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French Couple in Bed: Honore Daumier
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Pre 1900 item# 1141420 (stock# 2571)
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King Art
414-276-6779
"Price on Request"
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Honore Daumier, Marseilles, France on February 26, 1808- 1879. This oil on wood panel in a beautiful 19th C gold lef frame is a rare example of his small portraits in oil. It is signed lower left h.D. Condition is good with minor paint loss along frame edge. Provenance: Private Atlanta Collection. Private Illinois collection.
He was the son of a Marseille glazier who wrote a little poetry on the side and who thought so much of his own talent that in 1816 he decided to move himself and his family to Paris. Over the next dozen years, the family lived in eight different apartments in Paris. There was never enough money, and the experience of hard times would mark Daumier for life. At the age of twelve, Honore became a messenger boy for a process server's office and then a clerk for a bookstore - jobs that opened up to him every corner of Paris. He sketched everything he saw and finally started studying art with an academician whose idea of instruction was to have his pupils copy plaster casts hour after hour. "This is not life," said Daumier, and he struck out on his own.A year later, the boy enrolled in the Academy Suisse, an informal school where students could draw from the model in the mornings and still hold down jobs. Though Daumier was never a flamboyant bohemian, he was soon part of a group of young artists from the school, some of whom became lifelong friends. If the teenager didn't have the money for oils or canvas (presumably why so little of his student work survives), in studios and cafes he drew the way other people talked. Daumier was on his way to becoming one of the greatest draftsman who ever lived.The lithograph was a comparatively new art in those days, but it quickly became Daumier's bread and butter. He began turning out political cartoons for an ardently antiroyalist magazine called La Caricature. One cartoon portrayed King Louis Philippe as Gargantua gobbling up every last sou in France. For such indiscretions Daumier spent six months in prison. He was the first French artist to get to the hall of fame because the people liked his little drawings, instead of the aristocracy liking his big salon paintings.
No sooner was he out again than he started producing more cartoons for another magazine. In 1846, at the age of thirty-eight, he married a young seamstress called Didine and settled down in an apartment on the Quai d'Anjou. There, in a bare attic studio, using crayons until they were so worn he could no longer hold them, and whistling the latest music-hall tunes, Daumier turned out lithographs of arrogant aristocrats, greedy landlords, sour-faced men and nagging wives, sinister lawyers and pompous judges. Sometimes his humor was gentle; occasionally it was savage; it was always perceptive.Daumier made lithographs, 3958 in all, until he went blind at sixty-five. But all along he was painting, though no more than a handful of his canvases were shown in public before the last year of his life. Compared with the more spectacular romantics, he seemed rough and unfinished. Nor did he understand the work of the new impressionists. He was a superlative draftsman whose brush drew spare and strong, and whose preoccupation was people. No matter how ordinary their acts, Daumier gave drama and dignity to their lives. He was ruthless in his candor, but his candor was born of concern.
The painter Daumier was a rotund gentle person who cared far more for others than for himself. There were never any extras for Daumier. A year before he died at seventy, a group of friends, led by Victor Hugo, arranged a show of his paintings. It closed dismally with a deficit of 4000 francs.Daumier's most celebrated work was a series of 'Robert Macaire' published in the 'Charivari'. His graphic works are unsurpassed for clarity, expressiveness, truth to type and nervously rhythmic life. He did not draw directly from nature, but from human nature, and this he did as fully as any artist who ever lived. But he was thought for years unworthy to occupy a single foot of space at the official Salon's shows. One Saturday night at Theodore Rousseau's barn in the village of Barbizon, a gathering that included Corot, Millet,Daubigny, Diaz and Bayre, along with Daumier himself, voted to form their own anti-Salon Independent Artists' Society.
No one ever represented with greater truth the varied type of Parisian character. He became blind in 1877, then died suddenly in 1879 of a stroke at Valmondois (Seine-et-Oise) in a house given him by Corot, the landscape painter.
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Seated Pierrot: Duilio Barnabe
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Pre 1960 item# 1139211 (stock# 2570)
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King Art
414-276-6779
"$4000."
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Duilio Barnabe: Italian 1914-1961. This "Seated Pierrot" is oil and mixed media on board signed lower right DBarnabe.
It is 25.50" by 19.50" and is framed 30.50" by 19.50". Barnabe is know for his Modernist cubist figures and some landscapes and still lifes. Condition is good and his paintings sell for up to $25,000 at auction.
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Alexander the Great & Soldiers: 17th - 18th C Italian
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Pre 1800 item# 1130529 (stock# 2567)
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King Art
414-276-6779
"$ 45,000"
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Italian. 17th-18th Century, Oil on Copper,
21"w by 15.25"h in an antique frame 26.25"w by 22"h. The painting is the subject matter of Alexander the Great surrounded by soldiers on his left side and people of the town on his right. On the verso is an antique inscription that attributes the painting to Jean Honore'Fragonard 1775. The inscription is obviousely antique and written in English.
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Barbizon Landscape with Figures: Jules Dupre
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Pre 1900 item# 1130510 (stock# 2566)
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King Art
414-276-6779
"$45,000."
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Jules Dupre, French,1811-1889,Born in Nantes. His father was an artist who decorated porcelain and held the position of director at porcelain manufactories. In 1822, Dupré worked for his father as an apprentice porcelain decorator. His early training as an artist was in the industrial arts, as it was for many of his contemporaries. While working with his father, he also executed drawings and paintings from nature.Dupré was influenced by his close association with DeMarne and Bertin and in 1829 he went to Paris where he further developed as an artist through his friendship with Cabat. Associations with the artists Decamps, Jeanron, and Huet were also formed at this time.Traveling to Great Britain in 1831, Dupré made a study of the paintings by English landscape artists. He also sketched and returned to France with a portfolio of imagery. His travels did not stop there though and the French provinces also provided great inspiration for the young artist. Early success came when he began exhibiting in the 1830’s and especially in 1833 when four of his works were accepted into the Salon. Official recognition came in 1835 when he exhibited four landscapes at the Salon and received a third-class medal. He also included works in regional exhibitions, which were becoming increasingly important as they supported and promoted local painters and upcoming Parisian artists.
It was at this time that Dupré became a key figure in the Barbizon group. He developed close ties with other Barbizon painters and began to promote relations with independent art dealers. When Dupré showed seven paintings at the 1839 Salon, it was to be his last exhibition, until 1852, and a turning point in his career. This was due to the insensitivity of the jury and the lack of understanding of many of his colleagues. Together with Cabat, Huet, Isabey, Corot, and Rousseau, Dupré organized a petition to change the jury system.After the 1848 Revolution Dupré became a member the commission created to reorganize the Salon. In 1849, he received the Legion d’honneur and continued to achieve financial success. At this time he reentered the Salon as an exhibitor. In 1867 he exhibited at the Exposition Centennale.Jules Dupré had fully developed as an artist by the 1870’s and was considered one of the leading landscapists of his time. He continued to paint until his death in 1889.Museums:Baltimore, Walters Art Museum; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, McMullen Museum of Art; Chicago, DePaul University Museum; Cincinnati, Art Museum; Cleveland, Museum of Art; London, National Gallery, Wallace Collection; Minneapolis, Institute of Art; New York, Frick Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Paris, Louvre, Mobilier National, Musée d’Orsay; Pasadena, CA, Norton Simon Museum; Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Saint Petersburg, Hermitage; San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums; Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario; Vic-sur-Seille, Musée Départemental Georges de la Tour; Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; West Palm Beach, FL, Norton Museum of Art;
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Mother & Children in Garden: Adolphe Monticelli
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Pre 1900 item# 1130504 (stock# 2562)
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King Art
414-276-6779
"Price on Request"
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Adolphe Monticelli, French, 1824-1886. This lovely oil on panel is 14 6/8"h by 11 3/8"w in a lovely 19th C Frame (22 1/4"h by 18"w). It is signed and in good condition. A pupil of Paul Delaroche, the master who was to have the greatest influence over the young Monticelli was N. V. Diaz de la Peña, whom he met when he returned to Paris from 1855 to 1856. Monticelli’s visits to Paris exposed him to the Rococo Revival, which was being popularized by artists including Diaz, and he started producing scenes of courtly figures in garden settings à la Watteau. This became a favorite subject, and from the 1860s until the end of his career Monticelli treated numerous variations on the theme. His final sixteen years were his most productive. The vibrant colors and thick, impastic surfaces of his late works struck a responsive chord in the young Vincent Van Gogh, who collected Monticelli’s paintings and expressed his indebtedness to the older artist’s work.Museums:Atlanta, High Museum of Art; Caen, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Compiègne, musée national du château; Dijon, Musée national Magnin; London, National Gallery; Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Marseille, Musée Cantini, Musée des Beaux-Arts; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Paris, Musée du Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, Musée national Jean Jacques Henner; Péronne, Musée Alfred Danicourt; Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Strasbourg, Musée d’art moderne et contemporain;
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Kleine Portratskizze 1923: Oskar Kokoschka
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Pre 1930 item# 1107417 (stock# 2541)
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King Art
414-276-6779
"Price on Request"
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Oscar Kokoschka, 1886-1980, Oil on canvas signed lower right O K. The painting is in good condition and is 20 1/8"h by 14 3/8"w in a 4.25" period frame with outer dimensions of 27 1/8"h by 21.1/8"w. It is from a private midwestern collection. He was the son of a fairly poor Czech goldsmith, was born in Pochlam, Austria and raised in Vienna, the great hothouse of modernism in economic, social and ethnic areas. By the time he was twenty-two he was labeled a "public terror". He was the "enfant terrible" of Viennese Expressionism as early as 1907. He first caused an uproar at an 1908 exhibition in Vienna; he became so controversial that he fled to Berlin in 1909. His contact with German expressionists there helped deepen his art. Kokoschka had an extraordinary life which is mirrored in his art. He changed nationalities twice; he lived in practically half the capital cities of Europe and he survived two World Wars. His early drawings are related to the nervous mannered work of Klimt and Schiele. However, Kokoschka quickly came into his own, abandoning style in order to explore the inner feelings of his sitters. He painted only people who interested him and never allowed his sitters to pose. Instead, he would have them move around and would talk to them so that he could get a sense of their feelings and personalities. In 1915, although he did not even know how to ride a horse, he enlisted in an elite cavalry unit of the Austro-Hungarian army. Eventually, having been wounded in a lung and in the head, and suffering from shell shock, he retired to Dresden to convalesce. Not surprisingly, his art took an unexpected turn: he became a master of land- and cityscapes. At the age of sixty-two, Kokoschka was still as self-assured as ever. "Though I am no great painter", he said, "I prefer my own pictures to any other. Art is dying; I am its oxygen. When Kokoshka is finished, true art will be finished." Had Kokoschka stopped painting at the beginning of World War I, his place in art history would have already been secure. But he continued well into his eighties, producing an oeuvre of considerable vigor and strength. He was a skeptic but never a pessimist; he left behind a body of work that is ultimately life-affirming and optimistic. Just before World War II he fled to London. Throughout these decades Kokoschka remained the rebellious outsider. In and out of fashion, now poor, now prosperous, he pursued the role of an embattled humanist, crusading against the conformity of modern times. Kokoschka's last years were spent in Switzerland and Austria, where he taught, painted and worked on his memoirs. In 1953, he opened a summer art school called the School of Vision in a castle overlooking Salzburg. Young artists flocked there and impassioned and tireless, he worked with two hundred students every day. Kokoschka continued to pour his thought and vision into tempestuous, vibrant paintings which he signed with the brusque "O.K." that became famous throughout the art world.As the longest-lived of the Austrian Expressionists, Kokoschka also had the most protracted influence on the development of modern art, which can be seen both in the Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s and the Neo-Expressionism of the '80s. His paintings sell for up to $2,953,180 for one of his portraits.
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Gleaners at Sunset: Jules Breton, attrb
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Pre 1900 item# 1107369 (stock# 2537)
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King Art
414-276-6779
"$75,000."
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Breton, Jules Adolphe Aime’ Louis, French,(attribution),1827-1906. Gleaners at Sunset, Oil on canvas, 46" by 52" in frame 54" by 62"
Described as "one of the primary academic painters of the nineteenth century", Jules Breton painted romanticized subjects in a realist style, especially bucolic scenes of peasants working in fields. Breton's subject matter was familiar to him from childhood. He was born in a rural area in north western France and was raised in Courriéres by family members who had much respect for the farm land and first-hand familiarity with those who tended it. His father was Marie-Louis Breton, who oversaw land for a wealthy landowner.
Breton first studied at at the College of St. Bertin near his native area, and then was overseen by Felix de Vigne, an artist who was much impressed by the young man and persuaded the Bretons to let their son focus on art. In 1843, Breton enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium where he continued to study with de Vigne. Another influential teacher was Hendrik Van der Haert. Breton also studied at Antwerp with Barton Gustaf Wappers and spent much time in museums copying the Old Masters. In 1847, he went to Paris where he enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the atelier of Michel-Martin Drolling, a genre painter.His early entries in the Salons of 1848, Misery and Despair, and 1850, Hunger, showed his interest in the plight of poor people. Getting a positive response from people in Brussels and Ghent, led him to moving there, where he also met his wife, Elodie, who became one of his most frequent models. He stayed four years, and then returned to Paris.
In 1853, his painting Return of the Reapers, became the first of his signature peasant scenes to be exhibited, and from that time, he stayed primarily with this theme, which is what he is known for among collectors and art historians. The next year, 1854, he returned to his home town of Courriées and settled there, using local rural scenes for his paintings and ultimately making famous that part of the French countryside. One of the first works he did there was The Gleaners, which launched his career because it brought him much positive public attention. The painting showcased people who returned to the field after the harvest to take the 'leavings' with the hope of having enough left over to feed themselves and their family. From that time forward until his death in 1906, he was very popular and received much reinforcement including official state commissions during the Third Republic, ongoing exhibitions during the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s, and winning medals at the Salon and prizes in other venues. Many of his works were made into engravings, which publicized his name widely in other countries including the United States and England. In America, the writer Willa Cather saw his painting The Song of the Lark at The Art Institute of Chicago, and inspired, wrote a novel with the same title about a girl with humble roots in Nebraska who became a famous opera star. The book became a best seller.
Museum Collections Include:
Chateau Museum, Dieppe; Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY; Hendrik Willem Mesdag National Museum, Hague; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha; Paine Art Center, Oshkosh; Musee d’Orsay, Paris; John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia; Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis; Toledo Museum of Art, OH; Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown; Musee du Louvre, Paris; Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Walters Museum, Baltimore; Antwerp Museum of Art, Belgium; Arras Museum, Calais; Bagneres Museum of Art, France; Bologne Museum of Art, France; Calais Museum of Art, France; Lille Museum of Art, France; Anvers Museum of Art, France
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Paris:Madelaine Street Scene: Edouard Cortes
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Pre 1970 item# 1102638 (stock# 2534)
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King Art
414-276-6779
"SOLD"
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Edouard Leon Cortes,Lagny - Torigny, France, French, 1882-1969. This wonderful Paris Street Scene by Cortes is oil on canvas, 13"H by 18"W, signed lower right in a French Impressionist Frame, 21"H b 24"H. It is in excellent condition and was painted circa 1950. Cortes showed his work and was a member of the Salon des Artistes Francais and the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts. He was well regarded in his time and his paintings are solidly in the impressionist style with a a exceptional ability to capture the magical light of the seasons: morning, evening, dusk, rain, snow and lights in the city. He is listed in Benezit and in numerous books and his paintings sell for up to $120,000. The painting comes with a certificate of authenticity.
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