Art For Today, June 1, 2015, 13 Works By 12 International Artists With A Brief Biography For Each

SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO, ANTONIO MARIA REYNA MANESCAU, CONSTANTIN TERECHKOVITCH, ALEXIS GRITCHENKO, NICOLAE GRIGORESCU, THEO TOBIASSE, ANDRE LHOTE, LUMA VON FLESCHBRUNNINGEN, DANIEL O’NEILL, EDWARD SEAGO, HENRY MOORE, JACK LORIMER GRAY

JACK LORIMER GRAY (1927-1981), 

CANADIAN/AMERICAN SHIPPING IN NEW YORK HARBOUR 

Oil on panel; 

signed lower right

 11.75” x 13.25” — 29.8 x 33.7 cm.

Jack Lorimer Gray (April 28, 1927 — September, 1981) was a Canadian artist, known particularly for marine art. As a schoolboy young Jack loved drawing pictures, especially those of ships at sea. By the end of World War II he was a student at In the summer of 1945 Gray boarded with the Young family of East Ironbound island and made many sketches of island life which subsequently were turned into large paintings. 

His first major solo exhibition was at the Hackmatack Inn in Chester, Nova Scotia in 1948, leading to several commissions. With subsequent patronage from the Philadelphia dowager heiress Mary Dayton Cavendish, Maritime brewery owner Sidney C. Oland and others in the Oland family, Gray gradually advanced his career, living aboard boats in the early 1950s. When the steamship Dufferin Bell was wrecked on the Nova Scotian coast in 1951, Gray traveled with the salvage crew and filled several sketchbooks, attracting the attention of the press. An early friendship with author Thomas Head Raddall led to Gray's pen-and ink illustrations in Raddall's A Muster of Arms (1954); Gray also painted a wartime scene of Duncan's Cove, Nova Scotia for the book's dust jacket.[1] While based in Chester in the summers from 1953 to 1955, he painted in (his landlord) Herman Walker's sail loft in the Back Harbour

HENRY MOORE (1831-1895), 

BRITISH FISHING BOAT AT HOME HARBOUR 

Oil on canvas;

 signed and dated 1881 lower left, 

 21.5” x 30” — 54.6 x 76.2 cm.

Henry Moore RA (York 7 March 1831 – 22 June 1895 Margate) was an English marine and landscape painter. Henry was educated at York and was taught painting by his father. He entered the Royal Academy schools in 1853, and exhibited his first picture, 'Glen Clunie, Braemar,' at the Royal Academy in the same year. He was a constant exhibitor at the Royal Academy from that time onwards. He exhibited at the Portland Gallery from 1855 to 1860, and at the British Institution from 1855 to 1865. It was also in 1855 that he sent the first of many contributions to the gallery of the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street. He was a member of that society from 1867 to 1875. He was also a constant contributor, both in oils and water-colours, to the Dudley Gallery from 1865 to 1882. He became an associate of the Old Water-colour Society in 1876, and a full member in 1880, He contributed in later years to the Grosvenor Gallery and the New Gallery. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy on 4 June 1885, and an academician on 4 May 1893.

EDWARD SEAGO (1910-1974), BRITISH

TUGS ON THE GOLDEN HORN - ISTANBUL

Oil on masonite board; signed lower left, titled verso

14.2” x 19.9” — 36 x 50.5 cm

Edward Brian (Ted) Seago RBA ARWS RWS (31 March 1910 – 19 January 1974) was an English artist who painted in both oils and watercolours. Seago was a self-taught artist, and enjoyed a wide range of admirers from the British Royal family and the Aga Khan to the common man. His works have been classified as either Impressionist or Post-Impressionist and included landscapes, seascapes, skyscapes, street scenes, his garden and portraits.

DANIEL O’NEILL (1920-1974), 
IRISH

OLD TIME DANCE

Oil on masonite board; signed lower left, titled verso

24” x 16” — 61 x 40.6 cm.

DANIEL O’NEILL (1920-1974), IRISH

CONVAD

Oil on masonite board; signed upper right, titled to gallery label verso

20” x 24” — 50.8 x 61 cm.

Daniel (Dan) O'Neill (1920 – March 9, 1974) was a Romantic painter born in Belfast, Ireland. The son of an electrician, and himself an electrician by trade, he was largely self-taught, although he briefly attended Belfast College of Art life classes, before working with and studying under fellow Belfast artist Sidney Smith. He quickly developed an expressionist technique, and strong romanticism, with imagery, often full of pathos, evoking the themes of love, life and death

O'Neill's first exhibition was at the Mol Gallery in Belfast in 1941. In 1946 he sold 21 pictures out of 23 at an exhibition at the Waddington Galleries in Dublin and from then on exhibited regularly. In 1949 he visited Paris and was influenced by Georges Rouault, Maurice de Vlaminck and Maurice Utrillo. A number of works followed on which his reputation largely rests, including: Place du Tertre (1949), The Blue Skirt (1949), Knockalla Hills, Donegal (1951) and Birth (1952). His later work, largely brighter in colour, was seen by critics as less successful. In 1951 his work was shown in the Tooth Galleries, London and he also exhibited there with Colin Middleton in 1954.

In the 1950s, O'Neill moved from Belfast to Conlig, County Down, where there was a small artist's colony that also included George Campbell and Gerard Dillon.Along with Colin Middleton, Gerard Dillon and George Campbell he was one of a group of artists who respected each other’s work and kept in touch over the course of their careers. However, after the closure of the Waddington Gallery in Dublin, O’Neill found it difficult to exist as a painter. He lived in London from 1958 to 1971 and his work in this period was increasingly introspective and often desolate. In 1970 George McClelland invited O’Neill to exhibit a one man show, Recent Paintings, at his Belfast gallery, and provided O'Neill with accommodation and a studio to work in. It was his first one man show in 18 years and was a complete sell out.

During his lifetime, O'Neill's works were primarily exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy. More recently, some of his paintings were shown at the Irish Museum of Modern Art as part of a 2005 exhibition of Northern Irish artists.

His work is represented in many collections including the Ulster Museum, Queen's University Belfast and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin.

LUMA VON FLESCHBRUNNINGEN

(1856 - 1934),

AUSTRIAN/CZECH

DIE REUE (REPENTENCE)

Oil on canvas; signed lower left

51.5” x 62” — 130.8 x 157.5 cm.

Royal Collection of Franz Josef I, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary where it hung in the Royal Palace in Budapest until it was donated with several other works of art to the Red Cross to be auctioned at the beginning of WWI.

ANDRE LHOTE (1885-1962),

FRENCH

SOIR SUR LE PORT, 1947

Oil on panel; signed lower right, titled,

dated “en 14 R le 8 aout 47” and

inscribed “pinxit” in black ink verso

18” x 24” — 45.7 x 61 cm

The present work illustrates the hard edge geometric qualities of his Cubist
counterparts but this image is far more representational. Two on-lookers at
left gaze out toward a myriad of boats that are made up of deeply saturated
colours and flat curvilinear forms. Brilliant whites evoke the glare of
sunlight. There is a great energy and sense of activity in the work. The
entire scene is dramatically truncated to suggest that the bustle of this

harbor continues much further than the confines of the canvas.

THEO TOBIASSE (1927-2012),

Palestinian

UN CHANT DE VIOLON QUI NOUS SORT DE MITZRAIM

Gouache and mixed media on heavy

paper; signed upper right, titled lower

right and dated ‘70 mid left

Sheet 20.25” x 27” — 51.4 x 68.6 cm.

Tobiasse born Tobias Eidesas the 26 April 1927 in Jaffa then Mandatory Palestine and died 3 November 2012 in Cagnes-sur-Mer in France , is a painter , illustrator and sculptor French.

His first paintings were exhibited in 1960. He was awarded the "price of the young painting Mediterranean" in 1961  and Armand Drouant offered him a contract and the first exhibition at the Galerie du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris in 1962 .

Tobiasse also wins the Dorothy Gould Prize in 1961. He decided to devote himself to the visual arts. Many exhibitions are dedicated to him in the world, in Paris at the Drouant gallery in Geneva, Montreal and Tokyo, then London, Zurich, Lauzanne, Los Angeles, Kiev, and then a first solo exhibition in New York (1968). 

From 1964 Tobiasse develops a more personal iconography drawing from his own memories of his childhood in Lithuania, the wanderings of a family looking for a safe haven and the Holocaust. The train, the one that leads his family from Kaunas to Paris, or Jews to the camps, became a recurring motif.

NICOLAE GRIGORESCU (1838-

1907), ROMANIAN

FARMER AND CART IN A

SHADED VILLAGE LANE

Oil on canvas; signed lower left

8.75” x 13.75” — 22.2 x 34.9 cm.

Grigorescu is one of the founders of modern Romanian painting. In the
Autumn of 1861, Grigorescu left for Paris to study at the Ecole des BeauxArts.
He was soon attracted by the artistic concepts of the Barbizon School
and he became an associate of noted artists such as Jean-Baptiste Corot,

Gustave Corbet and Theodore Rousseau.

ALEXIS GRITCHENKO (ALEXEI

VASILYEVICH GRISHCHENKO)

(1883-1977), UKRAINIAN

MAN SEATED BY THE SEA

Oil on panel; signed lower right

15.75” x 20” — 40 x 50.8 cm

Alexis Gritchenko was a Ukrainian born painter, graphic artist and art
historian who travelled extensively throughout Europe, Asia and the United
States. He participated in exhibitions from 1909. Gritchenko’s work can be
found in various museums and private collections, more than three hundred
of them in the United States and Canada. The Alexis Gritchenko Foundation
was formed in New York in 1958 to preserve Gritchenko’s artistic legacy.
A clashing of figuration and abstraction, this painting depicts the real world
but the viewer is ever conscious of the paint and lines applied to the flat
surface. Gritchenko has locked his image into a frenzied throng of shape
and colour that paradoxically seems to heave and swell before becoming
immutable. The curves and bends of the land in the foreground are echoed
in the radiant sea. Scores of vertically stressed brushstrokes play off the
clear horizontals of the thirdly divided image. In this energetic painting,
readability evaporates in favour of an eruption of colour. One can sense the
laborious effort the artist underwent to broker a resolution between the

two-dimensional and tangible world.

CONSTANTIN TERECHKOVITCH (1902-1978),

RUSSIAN

LADY IN A HAT

Oil on canvas; signed and dated 53 upper left, signed by the

artist in ink on a label to the stretcher

25.75” x 20” — 65.4 x 50.8 cm.

This work is at once a testament to Terechkovitch’s artistic bravura: a beautiful and serene portrait of a woman that seems to palpitate with liveliness. The subject for this work evokes a sense of traditionalism, skillful portraiture that holds its roots in traditional Western art, but Terechkovitch’s use of colour presents something entirely novel. The sitter is composed with broad strokes of bold colours that appear to almost have been squeezed directly from the tube. Despite the spontaneity implied by the audacity of his paint handling, Terechkovitch has skillfully crafted the image.

ANTONIO MARIA REYNA MANESCAU

(1859-1937), SPANISH

VENETIAN BACK WATER

Oil on canvas; signed at “Venecia” lower right

13.7” x 29.25” — 34.7 x 74.3 cm.

Antonio Maria de la Concepcion Reyna Manescau ( Malaga ), 5 December 1859 - Rome , February 3, 1937 ) was a Spanish painter who is known as the painter of Venice for the numerous paintings he made of the city.

He was one of ten children. His parents enjoyed a good social situation, and both his brother Ricardo Reina as his uncle Jose Reyna Zayas were mayors of the town of Coin, in Malaga, Andalucia , Spain . From a young age he showed great fondness for drawing, began his artistic training at the School of Fine Arts in Malaga and in 1882 received a pension from the County Council for further study in Italy. He moved to Rome , the city where he lived until his death and where he married the opera singer Beatriz Mililotti DeSantis.

At the International Exhibition of Fine Arts in Rome held in 1911, he exhibited in the Spanish pavilion a large canvas entitled Andalusian Rancho in which he masterfully represents a family property known as Cortijo Ricardo. This work is currently in the city of Coin. 

ATTRIBUTED TO SEBASTIANO DEL

PIOMBO (1485-1547), ITALIAN

STUDY OF TWO FIGURES (STUDY FOR A

LAMENTATION OF CHRIST?)

Red chalk on laid paper laid down twice with

partially visible six-point star and crown watermark

to the original sheet or the first laid down sheet;

bears signature and inscribed: “fec. Sebastiano del

Piombo” in pencil lower left

Sheet 14.75” x 9.75” — 37.5 x 24.8 cm.

The lines of this master draughtsman illustrate an obvious command of the red chalk medium. Composed of crosshatches and thick and thin lines, the sanguine strokes are carefully descriptive marks rendered with thought. Confident lines are

smudged to soften contours and create shadow. Though the actualized painting for this study is hitherto unknown, it is clear that the artist is attempting to analyze the poses of his figures so that they may be composed with the utmost realism.

Acknowledgment: Waddington's