Art History Gallery

Richard Sargent (1911-1978): Anger Transference, 1954, Gouache on Board, 21.25" x 20.75", (Saturday Evening Post Cover - March 20, 1954) ⭐ ⭐️ Best of "Painters.Paintings -2024" ⭐ ⭐ Richard Sargent, one of The Saturday Evening Post’s most prolific illustrators, was a Midwesterner born in Moline, Illinois in 1911. His early career in art began just after his graduation from Moline High School, when he went to work for a local printing and engraving plant. While there, Sargent attended night classes at the Moline Illinois Art School, the foundation for his future career as an artist. As his artistic prowess developed, he advanced further into creating professional artwork for advertising firms and later, a solo career as an artist and illustrator. The artist worked in advertising for over 20 years, starting in 1928, prior to making a name for himself as a freelance illustrator. During this time period, Sargent further honed his artistic skills by taking classes at both the Corcoran School of Art and the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington, D.C. Sargent also received special commissions that afforded him the opportunity to travel the world. Sargent's works are characterized by their good humor and insight into human frailties. His "Anger Transference" from 1954 is a powerful visual representation of the way anger can be transferred from one person to another. Here, Boss shouts at the husband; the husband goes home and shouts at his wife, who forgot to darn his sock, and the wife shouts at the child for drawing on the wall, and the child, in return, shouts at the cat. The painting is a reminder that anger is a contagious emotion. When we are around someone who is angry, it can be difficult to stay calm ourselves.

Franz Sedlacek (1891 - 1945): Ghosts in the Tree, 1933, oil on canvas, Albertina Museum, Vienna . . Franz Sedlacek‘s oeuvre can be assigned to the movement of New Objectivity, but also exhibits bizarre and surrealist aspects that were to inspire the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism several decades later. He was a master in transporting exceptional moods with his works. To what appears fo be idyllic and fantastic landscapes at first sight he lends tension through the use of a highly contrasting palette. At a second glance, the alleged idyll is broken up, which also holds true for Ghosts ina Tree. On closer inspection, what has initially resembled a nocturnal tree in pale moonlight turns out an oppressive gathering of ghosts dressed in black and perched on the branches like vultures waiting for their victims. It is a nightmarish scene, as if thought out by Alfred Kubin. (Museum label) 🎷🎷(The Hateful Eight) - 01 - L'Ultima Diligenza Di Red Rock - Ennio Morricone🎷🎷

Tomás Sánchez (1948) is a celebrated Cuban artist based in Costa Rica. He explores the beauty and loss of our environment with his detailed dreamscapes — moving from sprawling garbage dumps to idyllic visions of paradise. His work deals with the relationship between humankind, nature and spirituality, where 'meditation' is a key theme, often represented by small figures engulfed in vast landscapes. Sánchez says: "A landscape where nature is in its most pristine state somehow expresses it in all its potential, that hopeful narrative that is at the centre of all the cataclysms that lie ahead — at least to those who live attentive to the gradual destruction of the environment. Meditation gives us back that expansive feeling of being something more than the body we inhabit. Many of my paintings’ visions and reflections arise from the meditation experience. The meditator’s presence in several of my works is related to “the consciousness of the witness,” a concept in Eastern philosophy... I don’t know if my paintings can change the way we relate to nature, but in my experience, it leads us to that first stage, which is reflection." 🎨 🎨 1 - La luz detrás de la cascada, 1995, acrylic on linen, 70 x 55 cm 2 - La Expectativa, 2000, acrylic on linen, 152,4 x 121,9 cm 3 - El Testigo, 2000, oil on linen, 152,4 x 121,9 cm 4 - Meditacion entre el camino y el mar, 1992, , oil on linen, 60,9 x 50,8 cm 5 - Visitador de cascadas, 1994 6 - Contemplar al meditador de la isla, 2014, acrylic on linen, 51 x 61 cm 7 - Encontrar el contemplador, 2005, acrylic on linen, 45,5 x 61 cm 8 - En el Paisaje Interior, 2010, acrylic on linen 9 - En noche de la luna llena, 1993, acrylic on linen, 40,4 x 30,4 cm 10 - Contemplando redondez de luna, 1994 11 - La meditacion de la garza, 1992, tempera on paper, 76,2 x 55 cm 12- La puerta azul, 1993, acrylic on linen, 150 x 110 cm 🎻"Peer Gynt Suite No.1" (Edvard Grieg)🎻

Paul Evans (1954) is a British landscape painter. His unique and original style has evolved over an artistic career of 45 years and reflects his infectious joy at recording and learning from nature. His highly individual watercolours, acrylics and etchings are inspired by East Anglia’s landscape and coast, Sussex Downland, the Kent Weald and Cornwall’s rugged coast and moorland. Single-minded and meticulous Paul Evans has stayed faithful to his love of nature in all its amazing complexity, undisturbed by the chaos of human activity. With paint and brush Paul Evans captures quite places and the essence of the place and time. His ability to capture light in his paintings is exquisite, and brings an elusive quality to his work. (from the artist's web page) Here are some of his works 1 - Blue Moon 2 - Summer Colours, Dungeness 3 - Lavenham Light 4 - Hoar Frost 5 - Wonderful Winter Evening 6 - Winter Blues 7 - Harvest Moon 8 - Evening Light 9 - Out in a Suffolk Field 10-Summer Meadow (acrylic and ink) 🎷"Gabriel's Oboa" by Ennio Morricone 🎷

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525 - 1569): The Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on oak panel, 117 x 162 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna ⭐ ⭐️ Best of "Painters.Paintings -2024" ⭐ ⭐ One of the most famous landscape paintings of the Northern Renaissance and incidentally the world's most popular classical Christmas card design, 'Hunters in the Snow' was originally part of a series of twelve landscapes ("Twelve Months") covering all the months of the year. It was almost certainly called January. Also called 'The Return of the Hunters', this Bruegel oil painting evokes the harsh conditions and temperatures of winter. In the foreground, three hunters are depicted returning from a hunting expedition with only a fox, to show for their effort. They and their dogs appear exhausted as they pass a small group of peasants. The valley occupies the middle ground of the picture, frozen ponds and fields are dotted with skaters, while icicles hand from the mill wheel to the right. Bare trees litter the landscape. Fringed with mountain foothills and a cluster of jagged peaks (based on sketches made during the artist's 1552-3 trip through the Alps), the valley stretches as far as the horizon, populated by small villages laid out in the frozen flatlands. The entire scene is characterized by Bruegel's chilly colour scheme of pale green sky and ice, along with muted white snow - both set off by the dark browns and blacks of the trees, birds, dogs and people. It is a cold, gloomy late afternoon in winter. As usual for a Bruegel, the painting is filled with detail. See, for instance, the tree branches 'dusted' with fine snow; the Inn sign inscribed with the words "Under the Stag"; figures tobogganing, curling and spinning tops in the ponds; the firemen extinguishing a chimney fire; people shooting birds; the watermill with its frozen water wheel; and the village church steeples providing visual reference points in the far distance.

Jakub Schikaneder (1855–1924): Murder in the House, 1890, oil on canvas, 203 × 321 cm, National Gallery, Prague ⭐ ⭐️ Best of "Painters.Paintings -2024" ⭐ ⭐ Jakub Schikaneder was born in Prague and studied there at the Academy of Fine Arts. He combined his social feeling and knowledge of contemporary European painting in depicting women in hardship, old age and poverty. Schikaneder is known for his soft paintings of the outdoors, often lonely in mood. His paintings often feature poor and outcast figures. Other motifs favoured by Schikaneder were autumn and winter, corners and alleyways in the city of Prague and the banks of the Vltava – often in the early evening light, or cloaked in mist. 'Murder in the House' is Schikaneder’s most famous painting, and was very popular when it was first shown in Berlin that year, and at a Jubilee exhibition the following year in Prague. Set in a dark courtyard in the Prague Jewish Quarter, its location is not far from the apartment in which Schikaneder lived from 1872 until he married in 1884. In a courtyard between cramped and run-down town dwellings there is the body of a young woman sprawled on the rough cobbles. Blood by her head suggests that she has been stabbed in the neck, perhaps, and there is another bright splash of blood by a doorway behind her. On the left are ten people, ranging from a young girl to a balding and stooped workman with a leather waistcoat and grubby apron. One, a younger man, stands in front and is talking and gesticulating expansively, as if explaining what happened. The others are staring at the woman’s body on the ground. Behind them is a large window which is lit with the flame of an oil lamp, turning it bright red. Schikaneder makes each of the figures a unique character, and leaves its narrative open for the viewer to speculate over.

Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009): Night Sleeper, 1979, Tempera on board, 121.9 × 182.9 cm, The Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection - Brandywine River Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania ⭐ ⭐️ Best of "Painters.Paintings -2024" ⭐ ⭐ Andrew Wyeth possessed the same artistic fervour as his father, N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945), famously learning to draw before he could read. His realist works are instantly recognisable for their depictions of an overwhelming absence - a seemingly innocuous portrait of the mundane is charged with the sense of ‘what might happen’, or ‘what has just happened’. As a young boy, Andrew worked alongside his father on some of his illustrations, honing a skill that would become iconic to the Brandywine School tradition of painters who worked in rural areas of Delaware and Pennsylvania. After his father died in a 1945 car accident, he began to incorporate images of people into his paintings, most famously his neighbor Helga Testorf. Rendered in egg tempera, Wyeth's keenly observed images have a pared down sparseness that gives them a palpable sense of quiet. Wyeth was the first visual artist to appear on the cover of Time magazine and the first living American-born artist to have a show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Wyeth's work is often associated with American Realism. He painted in a meticulous, detailed style that emphasized the natural world and rural scenes. His use of tempera and watercolor contributed to the fine detail and muted colors in his paintings. Wyeth once said: “I dream a lot. I do more painting when I’m not painting. It’s in the subconscious.” There’s a lot here in 'Night Sleeper' from 1979, to look at yet it maintains a quiet and contemplative stillness that one associates with Wyeth’s work. The two windows provide two separate examples of landscapes, the moonlit mill in one and the dam and millstream in the other, that could be great paintings on their own. They all together add a whole layer of depth that would not be there otherwise and creates a beautiful harmony.

Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009): Wind from the Sea, 1947, tempera on hardboard, 47 × 70 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. ⭐ ⭐️ Best of "Painters.Paintings -2024" ⭐ ⭐ 'Wind from the Sea', painted a year before 'Christina's World', is an iconic example of Wyeth's landscapes, as well as one of the earliest examples of his use of windows and his often unique choice of vantage point. It captures a moment on a hot summer day when Wyeth opened the seldom used window in an attic room. The picture is eerily alive with movement as the wind blows the curtains into the room. The tattered, transparent fabric is light and airy, with small embroidered birds along the edges that seem ready to dart into the house. In contrast, the sun-bleached wooden window sill looks sturdy and solid. The interior of the room is dim, while the landscape beyond the open window is stark and bright. The tree-lined view includes no figures, but as in so many other works by Wyeth, a strong sense of their presence is evident. Two well-worn tire tracks running across the dirt lead the viewer's eye toward the sea in the distance. The close vantage point and the tightly cropped window frame at the edge of the painting create the illusion that the viewer is actually looking out a window. (National Gallery of Art)

Henri Biva (1848-1928): Punts moored on still waters, oil on canvas, 61 x 50 cm. ⭐ ⭐️ Best of "Painters.Paintings -2024" ⭐ ⭐ Henri Biva displays all his talent as an academic and naturalist painter. The salons were competitions, and the works presented were of an exceptional level: the young artists played their careers there. For those who were already well known, the salons were an opportunity to further develop their reputation and they exhibited their work "outside the competition", as is the case with this painting. One should note the perfect balance of the composition, the particular care given to the treatment of the vegetation and its reflections on the water of the pond, the remarkable ability of the artist to represent the constant and perceptible variations of light.

Henri Biva (1848-1928): Matin à Villeneuve, 1905 - 1906, oil on canvas, 153.6 x 127 cm, Private collection ⭐ ⭐️ Best of "Painters.Paintings -2024" ⭐ ⭐ Henri Biva was a French academic artist, known for his landscape paintings and still lifes. He focused primarily on the western suburbs of Paris, painting outdoors in the plein-air tradition; his style ranging between Post-Impressionism and Realism with a strong Naturalist component. The technique with which he excels is oil on canvas, but he also practices watercolor and pastel. Biva's pictures are characterized by intricate strokes and a pure palette bathed with warm natural light (Biva devoted great attention to light effects) This highly detailed painting, from 1906, depicts a morning scene at the Villeneuve-l'étang park, located just outside Paris in the western suburb of Marnes-la-Coquette (Seine-et-Oise), France. The artist has chosen a quiet section of the park with a view facing towards the east. The greenery suggests the work was painted en plein air during July or August, and possibly finished sometime later in Biva's Parisian atelier. Skillfully controlled artistry in the painting presents a dominant palette of green variously mixed and blended by the artist to form diverse tones, values and hues, contrasted only by the transpiercing light of the morning sky partly visible through the delicate foliage while bouncing off the surface of the shallows.

Martín Rico (1833-1908): A Canal in Venice, 1875, oil on canvas, 50.2 x 67.9 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York ⭐ ⭐️ Best of "Painters.Paintings -2024" ⭐ ⭐ Martín Rico based this view on a sketch that he made from a bridge along the Rio della Panada during a trip to Venice in 1879. The architecture of the Palazzo Soranzo-Van Axel is enlivened by the small boys playing along the canal, who are wittily echoed by the sculptures of dancing putti on the garden wall. Rico’s interest in light and atmosphere is evident in his depiction of the colored shadows on the buildings and the reflections in the water. He was born and trained in Spain and studied in Paris, but found a signature subject in the Venetian cityscape. (Met)