26 Paintings - Art for Today - By CZACHORSKI, Cucuel, PUSHMAN, VERHAS, BURLIUK, CORTÈS, CHASE, Flemish School, HOPPNER, BRESLAU, WYWIORSKY, HUGUET, VERBRUGGEN, GILBERT, MARCIUS-SIMONS

WLADISLAW CZACHORSKI (Polish, 1850-1911)

The Proposal, 1891

Oil on canvas

36 x 22 inches (91.4 x 55.9 cm)

Signed and dated upper right: Czachorski / 1891

WLADISLAW CZACHORSKI was one of Poland's most important 19th-century academic painters, He specialized in detailed images of beautiful, costumed women reading letters, arranging flowers, or receiving suitors in lush interiors. He received his art training in Germany during the 1860s and '70s, enrolling successively at the academies in Dresden, Munich, and Berlin, where he studied Old Master painting and appropriated, in particular, the visual vocabulary of Johannes Vermeer. A master at rendering fabrics and jewelry, Czachorski typically accentuated the female sitter, offsetting her with baroque lighting and a luxurious satin gown. Such emphasis on dramatic lighting and staging also marked his most noted paintings, his 1870s scenes from Shakespeare's Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. More

EDWARD CUCUEL (American, 1875-1954)

Summer Reflections

Oil on canvas

26 x 31 inches (66.0 x 78.7 cm)

Signed lower right: Cucuel

Signed verso: Cucuel

EDWARD CUCUEL (American, 1875-1954)

Woman with Umbrella

Oil on canvas

32-1/4 x 27-1/2 inches (81.9 x 69.9 cm)

A native of San Francisco, Edward Cucuel spent the first fifteen years of his career studying the Old Masters at the Académie Julian, École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and working as a newspaper illustrator in New York. In 1907 when he moved to Munich and fell smitten with Impressionism. Cucuel befriended the artist Leo Putz, leader of the anti-academic Die Scholle artists' group, and for several years, the two men painted together, each developing a distinctive Impressionist brand. By 1912, Cucuel found success exhibiting at the Paris Salons, and his paintings adopted the vibrant color and freer style of French Impressionism. 

Summer Reflections dates to the 1920s, at the height of his career, when Cucuel was working at Lake Starnberg, a popular tourist destination. With its distant sailboat and feathery shoreline grasses, the lake provides a backdrop for the pictorial focus: intimately conversing ladies enjoying the outdoors.

In 1939, with the onset of World War II, Cucuel left Germany and settled in Pasadena, California, where he lived until his death in 1954. More

HOVSEP PUSHMAN (American, 1877-1966)

Youth, No. 766

Oil on canvas

36 x 28-1/2 inches (91.4 x 72.4 cm)

Signed lower left: Pushman

HOVSEP PUSHMAN (American, 1877-1966)

Enchanted Communion, #589

Oil on panel

25-1/2 x 25 inches (64.8 x 63.5 cm)

Signed lower left: Pushman

HOVSEP PUSHMAN (American, 1877-1966)

Oriental Still Life

Oil on panel

22 x 14-3/4 inches (55.9 x 37.5 cm)

Signed lower right: Pushman

HOVSEP PUSHMAN (American, 1877-1966)

Reflections

Oil on panel

8-1/2 x 10-3/4 inches (21.6 x 27.3 cm)

Signed lower right: Pushman

The Armenian-born Hovsep Pushman, who trained at the Art Institute in Chicago and the Académie Julian in Paris before settling in New York in 1919. H established the standard for Orientalist still-life and figure painting during the 1920s through '40s. His paintings typically include a wide range of Asian objects glowing duskily, as if illuminated by candlelight. An aficionado of Chinese culture and philosophy, Pushman intended his paintings to function symbolically. His signature works exhibit exotic artifacts, impeccable technique, and a mysterious mood. The Detroit Institute of Arts; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Montclair Art Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa; and Seattle Art Museum count among the numerous museums nationwide featuring Pushman's work. More

JAN FRANS VERHAS (Belgian, 1834-1896)

The Ride

Oil on canvas

38 x 25 inches (96.5 x 63.5 cm)

Signed lower right: Jan Verhas

Jan Francois Verhas (9 January 1834 – 31 October 1896) was a genre painter and is considered the founder of the School of Dendermonde, best known for his paintings of children of the Belgian bourgeoisie, in a classical style but with a natural feeling to them. Born in Dendermonde as the younger brother of painter Frans Verhas, he studied at the Academy of Dendermonde and the Academy in Antwerp, finishing with the Belgian Prix de Rome in 1860. The Belgian government commissioned him to travel to Venice where he made the painting "Velleda et la Bataille de Callao" in 1862. Verhas was a regular of the Salons of the time, winning a second class medal in the Paris Salon Exposition of 1881, and a gold medal at the 1889 Exposition Universelle. He was made a Chevalier in the Legion of Honor in 1881. Jan Verhas died in Schaarbeek in 1896.


Paintings by Jan Verhas can be seen at the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp and the City Hall of Dendermonde. More

DAVID BURLIUK (Ukrainian/American, 1882-1967)

Man in Boat

Oil on board

20-3/4 x 24-1/2 inches (52.7 x 62.2 cm)

Signed lower left: Burliuk

David Davidovich Burliuk (July 21, 1882 – January 15, 1967) was a Ukrainian Futurist, Neo-Primitivist, book illustrator, publicist, and author associated with Russian Futurism. He was born in 1882 in Semyrotivka, in the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire, brother of fellow artist Volodymyr (Wladimir) Burliuk in a family partly descended from Ukrainian Cossacks who held premier positions in the Hetmanate.

From 1898 to 1904 he studied at Kazan and Odessa art schools, as well as at the Royal Academy in Munich. His exuberant, extroverted character was recognized by Anton Azhbe, his professor at the Munich Academy, who called Burliuk a “wonderful wild steppe horse.”

In 1909 Burliuk painted a portrait of his future wife, Marussia, on a background of flowers and rocks on the Crimean coast. Many times thereafter he would set the image of his wife to canvas. Without question two dreams possessed his heart all his life: the face of his wife and the portrait of his homeland - first Ukraine and then his adopted country, the United States.

From 1910 he was the member of the group Jack of Diamonds, and from 1910 to 1911 he attended the Art School in Odessa. After 1911 David concentrated on poetry. From 1911 to 1913 he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

In December 1912 David Burliuk was co-author of the manifesto "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste", said to be the start of Russian Futurism. In 1913 he was expelled from the Academy. In the same year D. Burliuk founded the publishing venture of the futuristic writer's group Hylaea. In 1915 David published the book The Support of the Muses in Spring, with illustrations by Lentulov, and by David and Wladimir Burliuk.

David Burliuk lived in Hampton Bays on Long Island for approximately 20 years until he died on Long Island, New York. More

EDOUARD-LÉON CORTÈS (French, 1882-1969)

Le Pont au Change, Paris

Oil on canvas

18 x 21-1/2 inches (45.7 x 54.6 cm)

Signed lower left: EDOUARD CORTÈS

EDOUARD-LÉON CORTÈS (French, 1882-1969)

Quai du Louvre, Sons la Neige

Oil on canvas

13 x 18 inches (33.0 x 45.7 cm)

Signed lower right: EDOUARD CORTÈS

EDOUARD-LÉON CORTÈS (French, 1882-1969)

Grands Boulevards et Porte St. Denis Paris, circa 1958

Oil on canvas

13 x 18 inches (33.0 x 45.7 cm)

Signed lower right: EDOUARD-CORTÈS

EDOUARD-LÉON CORTÈS (French, 1882-1969)

Place du Pantheon

Oil on canvas

13 x 18 inches (33.0 x 45.7 cm)

Signed lower right: EDOUARD CORTÈS

Edouard Léon Cortès (1882–1969) was a French post-impressionist artist of French and Spanish ancestry. He is known as "the Parisian Poet of Painting" because of his diverse Paris cityscapes in a variety of weather and night settings.

In 1914 Cortès married Fernande Joyeuse, with whom he had a daughter in 1916.

Although Cortès was a pacifist, when war came close to his native village he was compelled to enlist in a French Infantry Regiment at the age of 32. As a contact agent Cortès was wounded by a bayonet, evacuated to a military hospital, and awarded the Croix de Guerre. After recovery he was the reassigned to utilize his artistic talent to sketch enemy positions. Later in life his convictions led him to refuse the Légion d'Honneur from the French Government. In 1919 he was demobilized.


His wife had died in 1918 and he soon married his sister-in-law Lucienne Joyeuse. He died on November 28, 1969, in Lagny, and has a street named in his honor. More

WILLIAM MERRITT CHASE (American, 1849-1916)

Copy of Velázquez's Menippus, 1882

Oil on canvas

70 x 36 inches (177.8 x 91.4 cm)

Although William Merritt Chase excelled as an Impressionist landscapist, he was consistently masterful as a figure painter, utilizing a particular palette and body configuration and accompanying accessories to complement a sitter's personality. Born in Indiana, Chase studied portraiture and figure painting at the National Academy of Design in New York before enrolling in 1872 in Munich's Royal Academy. Here, access to Old Master paintings afforded Chase the opportunity to copy figural works by Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, Rembrandt van Rijn, and an especial favorite, Diego Velázquez. 

A return trip to Europe in 1881 took Chase to Spain, where he made a pilgrimage to the Prado to study Velázquez's paintings. Chase's Menippus is an exact copy of Velázquez's painting by the same name, a portrait of the third-century B.C.E. Greek satirist, and others. 

Chase traveled to Venice, Italy in 1877 before returning to the United States in the summer of 1878, a highly skilled artist representing the new wave of European-educated American talent.


In 1881, friend and artist William Preston Phelps travelled back to Europe to team up with Chase to go on a working tour of Italy, Venice, Capri then back to Germany. More

FLEMISH SCHOOL (Early 17th Century)

Portrait of a Noble Woman, circa 1620-30

Oil on canvas

32 x 24-1/2 inches (81.3 x 62.2 cm)

Flemish School: (1600 - 1800). The Flemish style of art began in the 15th century and was inspired by the manuscript illumination and art of the Burgundian court.

The first center of Flemish art was Bruges, recieving this reputation with the help of Hubert and Jan van Eyck in the 15th century. Paintings of this time were excuted in a realist style and often contained depictions of elaborate materials,  fabrics and religious symbols.

In the 16th century, Italian influences appeared and the center of artistic production moved to Antwerp. While some artists embraced the Italain style, others ignored the fashions and retained their indivdual style. The 17th century was marked by the influence of Peter Paul Rubens, the foremost Flemish artist. After the 17th century, Flemish art declined with the emergence of the French Rococo style.


Known for inventing oil painting, other characteristics of Flemish art included attention to detail, bright colors, and superior technique. More

JOHN HOPPNER (British, 1758-1810)

Portrait of a Lady at Half-Length in a light dress with a lace collar resting her arm on a balcony (possibly Mrs. Charles Greeley)

Oil on canvas

29 x 24 inches (73.7 x 61.0 cm)

John Hoppner (4 April, 1758 – 23 January 1810) was an English portrait painter. He achieved fame as a brilliant colourist. His touch has qualities of breadth and freedom that give to his paintings a faint reflection of the charm of Reynolds. Hoppner was born in Whitechapel, London, the son of German parents - his mother was one of the German attendants at the royal palace. King George's fatherly interest and patronage of the young boy gave rise to rumours, quite unfounded, that he may have been his illegitimate son. Hoppner became a chorister at the royal chapel, but, showing strong inclination for art, in 1775 he entered the Royal Academy. In 1778 he took a silver medal for drawing from life, and in 1782 the Academy’s highest award, the gold medal for historical painting, his subject being King Lear.

He first exhibited at the Royal Academy In 1780. His earliest love was for landscape, but necessity obliged him to turn to the more lucrative business of portrait painting. At once successful, he had the most fashionable and wealthy sitters. He rarely attempted ideal subjects, though a Sleeping Venus, Belisarius, Jupiter and Io, a Bacchante and Cupid and Psyche are mentioned among his works. The prince of Wales visited him especially often, and many of his finest portraits are in the state apartments at St. James's Palace.

Competent judges have deemed his most successful works to be his portraits of women and children. In his later years Hoppner suffered from a chronic disease of the liver. When first painted, his works were much admired for the brilliancy and harmony of their colouring, but the injury due to destructive mediums and lapse of time which many of them suffered caused a great depreciation in his reputation. More

LOUISE CATHERINE BRESLAU (Swiss, 1856-1927)

La Toilette, 1898

Oil on canvas

24-3/4 x 25-3/4 inches (62.9 x 65.4 cm)

Initialed and dated lower left: LB 98

Louise Catherine Breslau was one of the most sought-after portraitists in late 19th-century Paris, but it has only been in recent years that art historians and dealers have revived interest in her work. She was born Maria Luise Katharina Breslau in Zurich and as a youth took drawing lessons with the local artist Eduard Pfyffer. Confident in her artistic abilities, Breslau entered the Académie Julian in Paris, and she became the Académie's only female student to debut at the Paris Salon of 1879, with her self-portrait with friends, Tout passé. Shortly afterwards, Breslau "Frenchified" her first name and opened an atelier in Paris. Positive reviews from critics, as well as continued Salon successes ensured that she received numerous portrait commissions from prominent clients. Portraits like La Toilette illustrate her facility at rendering facial expressions and her sophisticated monochromatic palette and striated paint handling.


Notably, Breslau was the third woman to receive France's Légion d'honneur. During World War I, she painted humanistic portraits of French soldiers and nurses, underscoring her support of the country that had adopted her. More

VICTOR PIERRE HUGUET (French, 1835-1902)

Baignade de Chevaux (Algerian Caravan Bathing Horses against a Rocky Landscape)

Oil on canvas

26 x 33 inches (66.0 x 83.8 cm)

Signed lower left: V. Huguet

Victor Pierre Huguet (French, 1835-1902)

Rest for water 

signed 'V. Huguet' (lower right)

oil on canvas laid down on board

40.5 x 58.5cm (15 15/16 x 23 1/16in).

Victor Pierre Huguet (French, 1835-1902) 

A Rest by the River 

signed 'V. Huguet' (lower left) 

oil on panel 

14¾ x 18¼ in. (37.5 x 46.4 cm.)

Victor Pierre Huguet (French, 1835–1902)

An Arab encampment

oil on canvas

47 x 61.5 cm. (18.5 x 24.2 in.)

French painter Victor Huguet was a noted Orientalist, highly regarded for his enviable ability to capture light and shadow in a highly sculptural landscape. Compared with other painters who recorded the landscapes and people of North Africa and the Middle East, Huguet had a deft, fluid touch which imparts a freshness to his surfaces and scenes. Technically, he frequently verges upon Impressionism. In the present work, his skills as a colorist are given full rein: with a rather cool, silvery palette, Huguet nonetheless achieves the effect of baking heat in an arid landscape, making the refreshment offered by the body of water to the horses and riders all the more welcoming. Huguet's Orientalist paintings frequently introduce the horse, which he had obviously loved to paint.


Huguet received his artistic training in Marseille under the tutelage of Emile Loubon. At the age of 17 he visited Egypt, traveled to Crimea with Durand Brager in 1853 before the siege of Sebastopol, and also visited Algeria--a journey which found expression in numerous paintings. More

GASPARD PEETER VERBRUGGEN, THE ELDER (Flemish, 1635-1687) AND PIETER YKENS (Flemish, 1648-1695)

Flora - An Allegory of Spring

Oil on canvas

43-1/2 x 56 inches (110.5 x 142.2 cm)

Gaspar Peeter Verbruggen (1635, Antwerp – 1681, Antwerp), was a Flemish Baroque painter. He was the father of Gaspar Pedro, or Gaspar Peeter Verbruggen the Younger, and by his second marriage, also father to Balthasar Hyacinth Verbruggen. He had been the pupil of Cornelis Mahu in 1645 and became master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1650. He was known for flower still lifes and worked with Frans Ykens. His pupils were his oldest son Gaspar Peeter, Gillis Vinck the younger, and Jacobus Seldenslach, More

VICTOR GABRIEL GILBERT (French, 1847-1933)

Le Repos

Oil on canvas

23-1/2 x 25-1/2 inches (59.7 x 64.8 cm)

Signed lower left: Victor Gilbert

Victor-Gabriel Gilbert, a painter of Parisian market scenes, was a key figure in later nineteenth-century French art who straddled the French Realist and Impressionist movements. Born in Paris on the eve of the 1848 "February" Revolution, Gilbert grew up in a city with a highly-charged political atmosphere of working-class assertion which affected his art. Gilbert showed an early natural ability for drawing, but due to his parents' strained financial circumstances, he was unable to afford tuition at the École des Beaux-Arts and had to work as an artisan. From the age of thirteen, he was apprenticed to Eugène Adam, a painter-decorator, while at night he took lessons with Pierre Levasseur at the École de la Ville de Paris, which was the only formal art training he ever received. By developing artistically outside the École des Beaux-Arts system, Gilbert ended up drawing inspiration from the urban world around him. Instead of following the lead of Realism's major proponents, who focused upon rural peasant life, Gilbert chose to paint the hard-working city-dwellers who sold fish and vegetables and flowers in the open air markets of Paris. He became the premier painter of Les Halles, an area in Paris that still exists today but which then was a center for street vendors and markets. Gilbert had created a niche for himself with market scenes and for his work in the realistic depiction of the aspects of Parisian life, becoming popular not only with the public but also with the State which bought examples of his work from the Salons. As his style progressed, Gilbert began to embrace the higher-keyed palette of the Impressionists as well as their bourgeois subject matter. In 1987, he was awarded a knighthood of the Legiond'honneur. Today his paintings are in many distinguished private and public collections including museums in Bayeux, Besançon, Bordeaux, Dieppe, Le Havre, Lille, Liége, Nice, Paris, and Strasbourg. More

PINCKNEY MARCIUS-SIMONS (American, 1867-1909)

Symbolist Landscape

Oil on canvas

25 x 30 inches (63.5 x 76.2 cm)

Signed lower right: P. Marcius-Simons

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Born in New York in 1867, Pinckney Marcius-Simons began painting at twelve years of age. He went to Paris to train, and focused his attention initially upon genre painting which he exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1882 and also at the Salons of the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts from 1891-94. It was not until 1894 that Marcius-Simons fell under the spell of the fantastical work of the Symbolists, and began painting canvases which brought him true success. Emphasizing a dramatic color scheme featuring jewel-like hues, as seen in this example, Marcius-Simons turned his attention to illustrating operatic themes, and worked as a set designer in Bayreuth, Germany, at the Wagner Theater until his death. Some of his finest works are his poetic rendering of the "Nibelungen Ring," a series of elaborate pictures which he tried to create in the same manner by which a musician scores.


Although information on Marcius-Simons remains somewhat scarce, it is known that President Theodore Roosevelt thought highly of him and bought several of his paintings which can be seen at his home Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, NY. More

MICHAEL GORTSKIN WYWIORSKY (Polish, 1861-1926)

Rest from the Voyage, 1907

Oil on canvas

15 x 26 inches (38.1 x 66.0 cm)

Signed, inscribed, and dated lower right: M. G. Wywiorsky / Monachium 07.

Michael Gorstkin Wywiorski was born in Warsaw in 1861.  He studied from 1883 to 1887 at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts under Karl Raupp and Nicholas Gysisa.  He also took private lessons with Joseph Brandt and Alfred Wierusza-Kowalski.  Study trips led him to Scandinavia, Europe and Egypt as well as the Caucasus.  From 1895 he lived in Berlin for some time before returning to Warsaw.  

His early works show the influence of the teacher Joseph Brandt and Alfred Wierusza-Kowalski.  At first he preferred genre scenes with oriental motifs, later he focused more onto landscape and marine paintings.  Wywiorsky died in 1926. More