwork is a vivid exploration of texture and abstraction, capturing the essence of a rustic landscape with a palpable sense of ene...

American artist Hellier (20th Century) designed this stunning post-cubist constructivist oil on canvas painting. This painting named "Ste Augustine" features a skillful composition a...

Oil on cardboard with frame. Total size with frame 58x78 cm Signed and dated, illegible signature by the gallery

Marcel MOULY Seascape : Storm is Coming, 1957 Original Oil on canvas Signed and dated bottom right On canvas 65 x 81 cm (c. 26 x 32 in) Excellent condition

This elegant oil on mounted canvas is by André Hambourg (France, 1909-1999) and features a seaside composition. The artwork is signed in the bottom left corner. The landscape is a lovely pastel color composition, by the beach, on the French Atlantic coast nearby Cabourg or Deauville. Newly framed with a gray and green ceruse wood frame and a blue canvas matte. Measurements: With frame: 22.82 in. wide (58 cm) x 19.32 in. high (49 cm). Opening: 16.13 in. wide (41 cm) x 12.63 in. high (32 cm). About: André Hambourg was born in Paris on 5 May 1909. Entering the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in 1926, he studied sculpture under Paul Niclausse for four years. The young artist then entered the studio of Lucien Simon at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts. While in the middle of his academic studies, Hambourg had his debut solo exhibition at the Galerie Taureau in Paris in 1928. He was only 19 years old. Because of the early recognition of his talent, Hambourg became active in major Paris salons in the first stages of his fledgling career. In 1931, he was made a member of the Salon de l’Art Français Indépendant and the Salon de l’Oeuvre Unique. The first of Hambourg’s many honors was the Prix de la Villa Abd-el-Tif, awarded in 1933. As a result, the artist traveled to North Africa for the first time and spent nearly ten years working in Algeria and Morocco. The strong light of the sun, and the bleak poverty of this region, inspired Hambourg’s works. In 1937, he executed a large mural for the Algerian Pavilion at the Exposition Internationale of Paris. Throughout his years in North Africa, Hambourg would exhibit his paintings in numerous solo exhibitions in Algeria and Paris. In 1939, Hambourg was mobilized as a military reporter and draughtsman and worked on the staff of the Journal de Commissariat a la Guerre, the newspaper of the French army, under the pseudonym Andre Hache. Special missions on combat vessels led to his appointment as a war correspondent in 1944 with the staff of inter-allied SHAEF. As such, he participated in the campaigns of Germany, Alsace, the Atlantic front, and the Liberation of France. After returning to his artistic career for a short time, Hambourg became the official painter of the Navy in 1952. He undertook numerous voyages aboard French Navy vessels on missions worldwide, including Venice, the Soviet Union, Israel, Great Britain, The Ivory Coast, The United States, and Mexico. From these extended trips, the artist brought back numerous sketches and preparatory drawings for future paintings and illustrations. His international trips would have a lasting influence on his artwork. Hambourg’s adventurous maritime career resulted in his receiving the honor of Laureate of the Salon de la Marine and becoming the official painter of the Marine Ministry. In 1970, five hundred of his works created a prestigious retrospective at the Maison de Culture in Bourges, France. Other notable shows include Drawings of Venice...

Frame size 74x101 cm. Rafael Durancamps i Folguera (Sabadell, March 29, 1891 [1] - Barcelona, January 4 [2], 1979) was a Spanish painter. He learned...

Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 24 x 36 Frame Size: 37 x 49 Medium: Oil Dated 1957 "Hill Country Ranch Road" Porfirio Salinas was a self-taught artist who painted landscapes of Central Texas with an emphasis on the vast bluebonnet fields...

Village Scene Landscape small painting photos with and without light. Hildegarde Hamilton American woman artist who was born in Syracuse NY 1898-1970. Known for her post-impressionistic landscapes...

Vintage modernist harbor view by Aksel Jorgensen (1883 - 1957). Oil on board, circa 1957. Signed. Displayed in a period frame. Image size, 24"L x ...

Parisian Street Scene. Oil on canvas, 32x46 cm

Restaurant terrace at evening in Montmartre, Paris. Oil on canvas, 46x38 cm

Flower market in front of the Madeleine in Paris. Oil on canvas, 54x65 cm In this fascinating painting by artist Constantin Kluge You can view Paris. This city is famous with many t...

View of Via Margutta is an original contemporary artwork realized by Nicotra da Cosenza in 1954. Original oil on canvas. Hand-signed and dated by the artist on the lower right corner. Decorated frame is included. Mint conditions. Beautiful intense view depicting the buildings and the roofs in Via Margutta. Interesting light effect and dense and pasty color characterize this painting. This work has been realized by Nicotra Alberto. Nicotra Alberto (best-known as Nicotra da Cosenza) (Cosenza, 1899 - Rome,?) was an Italian painter. He studied in Naples and attended the studies of Michele Cascella...

Lionel Bulmer (1919-1992) 'The Edge of the Field' Signed c.1950s Oil on board 17" x 20" (43 x 51cm) Lionel Bulmer (1919-1992) attended Clapham art school before war intervened; after the war he started again at the Royal College of Art which had been relocated during the conflict to Ambleside in the Lake District. Here he met his lifelong partner Margaret Green...

Saint Germain-des-Prés under the snow. Oil on canvas, 60x92 cm Constantin Kluge was a Russian-born French painter best known for his naturalistic scenes of Paris and French countrys...

Modern abstract figurative nautical landscape painting by Houston, TX artist David Adickes. The work features a grouping of three elongated figures gathered next to a boat labeled "R...

Pointilliste View of Istanbul is a modern artwork realized by Stan Reszka in 1951 Oil on Canvas. Hand signed Stan Reszka. Titled, signed, dated on the reverse. Includes frame. S...

Blue landscape is an original contemporary artwork by Mario Asnago (1896-1981). Mixed colored oil painting. Hand signed on the lower margin. Includes frame.

Paris roofs. 1957, oil on canvas, 67,5 x 50 cm

Beautiful view of the hill of the italian region of Marche, where the artist was born and lived. Autenthication on photograph by the Artist dated november 11th 1996. Very good condit...

Antique American impressionist New York City scene. A view of washington square park. Signed and dated lower right. Nicely framed. Oil ...

Initialed lower right, 'J.e.t.' for Jessie E. Thomason (American, 20th Century) and dated 1956. Exhibited: Jack London Art Festival, 1956. Displayed in the original and period, paint...

Signed lower left, 'Stoltenberg' for Donald Hugo Stoltenberg (American, 1927-2016) and dated 1957. Titled, verso on original artist's label, 'West Side, New York'. Provenance: Mr. & ...

Josine Vignon (1922-2022) was a French artist living on the Rue Beautreillis in the Marais district of Paris. She painted with a beautiful style, largely influenced by the Impression...

Mid 20th Century oil on canvas painting of a Paris street scene with the columns of La Madeleine in the distance, signed Deuvray bottom left. The canvas is on its original stretcher ...

Beautiful mid century California landscape painting of a red barn tucked in the hills beneath Mt. Tamalpais, by an unknown American artist. Signed "Bloomf...

Acquiring a mid-20th-century Fauvist painting by Wilhelm Henning is an opportunity to own a piece of art that captures the vibrant spirit and expressive color palette of the Fauvist ...

A beautiful, large romantic landscape/mountainscape in green tones. Signed E. Fieth to lower left. The painting has a silver/champagne-toned frame.

Capitola (California) is an oil on board painting by Jon Blanchette (1908-1987) circa 1955. Marine seascape painting with crashing waves and buildings along the coast painted in shad...

4085 Stylish and well painted 1950's Italian harbor scene Italian Seascape, oil on canvas applied to board, displayed in a gilt wood frame, signed by De Angelis. Image size 10.5 H x ...

A rare color lithograph by late French artist, Éliane Thiollier. Edition of 275, certificate of authentication is provided. Minor acid staining from the old mat. Éliane Thiollier s...

Hans SEILER (Neuchâtel 1907 – 1986) The cliffs of Marqueyssac and Castelnaud, seen from La Roque Gageac Oil on canvas H. 40 cm; L. 83 cm Signed lower right, dated 1973 Provenance : ...

Vivid mid century landscape of autumn trees blurring into colorful abstraction by Helen Gleiforst (American, 1903-1997). Presented in a giltwood frame. Image size: 10" H X 8" W. G...

Johannes Frederik van Slogteren (1904-1991) was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where he lived for many years. His art teacher in primary school already noticed his talent and u...

William Henry Innes (1905-1999) Innes first exhibited his work during the Second World War while he was in the Royal Air Force. He showed extensively at the Royal Academy, New Engla...

Signed oil on canvas landscape circa 1950 by French impressionist painter Paul-Emile Pissarro. The work depicts a view of the river Orne in Normandy, France. The bright blue sky can ...

A beautiful 1950's French naif oil on board depicting Place de Metz in Grenoble, South of France. Superb period work depicting the famous square. Presented in a painted frame. Artis...

#5-2858 A mother and child,figurative impressionistic style palette oil on canvas applied on board.Displayed in a wood frame.Artist unknown.Image size 10.5 H x 13.5 W

House In The Green - Original Acrylic On Paper Original acrylic painting depicting a white house in the woods surrounded by greenery by Honora Berg (American, 1897-1985). Two white ...

Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Houston Artist Image Size: 11.25 x 13.5 Frame Size: 17.75 x 19.5 Medium: Watercolor on Paper Dated 1951 "Powerlines" Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Edward Muegge...

5080 Oil on canvas of sailboats in a French harbor

Up For Sale is a large original Oil Painting On canvas, depicting a Parisian street view of the Eiffel Tower. Signed in the lower-right corner R.Young. Unframed. Condition: Good. Pl...

William Henry Innes (1905-1999) Innes first exhibited his work during the Second World War while he was in the Royal Air Force. He showed extensively at the Royal Academy, New Engla...

William Henry Innes (1905-1999) Innes first exhibited his work during the Second World War while he was in the Royal Air Force. He showed extensively at the Royal Academy, New Engla...

This is a highly stylized 1952 New York State fall landscape oil on board by noted Ukrainian-American artist Mychajlo Moroz. The vintage painting has modernist tendencies that are ...

Work on canvas sold with frame Total size with frame 77x97 cm Josep MENESES is an artist born in 1930. The net lists 7 works by the artist presented for sale at public auction, main...

Up For Sale, This Beautiful Original Oil Painting On canvas depicts a Parisian street view. Signed In the Lower-right corner By P.G.Tiele. Italian artist P.G. Tiele passed away in ...

Emile Albert Gruppe (American, 1896-1978) "Winter - Gloucester, Mass" Oil on canvas Signed "Emile A. Gruppe" (lower right) Canvas: 20 x 24 Inchesinches Framed: 27 x 31 inches Prove...

Arctic Light-Orange Sun Unsigned Gouache on Japanese fibrous paper Series: Tundra Paintings Exhibited: Karl Zerbe, Gouaches of the Artic Nordness Gallery, (Madison Avenue, NY) Feb 3 through Feb 23, 1958 Cat. No. 12 (label with work, see photo...

Mid Century Carmel Monastery Beach California Impressionist Oil Painting Beautiful impressionist style painting of iconic Mon...