Figurative

William St. John Harper (1851-1910) American

Medium: Oil on Board
Image Size: 24” x 17”
Frame Size: 34” x 27”
Signature: Signed lower left
Price: $7500

Biography/Statement

Painter, etcher, illustrator and teacher, William St John Harper was active for many years in the environs of New York City including East Hampton.

He received his first instruction with John Whittaker at the Brooklyn Academy of Design. From 1872 to 1875, he studied in antique and life classes at the National Academy of Design with Thomas Le Clear and Lemuel Wilmarth, and there won an honorable mention his first year in life drawing.  He also studied in Paris with Leon Bonnat and Mihaly Munkacsy.

In New York City, Harper became one of the organizers of the Art Students League, which he served as a teacher and President in 1881.  At the League, he also took classes including from William Merritt Chase and Walter Shirlaw.

In 1879 he became manager of the Art Department for the New York Daily Graphic newspaper and also did illustrations that appeared in Harper’s Weekly and Scribner’s. As a painter and illustrator, he was especially noted for his images of women and children.  However, he was a sporadic painter, and only occasionally exhibited at the National Academy of Design. In 1892, he won the Thomas B. Clarke Prize from the Academy for an exhibited painting titled Autumn, and shortly after, he was elected an Associate member.

Harper also became a teacher at Cooper Union and Newark Technical School in New Jersey.

Memberships included the Artists’ Aid Society and New York Etching Club. He exhibited at the National Academy of Design and New York Etching Club and was a prize-winner at the Pan-American Expo, Buffalo, 1901.  Harper conducted a summer art school in East Hampton in 1898.

Sources:
John Davis, “William St. John Harper”, Paintings and Sculpture in the Collections of the National Academy of Design, Volume One (David Dearinger, Editor) Oxford Gallery

Artist Profile Page: Harper, William St. John / Categories: Figurative

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Figurative, Regionalist (Urban)

William R. Davis (1952-) Contemporary, American

Medium: Oil on Board
Image Size: 8” x 6”
Frame Size: 12” x 10”
Signature: Signed lower right
Price: $2400

Biography/Statement

Bill Davis is a noted marine painter. He grew up in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.  He is a self-taught artist whose oil paintings typically capture the serene light of sunrise or sunset on the water.   He employs many of the techniques traditionally used by American luminist painters to realize his personal vision, showing a marked preference for 19th century subjects.

In 1987, Davis had the first one artist show ever mounted at the Mystic Maritime Gallery in Mystic, Connecticut.  All twenty of the works featured in that show were sold at the opening reception. In 1990, he received the Mystic Maritime Gallery Award of Excellence, and his painting entitled Calm Day Off Latimer’s Reef appeared on the cover of Mystic’s The Art of the Sea Calendar in 1993.  Three of his paintings were also used in the book ‘Shipwrecks Around Boston’ by Cape Cod author, William P. Quinn.   Rockport Publishers has included Boston Harbor at Sunset in a new book entitled, ‘A Gallery of Marine Art.’

Much of Davis’ early works pays homage to 19th century artists such as James Bard, Martin Johnson Heade, Antonio Jacobsen and Fitz Hugh Lane.  He limits himself to about 30 colors in the palette of that period.  He describes his style as a “conglomerate of a number of ideas I saw in other artists with my own refinements.” Over the years, he has incorporated his fascinations for the different techniques of these artists.

In a tribute to Martin Johnson Heade, which appeared in the July 1991 issue of American Artist magazine, Davis refers to sunset as “the hour when night usurps day.”  He observes that this is the “best time of day for painters to capture the ‘inner state’ of a landscape,” and represents “an unequaled opportunity to sensitize the eye to the delicate mysteries of light and shadow.”

Although best known for his marine subjects, Davis strives to make his work accessible to those with a variety of tastes while expanding his own horizons as an artist.  Following the painting of Davis’ Lilacs and Basket, featured on the poster for The Cahoon Museum of American Art 1992 exhibition entitled, “The Flowers of New England.”

Davis has shifted in the last few years to painting more landscapes on location. In the process, he has converted to plein air painting, partly influenced by his friendship with artists Joseph McGurl and Donald Demers.

Artist Profile Page: Davis, William R. / Categories: Figurative, Regionalist (Urban)

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Figurative, Portrait

Desire Francois Laugee (1823-1896) European

Medium: Oil on Wood Panel
Image Size: 13” x 19”
Signature: Signed and dated 1881 right center
Price: SOLD

Biography/Statement

Désiré-François Laugée was a versatile artist who exhibited at the Paris Salon annually for a fifty-year period (1845-95). Born at Maromme near Rouen, he began his artistic training at Saint-Quentin with Louis-Nicolas Lemasle (1788-1870), a student of Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825). He then studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under the well-known teacher François Edouard Picot (1786-1868), another student of David. In his paintings of historical and religious subjects Laugée achieves emotional intensity though the powerful rendering of his figures, and the figures in his portraits and genre pictures have the same solidity and presence. Several of Laugée’s Salon entries were purchased by the French government, including Saint Louis Washing the Feet of the Poor (Ministry of State) and The Death of Zurbaran (Ministry of the Interior). Works in museum collections include Peasant Women of Picardy (Museum of Fine Arts, Bordeaux) and A Picardy Woman Spinning Wool (Museum of Fine Arts, Amiens).

Artist Profile Page: Laugee, Desire Francois / Categories: Figurative, Portrait

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Figurative

D. Jerome Elwell (1847-1912) American

Venice

Medium: Oil On Canvas
Image Size: 40” x 26”
Signature: Signed "Venice" lower left and dated 1880
Price: SOLD

Biography/Statement

D. Jerome Elwell was born in Massachusetts, June 12, 1847. He was the son of George and Elizabeth Pulcifer Elwell. He died at age 65 in Naples, Italy in 1912. He did watercolors, pastels and drawings. Some of the Belgium work which was early was dark. The pastels which were on brown paper came later and were done in Venice under the influence of Whistler.

Artist Profile Page: Elwell, D. Jerome / Categories: Figurative

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Ash Can School, Figurative, Regionalist (Urban)

Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) American

Medium: Oil on Board
Image Size: 4” x 3”
Frame Size: 8” x 7”
Signature: Initialed lower left
Price: SOLD

Biography/Statement

An urban realist painter of New York City genre, Reginald Marsh devoted his career to depicting people going about their everyday business including Bowery bums, vulgar party goers, and persons elbowing their way in crowded subways.  He was also a printmaker, completing about 236 etchings*, lithographs*, and engravings*, and devoted much time, especially in the 1930s, to printmaking*. Many of his paintings were done in watercolor and egg tempera*.

He was born in Paris to American-born artist parents, Fred Dana and Alice Randall Marsh.  His family settled in Nutley, New Jersey in 1900 and later in New Rochelle, New York.  After graduating from Yale University, he worked as a free-lance illustrator in New York City for the Daily News and The New Yorker and studied at the Art Students League*.

He was much influenced by urban realists John Sloan, George Luks and Kenneth Hayes Miller.  He went briefly to Europe and then returned to New York to pursue his sympathetic depiction of low-life subjects.  In the 1930s, he did murals for the W.P. A., and in 1943, he was elected a full Academician to the National Academy of Design.   Reginald Marsh died in Dorset, Vermont in 1954.

Source:
Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art

Artist Profile Page: Marsh, Reginald / Categories: Ash Can School, Figurative, Regionalist (Urban)

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