Catalog: Fine Art: Drawings: Pen (6)

Ottavio Padovanino, Italian, 1582-1634. This stunning drawing is red chaulk and pencil on paper mounted on paper. It is 15"H by 10.6"W with the name Padovanino handwritten in pencil on the paper below the drawing. Verso is written Alessandro Varotari, Verona, 1588-1648, "Le Padovau...." The condition is good with minor foxing and a darkened edge due to framing. It was in a private collection in Chicago.

Fernand Leger, French,1881-1955.Fernand Léger was born in 1881, the same year both Picasso and Braque were born, in Normandy; his father was a substantial cattle grazer.

John Ulbricht, Cuba, Illinois, and working living in Majorca, Spain for many years, 1913-2007.Provenance: Private Midwest Collection, Timothy Kuehne Gallery, Estate of Robert Von Neuman, Direct Acquisition from John Ulbricht, his son-in-law. He is known for Figural, Modernist and Abstract Compositions, Paintings and Drawings. These dynamic drawings represent his early original drawings from 1946-50 when he was living in the USA: Chicago and Denver, before moving to Majorca, Spain. His early work can be considered a period of peak artistic energy and exploration. They are pencil on paper out of his original drawings books from the estate of his Father in Law Robert Von Neumann, an important Midwestern wpa artist. Ulbricht has a long and productive artistic career and is listed in Who was Who in American Art. He has a extensive gallery and exhibition record and is in many museums including The National Portrait Gallery.

Giovanni Battista Gaulli, Italian, 1639-1709, called Baccico or Baccicia. Italian Angels or Putti on Clouds plus a small portrait of a man is a charming example of Gaulli's work. It is 5" by 7 3/4" of pen and sepia brown ink on paper. Provenance is Leslie Hindman Auction, Collection of P Waite, English Collection until 1994, German Collection Basenge. Condition good upper life corner restored. Giovanni Battista Gaulliwas a painter of the Italian High Baroque verging onto that of the Rococo. He is best known for his grand, Gianlorenzo Bernini-influenced illusionistic vault fresco in the church of the Gesù in Rome.Gaulli was born in Genoa, where his parents died from the plague of 1657. In mid-17th century, Gaulli's Genoa was a cosmopolitan Italian artistic center open to both commercial and artistic enterprises from north European countries, including countries with non-Catholic populations such as England and the Dutch provinces. Painters such as Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck stayed in Genoa for a few years. Gaulli's earliest influences would have come from an eclectic mix of these foreign painters and other local artists including Valerio Castello, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, and Bernardo Strozzi, whose warm palette Gaulli adopted. In the 1660s, he experimented with the cooler palette and linear style of Bolognese classicism. He soon, however, moved to Rome. In 1662, he was accepted into the Roman artists' guild, the Accademia di San Luca (Academy of Saint Luke), where he was to later hold several offices. The next year, he received his first public commission for an altarpiece, in the church of San Rocco, Rome. He received many private commissions for mythological and religious works. From 1669, Gaulli's painting took on a more painterly (less linear) aspect, and the composition, organized di sotto in su ("from below looking up"), would influence his later masterpiece. At his height, Gaulli was one of Rome's most esteemed portrait painters. Gaulli is not well known for any other medium but paint, though many drawings in many media have survived. All are studies for paintings.

Henri Laurens, Paris, 1885-1954.These 4 pieces are Cubiste Head ink on paper signed LR. They are 22.8cm by 18.5cm (9" by 7.3". The son of a workman, Laurens trained at an early age in a decoration studio, where he modeled period-style ornaments and drew architectural designs. Afterwards Henri Laurens worked on building sites and scaffolding, where he learnt the hands-on side of hewing stone. He also regularly attended the popular evening classes in drawing taught by "Papa Perrin," who instilled in his pupils a serious attitude to craftsmanship. Laurens' first sculptures were influenced by Auguste Rodin until he met Georges Braque in 1911. After encountering Cubism*, Henri Laurens began to translate the ideas of Analytical Cubism into sculpture, polychrome bas-relief* and collages*. Picasso, who liked what Laurens was doing, introduced the fledgling sculptor to Léonce Rosenberg, who was so enthusiastic about Laurens' work that he bought some of it and supported Laurens throughout the war years. A number of terracotta* and stone reliefs Henri Laurens did not long after the war reveal the influence of Jacques Lipchitz and African sculpture. By then repudiating Cubist geometric forms, Henri Laurens again approached nature, developing an organic, curvilinear style in which he produced highly abstract, rhythmic figures - usually female nudes - that were poetic and powerful. In numerous works Henri Laurens took up themes from Greco-Roman mythology and reinterpreted them. In 1944 Henri Laurens started producing designs for La Grande Sirène, and in 1953 he did Amphion, a bronze sculpture over four meters high commissioned by the university city of Caracas, Venezuela. Henri Laurens worked over each piece individually to ensure fullness and substance. Henri Laurens was awarded the Grand Prix for sculpture at the São Paolo Biennial* in 1953. Apart from sculpture, Laurens' legacy comprises a copious graphic œuvre: woodcuts, etchings and book illustrations. Henri Laurens died in Paris on 5 May 1954.

Fernand Leger, French,1881-1955. This stunning example of Fernand Leger's imagery at his peak period in the 1920's is graphite and gouache on paper. It is 34.5cm h by 25cm w in a beautiful frame 55cm h by 45cm w. It is signed lower right F. L. 22 and inscribed "A mon cher Ami Albert Fratellini cordialement F Leger". There is some wear on the edges of the paper as can be seen but no damage to the image. It has excellent provenance: bought from Gallery Louise Leiris in Paris by Prince Darius Tayarken of London (stamp verso), Private UK Collection, Private American Collection at present. Fernand Léger was born in 1881, the same year both Picasso and Braque were born, in Normandy; his father was a substantial cattle grazer. Fernand was trained as an architectural draughtsman and later worked as a professional retoucher of photographs. He was an abstract painter before the War, in which he had a brilliant record. He had visited the United States twice. In France, he lived in a villa next to some railroad tracks in a Paris suburb, and a farm in Normandy where he raised pigs and made cider.It is often said that Léger was the artist of the machine age, but he was not entirely a man of his time. He knew poverty as a child, was gassed in World War I, had to flee before the invading Nazis in World War II. But there is little of death and destruction in his work. Other men have painted with more passion, few with more exuberance.Léger returned to France at the end of 1945 after spending the war years traveling and lecturing in the United States. There had been three previous visits to America in the 1930s, all entrepreneurial adventures of only modest success. He had resumed his practice of making public appearances to explain his art to a sometimes curious, sometimes bewildered public. In addition, he enjoyed many celebrity encounters, like a holiday with Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, an evening at the theatre with James Joyce and friendships with Ezra Pound and Henry Miller. His paintings sell for up to 37 Million and his paintings are in many museums.